Bristol-based duo Emptyset (real names James Ginzburg and Paul Purgas) crafted perhaps the most austere, hard-edged and deconstructed take on techno that I’ve heard in a long while with their Demiurge album of last year, a collection that inhabited forbidding industrial-tinged territory.
Twelve months on, this accompanying 12″ acts as a remix companion of sorts, with Roly Porter and Paul Jenbanasam each providing their own reinterpretation of a track taken from the album. On the A-side, Roly Porter’s variation on ‘Vulgar Display Of Power’ starts off in Lustmord-esque dark ambient territory, venturing out through claustrophobic sub-bass growls and oceanic kickdrum pulses, before suddenly ratcheting forward into relentlessly hammering mechanical rhythms, the hiss of distortion generating an atmosphere of doomy corrosion. On the flip, Paul Jenbanasam’s reworking of ‘Of Blackest Grain To Missive Ruin’ follows a similarly uncompromising path, opening with an ominous crash that recalls the slow roll of a gathering thunderstorm, before venturing out into poisonous layers of ambient distortion, the eerie distant hum of ghostly synth pads against sudden bursts of DSP-treated textures calling to mind some post-apocalyptic wasteland completely devoid of life. Ferocious and immersive stuff that’s definitely cut from the same nightmarish cloth as its parent album.
Chris Downton
