As Dead Fader, Barry Prendergast and Jon Cohen have developed a reputation for pushing synthetic tones to within an inch of their life, distressing and processing their source material into distortion and near-overload, whilst still somehow maintaining the barest senses of danceability by welding the entire mass onto the sort of rhythmic undercarriage you’d associate with industrial dubstep and hiphop. On the heels of last year’s ‘Luckeeey’ EP for Tigerbeat6, this latest EP on Robot Elephant Work It, No sees the duo offering up four new tracks that see their established penchant for toxic levels of noise firmly intact.
‘Bosched’ opens proceedings with the sorts of relentlessly mechanistic clattering hiphop rhythms that you’d imagine the Terminator listening to as poisonously buzzing bass bursts arc back and forth against the steel plate snares and a contorted synth solo sputters against the oppressive noise. ‘Fishsh’ meanwhile easily offers up the biggest highlight here as Sensational’s dense verbal flow battles for space against growling plumes of overdriven distortion and shearing white noise, the relentlessly loping robotic hiphop rhythms and dub reverbs that lurk in the background calling to mind Techno Animal circa ‘Brotherhood Of The Bomb’, before ‘Das Hamster’ pushes zapping snare bursts and eerie atmospheric synths through the audio mulcher, the entire track somehow managing to remain more or less intact as it gets slowly crushed by a wall of digital processing. Punishing yet meticulously controlled stuff that’s limited to 300 copies on pink (!) vinyl, with a download version also available.
Chris Downton
