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AUSTRIA VENTIL RECORDS V_034 LP (2023)
Another strong slab of dark, aggressive avant-techno noise filth from this fave Austrian label, featuring one of the co-founders or head steelmen, Peter Kutin. The trio comprises his torso welded to the body of an electric guitar, plus the pivoted mechanical arms of Lukas König, the raving lunatic pretending to be a drummer whose powerful LP Messing for this label has been depleting mineral rights around the world since its release in 2020. Secret weapon is the glorious tonsils and black-gold teeth of Elvin Brandhi, appearing here as Fridge, although her real name might be Freya Edmondes and she’s been spewing out her own brand of politically-inspired vocal improvisation for quite a few years now, often setting the stage alight in a collaborative situation. Although it seems she actually prefers doing it on building sites or abandoned basements, like a true subversive would.
The Austrian electronic-and-beat duo have thus found the perfect addition to their crew whose plan was not so much as to invert techno or dancefloor norms, as to rekindle the maggots of post-punk music into something suitable for a nuclear blast or a nerve gas attack. Fridge’s treated and barked vocals – harrowing and wretched – go way beyond the distortion zone and drag the listener, on iron barbs, into a desolate state in every one of these psychic noise-o-dramas for the brain. Aided on one forgettable track by Karolina Preuschl, a latterday “aktioinist”, who throws herself into the hideous task of “hyperactive self-surgery”, according to the fevered, ranting press note by Bath & Strelka. Striking throughout this long player is the deliberation and icy calm of these destructive moves, each track often coming to a dead stop at midway point for no apparent reason before firing itself back into life like a steam-drive engine on the track, carrying a payload of high explosives. These strange dynamics, mixed with the unpalatable noises, can make for a heart-stopping listen.
I’ve often been sent into a delirious condition by the devilish games of Kutin and imagined they’re suitable to be used as soundtrack recordings for a kidnapping, involving bodies shut inside the boot of a car, in a hideous modern film noir. Today’s record goes there for sure, but also ups the ante with its cover art by TE-R, which resembles an imaginary X-ray picture of the central nervous system until we look closer and see all the ganglia, nodes and dendrites contain human faces, and some of them are tiny impish bodies dancing in space. An intense release. (31/10/2023)