The second 2025 item from Genetic Transmission isn’t actually a Twardawa original, but a remix set created by Stephen Ah Burroughs from Tunnels Of Ah. For the record Frag Deconstructed Genetic Transmission (ZOHARUM ZOHAR 356-2), Burroughs has gone back to his Frag project – a solo thing in existence since about 2018, with Boyd Rice’s NON and the work of Maurizio Bianchi, cited as “driving influences”. Later, Frag would indeed collaborate with Bianchi on Psychation and Septic Sterility, and also with Nocturnal Emissions for the Esoteric Sedition album.
I mention these names just to signpost where Frag may be found on the general global map of anti-social and threatening sounds, and further to warn the listener that today’s record is not at all a pleasant listen. Frag seems to be the hat worn by Burroughs when he wishes to pay homage to other musicians, whose music has impressed him deeply, by collaborating or by remixing. What he’s done here is much less intensive than the jet-black suffocating noise of Tunnels Of Ah, but it’s still remorseless, somehow intensifying the most bitter and repugnant parts of Twardawa’s music and emerging with five hideous episodes of anxiety, paranoia, and despair. Frag gets straight to the nerve centres of pain, using the skills of a cruel surgeon, and keeps on twisting his knife, attacking our sensitive receptors with drill, hammer, and forceps. What’s worse, he sustains this harsh treatment for a very long time on some extended tracks.
N.B. – I could be entirely wrong in apprehending these cuts as “remixes”; they are described, somewhat vaguely, as “reinterpretations” and “deconstructions” in the press blurb, so it might be that what we’re hearing is completely original Burroughs music that has been inspired by Genetic Transmission, rather than derived from it. But I stand by the assessment above, and either way you’re in for a pretty dark and unsettling ride. (22/10/2025)