From Synthesis:
(by Troy Southgate)
DESPITE the impression given by the title,
this split CD is not actually a live recording at all but a release that
was made available when these two dedicated purveyors of extreme Power
Electronics visited Tokyo in May 2007. My experience of Sutcliffe Jugend
had, thus far, been restricted to 1997's "We Spit on Their Graves"
album, which was infamously "dedicated" to the prostitutes murdered
by namesake Peter Sutcliffe -The Yorkshire Ripper - and also released
under the Cold Spring moniker. Between that and this present offering,
Sutcliffe Jugend had released a further two albums, namely "When
Pornography is No Longer Enough" and "The Victim As Beauty".
What I like about Kevin Tomkins and Paul Taylor is their ability to think
outside of the humanistic box presented to us on the daily news. There
is a lot of hype surrounding the general public's professed sympathy towards
well-publicised icons of the victim industry like Princess Diana and Madelaine
McCann and therefore it's quite refreshing to see the duo reflect this
mass hypocrisy right back at them. Their contribution to the CD is a single
28-eight minute track called 'White Goods'. It certainly begins in an
unassuming enough manner, as a gently shuddering blend of ambient drones
and pitches. Softly spoken, menacing vocals ("You know who I am")
make nasty threats over a light piano melody. But don't make the awful
mistake of thinking this is more of a mellow SJ release like I did and
whack up the volume, because on five minutes the listener is viciously
shaken out of this drifting, contemplative mood by a loud burst of tortured
screaming and a brutal misogynistic pleading: "Deface. Deface her.
Deface. Deface her." Things do quieten down a few minutes later,
however, as a psychedelic buzzing helps to soothe the after-effects. But
I‚m a very fast learner and when the piano returns again around
the 10-minute mark, I brace myself for what follows. At first, there is
a vocal stream of consciousness in which sentences appear to be linked
with a word from the preceding sentence. Rap for the psychotic. Sonnets
for those about to snuff it. It‚s quite effective, too, and the
track continues to flap along like a punctured tyre until the beeps, creaks
and whispers build up into a fiercely ejaculated frenzy: "Do you
want to share the same bed!!?" Not the greatest chat-up line in the
world, but somehow I don't think the good lady has much choice in the
matter. The lyrical violence sounds like a strangled cat trying to imitate
Dani Filth; or a petrified Sooty being kicked off the summit of Toytown
Mountain and then being stamped on for good measure. The piano pops in
again above a litany of unsympathetic queries about the value of human
life and continues in that vein until the end. But what Sutcliffe Jugend
have done here is to demonstrate that controlled aggression is just as
effective as the vitriolic outpourings that characterise their previous
efforts. A stunning and well thought-out track. And so to Satori. Despite
having known Justin Mitchell for almost ten years, I hadn't heard the
group's work before and was keen to find out what he and Neil Chaney have
been getting up to recently. Not that I'm jealous or anything. Satori
had already produced two cassettes ("Behold the Past" and "Satori")
back in the 1980s and an album ("Infect") in 1995 on the Functional
Organisation label, so there are clearly significant gaps of inactivity
between the releases. But then Justin does have a successful label to
run. Described as "Fortean Electronics", Satori are part of
the backbone of the UK's relatively small Power Electronics scene and
it's good to see that they recently had a chance to export their wares
to the Far East. There are three tracks on their 20-minute session on
this CD and the first of these, 'Convulse', is almost militaristic in
its constant rhythmic pounding. It‚s the English answer to pure
Japanese fury, containing both structure and direction. The victory of
the Apollonian over the Dionysian. That which deviates from the acclimatized
'norm' is controlled, like a responsible dog-owner with three Dobermans
straining at the leash. This is what Power Electronics should be. It's
ominous and foreboding, but the energy being generated is never allowed
to get out of control despite the presence of an interesting psychedelic
dimension. 'Dead Channel Transmission' hisses and spits like a drunken
whore, but again, there is an underlying beat that - in this case - even
verges on tribalism. Any discordance that breaks away from the frenetic
centre is shaped and tempered until it compliments the whole. Impressive.
'Eruption' also contains this semblance of military precision, the driving
meters of sound rinsed over with rumbling waves of machinery. But Satori's
accessible style is reminiscent of an old-school Industrial sound that
has merely been influenced by Power Electronics, rather than something
which has been cut from the same cloth as, say, a Masonna or Grey Wolves.
And for that it's all the better and simply proves that we English do
things best!
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