lurching ahead

there were rumblings of apocalypse last night.  a sudden storm had it’s way with chicago and there was talk of tornadoes and the sirens wailed and the awe and hysteria was mocked via twitter.  in the end it was just the usual; flooding, toppled trees and thousands without power.  I regretted not having a decent view of things and relied on my girlfriend to offer vicarious thrills based on her observations from her lofty southeast facing perch.  luckily my power stayed on, as it gave me the opportunity to supply a soundtrack to the dangerous spectacle of nature.  I’ve been making my way through a pile of music and a great deal of it has come from the Tympanik Audio label, a terribly young and rapidly growing giant in the north american industrial scene.  It’s been in existence for a little less than a year but has an impressive roster of talent and a level of consistent quality that is pretty damn remarkable.  one of the newest releases is Carbon by Endif.

this album, out of all the releases on Tympanik, is the most suited for the ever voracious dancefloor.  there are a number of tracks, (between two worlds and naked bloody and hungry in particular) that should fit in seamlessly at even the most future pop and hellektro saturated events clubland has to offer.  the beauty of Carbon however, lies in it’s adhearance to it’s own rules of sonic engagement.  Endif has a way of building songs that eschew simple formulas and genre conventions that embrace complexity and involve layers of seemingly disparate elements that nevertheless come off as being relatively straightforward (as in the forementioned tracks) or dense mood pieces that stalk and wander, pausing here and there, losing shards of themselves, rolling back and picking them up again before releasing a ferocious assault of it all back at the listener.  Endif also has a strong grasp of tension and how it can be used in concert with silences and slower tempos to make the hard crushing beats harder and more intense; surgery of the soul is a masterful example of this, it’s my favorite kind of dance song even though I enjoy a good 4/4 stomper as much as the next guy.  it’s good storm music, most definitely.

~ by misterentropy on August 5, 2008.