De Fabriek – Compressie Slag

This is an album which seems to live on the nervous edge of chaos, sometimes dipping in, sometimes keeping such things well as bay. "Louisville-Viertact" is built mainly on a Martial-sounding drum sound, paradiddling along while deep booms & scraps of machine detritus show up nearby, ed by electronics & keyboards. A slowed-down voice informs the listener certain facts in weird robot-like falterings. Upon this grows a clanky drum pattern, dying away to allow "Kleppen-Spoeling" it's liberty. This is a chaotic, blasting wall of distorted rhythm, hammering through thick metal walls of distortion, thundering, bludgeoning, a massive asphyxiating mountain of chaos machinery forged into post-apocalyptic dance moves. Hard


migraine-inducing). "Fracties" is a more languid rhythmic piece, dense, with the threat of potential chaos noise hanging over it like Damacles Sword, yet it has a ive, jungle-rhythm feel to it, boughed along on a simple bassline/snare spine while voices, keyboards and what is very possibly bagpipes blend together with such sounds as & sustained echoes into a thick, almost tactile wall of sound images - ever-changing, ever fascinating. "Stroomstoot" returns to the fast, distorted rhythmic composition which seems as if it's pushing the needle flat into the VU with it's post-electronic patterns which dip in & out of throughout. Again a simple enough composition, but effective in all it's noisy, raw-nerve-grating glory. It closes with human sounds either in the upmost reaches of ion, in utmost pain or utter madness. "Mekka-Turbo" again thickens up the composition - again a rhythm, but so full as to be a wall of droning machine sounds. Through the drone can be made out the drums, which make way for a blasted piece of Indian music, sent into even more distorted areas than it may already have been. Up from this rises a clanking metal pattern beaten along to the massive, painful mass of sound. "Vervuiling" again uses a massive, grinding factory sound, this time apparently utilising loops of dragging sounds & underlying drones over which fragments are cast. "Rotor" has a much more musical sound, building on a Eurock sequencer sound & droning keyboards, it drifts in thick dusty vacuums of tasteless, odourless space, adrift & floating, perpetually stuck it a loop. "Break-Attack" returns to the harsh, metallic-and-thunderous-distortion compositional approach. Considering the massive discordant sound used, they do seem to control it well shaping a sound out of



convincing cross-section taken from hiroshima the moment the bomb went off, "Underdog-Compound" rises on more mellow, humming sounds, again welded into some form of regular pattern, through which a variety of electronic sounds & looped voices rise & fall. It sounds a little like the ENO / BYRNE "Bush Of Ghosts" album after decomposition has lent it a heavy Industrial overtone. It shapeshifts around, allowing a variety of elements to rise up & the dance. "Vryloop" rises with moody noises



building into a cathedral-like atmosphere through which rise strange sculptures in a variety of related sounds. It's one of the more moody, fascinating pieces on this album, inhuman yet likeable. "Warzone" blasts into life with distorted noise, traffic sounds whispered voices & other elements, soon rising into the noisy-but- fascinating slow-drumming rhythm full of potential which burns like hot pipes against cloth-protected skin, tiring the air into something bad-tasting & lacklustre. It drifts, ever metamorphosising in tone while remaining strict in beat. It reminds me a little of DOME taken to a logical extreme. The album closes with "Adiabaat", which blows in on desert gales, finding itself in some kind of factory, dead, unused, yet gravid with potential. The rhythm whirls around in ever-spinning spirals, searching for direction, which it finds in glittering keyboards & clipping, wet beat, which heralds a more ive composition. After a little human truism, it slices it's blades in another direction, searching out new patterns, new plots, altered configurations, finally finding it's conclusion.

As always



you are interested in exploring, be sure & pack some paracetamol.

Originally reviewed for Soft Watch.