Run Level Zero
Mute Lines
self-released
Hot on the heels of last month’s The Rift comes another EP from Sweden’s Run Level Zero, a project whose contemporary, post-reactivation material has shown a far more expansive take on the classic electro-industrial of their earlier incarnation. Mute Lines is somewhat moodier than it’s predecessor, exploring further abstracted realms of RLZ’s take on industrial, leaning heavily into atmospherics and especially relying on Hans Akerman’s commanding voice to sell its emotions. Opener “Crayons & Paper” is widescreen in its ambitions, building up a wide field of sounds around its bass and drum programming and integrating pianos, guitars, distorted FM bells into its free-roaming arrangement. Alternately, “The Lady on the Floor” is practically all spoken word and skittering noise and broken pads, formless and unnerving until it disintegrates into long, ghostly drones that are almost a relief. The capper is “The Crown”, a wonderfully baroque track that marries the approach of each preceding song, using abstract and cut up noise and distorted percussion alongside its thick-as-molasses bass and a particularly wonderful lilting vocal from Akerman, weary but not beaten down by the procession of noice and percussion that surrounds him. Abstract without being aimless, Run Level Zero is continuing to explore a post-electro-industrial sound rooted in their influences but not bound by them.
aliceffekt
Ver’lytsl
self-released
It’s been a lengthy layoff for Montreal-based producer aliceffekt, with no new material in the seven years preceding new EP Ver’lytsl. Thematically the release picks up right where Devine Lu Linvega’s preceding work left off, detailing voyages through imaginary digital fairylands which tie aliceffekt together with Linvega’s work as a digital artist and game designer, in a sort of IDM rethinking of The Dream Quest Of Unknown Kadath. Musically, Ver’lytsl‘s four cuts throw the listener right into the deep end of Linvega’s hypercoloured read on gabber and chiptune amongst other genres, with opener “Oylaen Cannalx” making some nice gestures towards spacey bass music before dropping you right into kick-snare bullet hell. “Risan Aldeth” carries that intensity into grimier industrial territory, with the spacious echoes around its clicks and klaxons recreating modern warehouse rave ambiance, while the sweet n’ sour synth arpeggios wrapped around the gabber beat of “Lidou Mora’Feriu” drag Dutch Thunderdome goers into aliceffekt’s purely digital realms populated only by sprites and vocaloids. aliceffekt has generally eschewed LPs for the sake of shorter form releases like this, so it’d be offside to view Ver’lytsl as any sort of ‘preview’, but hopefully it presages a sustained return.
