Mascarpone
Module 33
Mechatronica
While French producer Mascarpone has earned a lot of his name via the industrialized EBM and techno sound, his work has always been touched by the sound of classic electro, of the Detroit variety. New EP Module 33 leans heavily towards that sound, without abandoning the harder and more sinister aspects of his work. “Fusion Pulse” is the case in point; the track’s rhythm and use of such sounds as the 808 cowbell point towards classic electro, the sharp, metallic stabs and distorted claps give it a distinctly industrial edge. Its immediate follow-up “Nanochrome” has more than a little EBM in its shuddering bass programming, barging through its brittle pads on a bed of chattering synths and filtered hi-hats. The variations do come in subtler flavours as well, as on “Cosmic Entropy”, where menace emerges from behind the Speak and Spell voice via some squelchy synthwork and horror movie chords, and on the title track, which is played straight save for some more deliberately sterile and atonal decisions in the mix and arrangement.
Buzzkill
Wasteland
Coeur sur toi / Ganache Records
Buzzkill’s new EP doesn’t beat around the bush in establishing the French duo’s sound: thirty seconds into opener “Shout” a speedily anxious read on machine-like post-punk rhythms and simultaneously disaffected and swooping vocals frame the rest of Wasteland. That jittery feeling of too much coffee and cigarettes too late at night is an energy which holds through all of its seven tracks, yielding a sound that’s fairly distinct from the more brooding and lugubrious contemporary acts mining early goth, but the buzzily spastic “Isolation” hearkens back to vintage acts of a different cast like compatriots Kas Product, while the wormy, wriggling synthpunk of “Nowhere” recalls more recent mutants, like The Vanishing and other acts associated with GSL in the early 00s. Regardless of influence, Buzzkill find a way to infuse fairly minimal arrangements with a lot of mood and atmosphere: that’s partially a product of the sheer relaxed cool of the vocals, but a keen sense for knowing exactly how much instrumentation to clad each sequence of their tunes in (and not a note more) makes each extra synth flourish or dropped-out bass passage feel just a tad more dramatic.
