Compactor - Total Data Control
Have not heard much about this project, which actually has been active since 2011. 100% pure minimalist brutality of a solo project! And Total Data Control is the very latest. Also being out on cassette via Phage Tapes (see link below).
You got 8 tracks of pure digital sound brutality. Every micro-second made of pure ear-candy delight. Somewhere between the electronic armchair feel of Autechre to the industrial rhythmic abstraction of Synapscape. The sound volume goes up and down in a split second, distorted-sounds jumps from the left speaker and right back to the right speaker, almost feeling a physical presence of an organic rhythmic beast in the heart of this. I can even taste the sounds on the edge of my tongue, tastes like something between corroded and rusted wires and welded steel!
First track Pervasive Intrusion starts the track with a lovely back-to-basics industrial/power-noise beat, looped steel bar tunes, fingertipped-controlled pedal-distortion effects (almost sounds like a mechanical guitar!). All of this gets warped in and out of focus, hint of Aphex Twin madness here and there. Really brutal and abstract at the same time.
Second track Location / Identification offers 8-bit Commodore 64 sounds being totally exploited and mutilated in a lovely rhythmic soundscape. The sounds of steel-spiders crawling all over this track. More of a creepy paranoia piece, very enjoyable!
Fourth track lets the listener understand the creepiness behind a Security Camara Stream. A more of an experimental and non-rhythmic noise piece. Again, we are dealing with a sound-brutality that u just want to dive into. Very stimulating material, almost feeling my brain is starting to itch (in a good way!).
Another track that should be mentioned is the last track on the album, called Listen Learn Predict. A heart-rhythmic death-industrial machine pounding slowly, telegram bleeps, old-school modem noises, screaming digital-ghosts... I mean really, this is good!
There is (or can be) a ghost inside a machine after all. And Compactor has just proven that. A frightening cold and merciless old-school mechanical machine with human faults and feelings?. The cold technoid aesthetics has a lot of souls ok?!. You have got to give this one a good listen, this is great! Additional (and official) info below :
Total Data Control is a 40-minute audio document recently licensed on US underground label Phage Tapes. The collection turns the lens and microphone around on Surveillance Capitalism, the commodification of consumer information. The cover art was created from the actual code for an open platform video surveillance program. Each of the eight tracks points to a different aspect of how ubiquitous these practices have become in society, especially since the increasing shift towards everything being done online. Further sentence fragments inside the insert trace the steps of a path of commands that leads to increased compromises in the humanity of our societal structures. There is also a simplified GPS map to one of the sources of this.
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