Kontakt Service - Our Hearts Are Like Open Graves...
As it is with Kalteldur, we are busy with reviews since reviewing albums is a dying breed... and that is just why we continue doing so. The latest with Swedish-bred power-electronics/noise act Kontakt Service was released last year on the Austrian label Steinklang Industries. Rumours have it that the album is a joint release between Ideal Father and Human Vault; further information about that is not written on the inner sleeve.
The limited 50-copy cassette comes as a shell-white pro-printed cassette, with 6 6-panel j-card (tons of awesome collage graphics!). 6 tracks, 36 minutes in total.
The first track, The Night Should Cover All clearly shows where the sound of this album is heading. Analog perverted murkiness in some abandoned sewer, below the busy old and dirty town. Classic distorted vocals, monotonic death industrial. Interesting chopped-up sound effects and creepy flanged effects in there as well.
The second track, Higher Degree of Rupture. Not with the high-frequency sounds og the former track, but starts like a dark-ambient piece. True crime samples about nasty stuff, flanged vocals, and a churning, distorted bassline. I can also recognize the characteristic vocal sound by Human Vault here.
The third track, Untitled 1. Raising the atmosphere where the roof is a bit higher. A slow kind of atmospheric noise track with a filmic soundscape attached to it.
The fourth track, Copulate in Silence, follows the same noise/ambient pattern with some nasty lyrics about... u find out yourself.
Jumping to the sixth and last track called Untitled 2. An interesting bass-heavy noise-ambient-based death-industrial soundscape.
Latest Kontakt Service is an atmospheric, nasty bit of industrial noise. Kind of easy going ( in a way ) but also challenging with the themes chosen for the tracks. Have a feeling that the album is missing out on something. A thumping pulse of some sort to build up the mood of distorted vocal parts, or some synth-work, could also put a touch of color in the mix. I do like the high focus on the conceptual sound-aesthetic, and it´s easy to hear the output from both artists. The album also works as a good introduction to both Kontakt Service and Human Vault. Atmospheric morbid themes are nonetheless guaranteed for any death-industrial addict!
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