CARDOPUSHER: New Cult Fear; Double Vinyl LP (2017)

Techno, Acid, House, Electronic, Experimental, Germany, Dark, Industrial, Electro; Double Vinyl LP – Ex Used Condition

New Cult Fear, on Boysnoize Records, proves it through disciplined, focused craftsmanship. It’s the type of no-frills production that deceives the amateur listener with its simplicity, while the seasoned listener knows that the simpler the elements, the harder it is to make a track that moves the dancefloor. Moving dancefloors it does, although there are few smiles to be had. This is music for dark rooms, for Nitzer Ebb‘s famous pairing of “muscle and hate”. This is being electrocuted by a broken TB-303 — only you find the feeling erotic, your exclamations recorded on a haunted reel-to-reel. And it’s never sounded so good. The 11 tracks of the LP sit squarely in “the zone”, that time in the club when time itself has stopped, when mind turns off and body takes control. Menacing acid lines, jacking bass, and harsh, reductionist production build the backbone to fragmented Latin percussion and vocals (including a feature by Miami’s Cuban/German Otto Von Shirach), which nod to Cardopusher’s South American roots and lend a sense of exoticism to its otherwise Detroit rooted aesthetic. This sense of geographic and temporal disconnection/reconnection permeates the LP; this is Detroit techno and Chicago acid, broken, fragmented, sent through antiquated and illegal P2P networks to Venezuela, burnt to CDr and snail-mailed to a Barcelona basement rave, recorded live, then blasted wide open in fractal bits over a global electronic network and reassembled here-and-now in a darkly crystalline execution. As the title New Cult Fear suggests, this is less the stuff of dreams and more-so of a paranoid nightmare. But let your body take control, and nightmares never sounded so good.