Artist: Agent Side Grinder
Title: Hardware / SFTWR Included
Genre: Electro / Industrial / Synth
Release Date: 4th June 2013
Label: Artoffact Records
Album Review
[:”Electronic hardware consists of interconnected electronic components which perform analog or logic operations on received and locally stored information to produce as output or store resulting new information or to provide control for output actuator mechanisms…”:]
I was hardly ever listening to an album, whose title hit the bull’s eye with more aplomb as AGENT SIDE GRINDER´s ‘Hardware’. The third official album of Sweden´s five-headed electronic juggernaut (2013 re-released in form of a package together with their current output ‘SFTWR’, which I will focus on later) seems like a cacophony of bare-naked noises and tunes, of oscillations reduced to the core of sound as language. The albums eight tracks feel like modules, like discrete unities in the soliloquy of an entirety, absorbing and reflecting atmospheres and sonic textures, interlinked by a common raison d'être: analogue spirituality.
‘Look Within’ is a bleak rhythmic mantra circling around a pulsating bass line, interferencing with a sterile mechanical heartbeat, which is embedded in flaring inorganic grain and K. Grip´s fragmentary words, audible imprints of a state in a time loop. ‘Sleeping Fury’ is a cataleptic and rigid array of sequences, static and synthetic, a generated process, multiplexed by disharmonic melodies and napped vocals, whose constant repetitions amplify the effect of a Mobius´ short circuit. ‘Rip me’ surprises with an unusual restrained rhythm pattern, a sweetly melodic corpus and a vocal intonation you can call emotionally very nearly, almost euphonically. It feels a bit like older DEPECHE MODE stuff, including the mandatory NEUBAUTEN-noise-art-caesura.
‘Wolf Hour’ is a bastard of the album´s main binary colours so far - simple but salvos-like beats, a driven, pulsating bass and fuliginous, subliminally aggressive vocals, confronted with translucent melodies and the crystal-clear guest chant of Sweden´s Indie icon Henric de la Cour (YVONNE, STRIP MUSIC). With ‘Mag 7’ we enter the album’s more melodic and coffee-table areas again. Like a gloomy version of DEPECHE MODE, the lower tuned, resignedly intensive vocals collaborate with the plain electronic background fabrics, punctuated with subdued melodies and KRAFTWERK-like textures. ‘Pyre’ is (in my mind) the album´s greatest moment, a slowly coiling reptile of noises and shadows. Hypnotic guitars and a sadistically tentative bass are licking right under the gently seducing and invoking vocals for creating an almost disturbing erotic atmosphere, a dystopian carnality.
‘Bring it back’ is (logically) sonic war again. Staccato beats, screaming noises and yelling words (barking single catchwords like soul, flesh, chaos, hope) celebrate a pamphlet of anger and yearning, of collapses and suspect passions. The album ends with ‘Stranger’, whose melodic tapestry finishes the just witnessed audible purgatory in a brilliant comforting way. Here the bass´ metallic breathing plays its best part, harmonizing perfectly with its artificial and fleshless digital setting.
As announced, second in the row is ‘SFTWR’, the band´s current release, containing 15 remixed tracks compiled from all ASG´s studio albums. I have to confess that I never really got the purport of a remix album entirely (what doesn’t mean that it´s not there, I only can´t find it!), especially if it pertains the electronic rendering of electronic tracks. It would have been exciting to face the songs in a completely new dress, with conventional instruments, in a symphonic translation or maybe a-capella, but unfortunately ‘SFTWR’ dilutes the songs by using the same stylistics, subverts their authenticity and individuality nearly. Okay, switching through the tracks proves the variety of styles the chartered artists (Crash Course in Science, Jäger 90 among them) spot in AGENT SIDE GRINDER´s musical cosmos, there are traces of Synth Pop, EBM, Minimal, Techno and Ambient, but the dyeing seems too random for messing with the perceivable atmospheric order ‘Hardware’ contains. Increased BPM´s, noise filter and distortions for the vocals or even crushing additionally synth layers – that´s how the tracks leave the fitting room.
But, for finishing this nagging and plucking there are three songs, which stand out from the rest, because their metamorphosis generated something really different, justifying the process of “new” mixing. ‘String Strikes’ (from their 2008 debut) comes along as a “sunshine pop” hybrid with chilling acoustic guitars, percussive rhythms and a “watching-yearningly-the-sky-meets-the-ocean-at-the-horizon-while-the-sun-goes-down”-singing. A radical transformation, but a refreshing one. The sinister ‘010-195’ (originally a bleak collage of minimal nihilism and colourless claustrophobia) becomes an epic soundtrack now, exposing the constricting density by drowning it in a vast of sound and surface. And finally the Jasper Tx Rmx of ‘Mag 7’, which turns the synth pop shape of the original song into a kind of electronic ambient, an sonic kaleidoscope directed at the inside, conveying aloofness and stimuli for the consciousness. (At least it could have that effect!)
Summarizing there´s left to say that ‘Hardware’ and it´s counterpart (or supplement, if you like) ‘SFTWR’ command an all-around view on the land- and soundscapes AGENT SIDE GRINDER´s music peoples and creates. All these lowlands, sometimes empty and rutty, sometimes stained with rusty urbanity and the transpired liquid of the yearning and angry corpse of emotional revolt, which seem blurred at the edges for allowing to draw the borders alterably and stylistically wide. It seems easy to recognize certain main influences of artists like KRAFTWERK, FAD GADGET, DEPECHE MODE and CABARET VOLTAIRE and reading in the press-sheet that the band called ‘Hardware’ a time travel, I guess it was actually intended. And meanwhile ‘Hardware’ seems to satisfy the artistic requirements, ‘Software’ will surely accomplish its mission on the dance floor. Two sides of a coin every adorer of highbrowed dark electronic music should hold.
Tracklist
| CD1: Hardware 01. Look Within 02. Sleeping Fury 03. Rip Me 04. Wolf Hour 05. Mag 7 06. Pyre 07. Bring It Back 08. Stranger Strange |
CD2: SFTWR 01. Wolf Hour (Red Idiot Rmx) 02. Bring It Back (Mf/Mb/ Rmx) 03. Life In Advance (Jacques C Rmx) 04. Die To Live (Container 90 Rmx) 05. Voice Of Your Noise (Fold Rmx) 06. String Strikes (Cvrd By Styx Tyger) 07. Stranger Stranger (Dödens Lammungar Rmx) 08. Sleeping Fury (Mighty Thor Rmx) 09. Look Within (Du Pacque Rmx) 10. 010-195 (Th. Tot Mx) 11. Black Vein (Rude 66 Rmx) 12. Rip Me (Sunbringer Rmx) 13. Die To Live (Blackstrap Rmx) 14. Life In Advance (Ccis Dub Mx) 15. Mag 7 (Jasper Tx Rmx) |
Line-up
Kristoffer Grip – Vocals
Johan Lange – Synthesizers, Drum Programming
Henrik Sunbring – Synthesizers, Drum Programming
Peter Fristedt – Sampler, Tape loops, Modular Suitcase Synthesizer
Thobias Eidevald – Bass
Website
http://www.agentsidegrinder.com/
Cover Pictures
Rating
Music: 6
Sound: 7
Total: 6.5 / 10
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