Like Atari Teenage Riot, Ec8or abandon traditional instruments in favour of digital technologies, which allow them to retain the musical code of hardcore. The departure is in the de-emphasis on vocals, which collapse underneath a torrent of sounds. Sometimes they hit it right, but like a lot of this stuff for every decent moment on a track, there’s a host of catastrophes. There is no effort to drop the crashing crescendos and drilling staccato in an effort to produce something that fits together as a whole. Being label mates on Alec Empire’s Digital Hardcore Records, there’s a divergence between the two in that Ec80r probably are probably slightly more edgy overtly, yet have lingering moments of melodic depth in some of the samples that carry through over what is otherwise an avalanche of noise. That is they tend to move beyond screamo vocals as a definitive part of their sound, the lyrics drop into a secondary place in the mix, and you end up with something far more similar to Riot 1999 than say Revolution Action. With so much noise going on, sometimes it can be nice to have some worthwhile lyrics to hang to, Ec8or lack that.

The opening voice over from the A Team ‘If you have a problem and if you can find them, then…’ provides the intro for the first track. Then, in come the screams. ‘You can hire/you can hire/you can hire/you can hire…EC80R’ Now pity that. As for the first few listens, I had a sense that maybe this was a clever commentary on the A Teams role as a mobile goon squad. Hired in as muscle to break unions and deal with funny little South American ‘terrorists’ against a back drop of the CIA war on the Sandanista’s. But no it was probably just the product of some programme lying around the Digital Hardcore studio’s that spews out these infernal rackets. I’ve felt burnt since splashing out €22 on ATR Live in Brixton. Worse was the smug wankers attempt to justify it on the back of the EP: “I still believe everyone’s opinion of the concert was divided, on our way to a taxi afterwards a few kids ripped up ATR t shirts on the ground in front of us…others just couldn’t get enough…a lot of them hated us.” Anyone that’s heard that EP, the manic random garbled segments of ATR tracks battling it out in no sensible order, like a CD that had gone mental on the skipping and leapt from track to track, my sympathy lies with the kids and not with the rip of merchants.

It's been soulseek all the way, hence a recent overload of new music and constant scramble to get through it. Lately I've been quite addicted to Add N to X, which popped out at me from memory as the band with the fucking robots, amazingly they seem to substitute themselves in my head for the disappointment that was the last Estel album. Cycling through Ranelagh with dodgy brakes when one of their songs came on full of screeching sirens, pumping bass lines and beats and bleeps, terrified the fuck out of me - stuck in the confines of cramped up traffic and pissed pedistrians leaping out at me. The closest thing I've heard to musical representation of biking into a ditch two years ago, stunned after being confronted with a crossroads of flashing traffic lights and manic cars and far too much THC. Beyond that I pillaged a shite load of digital hardcore stuff, well good, but jaysus if your not in the right frame of mind it can really leave you with a headache. Tigerbeat records have provided the answer to my perrenial question of 'hey do you know anything else out there that sounds like ADF?' Well, tigerbeats full of dubby stuff like Rootsman and the Bug, then stuff like DJ Rupture, which kind of chews up musical diversity into one grinding mess on a butchers counter of pop, dub, dnb and rnb, with a brief sojurn from the darkenss with some uplifting reggae with a gospel twang on the second track, and a wonderful use of Manu Chao. Kid 606 can not be recommended high enough, fucking kicks ass, absolutley devine, listening to it forces me to break a sweat while cycling.

Boards of Canada are always worth having on the go for those moments of concentration when there's no hash present, Autechre provide a similar sublime mental tweaking when stuck in front of a PC. Then leap backwards for some Future Sounds of London which are a good replacement for someone bored of catching up with a previous generations adoration of Orbital but looking for that epic feel which was emulated in other acts but lost in surface representations of a given zeitgeist. Skinny Puppy came highly recommended from certain bulliten boards on the net - awful like early Nine Inch Nails from the brief chance i gave it, and really as music geos it didn't really grip me, very fucking Dark and the vocals are far from comforting. But one for the future perhaps.

Labels: Internet, Music