Kompjotr Eplektrika
Darrk Circuits Fadead Waves
Celebrity Lifestyle
I don’t speak Danish, but if I had to guess what Kompjotr Eplektrika’s name means translated into English, I’d go with “computer epilepsy.” The duo’s free-form synthetic industrial music would seem to indicate I’m headed in the right direction. The group’s label, Celebrity Lifestyle, is also home to Sweden’s Pistol Disco, one of the best and maybe the only group to successfully thread connective tissue between shoegaze, industrial, and ambient. Kompjotr Eplektrika has a similarly twisted take on their influences and resultant sound, crossing machine shop clatter with very un-goth club beats.
The lead track, “Blikktztunddonner” has a droning low end, an endless ebb and flow of tidal noise that breaks against iron bulwarks. If there’s a “melody” to be found here, it comes directly from seared metal shrieks as genuine as if they’d been field-recorded in front of a factory furnace. Eventually, all this spills over into “Skeleton Gong,” an oddly modern, albeit sinister, bump and grind of electronica shot through with dubby electric whip lashes and railroad track rushes of sound from the high end.
This tendency to entice and obfuscate comes to define the group’s songwriting dynamic. There’s a concerted drive on their part to push the envelope even when trying their hand at accessibility. Look no further than “… and the Brainfreeze” for a prime example of this: the track devolves into a cloud of 8-bit video game white noise after laying a chill, but catchy, groove for the previous five minutes.
There isn’t as much sweet release found here as there is on either of Pistol Disco’s full-bloom efforts, but the remarkable tension built throughout Darrk Circuits Fadead Waves needs commending for evoking the sound of industry in all its mechanized glory.
Celebrity Lifestyle: http://www.celebritylifestylerecords.com • Kompjotr Eplektrika: http://www.eplektrik.net/kompjotreplektrika ◼
