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3LP
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EDLX 055LP
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Although there are hundreds of newer electronic music acts who wield heaviness and saturated sound as their primary weapons, AnD keeps finding bold new ways to separate themselves from the rank and file. The production duo of Andrew and Dimitri -- conduits for the industrial music legacy of Manchester -- excel at showing that aesthetic extremity does not have to equal monotony. Social Decay is simultaneously one of their most overwhelming and most innovative efforts. This visceral new release comes from the same hazardous, blasted terrain that informs the work of kindred spirits like Kerridge, Oake, and Justin Broadrick's many projects. Whereas AnD's previous album Cosmic Microwave Background (EDLX 038CD/LP) utilized the duo's intensity to pay homage to the enormity of the universe and the incomprehensibly violent processes involved in its creation, Social Decay takes things back to earth and right down to a "street view" more gritty and contentious than what Google Maps often reveals. Beginning with a feedback-drenched, shuddering premonition of things to come ("First Element"), each successive side of the album presents a new level of intensity, itself brought about by increasing levels of tempo and compositional coherence. The first suite of tracks, including "Corrupted Structures" and "Anarchic Rhapsody", is pure industrial music comprised of multi-layered noise collage, venomous and half-comprehensible whisperings, and rhythm structures that compel listeners to maintain an obedient posture rather than to ecstatically hit the dancefloor. Without completely abandoning this atmosphere, the next four or five tracks flirt more heavily with hip-hop inflected beats and an unmistakable sense of hyper-urban vigilance. Window-rattling tracks such as "Pandemonium" come across like urban audio camouflage meant to defend its users against surveillance by shadowy and invasive entities, while "Screaming Voices" adds infectious EBM sequences to the mix. Just as it seems like the duo is settling in to a groove, the mutant drum-and-bass rhythm and cinematic bombast of "Resisting Authority" strikes with explosive high-tempo energy. "Taking Control" and "Kepler" provide the effective aftershocks to this number, while "Disturbed Reality" closes out the album in an unexpected sense. While many would rely on a reflective, ambient "outro" to help fade listeners back into reality, AnD just keep continuing to deliver the crunching beats and looped warning cries, maybe hinting at the fact that reality is not far removed at all from this record's representation of it.
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12"
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EDLX 043EP
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With 2014's Cosmic Microwave Background (EDLX 038CD/LP), AnD delivered a record that fidgeted restlessly between a bleeding dancefloor and more airy machinist musings. This is the first part of a two-part remix EP (preceding EDLX 044EP) featuring a carefully curated cast from techno's outer rim. Speedy J and Lucy as Zeitgeber turn in a polar rework of the album's eerie, soothing closer, "The Surface of Last Scattering." Sleeparchive and O/H (the union of David Foster of Huren and Teste and Orphx's Richard Oddie) both plump for "Power Spectrum," one of AnD's typical sledgehammer works.
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12"
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EDLX 044EP
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With 2014's Cosmic Microwave Background (EDLX 038CD/LP), AnD delivered a record that fidgeted restlessly between a bleeding dancefloor and more airy machinist musings. This is the second part of a two-part remix EP (following EDLX 043EP) featuring a carefully curated cast from techno's outer rim. Black Rain turn in a polar rework of the album's eerie, soothing closer, "The Surface of Last Scattering," and deliver an overhaul of "Galactic Motion." The multifaceted Justin Broadrick of Godflesh, Techno Animal, Pale Sketcher, and more turns his heavyweight JK Flesh alias on "Non Sky Signal Noise," with ruinous effect.
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2LP
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EDLX 038LP
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CD
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EDLX 038CD
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Having honed a clear and uncompromising sound, which has been flexed across all manner of tempos, AnD return to Electric Deluxe with their first full body of work: a sonic contemplation of the cosmos, woven with all their industrial tropes intact. The venomous hats and cavernous rumblings on "Power Spectrum," the caustic squeals of "Acoustic Oscillations" and the anxious pistons in "Gravitational Waves," for example, should instantly resonate with fans of the duo's wanton dancefloor works. But another cataclysmic compilation this is not. Cosmic Microwave Background is a far more composed and calculated affair, which sees the AnD sound assiduously recast into album format. The analog bleeps of "Particle" and grainy textures in "The Epoch of Recombination" are some of the fluctuations that temper AnD's debut album into a solid listening experience, meanwhile exposing some of the pair's fluid and intuitive working process -- with themselves as much as with their machines. Juxtaposing production precision with more freeform composition, Cosmic Microwave Background as an opus is as intriguing and unexpected in its entirety as its individual parts. Not that the album is quite so black and white. There are anomalies such as "Non-Sky Signal Noise" which tread the velveteen grey area in between, with truly rewarding results. On Cosmic Microwave Background AnD have found their door between worlds, and flung it wide open. The sleeve artwork has been created from a series of paintings by AnD themselves, reinterpreted here by EDLX's own in-house designer Jan Willem van de Baan into a set of industrial-evoking pieces inspired by the sound and aesthetics of the album.
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12"
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EDLX 038EP
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After a cataclysmic entry into the Electric Deluxe fold, AnD present more pummeling dancefloor works. Melding steely industrial sentiment with their own toolkit of analog-fashioned tropes, AnD have crafted a signature which has allowed them to freewheel through techno's many tomes --and beyond -- without ever straying too far from the mark. "Cosmic Strings" is as delirious as any stone-cold Tresor classic. Then on the flip, "Photon Visibility Function" coils dark and brooding atmospherics round the most malevolent concoction of AnD-isms. This one has been made to split the club right open.
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12"
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EDLX 034EP
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It's clear there's little out of AnD's reach, and they're certainly not bowing down to anyone. Kundalini then, AnD's debut EP for Electric Deluxe, is not something to be taken lightly. The EP opens with a trio of patented AnD-style monsters, cataclysmic techno siblings all venomous and rusted through. It's a dark and unforgiving trail with these guys as drill sergeant, until "IcDbYc," that is. Not quite the calm before the storm, here we have AnD pull back from the bloody onslaught to turn a cleaner, more calculated sort of weapon. Cool and tactical shadow-skulking, trimmed with IDM. This one is just as deadly.
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