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12"
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TRESOR 362EP
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Repressed; R.I.P. Juan Mendez aka Silent Servant is a figure in techno history that needs little introduction. As a member of the Sandwell District collective and the label's art director he collaborated on works that were responsible for a global focal shift in the genre as their label adapted and challenged the paradigm of minimal techno, taking influence from other sources such as dub, post-punk, and even classical minimalism. But Mendez's relationship with music goes back much further than these seminal releases. With In Memoriam, Silent Servant's latest release on Tresor Records, Mendez writes a deeply personal memoir of a 30-plus year career spent exploring and absorbing the shadowy side of music; a carefully crafted elegy to people, places, and times past and the lasting effect they have on the present. Across the four tracks, Mendez pays tribute to the earliest Detroit techno and electro, the Belgian EBM movement and the wave music that followed, the monumental dub techno sound from Berlin, and the harder, abrasive sound of the UK at the turn of the last millennium; exploring and referencing the genres that informed his later work. Each track name gives a hint to the timeframe he is revisiting and re-contextualizing as the EP repurposes the styles that exerted an influence on him. This EP represents a pure distillation of Mendez's memories whilst also cementing his place in the current and future sound of 21st century techno.
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2LP
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HOS 739LP
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The expanded edition of Negative Fascination includes the extended mix 12", unreleased demos, and source outro packaged in deluxe wide spine jacket with updated art on clear vinyl. Perhaps the single most defining Hospital release -- one that cut across genre/subcultures and interloped into the wider consciousness and found commonality among the ruins. Digital download included.
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12"
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HOS 612EP
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Silent Servant's Harm In Hand 12" single, includes exclusive bonus track "Death Of Decadence" for destroying the club. Juan Mendez has evolved to more aggressive and stripped-down acid punk electro dance attacks on Silent Servant's equally vital follow-up, Shadows Of Death And Desire (HOS 613CD/LP, 2018), from which "Harm In Hand" comes.
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CD
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HOS 613CD
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Silent Servant returns with Shadows of Death and Desire. Now-legendary producer, DJ, and art director Juan Mendez arguably reset techno at least twice. Once with his surreal and Europe-by-way-of-LA '80s apocalypse culture aesthetics for Sandwell District, and again as Silent Servant capturing the youth-driven mutation of crossover electronics and dark parties churning in the American underground, which followed directly in the wake of his game-changing modern classic, Negative Fascination (2012). Mendez has evolved to more aggressive and stripped-down acid punk electro dance attacks Shadows of Death and Desire. Mendez took his time to deliver a more raw --yet refined-- brutalism on this, his second album. The otherworldly guitar feedback of opener "Illusion" is cut short with a relentless bass sequence erasing any preconceptions of softening with time. Stereo-panned dusty snares drag along concrete and break apart with without a past or future. The introductory hypnotic sprawl is hastily dissected and left behind for the systematic tension of single "Harm In Hand." Cold drum machine rolls that could have been removed with a laser from early Ministry are offset with a vocal delivery not felt in techno since Suicide. The narrative is constantly disrupted by caustic guitar stabs, its naked urgency like slamming on the brakes while inertia thrusts you forward in space but decidedly not in time. In his own words, "The record is a product of a significant life change that wasn't a benefit," which is eerily felt from the start but is surprisingly washed away with album closer, "Optimistic Decay" (which has become a mission statement from Mendez's visual ideology). "Optimistic Decay" sees Mendez reuniting with vocalist Camella Lobo (Tropic Of Cancer). Lobo's voice rises from spectral vocal delays beyond dub. A subtle nod to Silent Servant's initial Maurizio-leaning EPs but with the grandiosity and opioid slow-motion haze of My Bloody Valentine. Also a student of cinematic deconstruction, the album looks inward from the exterior of LA's untold stories in the netherworlds on the edge of the city, a rapid crash course in confidence games and subsequent letdowns. Shadows of Death and Desire sets the standard in electronic post-punk. Mixed and mastered by Josh Eustis. Designed by Silent Editions.
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LP
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HOS 613LP
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2023 repress. FE exclusive purple vinyl. Silent Servant returns with Shadows of Death and Desire. Now-legendary producer, DJ, and art director Juan Mendez arguably reset techno at least twice. Once with his surreal and Europe-by-way-of-LA '80s apocalypse culture aesthetics for Sandwell District, and again as Silent Servant capturing the youth-driven mutation of crossover electronics and dark parties churning in the American underground, which followed directly in the wake of his game-changing modern classic, Negative Fascination (2012). Mendez has evolved to more aggressive and stripped-down acid punk electro dance attacks Shadows of Death and Desire. Mendez took his time to deliver a more raw --yet refined-- brutalism on this, his second album. The otherworldly guitar feedback of opener "Illusion" is cut short with a relentless bass sequence erasing any preconceptions of softening with time. Stereo-panned dusty snares drag along concrete and break apart with without a past or future. The introductory hypnotic sprawl is hastily dissected and left behind for the systematic tension of single "Harm In Hand." Cold drum machine rolls that could have been removed with a laser from early Ministry are offset with a vocal delivery not felt in techno since Suicide. The narrative is constantly disrupted by caustic guitar stabs, its naked urgency like slamming on the brakes while inertia thrusts you forward in space but decidedly not in time. In his own words, "The record is a product of a significant life change that wasn't a benefit," which is eerily felt from the start but is surprisingly washed away with album closer, "Optimistic Decay" (which has become a mission statement from Mendez's visual ideology). "Optimistic Decay" sees Mendez reuniting with vocalist Camella Lobo (Tropic Of Cancer). Lobo's voice rises from spectral vocal delays beyond dub. A subtle nod to Silent Servant's initial Maurizio-leaning EPs but with the grandiosity and opioid slow-motion haze of My Bloody Valentine. Also a student of cinematic deconstruction, the album looks inward from the exterior of LA's untold stories in the netherworlds on the edge of the city, a rapid crash course in confidence games and subsequent letdowns. Shadows of Death and Desire sets the standard in electronic post-punk. Mixed and mastered by Josh Eustis. Designed by Silent Editions.
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LP
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HOS 357LP
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2019 repress; limited clear vinyl. Negative Fascination is the first official full-length album from Silent Servant. Juan Mendez has achieved international acclaim as a DJ and is one of the founding producers of the infamous and highly-influential Sandwell District label. Long-time followers will feel the effects of a die cast over a decade of precision and dedication to underground minimalist electronic music. Mendez blends his previously-stated interpretations of early post-punk, filtered through the monolithic works of Basic Channel with his own progressively nihilistic vision of industrial music. He utilizes a relentless and uncompromising mastery of hard-as-nails sequencer techno combined with dystopian atmospherics filling the void. Negative Fascination bridges disparate factions on ideological grounds, regardless of sound in the age of mutation. Mastered and cut by Matt Colton at Air Studios, London.
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CD
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HOS 357CD
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Negative Fascination is the first official full-length album from Silent Servant. Juan Mendez has achieved international acclsaim as a DJ and is one of the founding producers of the infamous and highly-influential Sandwell District label. Long-time followers will feel the effects of a die cast over a decade of precision and dedication to underground minimalist electronic music. Mendez blends his previously-stated interpretations of early post-punk, filtered through the monolithic works of Basic Channel with his own progressively nihilistic vision of industrial music. He utilizes a relentless and uncompromising mastery of hard-as-nails sequencer techno combined with dystopian atmospherics filling the void. Negative Fascination bridges disparate factions on ideological grounds, regardless of sound in the age of mutation.
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