February 8, 2008 • Hymen Records
Another foray into the deep, dark world of crazy electronic music: it's time for Somatic Responses, some sort of screaming electronic death machine that stabs my brain in the just the right spots. Okay, it's not a perfect brilliant album, but it's still the sort of dark dissonance I like.
Digital Darkness puts forth a style of music that (to me, so far) is pretty unique: it's incredibly heavy, and often incredibly complex, with beats that stagger madly back and forth between dark drum and bass to pounding power noise to breakcore and back again. It's difficult to call it a drum and bass album at all sometimes, as the music can get very dense and amelodic, but during other passages the beats can get quite danceable and awesome, and there is even a quiet breather track in "Neu". There are a lot of unique samples, drum kits, synth voices, and such going on, so the sound is pretty diverse from start to finish, although the consistently creepy-chaotic mood ties everything together quite nicely.
But of course, like too many electronic albums I've heard, it gets a bit too big for its britches and by the time the last couple of tracks roll around I've usually gotten tired of it. The fact that my ears have been mercilessly pounded for over an hour doesn't help things much, but at the same time I doubt that at-work-with-headphones is the ideal listening environment for this sort of music instead of some tweeked-out industrial club or something. (I don't go to clubs, okay?)
To be honest I'm a bit surprised that this album has received as much of a negative response as it has—aside from its length, I can't really find anything in it to complain about. Then again, perhaps it's grown on me; I have been listening to it quite a bit, and it already goes along nicely with all the other deranged electronic music I like. So take that as you will.
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