for DTRASH31 - "The Tension And The Darknesst"
Reviewed by Moron @ Industrial.org

"The opening track on "The Tension and The Darkness" sounds like a harpsichord heavy cover version of the chase music from the first "Terminator" movie but played by Mr. Bungle using a dying Korg M1 or similar late 80s sample playback synth. This is not a bad thing, just a little weird as the orchestration makes it sound like a synth heavy B movie and the sporadic comedic treatments drag you like some victimized elephant handler right into center ring. Like some smart ass pulled the fire-alarm after rubbing LSD infused vaseline all over the escape ladders. The listener constantly wondering "what the fuck is this sticky shit all over my hands" just as the paranoiac hilarity snags a ride on the swirling colour mass emanating from the speakers. Lots of slowed down dialog too, the kind that illegal drugs would convert to a baseline of "normal" while your friends trying to talk you out of eating goo from the toilet would seem "totally crazy". It's definitely got that acid logic all the way through, i.e. no matter how preposterous and unlikley the proposition it's all starting to make sense man. 

Exist's second outing is a 27 minute EP of degenerated digital hardcore fuck band game music and shows what shenanigans get going when the right hands are on the right gear. Nods to all software pirates and their cheery nfo's that make music like this possible. Initially I was led to believe that this round was darker than their first but I am not so sure. It's not as much heavy as disconcerting, blipvert delay used liberally on melodic lines, surprise goose attacks of oom pah pah parade music, time stretched bloody everything . . . blenderized so that little chunks of musique concrete slurp into view momentarily before vanishing back into the murky coctail. Probably the biggest surprise here is the delicate use of distortion. Unlike other D-Trash material and even J Schizoid's own schtuff, Exist are almost embarassed to lean on the saturation valve. It's a clear choice however as without it, the helium gaiety of this freak festival would be lost. 

The tracks are mostly pretty consistent in form. Not that hearing one is enough to nail the clown right in the nuts but you definitely get the pie in the right quadrant. The fifth track "When You Least Expect It" works a hillarious ethereal "woooooo" sample that tickles the listener with the business end of a fun fur toilet plunger. Effeminate "muthafucka" samples abound as well, pitched down but sounding far more silly than they have any right to. Loops warped so bad that they knock down bits of sparkly plaster from the ceiling adorn track 7 "Have to Pretend". The next track "All of Nature Wild And Free" leans back off the humour for a moment with an insinuating razor like aliased synth line that I could listen to all frigging day. Overall the tempo of the disc is pretty stayed, even when it's manic you can tell that it doesn't really mean it - more barbituate strange than prozac dead. 

I wouldn't call this album rocking exactly as it gets too pylon pointy at times to bang your head against but it is quite engaging. I'm always happy choosing "weird" over "deep" and if you tend to put both EC8TOR and People Like Us on the same playlist, you'll no doubt enjoy this pie in the crotch from Exist.
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