Various Artists – Album Roundup

at one with the machine is the sophomore release and point of exit for Jason Norwood’s studio powernoise project code 000. Two albums have evidently been enough to scratch that creative itch for him, but he has made good use of his time in the world of electronic distortion and jackhammer beats. Powernoise is a genre that demands its practitioners take a position on issues around humanity and creative agency; its basic materials are both mechanistic and aurally abrasive, admitting neither conventional aesthetic valuations nor traditional notions of expressive craft. Some notable proponents of the style embrace these features wholeheartedly, presenting desolate soundworlds of post-human indifference, whose entire audience appeal …

Paranoid Android – Paper God (new wave)

Punk was like some kind of natural catastrophe: in terms of the frantic pace of pop-music it happened an eon ago, but the shockwaves that spread outward from its point of impact, like a tsunami, get more powerful the more open ocean they traverse. Our understanding of popular music before punk is now characterised by a growing awareness of its crypto-oppositional qualities; and the narrative of its subsequent history is dominated by its influence on all kinds of rock music, and a lot of electronic music as well.

Word Or Object – They Shoot Horses, But Why? (dark ambient/ drone)

The cover of this release shows a dead horse still harnessed to the broken cart before which it met its demise. This is a different sort of horse shooting than that referenced in the title: this beast was (one presumes) executed for its usefulness to its killer’s enemy, or simply killed as a byproduct of its proximity to a human participant in armed conflict. Applied to such a scenario, the question They Shoot Horses, But Why? seems to question the cruelty of conflict: applied to the stories told in the novel and film entitled They Shoot Horses Don’t They?, asking ‘why’…