Consumer Electronics weight/hostility blues

Consumer Electronics – The Weight/ Hostility Blues. Harbinger Sound - harbinger 180 - 7" single.

Amphetamine Sulphate page.

A

the weight.

B

hostility blues.

Whenever I play Consumer Electronics I think of Philip Best, topless and twisting his nipples at me whilst shouting away at the audience - I can’t get that image out of my head; onstage Best is disturbing. CE- now a trio of Best, Sarah Froelich and Russell Haswell are powerful, conceptually challenging and complex live. This is Consumer Electronics first new single since the Dollhouse album on Harbinger Sound and Repetition Reinforcement 12” on Diagonal both from 2015. It is gorgeously presented with inner sleeve and picture cover.

The Weight opens with feedback and pulsating jabs of twisty, blasting noise; backed by a constant mid paced beat. It continues the beat-based assault, peppered with short, rhythmic cuts of noise that featured on Dollhouse Songs. The main Best/ Froelich vocal is very warped in sound, this makes it partly comedic and keeps your attention with seedy, unhinged dialogue. The familiar Best vocal that comes in mid-way through the track is cut up so multiple Bests seem to shout out over each other. The theme centres on murder victims, most of whose bodies remained unidentified for years after they were found. Weight comes off like some sort of dissected dance track with screwy, combative vocals: a multiple personality pile-up.

Hostility blues creates rhythm through fart like noises that lose time as siren like sound runs parallel and another tweaked vocal delivers more rage and bile. Hostility blues’ sonic tweaking is even more comedic and hysterical in comparison to that of the weight. However instead of the choppy, multiple rage of Weight, hostility’s Froelich vocals have a consistent fluidity to their delivery.   

I like this single as it seems to push forwards in finding new deliveries for the centre stage vocal within the overall sound of Consumer Electronics. They also seem to keep finding ways to be even more minimal in their use of different sounds as if constantly stripping back to the core of each track. It is also disturbing in how everything has been mixed and adjusted, it seems purposely disjointed. I do seem to be stuck in a theme of psychic warfare while reviewing it, having to check if my turn table is playing up, adjusting the record’s speed. Can’t wait for more as always where Consumer Electronics is concerned. I am also really-excited as I am getting a vinyl copy of Estuary English for Christmas this year and I also want to bunk off work to go see them in Manchester this month with Skullflower and Iron Fist of the Sun. Yeah!!!!!!

Choppy Noodles 2018

Shift - Abandon

Shift – Abandon – Unrest Productions - UNPRLP13 – 2017 – LP.

CD – Cold Spring - CSR236CD

Unrest Productions - Unsound Recordings - Cold Spring - Unrest Bandcamp

a

to rid them all and to wash their filth from my body

nothing – no one

recaptured

b

armed, disturbed, hostile

Shift is a UK based Industrial noise project originally from Sweden that has been releasing material since 2004. There have been seven albums so far (2 are splits) and many more releases. The project is also the nucleus of the Unrest Productions label. There was a cassette on Unrest also called Abandon in 2007, however I am unsure of the connection to this release.

Abandon shifts slowly and deeply with ‘to rid them all and to wash their filth from my body’. It churns and resonates a Death Hum like a deep alarm constantly revving itself throughout the track. Scraping vocal noise hiss and beats pulsate at long intervals. High pitched noise joins in the rising intensity as the breathing noises and vocal growls increase. The Death Industrial drones are the stable core of the track as everything else evolves and changes around it.

Nothing – No One is a bad nightmare of a track, a Night Terror of ambient menace. It’s difficult to tell whether it is on a scratched loop, on repeat or just cleverly repetitive, either way I was forced to engage with the vinyl in case it had got locked in a groove or scratch. I was jolted in and out of the record; the final track on side one ‘recaptured’ does fall into a locked grove, adding further record needle paranoia with the record’s constant, sonic menace: you can’t fall into the album’s abstract qualities, you’re constantly being manipulated and moved around.

Further humming intensifies the single track that forms side 2 of Abandon, beats pulsate again with more frequency. The Humming of ‘armed, disturbed, hostile’ shifts in its’ resonating drones. The vocal is simultaneously a shout and a whisper as it blows over things like a bad, hateful wind.

This album did give me nightmares, I could hear it in my sleep. It is effective in its serious delivery and has a distinct ‘Unrest’ feel as a result, it is playful in combination with it’s menace via the pretend and real groove locks on Side A. This is a well-presented, dark, threatening menace of an album that really ups the ante where lower level deep PE/Industrial is concerned.

Choppy Noodles 2018.