Futile Escapist Front – Lost Transmissions.

Futile Escapist Front – Lost Transmissions – CD – 2021 – Sonic Entrails – FEF

https://sonicentrails.bandcamp.com/album/futile-escapist-front-lost-transmissions

https://sonicentrails.bandcamp.com/

https://en-gb.facebook.com/sonicentrails/

     Hope.

       1.       Truth.

       2.       Feeling.

       3.       Salvation

     Despair.

      4.       Revelation.

      5.       Choice.

      6.       Damnation Now!

I engaged with this recording straight away; it is a new recording by John E Smoke. This makes me remember people’s feelings of how things were at the time of Covid and the lockdown, Lost Transmissions immediately radiates me towards that. The label has heavily dealt with these times previously on the amazing Something Broke album. This is also the first of two recordings by this new Flesh-Eating Foundation linked project.

It gives off a churning, dystopian ambient aura immediately, everything functions within a thick fog of paranoia, feeling like a slow exploration of a mindscape and its past. I use this word a lot, but infected comes through the work, drones mingle causing subtle interactions and low build ups, vocal samples emerge at different times as if reporting from the past and making it into the present.

At different intervals, synthesisers play over the work, often repeated patterns, but are very effective, giving an adrenaline rush to the work – a quickening. In contrast to this the keyboards also slow things back down with soundtrack like overtones, even bordering on classical in parts. Rumbling distortion and tone feedback resonate across the work, like a lead vocal singing its song. All of these components build a massive sound.

I want to say Science fiction when I hear Lost Transmission, but it isn’t fiction, it feels like the exploration of the mind through past recordings and samples. This is basically a brilliant, well executed album.

Army of One 2022.

The Mannequin Factory.

The Mannequin Factory – ST – CD and Digital – Sonic Entrails Records – 2019 - https://sonicentrails.bandcamp.com/

     ·        Mad as Hell 19

     ·        Feast.

     ·        I Found God.

     ·        Sentient.

     ·        Abdicate.

     ·        Black Stork.

     ·        The Wheel That Never Stops Turning.

     ·        Prisms and Palettes.

     ·        Carbon Jackboot.

     ·        Subliminal Sledgehammer.

     ·        Agents of Change.

The Mannequin Factory is made of musician John E. Smoke and Punk Poet Adam Probert. This is their debut album as Manequin Factory, Adam Probert has done several solo albums for the label and John E. Smoke has recorded for years as part of Flesh-Eating Foundation.

I’m immediately reminded of the story interludes on the Small Faces ‘Ogden Nut Gone Flake’ album, but with impressive social commentary added, this tends to be about the Austerity Cuts, Unemployment, Violence, Wars and the effects of Capitalism around the world. The warped electronics at an odd atmosphere to the already odd, expressive voice of Adam Probert, they provide a bleak landscape of sound for the vocal to build, models of our society on. I also find this a lot more persuasive than a lot of the Anarcho Punk I love through the clarity and sharp delivery.  As punk goes the vocal delivery is up there with Jello Biafra of the Dead Kennedys and Cruckifucks Doc Corbin Dark, this is rapper level articulation and rhythm.

At times the vocal and noise seem to explode to work together to create convincing expressions of hell, Feast is a prime example of this, the vocal rants at speed on the build ups to explosions. Vocalist and musician often seem to fire off each other. I found God allows Industrial beats and Blasts to do the work, the vocal is more affected here and doesn’t work as hard as it did on the previous tracks, it works better when it really takes the lead. The approach on the album is varied and the vocal does later adapt to the style and structure of each track to move from being purely spoken word to almost sung, the rhythm and timing are excellent. What sounds come from the voice also changes frequently.

There is an otherworldly surrealist approach to the album. The punk perspective seems to sit in the same world that the weirder parts of Crass came from via its’ experimental leanings with a Rudimentary Peni like lyrical, absurd view into other realities. I would call this a punk album, it incorporates Noise, Rhythmic Industrial and bits of Power Electronics, but it is the best punk album that I have heard in years.

Choppy Noodles 2019.