After the armour-piercing and dark Digital Darkness released on Hymen rec., on the other German label Ad Noiseam there appeared the new album of Somatic Responses with laconic title Reformation, though the title matches more for that was recorded on this compact disc. This time this team proposed to the audience the work of another kind – almost total calm, no aggression, slow drums and cut three-dimensional sound – those are the basic elements of the new musicians' experiment. Look at the release's cover and you'll understand what about this music is and where it moves. Listening to this record I had another feelings differing from those while listening to previous works of the project.The album includes 8 compositions made in one key genre, here is a great amount of slowly moving rhythms chasing each other, creeping subbases. There is such a feeling that these are b-sides by SR, which were not included into Digital Darkness. It all can be called by one mutated word "Deadstep" as the title of the first track starting this release. Rhythm-noise machine of Somatic always lacked only one thing – flexibility, it was always both advantage and disadvantage of the project. Nowadays guys' music develops in parallel with project Scorn, slow monotonously creeping rhythms covered with acid and melted keys.
There is such a feeling that after Digital Darkness musicians' machine was really stroke by a rocket accurately launched by somebody and since this moment they creep in circle on their all-terrain vehicle and they lost one crawler and gyrocompass. And they creep slowly, sending from time to time their slang messages - "Murder Thought", "Radiation Rhythm", "Dubscare", "Who's Stopping Ya! Killer". But simultaneously in this circle-moving one can find several rather smart broken off details, for example "LFO Assasin". Here sound odd voices as if sampled from otherworldly fantastic film, all looks very realistically and infernal at the same time. Maybe in this track there hides that main message which I didn't manage to find and hear in the title composition "Reformation", try to listen on your own.
- Ad Noiseam
- Somatic Responses