EXCEPTER - Alternation

If today's bands in the gloomy (above all American) noise scene have memorized the post-industrial primer, lingering especially on the power electronics chapter and its offshoots, Excepter, while sharing the same premises, seem intent on, and capable of, a creative reworking of those sounds.

To varying degrees, from the debut “Ka”, through “Sunbomber” and “Self Destruction”, and even more so on this “Alternation”, John Feel Ryan's band showcases an eclectic (un)making that draws as much from the insidious frequency games of Throbbing Gristle as from the rhythmic pulse of house. Without forgetting a certain harsh attitude, imploded yet still present between the lines, detectable in the spontaneous materialization of drone debris, like a sick atmosphere in the Ralph and Subterranean school. “Knock Knock”, to name just one, is something of a summa of all this.

In truth, “Alternation” is the most accessible of Excepter's works, thanks to fluid rhythms that make the tracks instantly digestible. Yet a remarkable textural complexity is not masked, allowing the sound to be imaginative even amid the monotony of minimal repetitions and sometimes exhausting loops. The band makes the most of the marriage between rock structure and digital practice, pushing the accelerator on sudden shifts in frequency, glitches and micro-sounds, so that the song form remains, in a precarious, virtuosic balance, tugged between frosty noise experimentation and the warm, hypnotic beat of dance electronics.

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18/09/2006