CONTROL UNIT - Elegy For Rusted Souls

In its own small way, this record carries the weight of something close to a historic event, since it marks the return of the great Factrix. Industrial pioneers, these Californians had been absent from the scene since 1982, lost in who knows what Ballardianly alternative dimension. It was frankly hard to imagine their comeback, but chance played its part. The decisive factor was crossing paths with Control Unit, which happened right in the middle of an American tour by Silvia Kastel and Ninni Morgia. It seems that Factrix caught a performance by the Italian duo and were thoroughly impressed, and from there came the proposal to collaborate.

Now, this shouldn't come as a surprise: anyone who follows Control Unit knows their sound has progressively drifted toward the cadaverous decay of late-Seventies San Francisco industrial. So? So, "Elegy For Rusted Souls" is pure incest, which is to say something constitutionally dark, rotten and disemboweled. In other words, across the thirteen tracks that make it up, the album never settles into a center of its own. There are no rhythms to follow, no melodies to be enchanted by, only noise metastases materializing at random.

What emerges is a painful, nerve-wracking ceremony of destructuring, orchestrated by Morgia's usual impro mastery, acting as the driver against Cole Palme's funereal bass and Kastel's downright exhausting stream of consciousness. The sense is that the creative process was guided more by the Italian duo than by the Californian band, but ultimately it hardly matters, given the pleasurable unpleasantness of the final result.

Ride the wave of great music

Add OndaRock to your favorite sources on Google Discover. Don't miss our reviews, milestones and latest news straight in your feed.

Follow on Google

17/06/2013