BLACK RAIN - Dark Pool

Let's make it short. Black Rain is Stuart Argabright, who is also co-founder (1979) of the famous New York no wave minimalist band Ike Yard.

After the success achieved with Raime, Britain's Blackest Ever Black tries once again to place one of its releases among the year's best. A follow-up to the compilation released in 2012, “Dark Pool” marks a welcome return to the studio and to the scene after a full 18 years. The intro and opening track alone are enough to get the measure of the whole album: dark electro-wave stuffed with wailing industrial hardware. But it doesn't stop at those first two tracks - we also find photoluminescent alumina and condensed radioisotope dust folded into a futuristic EBM (the record is partly inspired by the writings of Philip K. Dick and J.G. Ballard), pneumatic mites etching the skin and releasing cuneiform magnetic pulses (“Data River”), coded technodronic platforms (“Burst”), residual electricity and invasive tran(c)erotic rituals (“Night In New Chiang Saen”), searing recordings of regressive hypnosis (“Protoplasm”) and, finally, religious synth-wave with gothic, ethereal shades (“Profusion”).

The closing track is sludgy, filthy, industrialized EBM that crushes and overwhelms the last lingering flashes of the artist's minimal-noise side.

Once again the London label has hit the mark, even in its choice of cover art, bound to appeal to the millions of fans of Nineties electro-industrial sounds. We'll close with two words: a record that's violet-hued and damn filthy.

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13/09/2014