Powell's Untitled on the Death of Rave

Powell's new release on Boomkat's The Death of Rave imprint (home to the vinyl of Mark Leckey's Fiorucci..).

Four tracks, all seething with a claustrophobic post-punk repetition, happily and productively united with a bleak and insistent electronics.

Rider starts gently, drums and buzz circling, drawing you in. 'I walk with the zombies'.. and a guitar lick. The buzz shifts shapes but presses on insistently, unforgivingly. Hypnotic, magnetic. Unexpectedly so. 'Zombies..', he says again.The track pauses, a breather, but just for a second. Then it's back, bassline throb background hum as persuasive as before. Give up, give in, surrender, go under.

On 'Oh No New York', a sharp wave of static gives way to pure no wave bass, drum and vocal sample, an unconvincing OH NO! The track is then gradually criss-crossed with thin, shifting lines and bursts of scratchy static, feedback. And buzz. An all pervasive buzz. Sounds are set-up, you get a bit used to them and then they're carved into, circled, filtered and augmented with the drills and chainsaws of DIY, lo fi electronics. Whatever they may be.

Not that the original post-punkers didn't get around to playing with this stuff themselves. Suicide and Wire for sure (I'm sure there are many others but I just happen to have heard those two) certainly explored synths and so on in their nihilistic post-punk zone.  It was fucking great then and it's fucking great now.

There's something so seductive about the techno/post-punk alloy. Check the Silent Servant Fact mix, and anything Blackest Ever Black have ever done.  Purist nihilistic grandeur of the highest order.