Media -
Interviews / Articles / Essays -
Bad Sekta / IP1 Magazine [issue 22] - Jessica Bateman
Movement & Gesture Interface - Ryan Jordan
Zeropointenergy - IP1 Magazine - Ellie Mills
Machinochrist @ Mutiny, The Bongo Club, Edinburgh, Scotland [28/11/07]
"A thoroughly unruly first night for Mutiny -
Conceived by Nass (Edinburgh's DubPressure) and DJ Tamobanter, the manifesto for Mutiny is an alluring one: cheap and cheerful door tax, a battering ram of twisted noise, and a combo of red-raw local talent with resolutely underground guests. In a similar vein to nights such as Nuthouse and Wobbly, it's the cream of the topmost rigs and party collectives in the UK we'll be seeing ce soir. Tamo delivers a sick assault of techy dnb to get the ball rolling, followed by Cambridge's Scamp (Life4land) with a collection of his own bastardised tunes, welding frenzied drum and bass with explosive breakcore. Varying from the theme of broken beats, Mattycore, (also Life4land) pounds through a mosh-worthy DJ set of hardtek, hardcore and rowdy nonsense. The live set from Machinochrist (Badsekta/Noizetek) is his first appearance this side of the border, and it's absolutely bangin'. As one of the central figures in the southern breakcore arena he's the golden boy tonight, and he makes himself known by puncturing the Bongo Club with a juggernaut of skittering junglism and ragga samples at the start of the set, taking a turn into full-on nasty breakcore for the conclusion. A thoroughly unruly first night for Mutiny."
- Rosie McLean, 4th December 2007
Zeropointenergy @ ?, UK [??/??/06]
"...turning in the night's most interesting performance (of the theatrical variety) was another young man with laptop going under the name Zeropointenergy. Using some kind of self-designed motion control system, with sensors attached to his hands and head, Zeropointenergy used his own twitchy movements to manipulate the squishy, tech output from whatever software it was he had running. Never falling into the trap of actually starting to dance, and thus potentially ruining everything, he instead took advantage of being able to appear to be transported / taken over by the technology itself. Quite successful and very entertaining; the effect was also compounded by the unfamiliar nature of his sounds."
- Paul Morgan, 6th issue of "Honest Music For Dishonest Times"
BADltd008 - Various - "Memetrix" [ltd cdr compilation]
"Bad Sekta are an independent label from the UK, specialising in what they call "wonky electronic music". I've been monitoring / enjoying their output for a while now and so thought I'd write a short review of their latest cdr compilation -
Titled "Memetrix", the cd is a limited edition of 123 and comprises 18 tracks for a fiver, which I reckon is pretty good value. There's quite a nice variety of styles included here, covering a large section of where this "scene" is currently at, from the heavily insane to the softly plinky and from older, more established acts like Stitch (Headfuk) or Fzv (Ai / Rag & Bone) through to some newer acts like 18 year old winner of the recent Bristol Laptop Battle, The Fez!, or the tenderly-aged (15!) Tryptomatik.
Like many of the recent releases from Bad Sekta, this comes with colour artwork in a plastic slipcase and also has some weird black & white art on the cd itself.
Anyway, in the interest of brevity I shall just list a few of the tracks that standout most for me, although lots of the others are good too...
(in no order of preference) :
Bleak Reference - "Karmic Reconstruction Unit"
This track is rather good, if a little long at 7m44s. Excellent production and a sparse, thoughtful arrangement - punishingly distorted breaks, imaginitively cutup with murky snips of voices and some really nice, heavily processed synths / ambiences, breaking out into hard as nails, full on breakcore skullduggery - mmm!
Dj Richard Hillman - "Derek Acorahs Laser Eyes"
Schizophrenically veering between shards of sound, this is scarily dark rave/breakcore, done in a pretty original-sounding way. Ultra-fractured and frenetic yet eminently foot-tappable!
Dj Ultimate Kevin - "Shitter, Fatter, Balder, Sadder"
I'm voting for this guy to be voted "Greatest Nom de Plume Ever"! Anyway, this for me is an amazing tune - all the sounds are well-produced and well old-skool, with nice pads, phatty-boom bass, crispy bit-reduction breaks and some hugely original vocal samples (honest!), and the track is really classic sounding - enjoying the bass!
Lastboss - "Maricone Roads"
Apparently this track is derived from a Frank Zappa piece - I for one would have been very interested in hearing Mr. Zappa's opinion of it!
The afore-mentioned song, heavy-as bass, computer game samples and some wicked synth / noise fx, all cutup with the precision and groove I've come to expect from Lastboss - a name to watch, I think...
Randomoidz - "Raggage Baggage"
This just makes me want to dance every time I listen - phat bass, some impeccable arrangement and typically wicked production combined with loads of nicely organic filtering and distortion, with just enough invention and repetition to really work the dancefloor.
All in all, I'd say a pretty successful release, although the one gripe I have is that I think they could have balanced the order / levels out a bit, but then maybe that's the point with these kind of releases?"
- Praetorius, Discogs, Mar 21, 2008
BADmpfree002 - Various - "MPfree 1" [mp3 compilation] 
"an eclectic mix of styles
i really like this compilation!
a good range of electronic music from one extreme to another, never quite settling on one genre (like a lot of other record labels seem to) my particular favourites are :
acid burp - really lush song on a aphex-y / old mu-ziq kind of tip.
intonamori - a well produced and funky track that varies nicely.
lastboss - a mental exercise in cutup exuberance.
phuq - grimey (in the old sense of the word) excursion into oddness.
i look forward to the next release from these guys!"
- Fukwit, Archive, 12th January 2007