v/a – Voice Crack Remixes (Ambush CD5)

courtesy Aphasic

Business as usual for the first 10 seconds – Hrvatski’s tearing amens, noise, adrenaline… but what’s this? It all fades out into a beatless noise montage with detuned guitars phasing away, and there’s just a tinge of squawking saxophone in there too. It’s Ambush’s very own ‘Jazz Odyssey’! “No, I said DJ Scud ABOVE the puppet show!!!”

Such are the difficulties of pushing boundaries until they cave in. Ambush have to take a lot of the credit (and perhaps some of the blame) for the proliferation of Records of Total Destruction (“the only solution!!!”). These days you can’t move for industrial-ragga-junglists mashing the place up, but it’s been a long haul. Plus, there was always more to it than that for the originators: check Aphasic’s more abstract tracks. Even Ambush’s dancfloor tear-outs had more depth and dynamics than the rest of the ever expanding crowd of genericists.

Hardly surprising, then, that they want to diversify a little. Scud has paved the way with his experimental releases as Amen Fire (with Craig from I-Sound) and Aphasic now combines hardcore mash ups with more downtempo spacey biz as JUNK.

So… Exhibit A is still something of a surprise – a CD featuring remixes of stalwart Swiss noise experimentalists Voice Crack. I have no recollection of hearing anything by them before, so it’s all in the mix, and that is a good thing.

Aphasic keeps it nice and minimal. ‘Hyperion’ sounds like someone has stripped out all traces of musical instruments from a dub track and left all the effects in.

Matmos’ contribution is sort’ve random bursts of sound which has the feeling of travelling through some sort of industrial plant. On Mars. Ripped to the gills on night nurse. Naked.

Moslang smothers amens under a pillow and then fights with them for several minutes before they finally expire. “Oh no! They killed Jungle!” “You Bastards!”

Haswell & Hecker make fucked up noises. Possibly the absolute panacea of anti-turntablism, but you’d have to ask them about that. It’s pretty disorientating and funny in a Nurse With Wound “go mental/ have a long pause/ go mental/ make random farty noises” sort of way.

Toby Reynolds (aka DJ Scud) finishes off with ‘Final (k)’ – brilliantly off-kilter, yet structured, slightly menacing, atmospheric piece. Drones and snatches of voice give it real depth. The quiet bits actually had my stomach turning over in anticipation – this is the real deal.