VA: Kurzwellen 0
Kurzwellen

Kurzwellen's inaugural seven-inch vinyl release arrives nestled within a folded, poster-sized sheet adorned with a grainy, WWII-styled photo of gas-masked soliders trudging through a forest—no surprise, then, to learn that the label aims to not only celebrate the ‘80s industrial music scene but also resurrect it, with the intent to incite a new wave of the genre's old-school sound. In keeping with that aim, the promo-only appetizer features material by The Savage Morality plus excerpts from Precision Surgery tracks that will appear in full on Kurzwellen's first two formal releases, limited-edition vinyl outings (166 copies) scheduled to appear in February and April 2012.

Precision Surgery gets the A-side all to itself, and packs it with brief snippets that hint at the fuller presentation to come. Included amongst these macabre micro-episodes are gloomy spoken passages, drum machine beats grown from black Kosmische soil, angst-ridden passages whose creaks ooze menace and foreboding, guitar-fueled blaze full of distortion and psychedelia, and even an uptempo riff on electro-punk—the shape of things to come. The Savage Morality's “Blood Perversion,” on the other hand, lumbers for six minutes like some diseased behemoth clinging to its final moments of life. Powered by a raw, two-toned motif of guitar fuzz and a creature's strangulated drawl, the tune's low-end sludge would appear to be a perfect distillation of the Kurzwellen aesthetic.

February 2012