Katsunori Sawa & Yuji Kondo: Undulant Latitude
10 Label

Japanese music producers Katsunori Sawa (aka EOC) and Yuji Kondo (aka Ducerey Ada Nexino), who co-manage the 10 Label imprint and collaborate under the Steven Porter moniker, appear separately on this latest twelve-inch vinyl release. Whereas Sawa issued his EOC (Enormous O'Clock) album Information Warfare on Ai Records in 2008 and Kondo released his debut Ducerey Ada Nexino EP Adalovelaced I on Genesa Records in 2010, their first formal Steven Porter set, the LR EP, appeared on the German label Weevil Neighborhood in 2011. The split release Undulant Latitude now provides an opportunity to sample twelve minutes of recent music they've created as individual producers.

Sawa's A-side “Immortal Bind” is a multi-dimensional affair that weds ambient atmospherics with a punishing bottom-end of punchy kick drums and bass throbs. Smothered in grime and distortion, the material oozes a relentless, industrial-techno fury that suggests its natural habitat is more the factory floor than the natural outdoors. With that in mind, it's easy to imagine Sawa's track booming forth from the stage of a cavernous underground club and intensifying the already frenzied state of the sweaty crowd. Kondo picks up where Sawa leaves off with an even more lethal exercise in industrial-techno by the name of “Triangle Aggregates.” Clattering noises and nightmarish sounds flood the hermetic space, allowing just enough room for a death-laden voice to surface and for a coal-black drum-and-bass pattern to pound with merciless intent. It's a complex blend of samples, beats, and textures guaranteed to unsettle anyone's nerves and encourage psychotic tendencies within even the most stable listener. No one, most assuredly, will mistake Kondo's heady stuff for ambient anytime soon.

August-September 2014