ARTICLES ALBUMS COMPILATIONS/MIXES 3"/7"/10"/12"/EPs |
Ed Devane: The Squirm EP Since 1998, Barcelona-based producer Ed Devane has been provoking listeners with his noisesome electronic music and making good on his desire to instill paranoia, fear, and claustrophobia in the listener: the four decapitating cuts on The Squirm EP, Devane's aptly-titled 12-inch on Andrea Parker's Touchin' Bass, won't alter that reputation one iota. It's a brutal onslaught alright, and never more so than on the opener “Giant Bassmantix” where humongous bass lines throb while glass-shattering breaks writhe and a choral mass of phantoms groans. The intensity never lets up: “Doubt” howls like some poisoned mastodon, hellacious beats scream manically throughout “Ramsek,” and “Memorandum” approximates a trepanning operation amplified a hundredfold. For all that, occasional musical fragments rise from the ashes (a tinkly vibes melody inexplicably appears in “Ramsek”), making Devane's disc more than a pummeling caterwaul. An EP's the right length, too, as one shudders to imagine what crimes one might commit after ingesting an hour or two of similar material. November 2006 This review also appears in Grooves.
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