The most exciting thing in the American Midwest right now is Chicago Research. As much an alliance of post-punk antagonists as it is a label, it sits with Bristol’s Avon Terror Corps as one of the leading purveyors in the absolute cutting-edge of electronic mayhem and all manner of industrial racket.
Enter Ariel Motto. In addition to fronting the synth-pop project Death Valley, Motto has been decking herself in paramilitary garb and cutting some of the leanest and crunchiest EBM since the heady days of the cities Wax Trax!. Last year’s two E.P’s established the Club Music sound: martial basslines, cold resonance, murky vocals, a taut exercise in acrid techno and caustic grooves.
Like the foot of the T-800 crushing a human skull in the future dystopic wasteland, in smash Club Music’s first album proper Beyond New Beat. Still harnessing a laconic punch with its 22 minute length, Motto further distils her penchant for combative electronics and terse, focused production. The creeping presence of our ever ascending fascist state breathes down your neck on the icy ‘KO’, machine hi-hats and thick synths chug against screams and police sirens like some John Carpenter movie, each key omitting the sinister throb pressed with relish. Cavernous disquiet churns on the eerie ‘Mind Trader’, crisp beats puncturing weird turntable scratching and fat, slimy arpeggios.
There’s an honest to god love for sounds and textures which trigger our nostalgia for dance music of yesteryear without appearing contrived or ‘retro’, such as the orchestral stabs that jab confidently like early 90s Eurodance on the title track. You’d also be forgiven for thinking that the plinky ‘Binaural Beach 008’ wasn’t some old Warp Records compilation contribution, the frenetic ‘Battery Acid’ also feeling like the more aggressive end of IDM.
Ice-cool, muscular and razor sharp. Club Music’s debut Beyond New Beat is the prescient soundtrack to our collective hellscape that burns greater day by day, its industrial brood utterly infectious but its spirit of menace all too contemporary.