Legendary artist Mick Harris kicks off his 2019 with this 5 track EP of tar-black, bass heavy sonic violence. This EP features 5 reworks of ?Salford Priors?, one of the heaviest tracks from his return-to-form album ?Over Depth?, the first by Mick Harris himself, and 4 more by his longtime collaborators in the production guises of Fausten, Stormfield, Monster X and Scald Process.
Side A1 - Mick Harris version
The EP begins with an apocalyptic, dubbed out violent reworked by the man himself, creeping in with a cold, calm eerie drone that quickly goes from zero to 100%%, blasting into a full force attack of artillery percussion and strafing, shrapnel textures atop the landmine subs and characteristic Harris snarling mono-bass. A calm, desolate atmosphere permeates the barrage, giving an odd stillness to the rhythmic violence.
Side A2 - Monster X version
Formerly London, now Berlin-based sound designer Julien Caraz has caused much distress over the years with the sheer rage and precision sonic assaults of his Monster X project. Here he eschews his usual frenetic tempos for a solid 130BPM, a sleek techno destroyer built for giant spaces and huge soundsystems in mind. Tense, throbbing halftime rhythms that release into a full stampede, metalwork reverberating beside the charging subs.
Side B1 - Stormfield version
The Combat Recordings boss has worked audiovisually with Mick since the Scorn AV at Bangface Weekend in 2011, toruing with Fret AV in 2018. Here he switches back into audio mode to rework Salford Priors into a hard electro assault for the Stormfield remix.
Chopping up the original breakbeat, reworked to attack from different angles, ducking, weaving and striking like a boxer.
Amid the relentless bassdrum pressure comes a call-and-response interplay between rhythmic elements and fierce technoid bleeps, coaxed out of his beloved Machinedrum.
Side B2 - Fausten version
Fausten is the shadowy, twisted collaboration between Monster X and Stormfield. Having released a staggeringly twisted album on the legendary Ad Noiseam, Fausten went into hibernation as the pair pursued their own projects, with only a few sporadic tacks surfacing over the years. The pair have been putting together an album's worth of new material for 2019, beginning with a powerful remix of Salford Priors. Taking Fret back into it's aquatic, fathoms-deep sonic territory, this remix is a behemoth work that moves at quarter-step tempo,allowing for more physicality and dynamics, the profound pulse of each profoundly deep bassdrum like an underwater volcanic explosion, with skittering percussion the resonates in the stillness.
(digital only) Scald Process version
Scald is the live-instrumentation collaboration of Stormfield, on this track featuring classical cellist Joe Zeitlin and improvisational violinist Liam Noonan, taking their intricate string recordings and reworking them into a brooding, prowling structure of snarling bass and intricate drumwork. The sinuous strings weave with a lazy elegance like trails of ink through water, surrounded by the insect chatter of the elektron machinedrum in a dusty, demonic fusion of live improvisation and deep, dusty electronics.
Mastered by Binary Feedback, and cut
