Tamed Animals

"Repressed Memories," the lead track on this latest release from former Gang Charger drummer Dan Barnett, sounds like something at the nexus of industrial and IDM. Spectral synths haunt the album's stridently mechanical beats and textures. "Gate" is more overtly musical, but its dense composition suggests Giorgio Moroder trying his...

By Tom Murphy

March 14, 2013

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"Repressed Memories," the lead track on this latest release from former Gang Charger drummer Dan Barnett, sounds like something at the nexus of industrial and IDM. Spectral synths haunt the album's stridently mechanical beats and textures. "Gate" is more overtly musical, but its dense composition suggests Giorgio Moroder trying his hand at breakcore, only without all the spastic electronic percussion. "Eyjafjallajokull" (say that three times fast) has a highly eruptive beat that sounds like cybernetic termites chewing their way through wood at high speed. "Layered Deceit," meanwhile, dips into sinister EBM territory, with well-modulated bass-y swells that cut through the beat track for an effect akin to what Autechre perfected in the '90s. Ending with "Dark Sky, Bright Horizon," Obsolescence gives an appropriate nod to Aphex Twin's "Matchsticks."

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Tom Murphy is a writer, visual artist and musician from Aurora, Colorado. He was a prolific music writer for Westword and a documenter of the Denver music scene.

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Twitter: @simianthinker