TECHNO ANIMAL

The brotherhood of the bomb

CD/2LP, Matador

Whoa, hold on a minute, what happened? Where do all those rappers come from? Well, it ain’t bad, just was a little surprise. Thinking about it, it was just a matter of time before Techno Animal would combine their uncompromising beats with some hardcore-rapping. Why did nobody think of it before? Wow, this really has a beat, dude. Hard-hitting but still as dark and gloomy as we’re used to. Wam bam, thank you Techno Animal.

The surprise wears off fast and then it is time to enjoy the new situation. Techno Animal produced some tracks that are utilized by some underground-rappers like Sonic Sum, Dalek or Rubberroom as a floorboard. The interesting thing is, that Techno Animal didn’t get clearer or fatter in the production, but rather noisier and more distorted. Impossible, you say? Well, listen to the track “DC-10” where they bury some old-school-scratching beneath a brutal, white-noise attack during the chorus(?). Musically, this is nowhere near the clean-cut productions from earlier recordings, that used to hit your brain with their precision-like bass.

The “mushy” recordings add to the paranoid and dark atmosphere of the tracks, and make them unplayable even in more progressive clubs. Well, some of them will play these songs anyway. Those clubs, where people don’t dance anyway. There is always something to disturb the listener. The drum-loops are sometimes as crude as those of German homerecording-industrial-house-monotony (think Xotox), sometimes as black and depressive as Scandinavian dark ambient (think Origami Arktika). Even the otherwise quite straight rap-track “Glass Prison Enclosure” stumbles constantly over its own, irregular beat. Moreover, there are glass-flute sounds and other dark ambient-elements that, in my experience, have never touched hip-hop before. A sure floor-cleaner in my opinion, but I ain’t no fucking DJ.

The Rappers on the other hand are doing their best. Hard on the edge with impeccable staccato-styles they word their hearts out. You can hear the effort and strain put into their parts. I’d like to know, if they had to rap over the tracks, or if they knew them at all. How much of the rapping was overdubbed and how much of the tracks were only mixed together finally long after the vocals were done?

So, is this the start of something new? Is this the point, where hard Industrial crosses over into Rap-territory, and starts a new life of its own, or is it just some one-off? We will see. The future, as always, will tell. In the meantime you can use “brotherhood of the bomb” as the modern soundtrack of your very own urban nightmare. Because this is the feeling that is brought over. Do you remember the movie “Judgement Night”? I guess, you remember the soundtrack with all the cooperations of Rappers and Metal-Acts, e.g. Cypress Hill and Sonic Youth, Helmet & House of Pain and of course Slayer with Ice-T. Yeah, the act of cooperating so diverse styles rings again in “brotherhood of the bomb”, but I was talking about the paranoid atmosphere in the movie. A whole night of rain, ghettos, blood, pain and murder. Fighting to death with up to now unknown enemies. But where and who is the enemy of Techno Animal? Why does he need a brotherhood? And one with a bomb on top? Where will he lead them? Why does that all remind me of early Tackhead-records?

This is a disturbed and sick bastard of two musical styles that will blow your ears off. That is why it is any good and worth mentioning.

11/2001