REVIEWS

Portion Control
SLUG

Posted: Friday, June 20, 2008
By: Ilker Yücel
Editor

In the past several years, Portion Control has done well to regain their status as innovators in the field of electronic music. While widespread recognition still eludes them, it has been to their advantage as they've operated as artists in the truest sense of the word, devoting their energy to providing the masses with an audiovisual extravaganza that adheres to no rules but their own. With their latest outing, deviously titled SLUG, the group - now solely consisting of John Whybrew and Dean Piavani - continues further down the path of experimental software synthesis paved by their more recent work, while still giving us a few accessibly danceable tracks to hold the interest of the casual listener. Of those tracks, "Infant," "Defend," and "Rogue" present us with the trademark Portion Control EBM formula that has been so revered by bands like Front Line Assembly and Depeche Mode, stomping away with aggressive beats and bass lines that should appeal to the modern industrial dance floor. The same can be said of "Cosh Boy Ver2.1" with its driving subsonic bass and disjointed beats that are just shy of four-on-the-floor, updating a track from their previous Onion Jack IV release. Other tracks like "Unrest" and particularly "Global" take a more abstract approach, less concerned with a catchy bass line than creating a pervasive industrial atmosphere; while the sounds are completely synthesized, there is a certain organic resonance to the scrapes and thrums that resound through these tracks. Even "Cubicle" is a bit funky with its minimalist approach while "Heavyweight" could easily be an industrial rock track if not for the lack of guitars, although such instrumentation is hardly necessary given the audio force the song demonstrates. However, it's on the more experimental songs when things get truly interesting, like the introductory "Roast" with its clanging percussion and layers of electronic malfunctions and audio drive-bys, hitting the listener hard and fast with as many tweaks in two short minutes that you would normally hear throughout the span of an entire album. In contrast, "Paw" is no less abrasive in its textures, though much more ambient in its overall vibe as swirling pads wax and wane amid slashes of broken beats, while "Sammy Circle" presents an oddity of reverberating tones not dissimilar to a prepared piano with oscillating squirts of choppy samples and chirps of synthesized noise. In the end, the one drawback to SLUG is that by now Portion Control have established a recognizable sound, and while that's admirable in its own right, it does little to make the album truly stand out against its predecessors. Still, that's not to say that fans of progressive electronica and experimental synthesis won't find much to behold on SLUG, and credit should be given to Portion Control for their ability to augment these elements with an accessible vibe that would still find them a place on any modern DJ's set list.