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The Peoples Republic of Europe
Singularity

Vendetta Music

Posted: Monday, February 02, 2009
By: Matthew Johnson
Features Editor

With artists dialing down the distortion and dialing up the more overt techno side of the genre, power noise has gotten a lot less... well, noisy in recent years. The Peoples Republic of Europe is a throwback to the early days of the scene when things were so brutal that to attend a power noise club took a pretty high aural pain threshold as well as comfortable dancing clothes. That's not to say that Singularity doesn't have its moments of lighthearted fun; "Female Domination" sets BDSM-themed samples to a metallic thump of a beat, and "Love and Joy" throws in some snippets of vocal house as a reminder that this is in fact club music underneath all of the metallic echoes and washes of distortion. That's more the exception than the rule, though; generally speaking, this project's idea of dance music is best exemplified by "Bionic Funk," which buries an ostensibly groovy breakbeat in industrial-scale reverb and studio static. The coldness and brutality also extends to the song's themes. Such selections as "Age of Machines" and title track "Singularity" concern themselves with the sort of dark computer-controlled future envisioned in the Matrix and Terminator films, and listening to "38715," with its hard monotone kick, feedback crescendos, and synthesized recital of digits, it's easy to imagine such a future has already come to pass and we're listening to the robot dictatorship equivalent of chamber music. Even more confrontational are "Mecca Glacified" and "The Blasphemy Challenge," which combine grating noise and raw metallic rhythms with news commentary to paint an extremely unflattering portrayal of religion in general and conservative Islam in particular. While a few of these tracks could probably fit into a DJ set alongside comparatively accessible artists like Modulate or Terrorfakt, it's clear that Singularity is meant for the diehard fans who cut their teeth on the likes of Converter, Noisex, and Synapscape. In a scene that sometimes seems in danger of becoming diluted, The Peoples Republic of Europe deliver a refreshingly unadulterated kick to the head.