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Portion Control
Archive

Posted: Friday, March 30, 2007
By: Ilker Yücel
Editor

If one were to trace the evolution of industrial music from its beginnings in the late '70s when Throbbing Gristle and their cohorts at Industrial Records first coined the term, one would find numerous permutations that would lead to the development of other offshoots of the electronic genre. From EBM to synthpop to industrial rock, virtually all forms of modern electronic music can find its roots in the pioneers of the late '70s and early '80s. Among those pioneers was Portion Control, an underrated but significant band who have been credited by the likes of Skinny Puppy, Front Line Assembly, Orbital, The Prodigy, and Depeche Mode, to name but a few. While never achieving the level of notoriety as many of the bands that sprung from their example, Portion Control demonstrated the early industrial and electronic aesthetic as well as any of them. Having resurfaced in 2003 after a long hiatus, Portion Control is now gaining the recognition that eluded them during their initial inception. To commemorate their newfound lease on musical life, they've released Archive, a five CD box set collecting virtually all of their long out-of-print early '80s releases, serving as a time capsule not only of the band's past but also of the evolution of industrial music during this time.

One need but listen to the massive collection of music presented on Archive to hear traces of their influence on bigger name bands. From their first album, 1982's I Staggered Mentally, tracks like "Out of Order," "Karsic," and "Sure is Kinda Spooky" resonate with rawness and primitive energy reminiscent of cEvin Key's experimentations on Skinny Puppy's Back and Forth series, while the robotic vocals and simplistic beats and bass lines of "Crash Weight Gain" and "Thrust Angle" from Hit the Pulse recall the early work of Front 242 circa Geography. Tracks from the 1984 album Step Forward blast out synth brass attacks and oddly melodic synth sequences not unlike those heard on Depeche Mode's Construction Time Again, as evidenced by "Refugee," "Tongue Beat," and "Havoc Man," while "Under the Skin" and "Scramble" could easily be New Order songs. This period also presented some rather ambient moments in "Tin" and "Mutie." Also interesting is the inclusion of differing versions of some songs like "He is Patriotic," "The Great Divide," and "He is a Barbarian," further showing the band's progress through different periods and their improving production skills at the time. As a bonus, the fifth disc in the collection not only contains every track in high quality MP3 format, as well as a collection of images from throughout the band's history, but also an additional track, Rhys Fulber's remix of "Refugee," an indication of Portion Control's apparent influence on the industrial stars of today. From the proto-industrial noise of "Moving Towards a Waste," "Le Crunch," and "Come Alive" to the synthpop leanings of "Raise the Pulse," "Karateka," and "Rough Justice," Portion Control's Archive is a history lesson for those looking to broaden their horizons and learn about what it means to be an underground music group. Even in this advanced day and age where sampling and sequencing are common to the point of cliché, this collection serves as a reminder of what it was like when these tools first came to be, and just what sort of crazy sounds they were capable of.