REVIEWS

Download
Furnace RE:dux

Subconscious Studios

Posted: Thursday, May 10, 2007
By: Matthew Johnson
Assistant Editor

Of all cEvin Key's side projects, Download has always been the most difficult to categorize. The rest of the side projects fit at least marginally into one genre or another; PlatEAU is pleasantly stony techno, Doubting Thomas is an instrument soundtrack version of Key's Skinny Puppy work, etc. Download, though, jumps freely from industrial noise to experimental techno to dub to acid and back again, and that makes them a bit tougher to deal with, as this remastered version of the project's first album reminds us. Throw in the disjointed rants of Throbbing Gristle and Psychic TV founder Genesis P-Orridge—a living embodiment of industrialized psychedelia if ever there was one—and you've got a sure recipe for weirdness and unpredictability. Certainly, when Furnace first surfaced in 1995, it was a disappointment to casual Skinny Puppy fans hoping for an album full of club-friendly tracks like "Testure," but taking the opportunity to listen to the album today reveals how influential a piece of work it really is. "Stone Grey Soil," for example, prefigures everything from modern IDM to minimalist acid house with its mixture of twangs, blips, and pulsing drum machines, and "Omniman" is an appealing meld of squelching acid synths and hornet whines. "Sigesgang" starts off with dark dub and bits of processed speech, then builds gradually into a cacophony of rhythm and sound deconstruction, while "Beehatch" and "Noh Mans Land" are mellow, more pleasant, with laid back trip-hop rhythms and hints of exoticism provided by nature sounds, distant tribal chanting, and even the occasional rainstick effects, which manage to add a touch of naturalism without devolving into New Age tripe. The real reason for diehard fans to pick this up, though, is the bonus disc, RE:dux, which features eight numbered tracks taken from early Download live jams. The recording quality on this archival material is pristine; just hearing it, you'd have no idea it was all live improvisation. It also manages to be even more eclectic than the album itself; "Part 1" is growling, snare-heavy dub, "Part 2" is dripping acid electro, and "Part 3" is a nervewracking progression of tinny IDM loops held down by a rhythmic mechanical clank. "Part 4" and "Part 5" are the most conventionally pretty of the bunch, moving between pure deep ambience and pleasant downtempo, adorned with squelching analog synth lines, warmly rumbling bass notes, and muffled harp-like tones, while "Part 6" jumps back into playful robotic electro. "Part 7" provides a relaxing if eerie interlude of cavernous ambience, while "Part 8" finishes things off with 13 minutes of mind-melting sound collage, fuzzy distortion, and radically chopped and altered samples. More than just a bonus disc, it's practically an album in itself, so it goes without saying that if you're a cEvin Key fan, you need to add this two-disc set to your collection, whether or not you already have a copy of the original Furnace CD.