Most of the electronic music I’ve been listening to lately is admittedly tame compared to the stuff that introduced me to the genre. As much as I’ve loved the new albums by artists like Moderat, Darkside, Machinedrum, and The Field – and I do love those albums – they don’t really hold a flame to the gristle of Atari Teenage Riot or Skinny Puppy.
Honestly, the roughest electronic stuff I’ve been into has been Kanye’s Yeezus. Who else is making material like “On Sight“? Maybe Factory Floor. But as great as their album is, I’m more likely to sit down and zone out when a song is eight minutes long than hang on every second like I do when it’s edited down to 2:30.
Yeezus brings me to Gesaffelstein. It also brings me to Daft Punk, Brodinski, TNGHT, and Arca, but it’s Gesaffelstein who’s really intrigued me the past couple of months. The easiest way for me to describe what I’ve heard so far is that he’s starting where Justice left off and giving it the repetition and razor-sharp edge that techno owns.
His latest single, “Hate or Glory”, starts with a monotonous bouncing synth that collides with a 4/4 scream. It then builds piece by piece adding more distorted synths and high hats sitting way up front. Everything drops twice throughout the song just telling you that what you thought was loud and rough before was tame compared to what’s coming. Boy does the final onslaught deliver. It’s everything from before plus more of everything before. It’s great. It’s about what I felt when I heard “Waters of Nazareth” for the first time.
