Aural Aggravation

Brutal Resonance / Confusion Inc. –21st July 2023

Christopher Nosnibor

One thing I find – often – is that I keep encountering acts who have been going for quite literally decades without my having the slightest knowledge of their existence. This is a source of frustration: after all, I like to think I not only have my ear to the ground – so to speak – when it comes to emerging artists, but that I am pretty well connected with labels and PR. But then, so much of the music industry, it seems, is about luck and change encounters, and being at the right place at the right time. That, and the fact that existing in underground circles for a decade or more doesn’t mean that the chance of rising up toward the light is anywhere near remotely assured.

And so it is that I have been blissfully unaware of Slighter – the solo moniker of Colin C., who it appears, according to the bio, ‘has been fine-tuning the future of electronic music since kickstarting his music in Mid City Los Angeles in the early 2000s… Creating from a unique vantage point, he was involved in collaborations for various Metropolis Records releases and Cleopatra Records compilations, in addition to Slighter releases via his own Confusion Inc. imprint.’

‘How?’ I ask myself, and again, ‘how?’ I’m not only a fan and follower of these labels, but frequently get sent releases for review. I’ve mentioned perhaps a few times now – or more – how Cleopatra tapes were an integral part of my introduction to goth, and subsequently, Metropolis have been the outlet for some of my favourite more industrial-leaning acta like PIG, who I’ve been a fan of since they supported Nine Inch Nails on The Downward Spiral tour back in 1994. It might have wiped me bang in the middle of my A-Level exams, but fuck, the trip to Wolverhampton was worth it.

This is apposite. It seems almost impossible to discuss anything in the bracket of contemporary industrial without recourse to either Niner Inch Nails or Ministry, depending on whether the music is of an electronic or metal persuasion. It wasn’t always this way: from the 70s and through the 80s, industrial was a different beast, but circa 88 or thereabouts, something happened. It’s hard to really pinpoint what that something was, but it definitely happened.

And so it is that Slighter’s latest, The Futile Engine, is some strong work, which sits in the post-NIN industrial bracket, while owning a certain debt to 80s Wax Trax!. ‘Introspection Illusion’ announces its arrival with a squall of noise, a scream of electronica, and some muffled, subterranean vocal whisperings which are dark and unsettling… and then the machinery grinds into action and things really get heavy, and in no time we’re submerged in a throbbing barrage of noise, driven by a thudding industrial disco beat.

‘Pulling Me Under’ is more obvious brooding industrial dance with whirling synths and mangled, menacing vocals pitched against pounding beats. This sets the tone for the album as a whole: ‘Have No Fear’ is dark and sparse, a mechanised beat pulsating in the background against menacing close-mic vocals and we’re deep in PHM terrain here. In contrast, ‘Nostalgia Hysteria’ launches headlong into trance territory, tweaking the 505 in a full-on Josh Wink style.

They plunge deep into dark waters with the more experimental ‘Memory Corruptor’, but so much of The Futile Engine is simply dance music with some darker edges that it’s hard to really engage with. And the trouble I have with so much dance music is that it feels cold, clinical, impersonal. Perhaps it was the lack of drugs that mean I never got 90s rave or techno. But this doesn’t gain more appeal with time, and that’s a fact.

The Futile Engine has its moments, for sure, its execution is pure perfection, and the album displays a knack for insistent beats… but it’s exhausting. Unless you’re seeking relentless beat torture, you probably won’t dig this.

AA