punishing soundscapes, dissonant progressions, and visceral tones
Release Notes
Label: raster
Released: November 29, 2024
Mastered By: Bo Kondren at Calyx
Artwork By: Juan Mendez and Simone Ling
If You Like: Lakker, Orphx, Kangding Ray, and SHXCXCHCXSH
[Editor’s Note: I’ve been going through a bit of self-reflection lately, particularly regarding my relationship with writing about music on Headphone Commute. Sure, there have been plenty of past instances where I questioned the whole purpose of this all, only to remind myself that I do it only for the music. But since I have been revisiting my album reviews from about a decade ago, I’ve noticed that I used to have a lot more to say about each one. You also had a lot to say about my recommendations. This is when I still had comments enabled on the site before the trolls and spammers ruined it all. My social media presence was also pretty vibrant – these days reduced to only posting album covers on my Instagram instead. It seems that I am turning inwards, once again, to where it all began about two decades ago now. Just taking notes on music that I love and sharing blindly with the world. And if, by chance, someone will find these incoherent ramblings and then discovers sounds that I here praise with words, perhaps they’ll thank me in another forum. Perhaps then all this will pay off. And now, back to the regularly scheduled programming. Enjoy my latest endorsement!]
I don’t particularly appreciate the act of classifying music, but if I had to pick a genre for Belief Defect, it would be placed somewhere among the dark, industrial-tinged proto-techno and experimental avant-garde. The project comprises a duo of Luis Flores and Moe Espinosa. The latter name should be already familiar to you, if you follow his darker side of techno under the Drumcell and Hypox1a monikers. They first appeared on the scene, and indeed these electronic pages, with their 2017 debut titled Decadent Yet Depraved picked up by the venerable Raster imprint. I was lucky enough to attend the project’s premiere at the Berlin Atonal in the same year when they were still performing under an anonymous veil. You can watch about ten minutes of this murky atmospheric experience here. This was indeed a “soundtrack for this apocalyptic time, an uncompromising reflection on the state of mankind and its uncertain future,” which only got bleaker in these dystopian hours. Seven years since [it doesn’t feel like seven years!], and Belief Defect is back with eight punishing reflections on our Desire and Discontent.
The world became another since the release of »Decadent yet Depraved« and Belief Defect’s reflection of it: now darker, political, honest – end times in Cinemascope. »Desire and Discontent« unfolds like a parable, structured by subsonic frequencies that give arrangements a solid gravity, dissonant chord progressions resulting in coherent movements, punctuated by human-like voices over slow, suspenseful melodies that come into being without the listener’s awareness.
The album is both absorptive and suffocating at the same time. The haunting and enigmatic ambient pads ascend into the light while the growling bass is chasing their emergence. Percussive slabs descend and put out all the glow, but you can still make out the cries of desperation. Grinding, grating, and oppressive sounds move onto the sound field like heavy tanks destroying morning flowers, covering all frequencies with dead, distorted noise and grainy, viscous oil. Organic breeds with digital, as well, rebirthing alien, untraceable, unknown sounds, then shattered and destroyed with static choke and piercing interference. And when the onslaught ends, you feel a little dead and empty, as if this struggle kept you long alive, and now that it is over, you have nothing… because this fight is what defined you all along.
The release is available now as a digital download or a pre-order (shipping date is around January 17th 2025) for a CD or a double black vinyl, perfectly mastered by Bo Kondren at Calyx Mastering, Berlin, with the artwork designed by Juan Mendez (aka Silent Servant) and Simone Ling. Highly recommended for fans of cutting-edge post-industrial ominous music who appreciate brooding, complex sound design, foreboding tones, and a visceral listening experience [in headphones and at loud volumes among the stone-cold walls].
