Review: Always positioned gleefully on the edge of any discernible music scene, Russell Haswell has never been shy of confrontation in the sound he disseminates. That he now rubs shoulders with darlings such as Powell and the like is merely happenstance - he will continue doing his thing unabated. So it is on this malevolent but surprisingly danceable single track for Editions Mego, which places a simple disco beat at the back of the mix and leaves the rest of the space free for an especially nasty distorted synth line to squeal and wail its way through eleven minutes of pure rave energy. Hearing this over a big system may well prove to be a life affirming or spirit crushing experience.
Review: The Downwards label precede the intriguing release of a new album from multi disciplinarian Russell Haswell with this remix release brandishing wildly different reinterpretations of the Coventry based musician's work from William Bennett, Kevin Drumm and label boss Regis. Haswell and Downwards seem like a good fit given the former's long career of boundary pushing music across labels as varied as Editions Mego, Warp Records and Carlos Giffoni's No Fun Productions, while the latter have remained uncompromising in the direction of their release schedule. It's a rare occasion when you can identify a Regis remix as the most accessible contribution to a release, but that's certainly the case here, with the Downwards chief delivering a twitching, loopy techno workout of "Chua Rave," while Whitehouse founding member William Bennett - another former collaborator of Haswell's - has remixed "Harshing" which is quite aptly described by Downwards as a "stereo head f*cking, brain floss session". This is surpassed in the "skin crawling brutal sonics" stakes by the minute remix of the same track from the Chicago-based experimental musician Kevin Drumm.
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