Various artists

Category: Compilations
Album: Tonedeaf Records Presents: Vinyl Conflict 1

EBM. Elektro. Futurepop. Synthpop. Whatever you want to call it, it’s still the bread-and-butter of the industrial underground. Go to a show featuring industrial-rock and you’ll find an empty room. Go to see someone play karaoke with their sequencer and synthesizer and you’ll find a vinyl-clad packed house. People are fascinated with and drawn to the Euro-pop-industrial sound. This compilation, Vinyl Conflict 1, is a good overview of the style.

For a beginner in the tradition of the Euro-industrial EBM scene, this compilation covers a great deal of ground, exposing listeners to all the current (and past) club favorites, such as VNV Nation and Assemblage 23, and a few lesser-known contenders, such as Tech 9 and Headscan. The thing that separates this album from others of its type, though, is that it is a non-stop, hardcore dance mega-mix. You heard me: an hour of non-stop, mixed dance-club tracks. The question that this begs, despite the quality of the tracks chosen, is why one needs a non-stop mega-mix of elektro-industrial dance tracks. Is there a great demand to have a two to three minute segue mixing VNV Nation into Assemblage 23? It seems like the concept is a bit excessive, not to mention that this is the first in a planned series of CD’s, all mixed by different underground DJ’s.

If anything, the never-ending string of beatmatched and faded songs only heightens the annoyance that one feels and the hope that the affair will soon be over with. It’s roughly the same effect that one feels in a club environment when you grow tired of the DJ’s musical choices and hope that they start the next song soon… Except in album form. Because, one must ask, how does the listener really benefit from this dance mix, unless they are particular fans of these tracks, if they are more than likely listening to this CD at a desk, in a car, or in their room and not on a dancefloor? Possibly this could make for a flowing, numbing background music, but hardly needs a series of CD releases.

So, in trying to make EBM more palatable to the electronica community, Tonedeaf has instead injected industrial with the mind-numbing and vapid regularity of house music. Just another experiment gone awry, but a decent blend of EBM for those whose CD collections are lacking or are not aware of the latest string of hitmakers.

I’d like to hear all these tracks again, in their original form. But I demand my 4 seconds of silence between tracks. If I want to hear a DJ set, I’ll head for my nearest club.

 

from ReGen Magazine (~4/2004)