This EP marks the first release from Richmond, VA's Harm Stryker, opening with "Apogee": A brief piece with a sampled acoustic guitar loop and faint percussion amidst some eerie undercurrents that fade in and out amongst the deep delay of the instrumentation. Fucking excellent. "Maintenance of Civilization" is up next and is far, far longer, running more than eight minutes. The bulk of the composition is made up of intense bass rumbles that are very quiet because they're so deep that they're almost inaudible, and then the foreground contains some light crackling sounds that pan around with some subtle, brooding synth textures and blips. "Cold Days" is similar, clocking in at over seven minutes, and using a lot of calm low tones and various layers of blips, as well as some pulsating percussive tones that sort of mimic the sound of a heartbeat or something. The blips calm down after awhile in favor of some peculiar moaning feedback types of sounds, but the percussive thuds remain largely steadfast. "Nightmare" closes things out as the loudest and most diverse of the tracks, maintaining the same dismal sort of atmosphere, but upping the ante with some sick distorted electronic tones cutting across from side to side and waves of bass rising and falling as whispered vocals seep through to the center. Superb. I'd love to hear more material in this vein. It's a bit more edgy and chaotic without losing any focus, and I definitely like the addition of the vocals. Great stuff. The recording quality is really smooth and flowing as well. Everything is crisp and detailed. I might have mastered things a bit differently ("Nightmare" is quite a bit louder than the preceding two tracks), but it all depends on what kinds of dynamic shifts they were shooting for. It's not much of a problem, but "Maintenance of Civilization" especially seems decidedly too quiet in relation to the rest of the disc. The packaging is pretty cool. The CD-R comes in a sleeve that has been spraypainted and possibly smeared with various gray/blue colors, and then a clean coat of light blue covers the entire sleeve, sans the Harm Stryker logo, which allows the smeared undercoat to show through. The CD-R itself has also been spraypainted light blue, and the coat is so clean that it's almost hard to believe... there's not even a trace of paint residue on the bottom of the disc! Inside are several inserts: One with recording information and the tracklist, one larger pamphlet that outlines the group's ideas and radical political motivations, and one tiny strip of bright yellow paper that reads, "Noise is a logical step in the evolution of intelligent anger." Very cool. This is a nice debut, indeed. I believe that one of these tracks is going to be released on a PACrec EP at some point, so keep an eye out for that, and check this out if you're into ominous dark ambient soundscapes... They're selling this thing for a cheap price ($5, I believe), so you can't lose.
[self-released]
Running time - 23:24, Tracks: 4
[Notable tracks: all four are very nice]
Harm Stryker - http://www.harmstryker.org
