On: The Miillion — Violence
(Written for Noise Delays Recovery) https://noisedelaysrecovery.com/
The Miillion’s VIOLENCE is aimed at us with two barrels from Thirsk’s Industrial Coast, a label steeped heavily in the fresh exploration of post-industrial music in the mid-2020s, and is complete with an online store daring any brave cretin with a wallet to catch select releases from a plethora of labels such as Siltbreeze and Not Not Fun, whose exports over the last few decades form but some of the historical notches in the spine of fuzzed out, fucked up wastoid tune-age and whose own cache includes notable picks from Alex Cunningham and Mark Tester among an endless hall of weirdnesses. Their shades of diverse, threatening trade is purveyed by self obscuring mail-order cassette labels across the land, in a practice which feels appropriate as an antagonistic force pointed directly towards the Spotify generation’s endless well of saturation which grows ever more tiresome and seeks to provide devotees with a personal capital E Experience which eschews algorithmic trend.
A follow-up to The Beat Up released back in the COVID stricken wasteland of 2021, VIOLENCE like any good tape heaviness worth its salt screeches and slams with blood curdling distortion and low squelching bass frequencies paying homage to the dark heart of the northern underbelly, but opens with wailing sweetnesses courtesy of a delicious female vocal sample in Dogged Up, with a breakbeat serving as fertiliser for the undulating chaotic trip which grows waywardly over the next 10 tracks.
Going deeper, Ten Ton Ten Ton and Druggies stride rather memorably with hushed vocals and cascades of heat seeking noise and serve as hissing, mischievous party-pieces inviting comparison to the bastard ephemera of discarded demos of DJ Shadow or the sight of broken green bottles of Stella Artois and those brief glimpses of the horrifying reminders of bodily decay adorning ciggy packets which line the floor of backstreet snickets where the street unwillingly becomes the club. Choose Denmark deals from the back of the scene with feverish techno. Where Hysteric further continues the thread with gritty funk and distorted bouncy house keys revealing the cold manufacture of disposable fun packaged and sold in little plastic baggies consumed by fiendish characters who creep out of their dwellings solely at night.
Perhaps not enough attention in this review is being paid to the variety of the cuts on show here, one trick ponies can often be entertaining for purists, but this tape manages to outgrow genre definitions and renders them a lifeless piece of stratification, Drugs VS Wrexham earns these stripes by providing a cooldown, taking the boil back to a simmer with its descending, dementedly picturesque melodic line culminating in airy scratches and vocal refrains.
The Thistle returns with booming hip hop bass to to cave in your dome whereas The Rose almost trades in the exciting dreck of plunderphonic mess to bring something altogether more languid, with warbled fluttering sonics and a pitter patter of machinic drums set to sincere harmonies provoking slow, deep head bobbing. Sharp Scaber chips in with spoken word samples to decry the Sisyphean misery of the working class over whirring guitar loops and further nods to soul, slotting in more vocal pieces to the puzzle being jammed in place before us. Breezeblokk completes it by re-instigating the party.
Violence stylistically flies all over the chart as an exercise in harshened dancefloor ready electronic sounds and ideas marshalled by a wholly original palette. There are shades of the electro industrial and turntablism foundations of early 90s acts like Thrill Kill Kult or MC 900 Ft Jesus but its vocabulary is probably even more expansive than those worthy ancestors. It manages to be simultaneously more immediately sonically apprehending and melodious than either of those, opting less for sample kitsch (although there are just enough chopped up vocal and spoken word samples to hint at this heritage) and instead urging a psychedelicised fleet of static-cum funky electronic and hip hop energy filling the space of the beats towards your lugholes.
Low, lone, and loose, but fleshes out the vibrancy of the Experience of our most depraved partying and ensuing comedowns to keep you away from the noose. For now.
