Filament 38

Virus! (www.virus-mag.com)

After 2002's great debut, "Fractured", Ohio's electro crew Filament 38 now offer their second full-length journey on Negative Gain Productions.

Whilst too many electro bands only concentrate on getting the most trendy beats into their menu and at the same time forget to put some effort in regarding the rest, Filament 38 endeavored to have a look all around. And they succeeded. "Unstable" contains varied pulsating rhythms, fresh and exciting sounds, complex but flowing areas, infectious earwig melodies and suitably, pleasantly distorted vocals without the usual "I'm the most evil" exaggeration.

Although there's a bit of an early/mid 90's feeling (FLA, X-Marks The Pedwalk, Evils Toy) throughout the trip, the band parallel spreads a flair of the present time. The disc holds a whole bunch of dancefloor candidates - "Contempt" with its mega groovy beats, "Dissect (Infekt)" with its sci fi sounding synth spots, "Uplink (TerraMachina)" with its partly reminding of Boytronic rhythms, or the uptempo cookie "Suffocate". Also the midtempo piece "The Cold Process" with its convex, hymnal fragrance and the slow "Relapse" with its melancholic, trippy character and deep atmosphere manage to convince.

The Imperative Reaction remix comes out very energetic, with pumping beats and an EBM flavour, Terrorfakt serves a certain monotony, crunchy industrial splinters and some vocal change into some robot-like ones, and Cruciform Injection somehow transformed the track into a more minimalistic dress but still we've got the galloping beats. A recommendable, tasty electro record!

Breda, 26 May 2005

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