home > browse > cd-feature > view article

CD Feature/ Cdatakill: "Valentine"

  Tobias

Just like the universe, energy is infinite. It can not be destroyed, only transformed into a different state. This physical wisdom is a pretty good picture to explain to a die-hard breakcore fan, why the new album by genre-heroes Cdatakill still rocks superbly, despite being very different from  anything they have done before and indeed a bit more “cultivated”. It is also a good metaphor for those without prior knowlegde of Zak Roberts' one-man band  to describe a style which manages to sound relaxed and aggravated at the same time. And finally, it goes some way in explaining the dense, paranoiac ambiance surrounding “Valentine”.

The inner tension has to be released in some way or the other, after all, and even if, on the outside, the murderous, maniacal and mathematically precise rhythm-machinations of the double album affair “Paradise” (which placed the unpolished experiments of the “Brazilian Nightmare” release next to more recent studio cuts) or the more soundscape-oriented digital fieverdreams of “The cursed species” may have been replaced with downbeats, dub and dulcet atmospheres on more than one occasion, that doesn’t mean that there is not still a lot of severe damage to be done. “We’re gonna hit something – so what?” a determined voice intones at the beginning of the programatically entitled opener “No brakes” and truly, from then on it’s a slenderly timed and tightly corsetted 41 minute ride through Roberts' weirdly-wired neuroreceptors. Everything was clean about his previous efforts -, the drums, the sounds, the samples all appeared to be cut with a nano-saw invented by Nasa to trim the nose-hairs of alien bacteria. Now, the ingredients are smeared across the canvas like the leftover from a psychedelic painting session looked at from behind thick sheets of Marihuana smoke. On “Mingi”, adventurously deep growling bass rolls melt into a wild animal’s roar, Billy Holiday’s “Yesterdays” disintegrates into a burning haze of echo-grooves and schizophrenic sound clouds and if a piece is called “You are mine”, then it’s not a tribute to love, but obsession. The focus is no longer just on the beats, but on the overall-feel of these strange-scenes dominated by the interaction between scraping metal and heavenly melodies made up of human voice-snippets. The erotic artwork courtesy of Magnus Blomster is a perfect visualisation of the music – raw, unashamed, provokingly physical, yet playful and full of sweet promises.

It looks like Cdatakill have realised that the strongest statement may sometimes consist in switching to a different gear. While previous albums seemed to run so fast that they were out of breath by the end of the race, “Valentine” is so full of tension that it virtually brims with power. At times, it even seems as though Roberts has built the perpetuum mobile – not having spilt a single drop, it almost appears as if he actually increeased the total energy reserve of his system.

By Tobias Fischer

Homepage: Ad Noiseam Records
Homepage: Cdatakill