Brutal Resonance

Hollow (2011)

Known Rebel

Tympanik Audio
Ambient, Minimal

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BRUTAL RATING

9.0

amazing

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In the span of a few days, this album has completely taken over every audio device I have by virtue of just what an incredible musical trip it is to listen to. When I first got it, it sounded tepid and rushed, but after repeated listens it grew into a fiendishly addictive release. Known Rebel have a style which has been termed 'bedroom IDM' by some in the press but they come across much more as peddlers of delicately wrought hand crafted material. What their tracks lack in obvious atmospheres they make up for by focusing on each individual sound as if it were the entire reason for 'Hollow' to exist. Painstaking detail has been shown onto the stage and we'd be fools not to notice this textural expanse crawling across the auditory field. This is not a grandly epic collection of songs, it is much more concentrated on what can be achieved through the most direct path possible. In the shadow of the never ending party which is Ibiza, this pair of technical renegades carve out decisively reflective engrams of sound

Wandering this way and that, a casual progression trickles down the back of steely rhythms... you will become immersed in these curling compositions which feel like the soft touch of warm water on taut skin. This one is a close quarters exercise in delirious heart pounding escapism, I don't quite know where I'm at when I listen to this and I'll be damned if I'm going to stop. Actually, this could be technically called more of an EP as over half of it is comprised of remixes, but let me tell you something about those remixes: they are tailored so well that what is added to Known Rebel's original versions merges with what you've already heard to become new, additional songs. This is a feat very few ever manage to pull off but the roster assembled on 'Hollow' are no laughing matter. Mothboy once again run away with my grey matter by supplying an astonishingly gorgeous take on the track "Herz Aeon". Lucidstatic transform "Gathering of the Argonauts" into a seething, clattering demon which is then drawn across the sound field until it snaps.

Who really perk up my ears are 2methylBulbe1ol with their (his?) remake of "Helium-3". This is amped up mayhem, it jumps down from it's perch and proceeds to rip out your entrails and hang you with them. A compressed fist of raging chaos, I back away from my speakers on an instinctual level not wanting to attract any attention. This is like having multiple shots of mescal shoved down your throat and then following up with a shot of pure adrenaline. The flexing, coiled power of this remix is devastating to any who hear it and the louder you let it get, the harder it will be to stand still.

Access To Arasaka inject some sinister malevolence into their version of "Herz Aeon" through viciously digital beats and horrifically precise washes of screaming electronic menace. This guy's continual evolution in his sound is on display and do I detect some kind of crucified take on dub making a cowering appearance? Regardless, his next album I predict will be even more out there than 'Geosynchron' was. Stay on topic, Peter! Known Rebel have made their first release an enviable one, in the arena of biology they'd be referred to as neutral. Whatever is around
them and whoever remixes them becomes bonded to them and thus by extension, part of them. This is an act who are diverse in styles and epically rich in arrangement, you don't ever know what turn these tunes will take and even though I keep playing this I continue to discover new details and even more labyrinthine excursions into a contemplative ethos of rigorous exactitude.