Final
Dead Air

"I'll start the drone))))))"..

This must be the summer's catchphrase at the home of Justin Broadrick, the mind behind this mind-blowing creation known as "Dead Air". Whether it's guitar feedback, insane layers of dusty old-school power-electronics, or 58-minute synth-drone textures, his obsession is always the same: static sound, mini(maxi)malism, imperceptible variation, sound in slow evolution. The damn drone.

This album is no exception: drones from another world, seismic shocks of devastating noise backgrounds, and melody that, if you're lucky, boils down to two notes per piece (eleven minutes each, of course). Because let's face it: drone gets on your nerves after a while, but if it's done by someone of Broadrick's caliber, then the whole conversation changes; a man a guarantee, we should call him. Now he's even started doing dubstep, in his own way, of course... paranoid, underground, lethal shit, for bodies and souls. As if it weren't enough what he's been epically spewing under the guise of Jesu (or was he?... argh... sure, if only he published less than 100 albums a year, we might avoid such falls).

In the meantime, let's dust off this umpteenth "Final," a pseudonym he conceived at 15 with remarkable - and well-documented - results, a side project that here makes its tenth appearance, dated 2008, released by Utech Records (which I take the opportunity to recommend, releases of great quality and stunning artwork): a project where the former Napalm Death professes himself among the first to give a particular interpretation to drone, decoupling it from its historical bases of minimalism/industrialism/dark-ambient, to bring it more to a shoegaze aesthetic more sick, rotten, and dark it cannot be, an aesthetic that is almost a response to the ethereal of My Bloody Valentine, but also a filth and stench of guitar recalling old True Norwegian Black Metal battles, leading us to coin just for the occasion, the more appropriate term, True English Drone, stuff rooted in the most luminary industrial experimenters (people like Zoviet France or Whitehouse, to be clear) and the same that can be heard, for example, on the aka White Static Demon, or in the more diluted records of the entity Techno Animal (and consequently those pieces where Broadrick's noise-making hand and introverted artistic sensitivity is more present than the rhythmic and extroverted side of mister Kevin 'Martin).

An experience difficult to convey in html, nine submerged tracks, subterranean, dirty, foggy, shitty, vomit-inducing. Total gray. Stuff completely out of this world. After all, titles like "Caved" and "Subterrane" say it all. And what about "Slow Air"? They sound like his Godflesh, with the drummer killed off and everyone else following, left lifeless near the amp, amidst hum, mass loops, muddy distortions, and monstrous unstoppable feedback: christ, what stuff. "Fearless Systems" dares instead with ambient (oh god, let's call it ambient..), practically Eno with all his gear in a meltdown, but also a Tim Hecker in a less nerdy version), then this madman comes out with ultra-experimental stuff like "Disordered" and ""Inanimate Air", bringing out his most abstract and claustrophobic self (and therefore a lot of fucking stuff). And then there's "Smeared Air", aberrant signals from Elsewhere, "Descendre", no more no less than the sound of death, "Dead Air", dead air indeed, but also our ears.

Opposing resistance is less easy than you think, Dead Air is a blow like few have been heard. Insane.