Skinny Puppy
The Greater Wrong Of The Right

THE REVIEW

Among the last real (thus not ephemeral) electronic body musicians-agitators from the deadening/hyper-creative cyber-scene of the mid-eighties, we count the fierce Vancouverites (thus, from British Columbia), "Skinned Puppets". Undoubtedly, they have represented, often more than many overrated and overly-named contemporaries, an absolute, firm, pillar in the dark electro/punk terrestrial scene of those years.

Skinny Puppy fully reappear ten long (truly an eternity, in the "electronic" field) years after their predecessor "Process" LP (from '95 by the time chronology), with this truly masterfully percussive (never monolithic), multi-rhythmic, up-to-date soundscape: crystal-clear (hard)body-music for the contemporary age. Offspring/astute-prosecution, albeit degenerate, of maliciously acoustic cyber-historicity such as Throbbing Gristle, Cabaret Voltaire, and company audio-drillers, the hallucinated/nti (surreal-theatrical) live-electro/performers Kevin Ogilvie & his historical deconstructionist partner, Monsieur Kevin Crompton, with the passage of vile time, have effectively subjected their future tracks to an audible skimming, rounding treatment (not drying out and/or even worse, "commercializing"); the most screeching and angular acoustic algorithms reach, in this "great right-wing error" (great title... did they learn of the unusual political vicissitudes in Italy?) a considerable, albeit perhaps now unexpected, electro-dynamic turn: a layered comeback, in its total audio integrity, of monolithic sonic-siliconity.

The parcelized guitar " Pro-test" (potential ultra hit for leaden dancefloors), as well as the hyper-dynamic/disorienting, as well as corrosively "melodic", "Neuwerld" or even the wonderfully contemporary, industrial-pounding, "Ghostman", represent the absolute peaks of a work so long-awaited as proportionally/successfully achieved.

If one were miserably and offensively to seek the classic needle in the haystack (?), the only (truly minimal) flaw of the work in question might be the not fully expressed potential audio-intuitions/directions for further future exploration of an (im)possible new way of Canadian electro sound for upcoming (hope is always the last to wither) turbulent, nascent electro de-generations... Their fractal (albeit microbic) audio-historical, they have extensively and lucidly narrated/established, even more mockingly over these last five decades of honorable/scraped career... for any possible/probable new developments, may the fresh new recruits come forward kindly: one cannot/must not demand/ask for (the whole of) everything from them, after all.