Maniac

#10. ‘The Power and the Glory’ by Perc and #9. ’11-14’ by Powell

Now, I’m still a relative newcomer to the tangled but fascinating web of genre and sub-genre that makes up the fabric of Contemporary Electronic Music but those nice folks at Rough Trade have helpfully suggested that a lot of what I like comes under the broad heading of ‘techno’ which seems a pleasingly chunky descriptor. Here’s a couple of albums that definitely drift towards the crunchy rather than the smooth, both suitably repetitive and clearly from a ‘body music’ tradition but with enough playful invention to allow Mr. Perc and Mr. Powell to make the leap from the DJ friendly world of the  twelve-inch with the tonal  and rhythmic variety  to sustain interest over the length of a whole, old-fashioned album. That said, the Powell, which is actually a compilation of tracks released over the last three years, is clearly a cheat and, as another late-in-the-year release, it might have rated highly through its novelty value but there’s nothing I’m enjoying listening to more right now so I’m willing to risk it. I’d originally put these two together to cheat my list into a Top Ten before realising that both my previous lists have been twelves anyway but I’m leaving them that way because they make such a good twofer. You can listen to them both yourselves and put them in whichever order you choose – Perc’s latest is the more industrial of the two (as a follow up to his previous ‘Wicker and Steel’, by way of the ‘New Brutality’ EP, this one’s a bit more ‘concrete and steel’, if you see what I mean) whilst Powell tends more to what I believe the clued-up might call the ‘club banger.’

Banger