seven

meet converter - the creation of scott sturgis from ohio, also famous for his project "pain station".

"shock front" is a symphony. a symphony of the world of the machines. there is nothing human about this disk. it doesn't mean that "shock front" lacks emotions - this album catches you and won't let go till the end leaving you drained and overwhelmed with feelings. it creates images of incredible complexity and power that sweep you off your feet.

this is a lot of what i have been searching for in the noise movement - the density of sound that matches the sound density of metal guitar-driven bands but surpases them in complexity and even aggressiveness. a lot of noise acts of today become annoying and repetitive when artists get carried away with pure technique. they become too experimental and their tracks become just studies of sound, not music. shock front never becomes annoying and you never know what to expect next. this is not beautiful chaos of autechre and not menacing ambience of gridlock; this is not abrasiveness of sonar or violence of imminnent starvation. converter is all that those bands lack. converter is definitely influenced by all of them, but not by what they have, rather by what they've missed. everything that you thought those bands left out of their compositions, scott added and created his own unique mix.

every track on the album is unpredictable. there is no way to describe a single song as "aggressive" or "ambient" or "danceable". every single track will change from white noise to chaotic machine ambient, from almost danceable machine beat to ripping sound of crashing structures. there is everything here, but nothing you have heard before. there is nothing human on those tracks. every single moment is the life of the machine told by the machine. these are not human emotions that are being described.

the music itself is completely unique. distorted percussion, cracking torn synths, harsh noisy beats that sound like overprocessed guitar, harsh white noise, pulsating dark beats, ripping breakbeats, torn drilling noises. the unique constantly changing mixture. from machine ambience filled with white noise to crushing exploding barbaric rhythms. the track might start with dark chilling emptiness and stay like that for 5-6 minutes before it explodes into 2-minute chaos. some beats are unexpectedly torn and broken, reversed and smashed against your face; some stay with you throughout the track, others appear once for a second and leave you wondering if you really heard them. every track is a journey in itself and you never know how and where it will end.

"shock front" is one of the most futuristic releases in its vision of the future and the technoid culture.

this is converter, and you have been warned.