Band: Kristoffer Nystroms Orkester

Album: brakeHEAD

Album Year: 2006

Label: Malignant Records

Genre(s): Noize, Power Electronics, Power Noize

Website: www.malignantrecords.com

Review Date: 02/07

Rating: 9/10 if you love power electronics, otherwise significantly lower
 

Track Listing:

1. biTer (deep cut edit)

2. high_level_input-slow_speed_output (well done)

3. extenDEAD konnektion (shortened diskonnekted version)

4. asphalt flowers (k n o mix)

            I’ve never heard of Kristoffer Nystroms Orkester before, so I really had to idea what to expect going into this album. It turns out that the project name is a combination of the two member’s names – Peter Nystrom and Kristoffer Ousted and they make harsh machine-like power electronics.

            At first glance, the packing is extremely industrial. The cover and back of the digipak feature black and white pictures of people working in factories with various tools and machinery. Unfortunately, the inside is very plain and boring as it just has a picture of the members and “recorded in…” information.

            The music itself is technically extremely industrial. Lots of fucking noise,  occasional pounding beats, and distorted & destruction machine sound give the album the atmosphere of a very powerful and chaotic old time-y factory, but unfortunately the music beyond this atmosphere isn’t that amazing. The first two tracks have some good pounding beats in them, but unfortunately the vast majority of the album is made up by distorted noise, and this noise  consistently blots out any other elements that appear in the music. Even when a beat is preset, the noise always eclipses it, and the sounds appear to continuously compete for the listener’s attention, rather than work together to create huge pounding destruction. I enjoyed the first two tracks; they succeed in creating very raw and devastating somewhat structured noise, but after that the album fails to impress me. Track 3 is an extremely (and I mean EXTREMELY) long piece of slow power electronics/noise ambient, which quickly becomes very monotonous and boring, and I found myself always wishing a beat would come in so that the song could take off. Instead, the listener floats endlessly in a cesspool of broken machine parts with batteries broken and endlessly spouting their conflagration of whirring and buzzing into oblivion. Basically the album is full of similar patterns of harsh noise, being present for just about the entire thing, and every other sound and component of the music corrodes under and becomes veiled by the thick layers of noise and distortion.

            I feel like this album succeeds at being a hard machinery inspired power electronics album, but I personally hate power electronics and therefore it does not appeal to me at all. I think that this album is well developed and manufactured for the type of music that it is, and I think that it will be very enjoyable for fans of the genre. Otherwise, it will just sound like a constant wall of distortion and noise. I would like to have heard more beats on this, and some loud and extremely distorted screaming vocals. Hopefully I can hear more stuff from KNO in the future that has more structure and less noise.

-[.d4n b4rr3tt.]