Artist: LCEDP

Album: de l’utilte des convoyeurs

Year: ??

Label: Angle Rec

Genre: Industrial, Noise

Website: www.audioterrorism.net

Rating: 2/10

This was my first experience with LCEDEP.

LCEDP wastes no time, and the album kicks right into harsh distorted noise. I’m not exactly sure what to call this record. It seems to be mostly noise…perhaps glitch noise…with a few sporadic rhythmic elements. The sound of the album is something like that of a European power noise act on Ant Zen, but a hundred times less structured and  a thousand times more sporadic. Imagine listening to a Greyhound album on fast forward. Yeah, that doesn’t sound very exciting does it? Well, neither is this record.

For the most part, this album seems to be comprised solely of completely random bursts of noise with absolutely no structure or purpose to anything. Occasionally there are some rhythmic elements which sound good, but because they completely lack structure they simply sound annoying rather than driving or pummeling. The best description I can think of for this album is: annoying. Everything about this is annoying from the unnecessarily harsh levels of distortion to the complete lack of direction and emotion to the strange and seemingly random use of panning to the fact that every song sounds exactly the fucking same. There is not very much going on in ‘de l’utilte des convoyeurs’. Every song is more or less just a bunch of noise bursts…there are no melodies, there are no pads, there are a few instances of bass but most of it gets eaten up by the extreme levels of distortion that destroy any senses of dynamics or identity that a sound may have had.

There really isn’t too much else to say so I’ll go ahead and summarize the album: First, imagine any European power noise act (say, greyhound who also seem to run their entire mix through distortion). Now take out any semblance of structure or driving rhythm. Now add in a ton of sterile abrasive noise with random levels of panning. Now put it into a blender. And there you have LCEDP - de l’utilte des convoyeurs. Oh, to their credit I think there is a synth in track 11, the brilliantly titled “fgjjj”, but it is run through so much distortion that it loses any kind of dynamic qualities that it may have possessed and just sounds…well...like shit. Cheap shit at that.

Well if you somehow get this album and listen ALL the way through this garbage you will find light at the end of the tunnel. The last track is a remix by ambient/rhythmic noise outfit Orphx. Comparatively this remix is the greatest song I’ve ever heard, and taken out of context it remains a solid rhythmic noise piece. It takes the noisey elements of LCEDP but places them where they belong - in a driving pulsating danceable track. The remix retains the minimalist overtones that Orphx is known for, but the track still manages to be diverse and contain a large number of different sounds and parts.  At five and a half minutes it is the longest track on the CD and without a doubt, worlds better than the previous 21 “songs”.

The only positive aspect to this album besides the aforementioned remix is the mixing/mastering. The album is produced well and although it is more or less completely harsh noise,  the overall level of production is pretty high and there are interesting panning techniques used. Other than that though the album is pretty much a waste of time so just download the Orphx remix and avoid the rest.

-[.d4n b4rr3tt.]

january 2008