CD, Urbcom, 2006
www.urbcom.net
I’m not sure if this phrase is synonymous with the UK only but still I’m going to use it – Urbcom appear to be a label with their fingers in all the pies! Band Promotion, T-shirts, CD’s, Club Nights and erm… ringtones for your mobile phone!
“Recreation-X – Display Disobey V2″ is Urbcom’s most recent CD release and it features some prominent ‘scene artists’ such as Nebula-H, TH Industry and Kin’Ho, amongst some lesser well known names, and is an excellent mix of both club friendly tracks and more chilled out sounds.
CD1 presents a more EBM/electro sound with tracks by Nebula-H (featuring Pangea), which is a fine example of hard EBM mixed with some interesting techno sounds, Alien Six and Jerico One (Jerico One being one of the founders of the Urbcom label), as well as bringing some dancefloor friendly breakcore to the mix. My personal favourite track is by Intercity 3: ‘Windows”, featuring Catherine Randall on vocals, is a beautifully sleazy piece of electro, and the vocals add a slightly dark and scary sound to it. Worth buying the CD alone for that track in my honest opinion!
However we can’t leave out CD2 here as this features some excellent noise and chilled IDM tracks. Anticracy offer some glitchy techno, not dissimilar to Aphex Twin. Sudden Infant’s offering is a surprising number – lots of noise and distortion but with some sweet vocals over the noise, it is somewhat unsettling. This was an unexpected addition (and a very enjoyable track) as I’ve only ever heard Sudden Infant’s more power electronic sounding releases. Somatic Responses never fail to disappoint and “Omnivox” is no exception. Hard IDM at its finest.
In all this is a rather good compilation with a little something for all electronic music fans, and is a good taster for up and coming artists alongside exclusive material from already known artists. Hopefully we’ll be hearing some more from Intercity 3 and Anticracy, but for now this is a very enjoyable CD and no electronic fan should be without it.
[7/10]
— Kate Turgoose