AXESSCODE
In a time when ATARI TEENAGE RIOT seems well and truly dead and Alec Empire lost himself in the corridors of international corporate business, the new digital-hardcore generation is here, and not necessarily where you would have waited for! From the depths of the ex-soviet-empire rises
AMBASSADOR21, and they are the perfect heirs to the DHR gang. Heirs, who, far from living on a
past capital and simplistic receipts, widely transcend the bases of digital hardcore : all
ingredients are here (aggressive rythms, lo-fi sounds, ultra-overdriven guitar bits), but used in
real songs, where ear-hammering is no palliative to lack of inspiration. The voices of Natalia and
Alexey (mostly in russian) mix perfectly, on top of that crawling sound mayhem, and real feelings pervade from their music, not just anger and frustration. That's not very surprising when one reads the list of their inspirations, where SWANS meet PANACEA, COIL or LARD.
"People Vs. Ambassador21", with its numerous dance / new-wave / EBM references, is maybe their most accessible record, somewhat closer (even if the sound is sharply harder) to the electroclash scene ; some tracks (please, do not ask me which ones, everything is written in Cyrillic!) made me think of KAS PRODUKT, LORDS OF ACID or CHIKS ON SPEED. An electro-pop / wave road abandoned by
ATARI TEENAGE RIOT after their first album, and that AMBASSADOR21 investigates brilliantly. A "
melodic " approach to digital hardcore which does not prevent this record from being pure
concentrated dancefloor-savagery; a record which is at the same time sexy, scary and
politically-conscious.
by vx69 for Axesscode
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