"If by enlightenment and intellectual progress we mean the freeing of man from superstitious belief in evil forces, in demons and fairies, in blind fate -- in short, the emancipation from fear -- then denunciation of what is currently called reason is the greatest service reason can render."
--Max Horkheimer
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The term "science-fiction" often dredges up from memory two things: b-movies, and bizarre, unsettling music. Music that's supposed to capture the feel of the otherworldly, the alien, the unexplored and therefore un-mastered realm of our imaginative experience. Sonic themes and melodies so evocative they craft visions in your mind's eye. That's pretty much what you get on End's debut album for Hymen Records, Science/Fiction.
Throughout End's Science/Fiction is a strong sense of theme and melody that's as resonant as any modern electronic album you'll find today. Science/Fiction revels in expansive percussion patterns and lavish chord structures that swoon with tension, where sonic ideas posited in unrelenting break sequences escalate into apocalyptic zeniths -- then implode to silence. An arresting epic unfolds inside your ears.
Science/Fiction posits musical constructs of intense architectural detail, where the composite brandishes these details as proof that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Deconstructing "An Elaborate Accounting Hoax" produces a collection of break beats, a rumbling bass line, and various sonic artifacts. But as a whole, the song evolves from chaotic effects swimming in stereo into a shimmering convergence of speed and needle-sharp chimes that plays with past Prodigy or Orbital anthems as much as it does with contemporary Matthew Herbert or Squarepusher. Similarly on "Immeasurable Distances" and "Society of the Spectacle," the resulting effect of End's complex sample overlays is one where melody and theme seem to emerge from otherwise meaningless sound artifacts.
1. Eclipse of Reason
2. Immeasurable Distances
3. The Image Economy
4. Global Media Engine
5. Simulacra and Simulations
6. An Elaborate Accounting Hoax
7. Society of the Spectacle
8. The Culture Industry
9. Theatres of Memory
10. Dead Media
11. Semiopolis
12. Science/Fiction
Released 2002 on Hymen Records
Photography by Seze Devres
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Errata 12"
Thematic companion and stop-gap follow-up to last year's Science/Fiction, End is back with another batch of post-glitch soundscapes and futuristic nightmares.
Errata reprises a few of Science/Fiction's dj-friendlier tracks (the shuffling plastic beats of The Image Economy and the hip-hop dirge of Society of the Spectacle) and offers some new essentials: Necessary Fictions is all icy melodies and a hypnotizing staccato groove while Torschlusspanik is a ferocious scatter-beat number complete with hard bleeps and 70s theremin. All topped off with stellar remixes by Black Lung, Mehmet Irdel, and Xanopticon.
1. Necessary Fictions
2. The Image Economy
3. Society of the Spectacle
4. Torschlusspanik
5. The Culture Industry (Black Lung Remix)
6. Theatres of Memory (Mehmet Irdel Remix)
7. Society of the Spectacle (Xanopticon Remix)
Released 2003 on Hymen Records
Photography by Seze Devres
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