Customer Reviews

Dark Skies Over Planet E

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LUCA MAINI's igloomag.com REVIEW ::

(10.15.04) Last year I found a used copy of Hypnoskull's Operation Tough Guy!, I bought it but I wasn't much impressed, I thought it was a bit old-fashioned and too much industrial for my taste. Plus, I couldn't stand Hypnoskull screaming like a madman every coupla minutes. For this reason, when this Dark Skies Over Planet E landed in my stereo, I didn't expect much. And I was very very wrong.

The two albums are 2 years distant but it seems it's a decade. This latest effort still retains the peculiar sound of Hypnoskull, enriched with breakcore influences, groovy breaks and some pleasant collaborations. Most important of all, Patrick Stevens stopped yelling: maybe some hardcore fans will be disappointed, but it's much more appealing for youngsters like me. Hypnoskull is aware of the changes of his sound and in the booklet you can find a disclaimer that explains his change of direction.

But let the music speak. To start, there's three great pieces, the gloomy industrial title track, the ultra fast breakcore of "The Frozen Army Of Drummachines" and finally "Terrostress," that sounds like an accelerated Producer tune. Then there's "Elektromutant," the name says it all --an electro piece made up with industrial drums and the addition of nice robotic vocals. It's with the help of tracks like this, "Don't Mess With The Big S" and "Assault Code Free The Floors" that Hypnoskull creates a fresh, highly recommended album. The first is a dark hip-hop moment, while the latter is a mash-up of breakcore and heavy-metal, a fashionable combo nowadays, just listen to Otto Von Schirach, Doormouse or even the recent Kattoo to find some excellent examples.

There's plenty of wicked stuff here, but I will mention only a few. Closing the album is a long experimental track: Hypnoskull asked 100 people around the world to send him 5 seconds of audio, of any kind, breaks, drones, baby voices, traffic noises, etc. --he assembled all the pieces and and the result can be found here. After the proper album there's six bonus tracks, six collaborations between Hypno and people around the world. There's the industrial monster "Nostalgia," w/ Act Dramatik, "Shift Break," a weird hardcore jungle tune featuring Needle Sharing and Patrick singing, but the most interesting of all is "Let's Hear It For The Hardcore!" with rising breakcore star Sickboy: the noisy mash-up assault will leave you breathless.

Dark Skies Over Planet E is a must have for fans of Ant-Zen sister label Mirex, since it's not that far from artists like Fanny, Sickboy or Hellfish and Producer.