Customer Reviews

Hack

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

this is MY kinda music! all the sampling, sound-bytes, techno-make-you-wanna-dance music. keep it coming! it's 2000 and this is still one of my most listened to cds. keeps your ears busy - where DO the sound bytes come from? i think i recognize some star trek...

Would you expect any less from Information Society, a band that should more appropriately be named Information Overload? This was actually the first Info Soc. album I owned and I still enjoy the over-the-top samples and bizarre noises mixed in with pop sensability. The great tracks here include "How Long", "Knife & A Fork...", "Mirrorshades", "Come With Me", and "...T.V. Addicts". This album so exemplifies the late 80's early 90's techno/industrial/dance sound-even more so than much better known albums such as NIN's PRETTYHATEMACHINE. Not that Info Soc. is nearly as self-absorbed or nihilistic as NIN or MINISTRY-bands that have a much more prominent metal edge. Info Soc. is more about dancing and evoking images of Mike Myers Saturday Night Live "SPROCKETS" sketch with Deiter than anything else. And the album doesn't really 'flow' in the traditional sense. It is more of a collage of dance beats, melodies, and computer-aided sampling with a distinct KRAFTWERK and DEVO flair. Far from perfect, but quite interesting. It never quite breaks out of the 'coldness' that is inherant in techno/dance music. What saves the album is that it is fun to listen to; it's not a repetitive dance album like so many others and it's not filled with self-important 'life stinks' diatribes. Info Soc. seem to have grasped the idea that most people would rather have a catchy melody along with their dance beats, as opposed to a monolithic, lumbering assemblage of casio-keyboard-produced dance loops or walls of distorted guitar and loads of existential angst. Music is supposed to be FUN.

If you start listening to Hack expecting it to be a continuation of the made-for-radio pop like the self-titled "Information Society" album, you'll probably be disappointed. "A Knife and a Fork" will leave you scratching your head, and you'll hit the stop button. But to do so will cause you to miss out on some excellent music.

"Hack" has several catchy, mainstream-safe tracks, notably "Think", "How Long", "Move Out" and "Slipping Away". But those tracks aren't front-loaded into the first four tracks on the CD... they're scattered between a variety of "experimental" tracks, some of which you'll like, and others you may find dull or annoying.

As an example, the track "Fire Tonight", has a light and happy tune. The lyrics, on the other hand, paint an eerie and dark picture of a city in chaos ("you said that if you couldn't take the car, you'd walk instead; it was the last thing you said before the line went dead; now I'm waiting by the window holding all the things of yours I've found"). The combination is rather unusual, technically interesting, and in my opinion, one of the best tracks on the CD.

The thing about these "experimental" tracks is that as a listener, you might not like them the first time you hear them, especially if you're looking for radio pop. However, they are also much less formulaic, so over the long haul, they still sound new compared to the radio.

If you liked "Think", give this CD a shot. There are enough solid pop tracks to be worthwhile, and if you give the rest of the CD a chance, you may grow to love the entire thing.

I have always had a soft spot in my heart for Information Society. After all, they did it first. Used the samples, made the breakthroughs-- When I make music I think of their work. Hack shows they are more than just mixers, the songs themselves have sentimentality and surprsing grace. Excellent purchase.

Among synth groups, INSOC (Information Society) is one of the absolute best. If you like 80's synth dance such as Erasure, Pet Shop Boys, Depeche Mode, etc., then you'll love this and all the rest of INSOC's albums. They provide a perfect blend of dance beat, lyrics, and emotion. The previous album is mostly dance synth pop. This album adds more R&B sounds. The later ones add more techno sounds. All are great albums and well worth getting.

Nice early 90s club stuff. "Think" is really good. I saw them in concert in Mexicali in support of this song. You would have thought they were Depeche Mode the way the people received them there (around 1992 or something). This is euro-clubby fare. The producer and band member Paul Robb actually had worked with a lot of people on the New York freestyle sound, responsible for songs like "Silent Morning" by Noel. But these guys are actually out of Minneapolis or someplace. Kind of funny. I also saw them in 1995 and they hadn't changed one bit. And they sounded just like they had when I saw them play with Sam Fox in 1989. Ha. If you like this type of thing you should check out Red Flag or Anything Box.

I love the first Information Society album. One could call it a great debut. But in this other album, HACK, Information Society's musical evolution is very notable. This album is more mature, the songs are tied in with each other and you can say it is like a live show. You got an intro song, and instrumental song and a song singed by X singer, then the same sequence and a song singed by another singer (two singers, both with great styles and voices)
To summarize: you can find an album filled with very easy listening and radio oriented tunes, in time you will get tired of it, on the other side, you can have a experimental album, so proggressive, so evolutioned you will get tired of not hearing any true single or radio friendly album, it is very HARD to find an album with experimental, more deep, different than your average radio single song but nevertheless excellent songs that also contains instant hits and radio oriented songs. HACK is an album that does both extraordinary well. Just when you think that you have had enough of radio friendly songs and want something more deep, more artistic there comes a songs that does it, and viceversa.
Another great fact of this album is the intros songs (or subsongs) I told you before. Buy this album, close your eyes and prepare to have an extraordinary fine synth pop experience, but experimental and radio friendly. This is INSOC masterpiece, an almost perfect album.

After knowing a considerable amount of success in the late 1980's with their first eponymous release (which contained such hits as What's on your mind, a classic of the synth-pop era, and Walking Away) techno-pop band Information Society was a lot less lucky with their sophomore effort, Hack. It didn't do as well as the previous one, despite some really good radio-friendly tracks and potential hits. The single "Think", for example, is one of those songs that are so catchy and infectious you can't help but sing along with them; same goes for "How long", "Now that I have you" (which, I'll admit, sounds uncannily like Think)and "Can't slow down" as well as "Mirrorshades". Surprisingly enough, these two are some of the highlights of the album, despite not being sung by frontman Kurt Harland. You can tell by listening to the numerous interludes that Harland and his bandmates had a blast playing with their computers and throwing in all those samples; one may say that it's too much, but I think that it's what made InSoc so original and fun. This being said, however, I can't say that Hack is InSoc's best album. It's a little too messy and it contains too much fillers (Fire tonight is excruciatingly boring, just like If only is)for my taste. But overall, it's still a great album from a band that, unlike so many others from that period, passed the test of time pretty well.

I really like these guys and believe that they are very good at the type of work they put out, considering the fact that they from Minnesota and not Europe like most synth-pop bands. HACK happens to be my favorate of all their albums. Songs like "How Long", "Think", "Now That I Have You", "Fire Tonight", "Can't Slow Down/T.V. Addicts", "Move Out", "Mirrorshades/We Don't Take", "Come With Me", and "Slipping Away" are just fantastic and similar to the debut album. Other songs are more experimental and techno based. A MUST HAVE FROM THESE GUYS....

In my opinion, this is probably Info Society's best album. A nice combination of everything in every song. The succeeding CD's of this one, however, are demonstrable that INFO SOCIETY seemed to have lost their creativity, regrettably.