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Product Details
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| 1. Conqueror |
| 2. Shock Front |
| 3. Cannibals |
| 4. Spirit Shield |
| 5. Coma |
| 6. Sacrifice |
| 7. Memory-Trance |
| 8. Deadman (Perdition) |
| 9. Denogginizer |
| 10. Sadist |
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
My Mechanical Lithium Overload,
By TastyBabySyndrome "Matthew Lewis, author of M... ("Daddy Dagon's Daycare" - Proud Sponsor of the Little Tendril Baseball Team, USA) - See all my reviews (VINE VOICE) (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)
This review is from: Shock Front (Audio CD)
Before beginning, I have to say that Converter is an acquired taste at best and isn't pressed for mainstreamed consumption. I've been trying on flavors for years now to get a glimpse of something unique, hoping to attune my mind to the mechanical revolution of inner sight and sound so I can appreciate this two-dimensional evolution, and I can say that calling Converter "experimental electronic sampling" is a little bit of an understatement. The sound herein doesn't always formulate what people are accustomed to hearing in songs, barely ever has wording attached to it, and uses a lot of what people define as "noise." And that's a compliment where I stand, citing the fact that Converter can work with methods of generating sound in ways that makes listening "an experience." Honestly, how many things have you heard that you can call that?Accordingly, some might find it hard to involve themselves with and that's understandable. My friends and I disagree on the matter often enough, but I'm of the opinion that the tracks formed in the "repeat patterns" sound like the gurgling of an electronic voice as it tries to form words and birth life. And those words, as well as landscape the dialect denotes, are submersive when listened to in the right setting and can make the mind scream "more." As far as Shock Front is concerned, the tracks have distinct presences but pinning labels on them individually isn't easy. The songs are more like orchestrations of sound that take the form of feedback loops, random noise generation, distortion of a pretty piece or two, and some discarded portions of a dying mechanical horizon. Sometimes this creates a contemporary word like "beat" that forms in the electro-mire, and sometimes it drones into something darker, something bleaker, bleeding blinking skies and neon hums. Portions of it sound like erotica for sadistic machines to me, with the consistent grinding of static meshing into coordinated footfalls, and other portions seem destined more dichotomous in design. They have this chaos in them that bleeds calm in a roundabout manner, the tempo melding in ways that almost give vibration meaning, and this sometimes manifests the madness of humanity itself by creating floods of darkness within those random sounds. "Deadman" is a good example of a track that gives me shivers when I sit in the dark and picture it, attaching imagery to the noise and the lone wording "living among the remains of dead people." "Cannibals" also has that effect, "all obsessed with the taste of flesh" ringing out into an ocean of static and slow beats seems morbid, and those two songs show the tempo of the album. These also work as a glimpse of the few lyrical loops found on the album, showcasing its reliance on sound to make the same impact that random wording like this leaves, but not on the meaning itself. Sometimes the album isn't dark but is instead dislocated in the building boom (Coma is a good example of that) that seems to come from noises beaming from both here and afar, sometimes (Memory-trance) I think I hear biometric whales singing in their deaththroes in the background, and sometimes (Shock Front) it sounds like a mechanical lithium overload. And it's all so sweet. Overall I'd rate the album highly, but would again warn anyone that isn't familiar with Converter's works to sample before buying. Taste it, roll the mechanical around inside your head for a while, and then decide if it's a playground you'd like your mind littering.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Shock Front,
By
This review is from: Shock Front (Audio CD)
I went to an Autechre show a few years ago that completely changed my perception of live electronica. Instead of just playing back Untilted on gigantic speakers, Sean Booth and Rob Brown laid down a beat at a quick clip and mutated it over nearly 4 hours. We in the audience were but helpless bobble-head dolls, moving in time with the beat for the length of two feature films and not caring that melody never entered the equation.That show got me thinking about the incredible endorphin-releasing power of beats, and I have to believe that this is what makes Converter's utterly destructive Shock Front such a pleasurable experience. Ant-Zen was the only label dedicated to the brief "rhythmic noise" movement in industrial music, and Converter (a.k.a. Scott Sturgis from Seattle, WA) saw the movement's aesthetic to fruition. Compared to his contemporaries, Sturgis is the least afraid of sticking to one idea and using volume as a weapon, yet he knows his software and has a deft ear for syncopation. So even though Shock Front is rhythmic noise in the extreme, it's twisted and idiosyncratic enough to avoid monotony and remain stimulating after dozens of plays. I surmise that Ant-Zen was happy with the results. Shock Front still kicks butt today because of its insistence on staying emotionally neutral. It's metal machine music, driven by blasted technoid beats, rumbling passages of noise and asphyxiated screeches. Sturgis seems too enamored with creating the perfect rhythm and hearing his system go haywire to try freaking you out with any dystopian melodies--the same ones that have caused so much 90`s industrial to go stale. Shock Front's emotional neutrality has the added effect of making it seem as though you could wield it, move with it, instead of letting it hold you prisoner. It would be an admittedly awful soundtrack for exploring your own headspace, but a fantastic one for running sprints or going head-to-head with the punching bag. Converter's subsequent release, Blast Furnace (2000), continued in this vein, but Shock Front is the superior record because it contains more winning single moments. The midsection of "Denogginizer" is an aural approximation of a Godzilla battle, the machine-gun fire giving way to the earth-shaking stomps of the enormous beast itself. "Coma" is a dance track played on blown-out speakers and wrecked electronic equipment, though you'll only hear it in the blackest of clubs. However, the crown jewel of Sturgis's career is the massive, awe-inspiring title track. A monstrous trudge effortlessly morphs into an explosive drum `n bass workout, and when it redlines near the end it can be exhilarating, hitting with the force of a sledgehammer and the precision of a machete. Those looking for something to bring the noise but hate metal's histrionics and noise-rock's snarkiness can now line up before Shock Front and get their fix.
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