Broken English Club - The Artificial Animal (2022)

After the White Rats trilogy behemoth that came out on Lies records, Oliver Ho’s Broken English Club returns with a startling album exploring technology, reality, spirit and the self.
Coming on Oliver’s own Death & Leisure imprint, The Artificial Animal is a no compromise journey through raw data noise, feedback, raw dubby techno and experimental cut-up sound pieces.
Throughout the 12 track album there is a sense of overload and electronic fevered hallucination counterbalanced with primitive rhythmic machine music.
The pulsating low throbbing bass and soaring synths of Ersatz mark the beginning, the drama slowly builds with caustic noise and arabic trumpet calls. This is closely followed by the stuttering sound collage of The Artificial Animal. Concepts of spirit, artifice and technology are the inspiration for the chopped up clips of tv show exorcisms, inter spliced with feedback and static, creating a bewildering kaleidoscope of sounds and texture.
After this shocking introduction we jump straight in with Snub, a heavy relentless acid track with roaring distorted drones, that constantly moves higher and higher in intensity. The Slow Bleed follows with dubby warehouse beats and metallic screeches echoing in the background. Concrete is next with broken scrap metal rhythms and melancholic synths which bring to mind early Apex Twin. Next is Sink, a barrage of undulating spiralling synths, white noise and mashed down-tuned vocal take everything into an experimental direction. Following this, Neck brings Warp style staccato bleeps and broken beats, creating a kind of plastic funk. Collapse brings atonal synths and sea sick shimmering chords over heavy drums. Blood and Wire takes a turn into ambient synth atmospheres punctuated by heavy blasts of death metal screams and white noise, creating a feeling that Is both ethereal and maximalist in its level of intense noise.
Next is Grey Sands, a dusty atmospheric groove with sparse squarewave bass stabs and industrial high drones. The album moves towards its end with Pervert and its cycling knife sharp buzzing synth drops, raw data noise and psychotic low vocals. The final goodbye is World of Fire, moody ambient atmospheres with glitch slow motion gabba bass drums and the repeated vocal phrase, “Everything’s on fire”. In its entirety the album is a dense collection of sounds and rhythms, theres nothing here for posers, techno fashion victims and party tourists, this music is for obsessives looking for noise and raw broken soul.