- Brutaż, a party and label based in Warsaw, is a key node of adventurous club music in Central Europe. Its parties push local talent while bringing in bold DJs from abroad (Discwoman, Erika and Courtesy being recent guests). Its records showcase new and little-known artists who embody the outfit's scrappy, experimental flair. The latest 12-inch, Ice Dog's Babylon Fish, is particularly oblique. The artist name and title use Cyrillic letters to spell English words. The track names, when they're more than cryptic acronyms, are in Serbian. As for the music, it's classic Brutaż: a filthy blend of leftfield techno and experimental electronics.
The five tracks on Babylon Fish are sinister in mood but pleasingly rich in atmosphere. For my money, their bleak palettes work best when applied to more accessible structures, like on "Biti Ovde," a darkly funky slo-mo groover, and "2vs," a techno cut whose industrial haze recalls peak-era Skinny Puppy. The other tracks have harsher sounds and more dilapidated rhythms. "29gt" stumbles mechanically through peals of noise. "Kolutovi" teems queasily like a mound of insects. "U Glavi Leti Ptica Belim Repom Meduze" would nicely soundtrack a human sacrifice ritual. The nightmarish vibe can get a bit much at times, but the production, as vicious as it is surreal, is never anything short of inspired.
TracklistA1 2vs
A2 Biti Ovde
A3 Kolutovi
B1 U Glavi Leti Ptica Belim Repom Meduze
B2 29gt