- Whether or not Manchester duo AnD are interested in remaining enigmatic is besides the point: they've given themselves an almost defiantly un-Googleable name. Thankfully their music—scattered across labels like Horizontal Ground, Idle Hands, Black Sun and their own AnD imprint—speaks perfectly well for itself. The three untitled tracks on this second self-released 12-inch offer plenty of soot-blackened techno thrills, in line with some of Perc's more unrelenting recent music (a "A New Brutality" springs to mind). Lower in fidelity and less fluid than British forebears such as Regis and Surgeon, but lacking the willfully murky approach of Karenn or Blawan, they occupy a particularly hard-nosed and brittle space.
"Industrial" gets thrown around a lot to describe the newer crop of dark British techno artists, but in terms of their sound palette, AnD justify it more than most. These tracks chug like steam trains, grimly monolithic and pumping out choking clouds of grubby muck. The jagged melodies of "B1" pound up and down like pistons. "B2"'s surface has arcs of raw electricity that seem to spit and crackle from exposed cables; they're drawn along by thick, woody kicks and the sawing, welding and hammering sounds of heavy factory work.
TracklistA 02
B1 0202
B2 0222