AnD - Ard Core Krew

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  • With the jungle revival in full swing, you might expect AnD's Ard Core Krew to be a rave-referencing slice of retroism. Instead, this latest release from the Mancunian duo is, true to form, industrial techno pushed to its limits, where snippets of hardcore lie buried in distortion and noise. It's like watching footage of a warehouse rave on a VHS that's degraded almost entirely to static. Continuing on the let's-go-harder path that's taken them from the polished, chilly techno of their early releases on Horizontal Ground to the overdriven neo-gabber of recent releases on their self-titled imprint, the three tracks here show little respect for mixing desk niceties. The kicks crack and buckle in ways that make someone like Delroy Edwards' grit sound polite by comparison. On "Ard Core Krew" and "Changed My Views," each off-beat pulse thuds in so hard that the rest of the track has to dip around it, with both the wailing synths of the former, and piston hi-hats of the latter, recoiling as though punched before springing back into the mix. "Free At Last" is cleaner. Its roiling percussion recalls Shed at his most militaristic, with synths that ring through a fog of static and a buzzing like trapped wasps. It could cause clubbers to try and wave away phantom insects—if, that is, any DJ's got the balls to drop something this brutal.
  • Tracklist
      A1 Ard Core Krew A2 Changed My Views B Free At Last
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