ANENZEPHALIA

"Ephemeral Dawn" (reissue)

Tesco Organisation - 2007

CD

A few years ago only, the possibility to get reissues of some of the most important out-of-print and sought-after Tesco releases was extremely remote and denied by the label itself, that comprehensibly preferred to invest money on new productions. Things have positively changed in the market lately, enough to let the Mannheim Organisation plan two illustrious reprints: an enhanced version of Genocide Organ's "Remember" (soon to see the light) and Anenzephalia's masterpiece "Ephemeral Dawn".

Released in 1995 in a limited edition of 750 copies only packaged in a fold-out poster sleeve, Anenzephalia's second full-length expanded their cult status with one of the best accomplished and, 12 years later, still unmatched examples of extreme electronics. The digipack recreates the austere black and white aesthetic of the original, compiling in the booklet all the disturbing images of decay originally featured in the various panels of the poster. The music is always referred to as power-electronics, but Anenzephalia, at least on this CD, have little in common with the likes of Whitehouse, they are closer to the industrial sounds of early SPK, geometric, precise, hypnotically rhythmic, never ear-shattering or incredibly noisy, yet more inexorable and frightening than thousands of sloppy noise-makers born in the last 15 years.

Half of the album is made of cold and desolate instrumental tracks, where distant noises, electric discharges and gloomy winds evoke sceneries of urban desolation, paranoia and loneliness. The best in this sense are surely "Kachexie", the hurricane of distorted and suffocating radio frequencies of "Abiding Broadcast Contamination", the unsettling collage of mutant voices of "Thaum", and the percussive engine room orgy of "Genealogy Of Disease". The other half features B/Moloch's monstrous vocals, and contains some of Anenzephalia's most outstanding anthems, well-known to who had the luck to witness one of their rare live appearances: the slaughtering turbine wheel of "Regime", the breath-taking underground ride on a hellish train of "Infernal Wake", the frightening suture work of percussion, gasping voices and sinister sounds of "Schockwelle: Krisis". Finally, and possibly their best track ever, "Liebombast", a massacre of low-frequency and high-pitched electronics, introduced by a sample from "THX1138".

There's not much else to add, if not that "Ephemeral Dawn" is a true essential milestone in the industrial music history, one that renovated it in the 1990s', setting new standards. Now that you don't have to rush on eBay in the middle of the night to bid on the last second on some shark's auction, hoping to win a ridiculously overpriced copy of the original press, no more excuses are allowed: buy this CD!

- Simon V.

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