TRIPLE LP
Limited to 300 copies, no repress.
French label Lux rolls out the red carpet with this immaculately packaged triple vinyl boxset documenting the work of Swiss noisenik Michael Antener, presenting his first two records alongside a varied selection of live and previously unreleased material. Even within the context of the highly diffuse European industrial underground of the 80s, Antener remains a bit of an unknown, an almost entirely self-reliant fringe-player with a penchant for the darker aspects of the human experience - so far so industrial, and there's certainly some shared perspective with Throbbing Gristle, Ramleh, Nocturnal Emissions et al. Still, if he was operating alone, he was surely also highly aware of what was happening around him, something that Eine Aufnahme voller widerlicher Verderbtheit speaks to in its multitudinous expressions of EBM, noise, electro, dark wave and the general sonic subversion that was brewing in the subculture at the time. Much of Eine Aufnahme is primitive, but Antener is never anything less than fully committed - there's the sense of an artist who regardless of who was listening in had to get these sounds out somehow. That's a feeling reflected in the impressively substantial amount of music to get through here - 22 tracks across six sides that become increasingly sex-dungeon friendly as the tracklist progresses, ushering itself towards what we might now understand as industrial techno. Believe, if the Downwards folk haven't already heard of The Strangler of the Swamp then at least someone in the family has a Christmas present sorted. That's perhaps as far as good will extends around this kind of thing, and thankfully so.
