A selection of vintage Regis warheads brought back to life simply because some things just don’t deserve to remain hidden. Seems Karl O’Connor has a wildly murky history of pseudonyms that have played host to a number of ‘lost’ tracks over the years, and In Plain Sight does the service of ushering four more back towards the light, and it’s truly uncompromising stuff, positioned at that tectonic interface between EBM, industrial and techno that still sounds formidable. ‘We Said No’, which most will know for its appearance as the opener on Gymnastics, the debut LP from 1996, features here in two previously unreleased versions from that same year, and sounds as lethal as ever, the grinding hyper-brutalist synth oscillations and relentless hi-hat action of the ‘August 1996’ relabeled as ‘I Said No’ particularly intensive. Closer ‘Backwards Man’ is probably the winner for me though, a seemingly entirely unheard re- cut of the opener from the EP of the same name that nails the notion of repetition-as-transcendence as brilliantly and brutalist as you’re likely to hear, then or now. The only regret is that it might go on a lot longer. In which case, time to reload…
FFO: Surgeon, Container, Perc, British Murder Boys, Silent Servant
