Ionic Vision- Bitter Isolation

Written by Matthew Johnson

ARTIST: Ionic Vision

ALBUM: Bitter Isoluation

LABEL: DSBP Records

REVIEWER: Matthew J.

DATE: 2-23-09

Together for over a decade and a half, Ionic Vision have devoted their career to the true EBM sound, and their fourth album is no exception. You won't find synthpop or industrial rock masquerading as the real thing here, and lord knows you won't find any ballads. This is the real stuff, clanking industrial dance music, more evocative of factories than raves, and it just never stops. From the chopped panning metal sound and vintage drum machine patches of opening track "Insects" to the twanging synthesizer and gravelly vocals of "Reveal" to the club-friendly cymbal hiss and deadpan couplets of "Visions of Order," Ionic Vision deliver an album that's half dance floor workout, half death march. Like such fellow European acts as Parade Ground and Severe Illusion, Ionic Vision rely primarily on the stripped-down sounds of yesteryear, taking analog drum hits and synth sounds and then processing them until they're stripped down to their machinery skeletons; unlike many of their contemporaries, though, they don't go overboard with the abrasiveness. Tracks like "Open Your Eyes" and the sexual-themed "She Is" are raw and gritty, but they're still unabashed club songs, meant for dancing, not armchair analysis. "Die Macht (Rundfunk)" is particularly infectious, its deliberately flattened percussive sounds and understated groove recalling the earliest work of Nitzer Ebb. And if 12 tracks of pure old-school club candy wasn't enough, the always value-focused label DSBP pads out the CD with bonus remixes from the likes of Electro-Synthetic Rebellion, Encoder, and more; though none of the remixes really reinvent the original tracks, they all provide some interesting divergences that will keep Ionic Vision's tracks dance floor-fresh for the foreseeable future. If you like to stomp, look no further.

To hear sample tracks from this album, check out the band's MySpace page at www.myspace.com/ionicvision.