PTI- Exhaust

Artist: PTI
CD Title: Exhaust
Label: WTII Records
Reviewer: Matthew Johnson
Date: 12-19-05

PTI’s mix of gutturally barked verses and harmonic choruses gives their music its unique sound, but it can also be a bit disconcerting the first few times you hear it. This collection of remixes focuses more on the rhythms, melodies and textures for a result that’s more varied, yet cohesive enough to function as an actual album. Some of the bigger names whose contributions are featured here include Assemblage 23, who offer a fairly straightforward EBM mix of “Database,” and God Module, whose reworking of “Condemnation” is very much in keeping with their current style, harsh and evil but also clean and modern. Negative Format add their slick techno-influenced style to “Gone Silicon,” and Christ Analogue’s Wade Alin takes “IDentify" in a more old-school direction with a deliciously primitive-sounding electronic bass line. It’s the newer acts, though, that contribute the most interesting mixes. Iammynewt and Y-LUK-O both offer reworked versions of “IDentify” that mix distorted rhythms with incongruously pleasant synthesizers, while Deadliner’s mix of “Otherside” weaves bursts of grating noise into bouncy synthpop beats and gently floating keyboards. MindFluxFuneral’s mix of “Condemnation” is one of the album’s most aggressive cuts, with hard breakbeats and lots of cut-up snippets of the original, while Torrent Vaccine’s mix of the same track is subdued and cold. PTI themselves provide a remix of “Databass” that improves on the original by panning the vocal effects back and forth across the stereo channels for a fuller sound, and title track “Exhaust,” the CD’s one unreleased original piece, should prove a hit with fans of more trance-oriented EBM. A decent remix collection for PTI’s preexisting fans, this disc also makes a good introduction to the band; it’s actually got a lot more variety than the album it was based on, but still keeps the distinctive PTI sound intact.

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