Scanalyzer- On the One and the Zero

Artist: Scanalyzer
CD Title: On The One And The Zero
Label: Positron! Records
Reviewer: Matthew Johnson
Date: 4/16/06

Scanalyzer is a new collaborative project from Chris Randall and Wade Alin. Randall has always been about the funk, both in his industrial rock group Sister Machine Gun and his techno side project Micronaut, and Alin seems to have worked out his rage for the time being in Christ Analogue and has since been devoting most of his time to the soulful trip-hop of his new band, Atomica. It's kind of a surprise, then, how dark and evil Scanalyzer sounds. The four-on-the-floor onslaught of "Herstius" would fit right in between Combichrist and Terrorfakt on the dance floor, and "Scan7" is cold, clinical and noisy, with all the rhythmic complexity and feedback of Hecate or Black Lung. "Moretech" and the down-tempo "Hifishit" are still dark, but less abrasive, incorporating pianos and strings for a sense of noir drum 'n' bass, while "Monotreme," already inherently cool for taking its name from the family of egg-laying mammals that includes the duck-billed platypus and all manner of echidnas, adds gorgeous layers of looped violin and cello over muffled, reverberating breakbeats for an effect that's ominous but lovely. By the second half of the album, Randall and Alin ease up a little from the relentlessly grim vibes, and Randall's irrepressible funk creeps back into the mix. "Screamer" is still noisy as hell, but its crazy screeching and frantic jungle rhythms come across as psychotically joyous, rather than pathologically violent, while "Neutron Dub" incorporates synthesized speech and snappy breakbeats, resulting in what sounds like an old Speak-N-Spell toy strung out on crystal meth. If you're a rhythmic noise junky who's avoided Randall and Alin's work up to now in fear of its accessibility, give Scanalyzer a chance. This is the one where they pull out all the stops, and it's a lot more chaotic than you might've expected.

More info on this project is available from the Positron! Records website at www.positronrecords.com and on MySpace at www.myspace.com/scanalyzer.