G36 VS JK FLESH – ‘DISINTEGRATION DUBS’
Repurposing music as an instrument of discipline has been the modus operandi of Kevin Martin and Justin Broadrick for over three decades, a fact underlined in blood by the exquisite rigour of ‘Disintegration Dubs’, a preposterously punishing confluence of torque and tyranny that administers twelve strokes of the sonic birch directly to the cerebral cortex. Pitting the dread bass belligerence of G36 (a collaboration between Martin and his longtime sound engineer Gorgonn) against the Damoclean, molar-loosening techno of Broadrick’s JK Flesh alias was never going to make for easy listening, and so it proves, with both artists locked in a bout of brutal, beat-murdering brinkmanship that seems destined to end in their mutual annihilation. Broadrick is in particularly truculent mood here, dismembering dub techno alive then flooding its pristine icefields with toxic waste. The carnage is resplendent, but if it’s subtlety you’re after, you’re shit out of luck. G36’s contributions meanwhile (‘Meat Grinder Dub’, ‘Body Crusher’, ‘Annihilation’ … get the picture?) follow a similar, but even more barbarous trajectory to that of recent eruptions by The Bug, hideously deformed composites of deviant dancehall and corrugated dubstep that pummel you senseless before tightening the sub-bass garrotte until your eyeballs pop from their sockets on rivulets of scalding vitreous humour. Dub seldom gets more pernicious than this. Welcome to the house of correction.
GonzoKaraoke 