15/12/2023
Defrag - "LOST LANDS" EP. review at Vox Empirea - dark reviews
Known for his extraordinary perspicacity in the technological musical field, New Yorker Jeff Dodson is the interpreter of the solo-act Defrag, an authentic, appreciated institution of hyper-advanced electronic sound. Founded in 2000 initially under the name Bitstorm by the two young students Jeff (bass / programming) - influenced by Techno and electronic - in collaboration with Matt "Paper" Flego (guitar / programming / live breaks) - predisposed to Metal and Jungle - , the project undertook an artistic path characterized by progressive improvements, with the enthusiastic, pioneering desire of sound exploration - limited however to the technical knowledge of that time - with the aim of publishing and spread the music creatively generated, changing then its appellative to Defragmentation in 2001; in 2004 Matt left the band which became Jeff's solo-act, who for five years merged the pseudonym Defragmentation with the abbreviation Defrag, that since 2009 has been the official name of this artistic one-man venture. The musicality created since its origins to date as Bitstorm, Defragmentation and finally Defrag, ranges around a multiplicity of styles almost entirely instrumental, shaped, unified, manipulated and then materialized in exclusive, cinematic, 'emotional-scientific sound forms in movement' that incorporate the rhythmic virtuosities of Braindance - in which the quatrain 'kick-snare ' becomes a complex tangle of beats - the altered assonances of Noise, the claustrophobic, sharp roughness and the crazy motion of Breakcore, the perfect digital 'errors' of Glitch, the melodic essentiality and the looped-sampled-effected percussive syncopathies of Jungle, the rhythmic tension of Broken Beat, the daring electronic experimentalism of Industrial, the emphatic bass-lines with the 'onedrop' slowdowns of Dubstep and the refined rhythmic-instrumental futurism of Electro, all this characterized episodically by suggestive Ambient-oriented elements and aggregating forms of pure abstractionism. The songs symbolically deal with catastrophic topics connected to the end of the world, to environmental destruction and to the end of life observed from a scientifically quantum perspective, The project's discography first lists the only release as Defragmentation: the self produced debut album "Self Construct" ( 2002 ) published for the American label Underground, Inc., which subsequently released "8Bithead" (2004) - containing the remixes ( plus other stuff ) elaborated by Jeff - already with the name Defrag - of the tracklist of the album "Easy Listening" of the industrial / Heavy Metal American supergroup Pigface - The inclusion in the prestigious catalog of the German home H***n Records - sub label of Ant-Zen - described a Defrag's artistic rise was even more solid, through the albums "Lament Element" ( 2009 ) and "Drown" ( 2014 ) , followed by the EP's "Lost Lands" ( 2015 ) licensed by the English label The Irrational Media Society and "Idle Lines" ( 2021 ) , released by the German Kaer'Uiks. The single "Glass Ship" ( 2022 ) marked the return to H***n Records, which signed all subsequent creations to date: the albums "Float" (2022) and "Lost Worlds" ( 2023 ) , plus this current relaunch of 'EP "Lost Lands" ( 2023 ) . The Extended Play constitutes the first chapter of a EP trilogy which will soon be completed with two more episodes: all three creations are incorporated conceptually and physically into the vinyl LP album "Lost Worlds", a release designed to stimulate fantasy and activate maximum emotional involvement, divided into imaginative and musical phases that the listener will travel through, mentally and spiritually first flying over the lost lands, initially depicting the post-apocalyptic planetary desolation and a wandering humanity, forced to move like automatons in the biosphere - a condition interpreted through highly aggressive sonorities - followed by a second scenario of Lost Seas, in which a primordial civilization is shocked by a terrible aquatic cataclysm - expressed through acoustics violently stretched to the limit - and finally from a third of Lost Skies, hopeful but with a persistent, obscure undertone of enigmatic threat, populated by angelic figures who bring salvation and comfort to the surviving humans, leaving the question of whether these otherworldly entities were perhaps the forces that unleashed the Apocalypse brought down on Earth - built musically through a depressed and shadowy melodicism - . The six tracks of "Lost Lands" represents the most 'relatively confidential' episode of the triad on EP: it metaphorically transposes the fascinating, decadent immensity of 'biomes in ruins', sculpting psychoreactive soundscapes of extraordinary intensity. Let this fantastic exploration through the lost lands begin, step by step.
Tracklist:
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"I Arrived Cold" >> The romanticism of the pianistic introduction thins out in the development, isolating two notes that melancholy replicate in the background, while the downtempo drumming articulates an angular, asymmetrical concatenation of crazy beats, above which swarms of synthetic-sequenced overexposures swirl. The keyboards emit low-temperature ethereal pads that slowly verticalize towards a metallic-colored sky. An extremely evocative start.
"With Insects In My Head" >> Track with an indefinably transversal euphonism, with vague neoclassical recalls, based on a sharp, snappy and linearly intricate set of uptempo drum-programming and 'start-stop' counterpoints, composed of a succession of intermittent microparticles that combine with the hypnotic circularity of the underlying chord scales and with the hyper-processed vocal loop sections. Electronic art of rare excellence.
"At A Harbor Of Dreams" >> A sort of multifaceted pentagram created by sequenced 'xylophone' luminescences opens this multiphasic song, in which the dynamism of the drumming emits a thick, schizoid vortex of uptempo rhythmic frequencies and effervescent electronic cusps that quickly pierce the diaphanous consistency of the pads, finally transforming into revebered evanescences evaporat within the mists of a restless sleep.
"And We Celebrated" >> The sequencing transmits a filament of replications that dissolve into the sampling of strings, followed by a hyperkinetic burst of uptempo punctuations which then becomes more intelligible drumming, just as the synths spread icy iridescence and feminine choral refractions.
"While Birds Ate" >> Artificial chirps, rhythmic noises of alarm clock and sequenced piercings, herald the frenzy of a pyrotechnic uptempo drumming that expands rhythmically fragmented beats and tight cycles of pulsations, in osmosis with the acute assonances of the synth and with the acid saturations that gravitate on the sound. Panoramic view from above over the lost lands, flying on the wings of replicant-birds.
"The Tortoise Rotting" >> The electronic surrealism of the song manifests itself through coldly essential synth orchestrations, whose oblique harmonies draw sonorities oriented towards cinematic paradigms for 'sci-fi drama' films, all this interspersed with pauses full of symphonic-electronic shadiness and energized by a bombastic, serrated uptempo percussiveness.
Conclusions:
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The perfect antithesis of the conventional electronic sound, the one played by Defrag in this EP is a magnificently evolved and original celebration of IDM / Industrial / Breakcore / Ambient / Dubstep rituals, distinguished by avant-garde technicalisms performed with unparalleled expertise and compositional inventiveness. The cold logic of the machines is subverted, intertwined, twisted, 'defragmented', distilled finally made alive, until a metaphorical, multiphasic musicality is obtained, characterized by estrangement and audio-soul involvement, originating from a whirlwind of unpredictable synthetic transmissions, supported by predominantly odd, speedy rhythmic spectrograms with harmonious complexity. Now that you have entered the alienating territories of "Lost Lands", you will continue this sensational virtual run towards apocalyptically stormy Oceans, seeking escape beyond dark post-cataclysmic Skies, where you will encounter otherworldly, punitive and salvific beings. The journey has just begun and we are already ecstatic.