More news from the 90s: Gatekeeper's 'Exo' goes back to the global decade

First published in Loud And Quiet

Gatekeeper 
Exo 
Hippos In Tanks

Gatekeeper's terrifying Giza EP from two years back instigated a revival of John Carpenter-esque horror soundtracks (see Xander Harris' Urban Gothic and Geoff Barrow's recent Drokk project), but now the Chicago production duo have binned the lightning strikes and campy synths for a bewildering onslaught of 90s sounds, from acid-fried techno to Spiral Tribe rave fantasies to the queasy digital dystopia of James Ferraro's Far Side Virtual. And weirder: a 'first-person gaming environment' has been designed as an add-on, which you can explore like those old CD-ROM adventure games.

If that sounds too sickly to be palatable, bear in mind that Ferraro is perhaps one of Gatekeeper's closest contemporaries – both produce a kind of conceptual meta-music, at once dated and futuristic, with something very real and very terrible to say about the digitally-enhanced, high-definition, hyperreal world we live in. Perhaps not an album to come back to regularly, but an essential listen for anyone interested in the not-so-danceable corners of dance music.

Geoff Barrow and Ben Salisbury: 'Drokk: Music Inspired by Mega-City One'

First published in Loud And Quiet



Geoff Barrow and Ben Salisbury
Drokk: Music Inspired By Mega-City One 
Invada

The revival in interest in early electronic music produces an awkward paradox. From Veronica Vasicka’s Minimal Wave series to the forgotten proto-house classics loved by the UK bass scene and the legacy of industrial revived by Carter Tutti Void – it's an eternal summer of early ‘80s retromania. Portishead's Geoff Barrow and BBC composer Ben Salisbury encapsulate that paradox with this imagined soundtrack for the 2000AD comic.

A vintage Oberheim Two Voice synthesiser dominates while semi-automatic drums warp over rasping metal, making for a fairly literal take on the dystopian grid-eyed world of Judge Dredd. The fantasy action is firmly in the realm of sci-fi hauntology – a past that saw the future in the man-machines of Kraftwerk, John Carpenter and Drexciya – and though the revival is partly a fan fetish, Drokk has a stylish commitment to authenticity that can't be knocked.