Drumcorps – Grist (blogs)
tokafi.com // pure, unchannelled energy
deafsparrow.com// Drumcorps gets to me because even its drum and bass backbone has a real feel to it, like it is truly flesh and bones, not machine made or mass manufactured
invisibleoranges.com // Drumcorps appeals to me, and not just because he samples metal; DHR and gabber have done that already. Rather, Drumcorps fuses metal and drum & bass without trying to be either… Hyper-chopped breakbeats explode and mutate through shuddering edits. Drums and guitars pitch up and down through timestretching that wallows in gritty digital artifacts. Songs veer through various speeds and time signatures, with ambient bits in between. Bands sampled include Botch, Converge, and other sources I couldn’t place. Unlike your average over-produced d&b 12″, Drumcorps lets the grit and edges hang out
disquiet.com // Grist builds on the legacy of metal-tronic hybrids like Godflesh; it switches gears expertly, locating choice samples amid the riffage of Slayer and the splattered beats of Drum & Bass
liarsociety.tripod.com // Drumcorps advances the evolution of extreme mechanical music a step or two. Owing an equal debt to Big Black and Slayer, Grist is really the album Ministry should have made by now. Other bands have merged a hurricane of guitars with an electric chair of spasmatic breaks, but this is the first time I’ve heard it fused and explored so successfully over the length of an entire disc
Aaron Spectre returns to his roots here, offering up unreleased tunes that people might’ve heard when he was playing ambient rooms and running the Share night at NYC’s OpenAir (ie. his dreamy side where he manages to pull on everything from Eno to AFX to Slowdive). Lost Tracks is nine nearly perfect pieces that interlock whirring, clicking, granulated beats with a drawn-out, distorted combination of instruments that could either be analog synths, guitar, or the dulcimer. The end result is that rarest of creations, an ambient album that has a pulse, a life, and a dark narrative without being cheesy. It’s the sweet side of one of the world’s greatest and most versatile producers.
Darla Records (USA) // DRL 177
