Sweden?s mighty Skull Defekts return to the CDR format with this two track release on Cut Hands. For ?DFX?, Skull Defekts was Joachim Nordwall, Henrik Rylander and Jean-Louis Huhta, and the tracks on here stretch Skull Defekts? trademark electronic noise explorations to epic dimensions. I don?t know enough about SD to judge whether it is anger that makes them sound the way they do, but you?ll certainly be excused to believe so. The anger potential here is on a par with more frenzied electronics of late-nineties Atari Teenage Riot but ?DFX? isn?t digital hardcore at all. Rather, it?s performed with a pathologic interest in the sound body, which has me think of Takashi Miike?s unbearably precise ?Audition? movie.

I liked that movie better, however. While several passages of the two tracks create claustrophobic atmospheres, I feel that the tracks are a bit out of balance as a whole. The first piece is 21:36 minutes and the second 21:34 long, which hints at the fact that the overall track structure was either meticulously arranged to create two tracks of the same length (for whatever reason), or it was, more or less, randomly chosen. I believe that the latter is true, and that the pieces are more like sketchbook entries. Some might say that this makes for a perfect cdr release (and SD have released crushing albums indeed), but given the quality and effort put in a lot of CDR releases, that wouldn?t do justice to the format. Limited to 100 copies in oversized cardstock packaging ? and surprisingly still available from the label. 5/10 -- Jan-Arne Sohns (13 August, 2008)