Buzzin Electronic Music

Album Review – Excepter: Debt Dept (Paw Tracks Records)

Excepter release their fourth album on Paw Tracks Records this week. Debt Dept is a shivering, dark, brooding left of centre experimentation with electronica noise reminiscent of Mark Stewart & the Maffia and his On-U-sound experiments. The vocal chants on the opening track, Entrance, also remind me of Brix E. Smith and The Fall circa Lay Of The Land.

Tracks on Debt Dept start with analogue electronic beats and sounds, trance like in their steady rhythms, which are awash with layers of voices, spoken and screamed.

Kill People is the stand out track for me. With its slapping snare and throbbing bass while ‘Kill People‘ is spoken into several channels in several vocal styles, the result is infectious and warrants repeat plays.

Checkout the Kill People video for a good taste of what the album is like.

The Last Dance is fortunately not a cover version of The Drifters 1960’s song with the same name! And again, this track works for me, with its simple dub enlightened bass guitar and drums, this time layered with roaming vocals/voices, while a weeping guitar flies around like a warplane. In fact the whole album has a garage/noise dub electronica vibe which gives the tracks more substance and meaning than other experimental music in this genre.

I see in Excepter a contemporary Throbbing Gristle with an electronica steer solely in experimentation, where ‘music’ is more a channel for pushing at boundaries and knocking on doors.

Debt Dept includes eight tracks full of political protesting (nine including Burgers – CD only). Instruments used on the album are listed as synth, sequencer, sampler, vocals, guitar, bass, drums, bass clarinet, piano and tapes.