CONTROL UNIT with Massimo – ‘Top Trans’ LP
Silvia Kastel & Ninni Morgia joined by power electronics artist Massimo (Mego, Staalplaat…). Old school evil industrial noise/minimal/primitive electronica. Cover is a rare collage by cult visionary LA filmmaker Larry Wessel, author of the recent Boyd Rice/NON documentary. Limited to 250 copies. Killer new album from the cold wave/Industrial duo of Silvia Kastel and Ninni Morgia, here with added muscle from ‘Massimo’: wretched repeat-keyboard Industrial overload, with ultra-grainy fidelity and modulated vocals that come over like “Frankie Teardrop†re-imagined for baldy Germans in leather, with leery rock/roll keyboard riffs reduced to smears of protesting electricity while Silvia hovers above them like a catatonic oracle, predicting future apocalypse with alla the broken technological appeal of MEV circa Leave The City. Elsewhere they get into a kind of profound metallic drone zone, with Silvia hyperventilating like she’s being seduced by pure current while shots of heavy voltage pass for beats and the last gasps of amplifiers cast monochrome shadows in the background. Best side yet from Control Unit, file this one next to Thought Broadcasts’s debut and the most spectral TG séance for a profound lesson in the reverie potential of Industrial night time. Recommended.†David Keenan / Volcanic Tongue Control Unit are guilty of making real industrial music. The creepy crawly scary kind. The kind that scares you parents a little when they hear the sounds coming out of your locked bedroom door. This isn’t post-Japanese drone or hard EBM, power duo Silvia Kastel and Ninni Morgia sculpt sonic crime scenes. True expressions of dread that hearken back to the early days of Throbbing Gristle and Coil, before the term industrial was sullied by such pedestrian concepts as a dance beat. It is much like that first time you dropped a needle on your very first copy of “Second Annual Report,†not really knowing what you were getting yourself into†Nattymari, Mishka NYC
CONTROL UNIT – ‘Oto Live’ CD
(Chocolate Monk choc.244) Proof if proof was needed that a gram of aqautic synth bloot is as heavy as a gram six stringed gutter wail. Ninni Morgia and Silvia Kastel get delirious in the premier London jive joint and showcase the sound of catatonic Italy with all the quiver of a love sick robot. Their sound is always a mix of wieldy, tactile, smart and sleazy. Plenty of vocal, synth and guitar call and response mixed in with the way out. So do your big ham hock of a face a favour and let them pervade your stink space.