Do Not Resist The Beat!—should we consider that a listening strategy? “Dystopian Vision,” Milton Bradley’s second release this year for his own willfully obscure label, encapsulates some of the most abrasive, pulverizing techno sound design a producer can commit to record without completely alienating the floor. But if you’re willing to stick your head over Mr. Bradley’s 500 copy, limited-edition hole into hell, you might just find some serious, sulfury funk gurgling up from the deep.
The year is 2009, and a sentient, malicious techno juggernaut has scorched humanity to ash and bled the world of all melody and high-fidelity recording techniques. Blowing over this barren landscape like the first nor’easter of nuclear winter, “Dystopian Vision” buries the dance floor under suffocating, mile-long layers of greasy, coal-fired low-end. Yet somehow, a stuttering, insidious beat — precision laser weapons? an alien abduction field recording? — weaves a base just solid enough to keep bodies afloat. Like Planetary Assault Systems’ recent “Temporary Suspension” for Ostgut Ton, the title cut makes for one of the most illogical, noisy, and punishing anthems in recent memory, but it’s an anthem nevertheless. The flip yields similarly atonal, uncompromising textures, this time pitched down and a touch more elastic. “Don’t Phonk” is downright buoyant, a shuffling and sizzling assembly line of fried toms and meaty bass, completely devoid of melodic color but delectable nevertheless. Ditto for “On A Day The Light Went Out,” a palpitating, pitch-black tunnel of Pom Pom bass and ancient, bone-rattling hi-hats. Milton Bradley, abandoning the comparatively tame and Dettmann-reminiscent dub of his previous DNRTB! slab, has here tapped into a uniquely doom-ridden corner of the dance music underworld. Let his merciless beat envelop you, and prepare to get moving in ways your pure mind never thought possible.
Yes, this is great.