Genre: Dark Electro

Track Listing:

01 Not Convinced
02 Stinger
03 Set The Hook
04 Intermittence I
05 Self-Portrait
06 Every Last One
07 Antitrust
08 Had It
09 Marks
10 Intermittence II
11 Revisionist
12 Manifesto
13 Choked
14 Intermittence III
15 Antitrust (Hyperdoubt Mix) (Remix - Defrost )
16 Not Convinced (March Of The Triffids V2.0) (Remix - DJ Vrhovny)
17 Set The Hook (Pro Wonkey Evolution Remix) (Remix – Coreline)

Skin Contact is a band, formed in 1997 by Kevin Breidenbach, whose interest in old school dark electro and EBM music lead him into musical experiments, which later got the touch of IDM, drum’n’bass and noise music. First release of the band was issued in 2007 and Antitrust is the second full-length album, released by him as well. Apart from that promo, EPs are available for download from official page http://www.skincontact.com.

On one hand Skin Contact seems to be the band that bids on aggressive, intense sound that is usually typical for dark electro acts nowadays, however, instead of straight clear beats in many cases, Skin Contact prefers rather ambient rhythmic patterns, if you allow me to call them so: there’s a special rhythmic ornament, floating, mixed with other sounds in the way that you cannot clearly indentify it until you absolutely want to (on the other hand – what for?). As for the complete atmosphere of the release, it mostly reminds of a dream or virtual reality. Generally the release is rather calm, there are tracks without any beat, like Intermittence I, II or III, but they don’t stand aside from the album and rather naturally fit in the work, because they do have the same mood, atmosphere and the same message. Melodies on the release cannot be called catchy (which also makes a difference from many dark electro releases), but I’m not sure whether this catchiness is really necessary in here. I was quite surprised to hear string passages in track 6 – Every Last One, and I really enjoyed track 7 – Antitrust, with millions of sounds calling to one another and enveloping the listener with atmosphere of mystery and suspicion, especially with the help of anxious, strained, high key intonation in the middle of the track and track 12 - Manifesto. What is else interesting about this release is that it doesn’t have any vocals, just a few samples, that is all. I would consider this quite positive, since when we hear vocals in dark electro music, we hear the same stuff over and over again and no matter how it fits this or that act, it usually makes all the music similar more or less. So yes, absence of vocals is obviously positive in this case.

Interesting fact is that Skin Contact presents bonuses to the ones, that buy the CD: in the booklet you may find the link, username and the password that lead you to early demos, outtakes and remixes. By the way, this release features three remixes from such artists as Defrost, DJ Vrhovny, and Coreline. Defrost presented remix of Antitrust, which I loved, although it has much in common with original track. It turned out to be very harmonic due to background patterns at the same time having raw rhythmic layer and trance elements that are common for the album in general. Vrhovny remixed Not Convinced, the first track on this album. The remix turned out to be heavy, slow, viscous and ... convincing. Set the Hook track was remixed by Coreline in a more of Pneumatic Detach chaotic style of rhythmic patterns mixed with technoid features.

What I have to notice, they use echoes and trance elements in their sound, which make it jumpy and somewhat discreet, not continuous, which made my ears a little bit tired after a few tracks with the same sound, but I don’t think it somehow influences the release generally, there are certainly people, who prefer exactly this kind of sound and this kind of music. I would call it an interesting, uncommon, not ordinary release.