Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: Kontradikshn
Label: Self-released
Released: 2016
Runtime: 65:20
Rating: 4/5
Kontradikshn are a special story among Slovenian bands these days. There are few acts here that have not only a fully formed musical vision but also a seriously well-thought-out self-promotion concept. Kontradikshn are basically a completely independent »music company« that does it all: art, management, PR and whatever else. By now you’ve probably guessed that this is a total D.I.Y. operation that keeps all the production reins in its own hands too. Since 2010 the band has played its way through countless club stages and combed through the territory of the late country, and in 2013 they had an important moment at the 6th Jelen Demofest in Banja Luka, where they took second place.
The lads from Brežice already signaled with the 2014 EP »Anatomy« that they’re absolute musical oddballs, meddling with the doctrine of the alternative underground through a very specific collision of rock sounds (guitars) and electronic music (programming, sound loops). The whole musical story is propped up throughout by stencil-simple, trivially solvable rhythms that force your body into hypnotic writhing, luring you into a good time in the hidden, dimly lit, smoke-filled corners of nightlife, »perforated« by beams of neon light.
It feels like Kontradikshn have been a step ahead of the times all along. Heralds of a musical era that hasn’t arrived yet. On our turf hardly anyone sounds like what they do, though Karmakoma and ZircuS go about similar approaches in their own way. Guitar distortion does eat into the format of the compositions, but here it serves more or less as sonic filler, always giving the sound a welcome charge of rock undertone. In the foreground, synths and programmed loops run wild. You can pick out elements of drum & bass and post-dubstep. Put simply, it’s electronic dance music wrapped in a dark atmosphere. Just listening to it isn’t enough. You really have to »let go« into it. Switching off the rational mind is a must, otherwise, listening closely to thousands of repetitions in the triviality of sacred simplicity will start to grate on your nerves. Yes. Party music! You can go »flash-ing« to it straight away, no brakes. Like you’re heading to a gig by the notorious The Prodigy. A proper rave party!
The whole album feels alive! Dynamic. It feels like it was played in a single take, modeled on a live show. Given that the sonic format of the tracks is staked out from the opening Euphoria all the way to the end of the album, the band still manages to develop a rich variety of lively arrangements across twelve tracks. Even though the expressive framework is fixed »at first listen«, Kontradikshn keep effectively »re-framing« it throughout the album, shredding the fragments of the whole and putting them back together again and again into a familiar yet different musical form.
The music of »Reframing« is commanded by a heavily effected vocal that, through curt, authoritative, dead-straight dictates, sounds extraterrestrial, completely alienated and cold, as if generated by a world ruled by machines. His English flows superbly. Over repetitive loops, the vocal approach, which bites into the arrangement format in a »barking, one-dimensional« way and doesn’t seek musical aesthetics, is the main carrier of the psychotically cerebral effect of trippy states, the hypnotic numbness the album’s mood leads you into. It’s easy to conclude, then, that Kontradikshn’s music is made first and foremost to be played live, since on stage it reaches the furthest range of the band’s self-expression.
Kontradikshn are a band that takes its artistry dead seriously. »Reframing« is an excellent debut of absolute originality, one that with its creative imagination and musical concept seriously challenges the international competition, while triumphantly filling the piece of the alternative underground mosaic that belongs to electronic music, a piece that bands here are only now starting to claim effectively. With the polished, charismatic debut »Reframing«, Kontradikshn put themselves, at least on our scene, right at the center of the push into new dimensions of electronic music.
Kontradikshn – Memory Dump (lyric video):
Lineup
Petar Stojanović – guitar, synths, vocals
Matej Plešej – guitar, synths
Anže Kump – drums, percussion
Production
Kontradikshn
Tracklist
1. Euphoria (03:45)
2. Neverland (05:23)
3. Anatomy (05:46)
4. 027 (05:10)
5. 108 Hours (05:47)
6. Evacuation (04:23)
7. Memory Dump (05:17)
8. Free (05:16)
9. Reframe (04:35)
10. Night Drive (11:35)
11. After After Party* (04:54)
12. #89 (The Lost Tape)* (03:22)
*…bonus tracks
