Finally first reviews for Sturqen’s “Piranha” started to come up.
Texts from Dagheisha and Heathen Harvest are here:
http://www.dagheisha.com/prod/music/reviewCd.jsp?idus=4437
http://www.heathenharvest.com/article.php?story=20091115072159346
By Heathen Harvest:
The unknown will inherit the earth. There is nothing that can anticipate the fortune to find something quite like Sturqen, a band with not much propaganda or merchandising behind it, surviving in the war zone from laptop music and with just one album as general curriculum. That just makes me think that sometimes the lesser known are the chosen ones, the less expected become the heroes and the bringers of distinctive fortunes of solid sound creation.
These debutants from Portugal, on the recently discovered Ukrainian label Kvitnu will take you with their highly experimental rhythmic industrial blended in acidic techno and extremely unstable energetic power. “Piranha” is a predatory album, dedicated to exploit rhythm above melody but with distinctive preference for energetic textures, fragmenting the electro synthesis into fierce distortions and paralleling Industrial sequences with the acidic blend of some kind of defaced Techno, evil, noisy, and painfully psychedelic.
Since there are no melodies but progressive textures sequenced it’s the powerful and almighty beat what will command the record from start to finish. Magnetically driven, these set of beats augmented by the ever pulsating core of beeps and hard trance distortions will engulf the listener’s mind into a raisin in the end. But while it happens the general meltdown will occur with the extreme transitions of acid trance. The work starts rather calmly, slowly peaking on “Vyk” where it will deploy part of its more raw resonance, consider a groovy techno side melted with Old school industrials ending their fusion in a noisey, dirty and psychedelic compost and then taking the definitive wild ride on “Tul” where the cerebral synapses start to fail in its daily deliveries when the storm of antenna like pulsations and odd chopped breaks blend together. The muscular rhythms takes the listener into the dance floor and smash his head with mind bugging loops and distortions. As general tactic, the tracks start from a massive hooking beat that gets abused by all kind of synthesis adding high frequencies that really disturb the ear and transforming its simple play intercourse into really weird breaks, fragmented rhythmic pieces and noise blasts while the twisted background made of groovy analogues morph like the round of fortune.
“47” presents a more Industrial approach with a locked rhythm that circulates till it gets like a mechanic progression but preserving that provocative set of analogue groovyness around it. Now if you want to get mad get rapidly into “K2n” and “Facce” where mechanic industrials meet delicious Trance sequences and a company of powerful rhythmic noise blasts and you’ll pretty much peak out with the highly intoxicated acid quality from “Alk” grinding with its high frequency sequences and completely rumbling everything over with its repetitive rhythmic hooks.
Clearly a mad album, seems like a phase of experimentation made without restrictions, with an intent to pervert the listener with its mad abrasions and fierce rhythm practice. Its original foundation made of rhythm transmuted into Industrial power and noise burns over an unstable transition of Trance analogues is really mind altering and really interesting. They achieved two things basically, to move the listener’s bones through its intrepid and volatile rhythms and to melt down his brain with the lights and colors. Sturqen is a band that will give a lot to talk about with this album, they have paved the way for massive admiration. Thumbs up!