Also, a very excellent habanero pepper liqueur made by Niall, the smallest stick-jock in the Outlands. If you're going to drink Scorn, the author suggests keeping a beer and a slab of bread nearby, as a sip of this terrifying liquid will sear your throat and cause your lips to go numb. Truly an excellent drink.

Scorn is a spare, subtle dub project that has been active since the early 1990s. The original lineup included Mick Harris and Nicholas Bullen, who are best known for their work with Napalm Death, the fastest thrash/punk/extreme metal band on the planet. (Bullen would leave Scorn in 1995 to work with other projects like Black Galaxy and kREEPA.) The move from lightning-blast, aggro guitar riffs to the sluggish, gloomy sound of Scorn surprised everyone, and to this day I can't explain the shift. But Scorn is one of my favourite bands -- I like them way more than Napalm Death -- so I'm not complaining.

Scorn's sound is empty, echoing, claustrophobic. The breaks are spaced far apart and overlaid with weird effects, along with snatches of incomprehensible vocals that never quite resolve into language. (The only clearly-articulated words on the entire Logghi Barogghi album are the words in the title, which are themselves nonsense.) The rhythm is as regular as a heartbeat -- but slowed down and distorted, more like a heartbeat in a sensory deprivation tank. It has always amazed me that a minimalist sound like Scorn's can be so suffocating and simultaneously so hypnotic.

The mid-period albums are the best, in my opinion. Scorn really came into its own with Evanescence in 1994; the remix album Ellipsis, which includes work by such luminaries as Autechre, Bill Laswell, and Coil, is also very fine. After Logghi Barogghi in 1996, Scorn became a little more 'musical' and 'accessible,' and ironically this made them significantly less interesting to me.

If you enjoy drum'n'bass, dub, or jungle, Scorn is essential. Even if you don't -- I came into this through the back door of dancefloor industrial and goth, and even now I don't really follow the D'n'B or jungle scenes -- these albums still reward a careful listen.

Scorn (?), n. [OE. scorn, scarn, scharn, OF. escarn, escharn, eschar, of German origin; cf. OHG. skern mockery, skernn to mock; but cf. also OF. escorner to mock.]

1.

Extreme and lofty contempt; haughty disregard; that disdain which aprings from the opinion of the utter meanness and unworthiness of an object.

Scorn at first makes after love the more. Shak.

And wandered backward as in scorn, To wait an aeon to be born. Emerson.

2.

An act or expression of extreme contempt.

Every sullen frown and bitter scorn But fanned the fuel that too fast did burn. Dryden.

3.

An object of extreme disdain, contempt, or derision.

Thou makest us a reproach to our neighbors, a scorn and a derision to them that are round about us. Ps. xliv. 13.

To think scorn, to regard as worthy of scorn or contempt; to disdain. "He thought scorn to lay hands on Mordecai alone." Esther iii. 6. -- To laugh to scorn, to deride; to make a mock of; to redicule as contemptible.

Syn. -- Contempt; disdain; derision; contumely; despite; slight; dishonor; mockery.

© Webster 1913.

© Webster 1913.