Control, Control, Control, I want to be in control
MKDELTA is a bedroom electronic musician from Finland, apparently named after the mind control experiments-predecessor of MKULTRA. He hasn't got a whole lot of output, his latest being the Experiment EP with four songs, clocking over just twenty five minutes. If you wish me to guess a genre, it'd be something inbetween IDM and technoid with influences from the more artsy EBM. It's just and just outside "danceable" with its sudden changes, but a skillful DJ might work around it. It's also got 8-bit sounds at some points, so if you like light chiptune... If that says nothing to you — which is probably more often than it does — I'll lend his words which are rather self-explanatory: distorted beat music. Not having listened to such kinds of music for years, this guy reminded me of how cool they can be — even if they usually aren't.
As I received the jewelcase in mail, I was rather unimpressed. Yes, it was a homeburn CD-R, which is completely understandable: what I do not, however, understand is why didn't he bother to put the name of the record on the side. The cover art consist mostly of geographical shapes and the MKDELTA logo. I would have been insulted by the lack of effort in the CD-R, were it not for the ballpoint pen messages inside. In some rather weird typography (using d as a, for example), it tells me greetings, a drawn MKDELTA logo and a figure of a human that is rather hard to explain (think "hell and an anonymous person, drawn with a pen") a quote credited to anonymous("I am not broken enough to regret this as music") and the code INDU 012/100. If you're a record collector, you probably know what that means. If you're not, it means that it's a limited edition (pretty much all records from this scene seem to be) and mine is the 12th of 100. No idea about the "INDU" though. It only brings "industrial" to mind. It's pretty cliché that I had to contact the artist to get this (underground, yo), but it's on sale as MP3s more easily. Sadly I'm a collector and I always want something physical for my purchase.
Before I start, I'll say that writing about music is like dancing about architecture, but writing about electronic music, for me, is even harder. I'll try. The EP opens with "Condensator", beginning with an ambient sound and electronic sounds that are still on top as the beat catches on. The ambience lays in the background, but the bright blips have control of the sound before everything but the bass and ambience drowns out. From here, the song starts to build up and we get a rather catchy beat to compliment the melody. If you're doing something else while listening, every now and then you forget about it, but it jumps back when something is added. The ending is very cool, but DJs might want to mix the next song before the glitchy ending.
"Condensator" fades out and "Vacuum Spider (V 2.008)" starts with a bunch of what sound like reverbed error sounds, along with a somewhat creepy background loop and a dismembered beat. These give way to a stiff-sounding melody to which a somewhat busy beat is added, along with more varied synth sounds. Creepiness and cheeriness join together, somewhat. Something that sounds a bit like bells is added, but goes away fast. Only the lead synth changes until everything but it and some demented beats and glitch sounds leave, and it sounds like the song would end. But no, it only gets back to the full swing, with a new beepy sound which makes it quite catchy. MKDELTA has managed to put in crazy freakout parts interspersed, and it sounds like the song ends again after one. Yet again, this is not what happens. It almost sounds like we're going for a completely different second movement, but just as you think that starts, the main loop begins once again. The song slows down after six minutes and changes to "Control" after seven. If I have understood correctly, at least some version of "Vacuum Spider" has been some kind of at least minor hit on the Finnish Mikseri.net. Not without a reason at all: while the song lasts seven minutes which might often be too much, very little to none of it is boring.
"Control" gives only a bit of time to relax to the beat and background industrial-sounding ambience before it punches the listener in the face with the melody. After this intro, we are, however, given a martial-sounding march beat instead, with the somewhat platformer-game-sounding blips over it to cheer it up. The only sound that even resembles a non-electronic instrument — the voice — appears after the beat has been replaced with something more spacy but still rather busy. The voice is, however, either so distorted and effect-laden that you can't hear anything of it, or it simply isn't voice but rather a synth sound something like it. It might perhaps be saying "control", but your guess is as good as mine. A clashy sound replaces it, apparently building up for something. This build-up is for a pause, after which the song is back in full action. The song sounds, in a word, militant, and therefore quite lives up to its name. The rest of the song is perhaps a bit too repetitive, and doesn't keep the listener into it.
The last song on the EP, "Distant Reality", opens with a quite normal beat and ambience, and the melody comes in after a short while. There's not a whole lot to say about this one. It's minimalist in the sense that of all the songs, this is the one you have to pay most attention to, even if not ambient. The second voice-resembling sound appears. Again, it's either highly distorted and run through a bunch of effects, or simply not voice. The hook, if you can call it that, is not as catchy as in the other songs and actually not very catchy at all. Not as interesting changes in the music, either. The quiet episodes liven the song up, but only to go back to the hook, which is rather annoying. It gets better at the end, but this only lasts some time before the outro begins. The outro fits the song, and closes the EP with the ambient background synths and glitch sounds that were so prominent on the songs.
Although I only noted it on "Distant Reality", most of the record is, to me, not as "in-your-face" as it could be if you are doing something else while listening. This lessens its power, but awards the close listeners. The EP manages to be both gloomy and cheery, in some points at the same time, probably due to the platformer game-like sounds used along with the traditional electro-industrial ones. These things might not, however, be the same to you, if you're not as jaded as me, it might be different. I cannot pinpoint why, but the record sounds somehow unfinished. Or perhaps not unfinished, but it gives a feeling that MKDELTA has not yet evolved into just what he could be. I paid six and a half euros for the record, and the MP3 version costs only five euros. Normal EPs go somewhere around ten, twelve euros in their price, and I believe I would still buy the record at that price. It is not a masterpiece, but a good EP in its own right.
Listen.
Buy and listen.
Watch and listen.
Äänimaalailujen lisäksi kappaleisiin on tarkoitus luoda vahva rytminen pohja. Projektin tarkoituksena on kuvastaa omaa aikaansa. Sirpaloituvaa soundia sirpaloituvalle ajalle.
- MKDELTA