Senking - Ping Thaw

During a long-overdue rewatch of John Carpenter's The Thing last night, I thought of this excellent album, which is strongly influenced by both the soundtrack and the general ambience of the film, and contains some speech samples on 'Thaw'. This is a cd compilation of two 12" EPs from 1999 and 2000, both of which are highly atmospheric, with a sense of looming dread. There is a definite sense of Arctic isolation, and heavily reverbed sounds of ice cracking, and glaciers colliding, under washes of spacy synth. 'Risk' from the first EP heads into quite heavy industrial territory, but it's the later 'Thaw' EP that shows a more assured touch, and mastery of foreboding atmospheres, with growling low synths, and syncopated, dubbed out delay - definitely fits nicely into the Chain Reaction/Uusitalo/Vladislav Delay spectrum. Jens Massel is still producing quality electronica as Senking - last year's 'Pong' is excellent, and highly recommended - veering into the more abstract outreaches of dubstep.

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