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Russell Haswell - Respondent (Diagonal, 2018)

Well I'll be. Sounds like Haswell has been walking this fucked rave/electronic/noise path for a little bit now. I completely missed out. Still stuck on the Live Salvages and the albums with Hecker and Yasunao Tone. Admittedly I haven't kept up much but wow, this caught me by surprise and really sunk its teeth in. A "mini album" built around a 10 minute collab with vocalist Sue Tompkins (first time Haswell has ever used a vocalist I'm told) but all tracks are great in their own aggressively dancey, atonal kind of way. I want to throw around lazy comparisons like early Aphex Twin and Venetian Snares but that doesn't do the record justice. It's definitely "nostalgic", "retro", "of the past" but with a gnarly updated take. I'm also reminded of Consumer Electronics too but that's fair because Haswell actually is IN that group. Real good.

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