Mahjongg

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• Throbbing Gristle

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Mahjongg's webspace prose reads like passages from a rave manifesto ("make love energy," "spawn a soundtrack for a new community," etc.). But Kontpab's multilayer tapestries of detuned synthesizers, piercing drum ripostes, and abrasive, effects-laden vocals are hardly elevating or unifying. Label it rave music for the wretched. The opening to "Problems" is Throbbing Gristle-aping at its finest, a misshapen synth line that won't induce one to dance but instead vomit in a nightclub restroom sink — and that's a compliment. "Kottbusser Torr" is afflicted with an irregular heartbeat. But the crowning achievement is "Those Birds Are Bats," with its coda of distortion, feedback, and subterranean torment that sounds taped from an exorcism. "I just noticed those birds were bats/I just noticed those cats were rats," goes the chorus; it's a perverted articulation of the negative aspects of human awakening, and rather fitting for those who expected Kontpab to be another exercise in E-fueled fraternity.

The creative grab-assing found on Mahjongg's 2005 debut, RaYDONcoNG, continues unchecked, as the Missouri five-piece mimics Can's sense of polyrhythms, PIL's affection for sound, and the A Tribute to Flexipop compilation's capriciousness. But Mahjongg is ever skilled in appropriation, using such influences to craft something wholly original.