Agent Side Grinder
Irish recording tape
Enfant Terrible
This is one of a duo of albums released simultaneously by the Swedish new wave minimalists and it adheres to more conventional song structures than its companion "The transatlantic tape project". The album is firmly ensconced in the retro cyber-punk quirkiness of the 1980s and, through its idiosyncratic outlook, finds its niche in the Krautrock movement. There's plenty on offer here, from the uneasy industrial catatonia of opener "Pulse" to the pop-pogo beats of "Die to live" to the abstract happiness of "Eyes of the old". It's littered with a Cold War clinicism that keeps the album rooted in that era despite the fact that the world-at-large is years ahead of that age (or so we're led to believe). The likes of "The screams" and "Telefunk" wouldn't sound out of place on an early John Carpenter soundtrack (if the vocals were removed) and that's an added bonus in my book. I'll not say that Agent Side Grinder are doing anything new when it comes to a genre known for its penchant for innovation, but the fact that they've stripped things right back to their roots -- that they sound authentically old-school -- may well be their own form of experimentation. Far from unique but, surely, that's the point.
- John Norby
