BLACK MERLIN Vinilo y CD

Review: Following up some great tracks on Pinkman, Mannequin and Malka Tuti in recent times, British synth wizard George Thompson returns under the Black Merlin alias - delivering some bold EBM and electro-noir antics for Berlin imprint She's Lost Kontrol. The rusty grind of analogue arpeggios, with minimal rhythms awash in icy trails of reverb plus guttural howls through walls of distortion shall taunt you throughout the sonic contents of the Noi EP. While Thompson sure has a knack for nailing all the hallmarks of early industrial music, he still finds time for the same tribal meditative minimalism found on his Karamika project as heard on the riveting "Noi 2" - one of the EP's highlights.

Review: Given he's previously released some seriously creepy, atmospheric techno on Berceuse Heroique and Pinkman, you'd expect Black Merlin's Mannequin Records debut to be similarly unsettling. That's certainly the case with A-side "DEF", a hypnotic and feverish affair where raw and restless, industrial-inspired riffs rise above paranoid, held-note chords and a locked-in drum track. You'll find more brain-melting, razor-sharp modular motifs on the arguably even more intense and wayward "Oba Enka", while closer "Ham" wraps undulating, acid-style electronic motifs around an altogether fuzzier, looser groove. It sounds like it would be capable of inducing vivid hallucinations in early morning dancers, which in our book is no bad thing.