- Tom Russell has had a cracking few years, riding the hard-techno wave with his MPIA3 project, enjoying the ascendance of Perc Trax as one of its core members, and pulling legs in silly rave duo Blacknecks. His latest release is the first installment in a new Perc Trax series, in which label artists present a more "complete" vision for their music. There are no remixes to flesh out the record and the artwork is bespoke. For Russell, issuing his first solo EP as Truss since 2012, the statement feels doubly weighty. Kymin Lea shows that, though the heat may have gone out of the industrial techno moment, Russell remains at the top of his game.
The main attraction is the title track, a mid-'90s IDM-electro number pumped full of modern day steroids. The hi-hats are ugly squeaks, the snare an angry knot of distortion, the bass a hideous, groaning thing. It all gets increasingly twisted and glitch-riddled as the track progresses: the better to bring out those plangent synth lines. It's a simple idea that's brilliantly executed. "Clawdd Du," meanwhile, is fresh in an entirely different way. Its closest cousin might be Powell: the snippets of raucous shouting, the sweat-soaked energy and the very British sense of humour are all Powell trademarks (though Truss is no stranger to the latter). Unlike Powell, of course, Truss has his head deep in techno tradition, and the results are linear and functional as well as nauseatingly weird. Closing the EP, eyes-down acid track "Wyefield" feels like a bit of a climbdown, lacking the singular spark found elsewhere. Still, two out of three is enough to make this Truss's best effort in years.
TracklistA1 Kymin Lea
B1 Clawdd Du
B2 Wyefield