- Following the excoriating noise assaults of John Cohen's earliest work as Dead Fader, his music has drifted into (slightly) less aggressive terrain. Lately, he's brought together downtempo percussion, industrial clangour and the pomp of neo-classical ambient in a range of combinations; this EP for Touchin' Bass hits a sweeter spot than some. It often sounds like his ears are tuned less to electronic frequencies than to the crushing guitar music of an artist like Justin Broadrick. On Dosage, Cohen hovers in a zone between doom metal's dead weight and the ecstatic smear of shoegaze. (The deathly dub of another ex-Napalm Death member, Scorn AKA Mick Harris, also looms large.)
Sometimes, as on the dirge-like "Tired," Cohen does indeed seem to have swapped his synths for guitars—though, as ever with him, it's difficult to hear things precisely, thanks to the corrosive properties of his distortion plug-ins. "Easy Sun" pursues a similar mood, though it's a little overblown. Cohen knuckles down on the excellently titled "Booze Lair," a sodden, grim slouch of a track, as well as the title cut, whose five-odd minutes of suffocating bass-drum pressure beget a floaty ambient outro.
TracklistA1 Booze Lair
A2 Tired
B1 Dosage
B2 Easy Sun