- Since rebooting a few years back, Zhark Recordings has become a go-to label for murky, introspective techno. It releases music made for dance floors without being beholden to them. The label's boss, Kareem, has turned in some of the best electronic soundscapes of his career, while longtime alley David Foster, AKA Huren, debuted another pulverising techno alias, MRTVI. There have also been new signings through Manchester's Casual Violence and the Canadian duo Stärker. Catharsis is a box-fresh collaboration between two solo producers that, like the music of Casual Violence and Stärker, ploughs the rich grey zone between industrial techno and dark ambient.
Lurking at around 120 BPM and laden with gothic, pseudo-mystic titles, A Purging Of Demons is a solemn record that shouldn't be consumed casually. (No Zhark record should, for that matter.) This is pure techno, purged of hedonistic excess, with results as austere and grimly unforgiving as that sounds. The slow concrete grind of tracks like "Bringing Forth The Hellchild" wear into submission, and even after a single listen the record leaves you drained. It's intentional, though. Catharsis are here to contest and to challenge, not to stupefy. The flash of a melody in "Summoning The Black Tongue" offers one of very few palliative moments, while the lead track, "Perception Through The Circle," offers a few more hooks. For a lighter but no less heady morsel, skip to Kareem's digital-only remix. A Purging of Demons isn't for everybody, but everybody should hear it.
Tracklist01. Perception Through The Circle
02. Summoning the Black Tongue
03. Bringing Forth The Hellchild
04. Distress, The Mother
05. Carving The Soil With Her Teeth
06. Carving The Soil With Her Teeth (Kareem Remix)