- Apocalyptic trance.
- A blacked-out Bandcamp page, a series of 12-inches and CDs etched with thorny tribal tattoos. A few lines of text that read "LOW GRADE PSY-TRANCE AND ACID FOR ENVIRONMENTAL DECLINE." Anti-State Electronics, the recently-minted collaboration between New York's Pain Records Hardcore and Chicago's Puppy Tapes, runs a savvy operation. Their mission statement might seem on-the-nose, but digging deeper leads to a trail of breadcrumbs toward a larger, if elusive, universe. The cover of ASE-003, the label's first full-length compilation, is a CD stamped with a crudely-sketched dragon, its rear cover emblazoned with a passage in J.R.R. Tolkien's elvish language. An Instagram announcement for the album is geotagged in "Middle Earth."
This approach to worldbuilding only adds to the music's alluring sense of mystery. A melange of lo-fi hard trance and acid techno, ASE-003 is unrelenting but equally heady and atmospheric, its drums swathed in reverb and grainy, brooding atmospheres. Some of these tracks seem designed to plunge you into ASE's dark, psychedelic headspace, like Nevermore's "Carrier," which is structured around an undulating acid groove that throws the listener into an uneasy hypnosis. Others slowly lure you in, like DJ §piral's "Perdición Total (cryingintheclubmix)", a ten-minute psytrance trip that endlessly layers and shifts its twitchy synth textures over a breakneck triplet bassline, pushing you deeper into the abyss.
It would be an understatement to say that ASE-003's murky productions sound evil. On the fittingly-titled "Bring Me Your Soul," Miss Parker delivers one of the project's most instantly-gratifying melodies, but it's propelled by whip cracks, icy textures and a whomping bassline that, together, make it feel like a kick of sketchy stimulants. DJ SALAZAR's "Selfish Son" employs clever use of delay to make its percussion appear like it's bouncing off the walls of a tunnel rave in a hyper-industrialized version of Mordor.
The crew's keen sense for worldbuilding isn't happening in a vacuum. Several of this tape's guests have been pushing these scuzzy hardore aesthetics in inventive directions in their own right. E-Saggila appears here as GLOBULL, one of a multitude of aliases the Toronto-based artist has used to explore hard techno, trance and EBM on her label Cobalt. And DJ LOSER, who appears twice on ASE-003—including on its acid-tinged hardstyle opener—also heads up Magdalena's Apathy, a Thessoloniki-based imprint that's been steadily releasing CD-only industrial hardcore compilations (visually accompanied by low-res selfies of goth ravers and metal logos) for the last couple of years. Their inclusion on ASE-003 points to a larger network of artists working to fray the edges of contemporary dance music, bringing the underground's dark and fantastical leanings to light.
ASE-003 proposes a blackened vision of psytrance far from the genre's usual clean production and colorful beach festivals. This is trance for forgotten warehouses and dingy basements—or as they put it, "a soundtrack for clandestine celebrations and gatherings in any form they may take." It offers a gritty kind of transcendence that blurs the line between the darkest depths of reality and a decadent kind of escapism.
Tracklist01. DJ Loser - NOLIFETOHOLDONTO
02. DJ §PIRAL - Perdición Total (cryingintheclubmix)
03. GLOBULL - KB2
04. Miss Parker - Bring Me Your Soul
05. Nevermore - Carrier
06. DJ VALENTIMES - Extinction
07. DJ LOSER - Full Regret
08. DJ SALAZAR - Selfish Son
09. Morgoth - Path Of Exile