Kerridge – Always Offended Never Ashamed (2015, Contort – CNTRT001)
Industrial | Noise | Dark Ambient | Techno
Kerridge's overall sound palette has not changed – Always Offended Never Ashamed serves up another "giant slab" of his signature technoid apocalypse. And yet, the design here feels more complex, more intricate. You can hear influences of Japanoise tabletop convulsions, elements of glitch, booming sands, Emptyset snares, and the razor-sharp guitar wails of early Portion Control, fusing to create a sound that is as contemporary as it is classic, and unmistakably his.
The album oscillates between two types of track – the propulsive, kick-oriented 'GOFD', 'DAYT', and the ten-minute epic that is 'WOSN'; and the other four, which seem to focus more on the bastardisation of tension between the beats, beats which still – and without fail – would knock your block off. 'MPH' is especially interesting – a torturous, claustrophobic masterclass in stasis in an album which is, on the whole, curiously spacious and motoric. In 'MPH', Kerridge situates the listener in that classic nightmare scenario where you know you're in too deep but your leaden legs aren't going anywhere, and he lets the instruments of your demise orbit around, slowly but surely attuning your attention to their various timbral constitutions, and heightening your sensitivity to the point of catastrophic over-stimulation.
