Porter Ricks : Techno Animal – Symbiotics

Simply fucking terrific. Seven more words, four more words, one

Techno Animal most minimalist work. From the sheer maximalist brutality of their origins to this mostly minimalist vicious atmospherics there is no comparison possible in here, in that way this is their weakest album.

Dont expect brutal rhythms spiced by the strange sequences and effects were their original core was based, in here there is a huge range of differences that may not be reconcilable. For start I wouldnt say techno doesnt have profoundity to accompany this sort of "duel" band interplay, but THIS particular techno from Porter Ricks by the standards of what was been done in 1999 shows a very poor exponent in that regard, more over considering that Techno Animal was a blast of inventive electronica full effects and twists and surprises by the time and to some extent to this day.
For example: "Ionic", a simple construct of a acid techno sequence, some noise, minimal rhythm section nothing else, a very simplistic and rather boring track."Polytoxic 1" and "Polytoxic 2" improves by using flat analog sequences to pair a rhythmic section once again dirty with some distortion and noise, flager and subtle synth lines as main additives, rather almost ambient, although never as progressive.
His best track is by far "Phosporic", some proto dark ambient track, full of minimal ambience and lots of reverb, reminds of the sounds of fabrics in a wasteland.

Techno Animal meanwhile compliments the album with something expected, a more rhythmical cadence, although atmospherics are way more ephasized and tons of empty spaces abound, a lot less effects and less rhythmic changes and effects as presented in previous albums. Rather an ambient album with the characteristic dystopic vistas familiar with Illbient.

Now if we look the album track by track, it is not really special, i think the way to properly appreciate it is by the concatenation from each track, each serving as contrast counterparts in a layer after layer in a cake sort of fashion, the bleak dark techno from Porter Ricks Vs the more "warmth" and contaminated Illbient from Techno Animal, yet both reduced to their minimal skelletal structures.
Intersting, but not their best.

A complete lower-body workout for your drug-addled mind and subwoofer!

Solid breaky-ambiant-industrial Album. Very coherent and progressive work.

Dangers of combining industrial and techno: The shallowness of techno doesn't give the industrial room to flourish. Both groups have artists are master sound manipulators, however they have trouble blending the genres into anything substansive.

Trobbing beats, heavy breaks, deep growling basslines, heavy percussion overlayed with drifting white noise. Fantastic late night listening!