Speedjack* – Surge

Mark Bell rests his LFO moniker for a spell and heads out into straight 4/4 techno territory, with touches of ambient with SpeedJack and Surge, and in short, this album slaps with teeth.

"Construction" still blows my mind. They don't make 'em like this any more.

This is one of my fav techno albums, in part because it is so diverse, but still has a very consistent sound and form. The album starts out softer and gets harder towards the end, but is still groovy industrial techno all the way through. The tracks are complex and with a nice progression even though they stick to the familliar 4/4 beat. Marc Bell creates on surge an original sound, with clear roots in detroit but less monotonic and with harder complex rythmic structures and ambient elements. Tracks like Fission and Storm are inhumane dancefloordestroying tracks presenting the harder elements on the album, while Blue bossa and Tone controll takes you higher towards distant atmospheres. CTC has psychedelic elements combined with the breath of reactors. To me Surge in an introvert listening experience, and tracks like Construcion, With the clouds and the fantastic outro Fast is a journey into escapism. This album is criminally unknown with a pioneering industrial sound, take your time, it needs concentrated listening to grasp the beauty of this album.