(Translated from my original Italian text by ChatGPT and Piero Scaruffi)
David Thrussell, an electronic musician from Melbourne (Australia),
a figure with an immense musical culture who grew up listening as much to Cabaret Voltaire as to Gyorgy Ligeti, as much to Wendy Carlos as to Ennio Morricone,
launched the project Snog, which descended from the genealogical tree of industrial music but also belonged to the techno generation, and all the while exploring the coldest depths of the cosmos.
Compared to British and American techno, Snog injects a strong anti-capitalist attitude, evident on the EP Corporate Slave (Futurist, 1992).
Emphasis is instead placed on accessibility in the album Lies Inc (Machinery, 1992), with the irresistible Depeche Modestyle electronic dance of Born To Be Mild and the more conventional techno of the single Shop. The album was reissued in 1996 in a complete version, including thirteen previously excluded tracks. Alongside Thrussell, Pieter Bourkealso a collaborator with Dead Can Dance and Eden since 1988makes his presence felt.
Black Lung is Thrussells solo project. Silent Weapons For Quiet Wars (Dorobo, 1994), particularly the two Theme From The Black Lung tracks, is one of the first works attempting to fuse industrial and ambient music (his pan-ethnic variant).
Snog meanwhile proceeds with Dear Valued Customer (Polygram, 1994 Machinery, 1995), which accentuates techno rhythms, delivering an irresistible Cliché and especially Hey Christian God.
The EP Soma (Mumbo Jumbo, 1993) opens another chapter in Thrussell and Bourkes discography. All of their arsenal (techno, dub, industrial, ambient) is on display on Somas first album, Hollow Earth (Extreme, 1994), which also incorporates material from the EP. Theme and Corporate Anthem deploy Kraftwerk-style staggering and menacing sequencers, mixed with somber Middle Eastern synthesizers. Romanz overlays driving Afro-Caribbean polyrhythms with Morricone-like chants. God Sends The Meat pairs Duane Eddys twang with African tribalism. And in Night Soil there is even a sort of 007-style film soundtrack. Then the album loses its way, venturing into the hallucinatory metamorphoses of Dark Koma and the pure hedonistic frenzy of Sleepwalker. Pushing into the pure avant-garde of Stockhausen with The Black Lodge, it dissolves into the slow-motion nebula of the title track.
(Original English text by Piero Scaruffi)
Bourke, by then also a habitual collaborator of Lisa Gerrard , and Thrussell sculpted another impressive psycho-ambient instrumental
soundscape with the eleven fragments of Inner Cinema (Extreme, 1996).
Stygian Vista is a distrted collage of musical visions and nightmares inspired by film soundtracks, set to a swampy, syncopated beat.
Arcane adds a horror/spiritual element, as well as a jazzy tribal beat,
to the movie theme,
while the pounding The Drunken Atlantean straddles the border between magniloquence and comedy.
More suspense enters the stage in The Golden Dawn, swept by cosmic winds,
while staccato keyboard notes coalesce in a frantic carillon motif.
Baal steers in the opposite direction with more exotic percussion and a
Latin-tinged horn fanfare.
Of the tracks that are more obviously for disco consumption,
the looping rhythmic experiment of Risen from Agartha and
the world-dub shuffle of Alchemical Nuptial are the more adventurous.
Their lush orchestration and catchy rhythms aim for
a high-brow form of synth-pop,
where zen overtones, polyrhythmic dance music and eerie ambience meet and merge.
The new course of
Black Lung was, instead, techno music, as proclaimed by their
second album Depopulation Bomb (Iridium, 1995), although always from
a schizoid viewpoint, and augmented with virulent texts against capitalism.
Disinformation Plague (Helix, 1996 - Metropolis, 1997) boasts an
intriguing idea
(a psychedelic version of the fashionable electronic music).
Psychocivilized Society (Nova Zembla, 1997),
Extraordinary Popular Delusions (Nova Zembla, 1998) and
The Grand Chessboard (Ant-Zen, 2004)
however are albums too political to be also musical.
Snog returned with Buy Me (IMCC, 1997 - Metropolis, 1998),
containing the singles
Future (already released in 1995),
Hooray, Make The Little Flowers Grow and Ballad.
Remote Control (Metropolis, 1997) collects the best of
Snog, although mostly remixed.
Thrussell had struggled to find the right format, the ideal half way between Snog's disco libido and Black Lung's avantgarde ambitions, but Soma's electronic sound crowned his search.
Snog's
Third Mail From The Sun (Metropolis, 1999) is not the easiest of their
works, although it may well be the most politicized.
Relax Into The Abyss (Metropolis, 2000) is the remix album.
