Music:
Member Since: 1/21/2007
Band Website: skulldfx.com
Band Members: JEAN-LOUIS HUHTA /// Percussion...Electronics...Stuff
JOACHIM NORDWALL /// Guitar...Vocals...Analog Machinery
HENRIK RYLANDER /// Drums...Feedback
DANIEL FAGERSTRÖM /// Guitar...Machinery...Vocals...Percussion
Influences: The Power of Rhythm and Sound
Sounds Like:
»Rhythm Is The Key« video by Johannes Heldén
»Six Sixes« live at Troglo Party in Italy
About 'Blood Spirits & Drums Are Singing' CD/LP:
"Okay, now if you need meditations that keep you right in the driving seat throughout the duration of the trip, then check out the Skull Defects and their album BLOOD SPIRITS & DRUMS ARE SINGING. With their line-up of double drums, guitarists and machinery, The Skull Defects conjure up an unlikely and unkind meltdown din somewhere between the arid No Wave of CHAIRS MISSING-period Wire, the contemporary ramalama of Sweden’s excellent Krautrock-wannabees Audionom and the artless pummelling early-70s proto-Kiss proto-Cleveland blues-free white blues of Germany’s Tiger B. Smith amped up to a heartless degree." -Julian Cope.
"Looped harmonic mantras: The group melts into a funky metal machine." - Tobias Fischer / TOKAFI.
"I am pretty much impressed and it has been a long time ago that I was impressed by a rock album." -Gothronic.
"The Skull Defekts första ordentliga studioinspelning präglas av betydligt mjukare ljudeffekter som snarare nalkas ett experimentlystet Sonic Youth än bandets tidigare dovt, oljudande utgivningar och mer grovhuggna gruvhypnoser. Manisk, cirkulär och sexig ritualrock, där rytmen är nyckeln och hedniska trummor sjunger." - Johanna Paulsson / Dagens Nyheter.
About 'Storm Skull Dub' 7":
"The title of the wax is maybe a bit misleading because dub influences are hard to hear. [...] Both sides have a heavy industrial feel to them, what with machinery sounds and field recordings from a train station or some other echoy place building the background for some electronic fuckery on Side A. [...] I tend to like the Defekts better in full rock mode, but it´s also interesting to hear this side of them." 10/10 -- Stephan Bauer, Foxy Digitalis.
About 'SKKULL':
The Skull Defekts are another one of those bands that seem to have gone from some unknown entity with just a cd-r and a tape, to a serious band, with an avalanche of releases, in the blink of an eye. So much so that it's been tough for us to keep up. This is the first of maybe three cds that have come out in the last little while, but the first we're actually getting around to reviewing.
In the review of the only other SD release we've listed and reviewed, a now out of print lp on Conspiracy Records, we said that "if there was any justice in the world, these guys would be battling Wolf Eyes for the hipster noise rock crown for sure," and this record, along with all the others we have yet to review, but will soon, only reaffirms that sentiment.
But whereas Wolf Eyes are lo-fi and murky, using piles of junk and damaged electronics and instruments that look (and sound) like they were sitting in a garage rusting for 20 years, The Skull Defekts seem to approach their noise with a bit more technical savvy, to the point of sounding mostly electronic, which they may very well be, but it's a testament to these guys and their sound that it's pretty difficult to tell what exactly is going on and what manner of soundmaking devices could produce this glorious racket. But who cares really, when it sounds this amazing, and mysterious, fucked up and so beautifully damaged.
The opening track here sounds like a Oval, but after being stored on decaying tape in William Basinski's attic for 20 years. A hypnotic looped soundscape of glitched electronics, haunting electronic melodies, crumbling distorted textures, alien beeps and bloops, all strung together into haunting melodies, and lurching barely perceptible rhythms, the song constantly crapping out, being swallowed up by distortion, as if it was being played back on a broken tape player, a skipping cd player and blown speakers simultaneously. A gorgeous chunk of decayed beauty. Of modern electronic corrosion. The second track is a slow growing drone, a warm electronic warble, a resonant thrum, drifting beneath shimmering metallic melodies, like Niblock covered by Wolf Eyes, a barely shifting series of sounds and layers, the various components becoming more and more distressed as the piece progresses, more distorted, less cohesive, but weirdly enough, more and more lovely.
The last half of the record is split into two parts, the first is a cloud of chaotic high end, a little bit Sunroof!, a little bit Vibracathedral Orchestra, but anchored by looped electronics and a relentless klaxon pulsing in the background, giving the track a strange sort of momentum, not at all unlike Avarus or Anaksimandros on Kompakt. The second part, and final track on the record, is a long dirge-y drone, of thick corrosive electronics and warm whirring low end, always on the verge of erupting into full on sludge, but instead, grinding glacially through a landscape of dark rumble and thick rib cage rattling throb... -Aquarius Records, US.
Record Label: Some different killer labels
Type of Label: Indie
