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2CD
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DIAG 018CD
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2016 repress. Powell's club-breaking series of 12" singles is now available on CD as 11-14, this killer, comprehensive two-CD collection. It charts the uncompromising development of one of this decade's most ruthless new artists through 18 original tracks taken from five EPs for three different labels -- including his own, Diagonal -- and features a searing collaboration with national noise treasure Russell Haswell. Syncing the muscle memory of late '90s drum and bass with a kink for the toughest '80s industrial and bleeding-edge electronics, Powell's music has emerged as a virile antidote to the conservatism of current dance music. With his first pair of self-released singles, The Ongoing Significance of Steel & Flesh (2011) and the Body Music EP (2012), he established an ascetic, bare-bones approach that resonated with the original no wave mantra -- "rip it up and start again" -- in a barefaced challenge to what was then deemed acceptable on the dancefloor. Precedent set, the controversial four-track Untitled EP (RAVE 002EP, 2013) revealed a more optimized, muscular take on his rollicking torque and freeform, caustic electronics at the cusp of the analog/digital schism. Late 2013 saw the coiled hard-step of Fizz and his most explicit alloys of motorik jungle-techno, before the Club Music EP (DIAG 009EP, 2014) combined all of these influences and exploded with spectacular, unpredictable brilliance, dosing a whole rave's worth of overloaded sensation into three brutally edited constructions, including the notorious "Maniac," starring label-mate and hardwave peer Russell Haswell. Central to it all, from the swaggering stomp of "Body Music" and "Oh No New York" to the deadly jag of "No U Turn," is a tensile, insatiable sense of urgency and a healthy disregard for convention. Mastered by Matt Colton.
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