Word: ep
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...nonsense syllables, one can only be glad to see her emergence into the realm of the intelligible. Yet Fraser's voice has now lost its most striking asset, an "I'm either verging on a nervous breakdown or about to explode with joy" quality. Her singing on this EP is on a par with the pretty but insipid vocals of the Sundays' Harriet Wheeler -- without the cynical edge of humor that makes Wheeler palatable...
...kinds of devices that require the songs to be so slow (otherwise we wouldn't notice them), and it's no wonder they were hard to understand live: this kind of songwriting virtually requires a studio engineer who knows what the band is doing. This makes the Helium EP one of the only records in years to actually benefit from sophisticated multiple-track recording...
...women are part of, the "end" of something the Rolling Stones started, in which rock and roll was about, specifically, boys' experiences, boys who could or couldn't get no satisfaction. What brings the amazing record I'm ostensibly reviewing into the same ballpark as the mediocre new Bratmobile EP, the great Heavenly 10" that came out last year, and whatever, Barbara Manning does next is that none of those artists seem to be operating as the jaded end of anything: Slant 6 songs, in all their compactness, open out into a new world of energy and experience, sort...
...first track on the EP starts with a minute of static morse-code dashes which flicker in like a weak TV signal, then coagulate into a discrete pulse of white noise. An electronic church bell chimes in the distances. Then the whole soundscape explodes into a furious riot of 130-plus beat per-minute drums, thrash-synth and Trent Reznor's ragged vocals. The song zaps into silence four and a half minutes later...
Like all good industrial music, Nine Inch Nails' sound is so overwhelmingly technical that it becomes primal. Speed ("Wish" clocks in at 180 beats per minute) and volume give the EP a sense of manic urgency. Broken also celebrates destructive impulse in all its magnetic horror and beauty. It is violence you can dance to. "1000 lips/ 1000 tongues/ 1000 throats/ 1000 lungs/ 1000 ways to make it true/ I want to do terrible things...