Freudstein- Dissected and Resurrected

ARTIST: Freudstein
ALBUM: Dissected and Resurrected
LABEL: Self-released
REVIEWER: Matthew J.
DATE: 10-22-07

Following up their sophomore album, British electro horror duo Freudstein is back with over an hour of new material, trading remixes with a number of fellow UK artists. The first portion of this CD, the "Dissected" section, includes remixes from their last album by a number of co-conspirators, and ranges from moody atmosphere, as on Ewigkeit's darkly ethereal mix of "Shadows" and Dissolved's "Candle Chamber" remix of "Laura," to evil pumping techno, as on History of Guns' minimalist throb of a remix on "Robots Pt. 3." While the methods range from glitch and breaks to industrial and noise, enough of Freudstein's horror show keyboard lines and deadpan drawls serve to keep the source material in the foreground where it belongs. On the second part of the album ("Resurrected," for those keeping track), Freudstein give as good as they get, taking on friends like Arkam Asylum with remixes ranging from retro-futuristic electro to spastic out drum 'n' bass. On a remix of Swarf's "Fail" that dates back to 2001, Freudstein takes a hatchet to the vocals and then uses the left-over bits to adorn a baroque sequence of organs and strings, while their mix of The Chaos Engine's "Angel of Ruin" adds a sense of grandeur to the original's hard-hitting industrial with massive synths and an extended orchestral outro. On the first part of this album, Freudstein prove that no amount of remixing can hide one of the electronic scene's most distinctive sounds, inspired equally by disco and Italian horror movies (or is that horror movies and Italian disco?), while the second bit shows that their unique take on electronic music can punch up everything from Swarf's bittersweet synthpop to Xykogen's gritty, snarling industrial. Either way, this is worth checking out.

Get dissected and resurrected at www.freudstein.co.uk.