SCORN

For 15 years now, Mick Harris has been recording bass heavy, down-tempo nightmares under the guise of Scorn. Harris has had a prolific career ranging from being the drummer of grindcore legends Napalm Death to collaborating with people such as Dead Voices on Air's Mark Spybey, Godflesh's Justin Broadrick, and legendary composer John Zorn. For years in the world of dark electronic music, no one was really doing what Scorn was doing; with a series of releases on Invisible Records, Mick presented to the world his sound of stark haunting atmospheres with sludgy rhythms and monster low end bass. Time went on and yet it seemed like maybe Mick was years ahead of everyone else mixing dark ambience with hip-hop beats, bass heavy synthesizers, and industrial aesthetics. However, with the recent dub-step scene rising out of the UK in the last few years, it appears that the world has caught up with what Scorn is doing. It's ironic that an artist that precedes a genre actually ends up being influenced by the very thing that he's influenced. It's not a common combo of industrial and dub and Stealth brings Scorn up to the current 21st century with its rhythms and bass tones being produced in an up-to the-minute dub-step style, making this release fit perfectly in between a set alongside Vex'd and The Distance, yet it also keeps true to what Scorn has always done. Many bass heavy styles have emerged over the years from drum & bass to tech-step, so it's great to see that Mick Harris is not only a veteran of the game but can still hang with all the young UK producers. Stealth is a perfect introduction to dub-step; there's enough distortion and dark ambience to keep any industrial-minded fan intrigued. The album will suck you in with its deep atmospheres, and the bass lines tell a story as they roll into melodies, and the modulations reverberate with rhythms that border on UK garage and gritty down-tempo hip-hop/grime beats. This record is one that you don't put on for a single; this is the record you put on when you need to be hypnotized from beginning to end. The only complaint is that it would be nice to see Mick sample some vocals or dialogue pieces. The music can be so sparse at certain times that a little bit of vocal presence might complement some tracks. Still, Stealth is a really refreshing record if you want to try something new and hear some really up-to-the-minute electronic music.

David E. Flick (courtesy of the RE:GEN website)

Mick Harris, former Napalm Death drummer, and the name behind a thousand side projects has been producing grim, heavy, foundation shaking bass experiments as Scorn since the early 90s. Those early albums on Earache were devastatingly effective combinations of bass and drone and prefaced much of the darkest trip hop and illbient of the mid 90s. Also experimenting with drum & bass as Quoit, it should be no surprise that on this new album, the first in quite a while, should be tinged with the influences of dubstep.

However, Stealth, on Berlin’s Ad Noiseam label, is heavy industrial dubstep. Like his other albums as Scorn it is suitably oppressive with all propulsive motion suffocated. Slowed down mentasm stabs rip like tears in speaker fabric, the bottom end thickens the air into molasses, and it almost seems nonsensical to suggest that anyone would/could dance to this (although I’m yet to roadtest this myself). As such Stealth, whilst full of intensity, the slow motion vibe sometimes traps the album in the atmospheres of the past - the inertia of mid 90s trip hop (much in the way Skream’s debut on Tempa felt trapped by its digidub influences).

Still, Stealth might bring some oldtime Scorn fans into the world of dubstep, and it will certainly appeal to those who have enjoyed the darker, crunchier borderline dubstep producers like Boxcutter, Vex’d and Milanese.

Seb Chan (courtesy of Cyclic Defrost website)

Mick Harris' Scorn project has come a long way. From its first incarnation in 1992 as an industrial noise metal band on Vae Solis, recorded with the original Napalm Death lineup, to its more trance-inspired dub rock of Colossus and Evanescence, to the illbient aesthetic of the albums that followed Nick Bullen's exit from the group, Harris — now the sole member of this "group" — has been continually striving to move closer towards the core of Scorn's sound. Over the course of all these releases, he has distilled his music further and further, arriving at a style that is entirely his own: no one else crafts such minimalistic, menacing, claustrophobia-ridden soundscapes as Mick Harris, but the sparse precision and carefully crafted perfection of his music is also a thing of still and absolute beauty. Of course, there are traces of all different kinds of electronica — the mechanical coldness of industrial, the deep, monolithic bass of dub, the ghostly synth washes of ambient, and the percussive focus of drum'n'bass — but as a whole, Scorn is a category of its own. Stealth, Harris' first Scorn album after several years of hiatus, is a seamless continuation of its predecessors — be it the nightmarish "Stripped Back Hinge," the subdued crawl of "Running Rig," or the stumbling terror of "Snag," the album is another fascinating, unrelentless display of Harris' artistry. There isn't much happening on the individual tracks once their basic elements have been introduced, but Harris lets the music breathe and gives its ambiance time to unfold. In a way, Harris may have painted himself into a corner with Scorn's evolution towards this stripped-down style of composition, as it is difficult to imagine where the music will lead to, except for even darker and even more unforgiving tracks, but as long as he can produce sounds that are so impressively unique, there will always be room for a new Scorn record.

4 stars out of 5

Christian Genzel (courtesy of the All Music Guide website)