From the exotic lands of the Philippines comes Hominid, the musical project of Elmer San Juan, who is a gabber DJ and a producer that presents us with a new album entitled From Exploration To Eradication. The music of Hominid is essentially based around rhythms. The beats on this album varies from 120 bpm to 240 bpm exploring a wide range of paces and percussive textures. Some compositions reveal a tribalistic feel inspired by mechanized clashes, others submit us to hardcore charges similar to a hyperactive sledgehammer. We are also confronted to more middle tempo beats referring to a kind of military march, and at times the music has an almost techno edge but with always a corroded approach. Electronic sounds appear under the forms of bleeps, oscillations, elastic waves and acid sonorities establishing minimalist melodies slightly evocative and atmospheric. The diversity on this release is surprising and each track never becomes stale or repetitive. We sense a musical intention behind these aggressions and experimentations and maybe that's where resides the eradication of mediocrity we are all hoping for. Jean-Francois Fecteau / Le Vestibule Radio Canada
I'm not exactly sure why but I was rather expecting this disc to be el-retardo "oonst" grunt gabber. The opening track which is in there at least, had me slipping on a greasy grin and getting properly in stance expecting some delightfully obnoxious music. That's not really what Hominid has in mind here though. Instead of being bitch slapped around by jackboot kicks and profanity samples, the staccato rhythms are almost soothing at times, polite even which is really quite strange for something generally racing along at these tempos. The opening track, initially the hardest of all the pieces here rapidly evaporates off into deep space synth wisps, these eventually re-coagulating into some ravey video game music. From there it's some tracker-like gabber with a definite happy hardcore candy sucker wiped overtop. There are no saccharine sine kicks or anything but there also is like zilch anger or aggression to it, more just the youthful exuberance of cramming fifty sour tongue candies in your mouth at one time while playing Tony Hawk on your gameboy. The third track "From Exploration To Eradication" mixes metronomic hard kicks with squelches not unlike that of the most satisfying armpit fart you have ever managed to pull off in front of a squeamish young girl. It's like getting your ass kicked with a big rubber boot while someone gives you a wet willy and it has a surprisingly juicy flavor. The fourth track twists the tempo knob down a bit, using backwards envelopes to give the otherwise digital sounds a rather analogue feel. Under this is some tech steppish sound production on idm-ish riffing which somewhat reminds me of the latest Somatic Responses disc on Ad Noiseam. The fact that Hominid resists the urge to break through the surface into overt boom boom rhythms really adds an emotive quality and warm synthetic ambience to the piece. "Waverunner" is up next, a compressed industrialized track which sounds a lot like the Unitus disc from DCFE compatriots D-Trash Technologies. It's got that all encompassing distortion blasting the skin off of big beat car commercial techno like Unitus but with more of loosey goosey sauciness due to the LFO usage and general lack of pretense. "Wipeout 2001" is pretty much straight up hardcore techno, a sample and holdish arpeggio getting stomped down into the dirt by a distorted 909 kick and then sliced up by ratta-tat-tatting cymbal hits. It's no doubt the bastard offspring of PropellerHead's "Rebirth" software but it's a decent job and sometimes you just want your eggs sunny side up, not in some foofy truffle souffle drenched with feta mint sauce. The next track "Sudden Ionospheric Disturbance" is a bandwidth limited high tempo track, ice cream headache cold but with very limited instrumentation, some strained jungle snares and hats plus a tiny bit of synth work flanged off into stand-offish tunelessness. I like the minimalist nature of it, again very trackerish. "Into My Playground" opens with a Yazoo flashback that although taken in context is more 8 bit rpg, still caused me some initial trepidation until the fast 2-4 country beat made me want to put on my cowboy hat and do some honkey tonking. The final piece "Signs Of Life" I'd comfortably call happy hardcore. Personally I think most happy hardcore is an abomination but this is just enough on the safe side of casio-core to keep me from leaving the theatre in disgust. "From Exploration To Eradication" is an interesting ride around a speedbass.com sounding tracker environment. It's way way way more DOS than MacOS and has the ring of punched in numerical values over lazy ass gui-based programming (though I have no idea how it was actually composed). Although I was hoping for some "gabber bitch FUCK YOU" catharticisms, I can definitely see this creeping out during a goofy drunk on some warm, sunny summer day or just possibly in-between some "I have no shame" sessions of Ultimate Bass Championship on my psx. Moron / industrial.org
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