Cassette Review // COMPACTOR + DIVISIVE "ZERO CULTURE"

https://compactor.bandcamp.com/album/zero-culture

COMPACTOR begins with these loud screeches that'll get you to pay attention if you're not.  Beats come in but it's just somewhere between pounding and thunder where it just feels like heavier than anything you've heard before.   This all begins to move mechanically and the music hits this industrial stride that I really enjoy but it also feels like such destruction.   I realize in listening to this cassette that I love COMPACTOR so much because it feels like music for the working class but for the working class to destroy itself and become something better, something more.

This takes us into a song which has these video game tones to start, which feels very fun and the beat is just so energetic.   The way this all comes together in a beat which still feels like we're playing a video game, to some extent, but it's also just this heavy dance music like you'd hear in the movie "Go".    This becomes a song which is just straight blast beats and the intensity with the pacing is like a bomb is about to go off and you must diffuse it.

As we finish up a song where the beats become more rapid fire, we slow down now into some beats and electronic loops which also have vocals making the "ah" sound within.   It's getting really electronic and just feels like a storm is coming.   A loop feels like it is starting up, as it goes in this pattern from almost like a car engine starting, and then at the end it just sounds like everything has come crashing down to the ground and broken.

On the DIVISIVE side the electronic tones come through with beats and it feels a little bit lighter.   Then an audio clip says "May I place you on hold for one minute" and the entire thing just turns into this wave of harsh noise.   This is exactly how I feel about having to call people in customer service and more to the point I'm guessing people working in customer service feel this way as well.  High pitched screeches come through like modems and this is what we should hear when placed on hold from now on.

Tones begin swirling in now and this feels like it's become somewhat ambient.   I can hear the blissful guitar chords being strummed.   An audio clip now explains how the system is keeping us down and we try to avoid pesticides but we still are probably being slowly poisoned.    We are told about wanting to stay inside and then some dance beats take over and I do want to just stay inside and dance now.  

An audio clip yells about not paying attention because you're always playing games on your phone (I love Tetris) and then the distorted wave begins to expand and contrast as other words are spoken behind it.   The static comes through now in a steady wave and it feels as if there are vocals behind it but I cannot make out any words.    Bells ring back and forth now after an audio clip says "This describes social anxiety disorder".   Louder now, like screaming, as the distortion blasts through and it does feel like social anxiety to me.  

Somehow this all slows down and almost begins to sound like the actual music you would hear when put on hold.   The audio clips about social anxiety continue and they talk about how it's hard to have co-workers and not feel anxious and I agree.   But the best way, I've found, to combat to feel like you're being talked about negatively by others is to just put positive words about people you like out into the world.