Renda, 2005
One of the firmest candidates for “out there” compilation of the year, this strange Japanese release on the Maruosa-owned label Renda Records is a mayhem box full of bizarre surprises.
Bruno & Michel Are Smiling are a duo from Hamburg who quote Hegel and Adorno while being shamelessly superficial on their musical production (which is their point).
Doormouse contributes with his trademark combination of pranksterism and musicianship, which works wonders on the track here.
Sampler wizard Ove-Naxx offers one of his dented barb-wired mixes of metal, video game blips, and general madness.
Violent Holiday drops one of the most generic tracks here, a perfect coupling of the ominous dark synths of the first days of breakcore and the break, twist-and-stretch fuckery of today’s more gifted plug-in testers.
End presents us with a demo version of Swinger, an excellent track from the Sounds of Disaster album sessions (a track also available on the remix album Sick Generation on Hymen).
Toecutter makes another welcomed appearance on a compilation (he features also on the excellent Invasion from xXx Dimension on Peace Off).
The intriguing Passenger of Shit’s screamo-gabba-grind leaves you wondering where all this metal-breakcore hybridization craziness might lead.
The compilation also features solid contributions by the ubiquitous Hard-Off, Cdr, Aaaaaa, and Doddodo.
The closing track deserves a whole essay in itself. For the sake of brevity I’ll just mention that this Dev/null and Maruosa collaboration is the boldest sonic assault of the year and proves lack of communication and serendipity are the main driving forces behind the bursting of any boundary.