b°tong — The Eradication Of The Individual

b°tong is a German project that blurs 'n' blends electro-ambient and musique concrete. It started in the early 2000s, with this being the project's twenty-fifth album - and what we find here is a mix of sinisterly stretched smartphone video audio, disorientated warped field recordings, and effect bent vocals.

The Eradication Of The Individual is a nine-track album- coming as either a CD or digital release, I’m reviewing the former. The CD comes presented in a grey mini gatefold- this feature on its front cover a snowily barren landscape, which has a few drops of blood on it and a small pyramid eye in circle symbol. With the inside featuring a grey backdrop, small black founts, and a few small blood drops. So the packaging doesn't give much away.

We open with broodingly simmering feedback rolls meets hazed electro junk swim of “Leufmotif” with its croaked & reverbed vocals. There’s the cold hissing vocalising, water field recording tones, and circling vibe tension of “I Am What I Am That I Am”. We have slurred and bleakly bent instrumental grimness of “Gloomy”, with its use of fraught silence and fleeting field recording unease. There’s the brooding gong/ vibe chime hover meets jarring electro texturing of “Of Arms and Legs”. Or the lengthy “The Demon The Devil The Diaphragm” with its disorientating blend of spiral and spindly electro tones, melted muzak, darting voice croak, churning/ feasting field recording soup, and the occasional creepy vibe drift.

Sitting somewhere between psycho-ambient, stark-yet-busily-tense-musique concrete, and paired back/ ambient  PE The Eradication Of The Individual is an intriguing and often unnerving sonic proposition. Which is well primed for moments of paranoia and social uncertainly, drop by here to pick up copy up.