I’ll readily admit to not being overly familiar with mister William’s output so it was with a mixture of scepticism and curiosity that I approached this collection and quite frankly, I was more than pleasantly surprised by the quality of the material on offer. What first strikes the casual listener is how sonically refreshing the compositions, admittedly recorded somewhere in the late eighties and lifted straight from a first generation copy, sound when set against today’s more clinical studio standards. They truly make you wonder whether electronic music as a whole really gained that much by going digital.

Next to that comes the pleasant pace at which the whole affair flows despite the rather ubiquitous nature of the track listing, which puts together material from the Anesthesia CD released by Dark Vinyl Records in 1993, songs from The Lost Recordings series and various other sources, together with four numbers unique to this release. Tracks range from harsh-sounding barriers of white noise and pulsating drones sometimes reminiscent of what Boyd Rice was toying with at about the same time to creepy proto-dark ambient fare interspersed with depressing sound clips (think Propergol or Genocide Organ); whichever side of the aural spectrum they gravitate towards, though, they always manage to retain a character of genuine earnestness that might just be their most admirable feature. Personal favourites include Atrophy and Salvation, Deliverance, Prayer for the Sick, two prime examples of just how gifted the suicidal Californian really was when manoeuvring outside realms of a (relatively) more commercial nature.

As with most other Malaise releases, Dead Whorse Riddles was mastered by Benjamin Siebert of Cathedral Music (the company that owns Malaise) and features artwork taken from Rozz’s original cassette sleeve, the whereabouts of the original cover being unknown to this day. Those of you who think this collection is intended primarily for Williams fetishists or merely another cash-grabbing walk down the Premature Ejaculation memory lane would be well advised to reconsider and grab a copy of what is essentially a refreshing window into an age when industrial music still hadn’t bitten its own noiseous tail.