For this release, The Worker has turned the lens and microphone around on Surveillance Capitalism, the commodification of consumer information.  The cover art was created from the actual code for an open platform video surveillance program, and reminded me of a front page for an old video game on an Amiga or a Commodore system… classic green ascii.

Each of the eight tracks is dedicated and point to a different aspect of how ubiquitous the practice of video surveillance has become in society with titles like “Pervasive Intrusion”, “Unencrypted”, “Keylogger”, “Manipulated Newsfeed”, & “Digital Footprints”. For me, the tracks seem to all be very similar in style- each starting off with a minimal beat/rhythm using some sort of an old style 8-bit drum machine or synth pad making very simple monotonous beats...think early industrial. And then each track builds using layering of more 8bit sounds.. and/or samples from what appear to be fax tones and probably audio is taken from digital video feeds of security cameras cut, chopped, looped, arranged and rearranged to create some very tweaky noise layered excursions… but again.. all of the tones are basically 8bit sounds.. so it does get repetitive at times. Personally, I really enjoy the noisy parts .. but not so much the beats.. I feel that this release would have had more power if it had only used the rhythmic approach to some of the tracks .. not all of them. Because of this the cut “Security Camera Stream” is probably my favourite.. as it has less of that and more of the other.

This is Compactor's debut tape release from long ruining noise label Minneapolis based Phage Tapes- and if the above sounds your thing, do check it out.