The self-professed ‘original Zurich electropunk’ Monoblock B – aka Silvio Tommasini – offers up 'Teatime in Medellin' not as one album, but two, released simultaneously, in limited, numbered runs of 500.
Spanning ten tracks, 'Teatime in Medellin A' is a perfectly respectable example of old-school electronica reimagined; digital synths used to recreate an 80s feel, dominated by big beats and squidgy, grumbling basslines. While at times approximating Jan Hammer, large portions of the album loiters at the fence of the territory marked EBM, with industrial undertones providing the scaffold for bleak, dark soundscapes. It's barren, monotonous and utterly impersonal, but that's largely the point, and you can at least dance to it... or trance to it, with 'Oddisey' pushing a pulsing, trance-like beat.
It's largely instrumental, save for the occasional blast of heavily processed, flanged and modulated to fuck Dalek-like vocals, as on the dubby 'Play Time'. However, it's the space-age blues of 'Dirty Longstreet' that's more Metal Urbain than industrial techno, that provides a spot of much-needed relief from the relentless mechanical trudge that culminates in the electrogoth dance number 'Hidden Love.'
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Counterpart album, 'Teatime in Medellin B' contains only seven tracks, but is the longer of the two, and includes not only the title track, but a brace of expansive seven-minuters, and the epic dark pulsing techno opener, 'Nitara', which throbs and drones for a full ten minutes. Overall, the mood is bleaker, the tempo slower, and with a more expansive, and, in places, orchestral feel. Unfortunately, vast expanses of the album are drab rather than dramatic, and while album B stands as a clear contrast and counterpoint to A, it's not necessarily any more engaging or less claustrophobic - and this time you can't dance to it.
Monoblock B On MySpace
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