Reassembling the Industrial world (Dismantled - Dismantled)

Member Name: Ian Proudfoot

Product:	Dismantled - Dismantled
Date:	30/01/03 (130 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Impressive work for a new artist, Post Nuclear Industrial meltdown, It's not futurepop

Disadvantages: Still holding on to the coat tails of it's infleunces, Production slightly murky

No matter what you do, you'll going to have your critics and the debut album by Oregon's Gary Zon aka Dismantled has divided opinions across the Electro-Industrial community. Misleading promoted as a the answer to the dominance of Future Pop bands like VNV Nation and Apoptygma Bezerk, the release of Dismantled´s self titled release has brought equal praise and spite from various quarters.

His supporters see him as a talented new musician who has brought something new to a stagnating genre. His critics however portray him as a Bill Leeb (Front Line Assembly) wannabe who can't escape his influences and is merely regurgitating the work of those before him.

Zon openly admits the influence of Front Line Assembly on his work, saying he started Dismantled as way of trying to produce Leeb style music and you know what it doesn't matter as Dismantled is one hell of an opening salvo for a new artist.

Dismantled does bare the marks of being created by someone who has listened to a lot of Leeb productions, but to dismiss it as a pure retrograde emulation is as crass as saying that every car since the Model T Ford have been the same because they have four wheels and an engine. What Zon has done is done is a taken a template and reshaped into form that has it's own identity.

The strengths of Dismantled lie in the way that Zon has constructed his songs. Most are based around a strong rhythmic pulse, lush orchestrations and a weighty mechanical momentum. Tracks like "Purity" and "Dystopia" are full of epic Wagnerian choirs and sweeping orchestration that draw in the listener into a cinematic ambience rather than club the listen into submission with clumsy four to the floor dance beats and charity advert strings.

Other tracks like "Human" and "Extirpation" are more led by more aggressive grinding percussion and punching synthlines that hint an unresolved violence lurking just
beneath the surface. "Expiration" has also received a massive overhaul from its early demo form and with the once over cluttered drum sounds being given some space to breathe.

What makes Dismantled raise above it's musical rivals though is the newer tracks like "Circular", "Hypersleep" and "Subcore" that really that show there is more than one trick in Zon's musical bag. "Circular" is propelled forward by skipping breakbeats and lush strings before disappearing into a void of echoing synthetic gurgles and found voices before the beat and strings return to propel the track forward before the track is sucked back into the echoing abyss.

"Hypersleep" meanwhile is a journey into dark ambience that flows like a journey over a futuristic Bladerunner environment where machines hum and bellow in the background. Again Zon's use of driving strings give the track an epic feel.

Finally "Subcore" ends the album leading with sounds that could orginate in the valves of a pumping mechanical heart. Zon's distorted and ghost like vocals hang over the track like a lost soul trapped inside a world taken over by technology. The tracks message ends the album as to say, the machines have taken over and all resistance is futile.

As a debut goes "Dismantled" is impressive opening salvo and having seen the tracks grow from their embryonic stages over the last couple of years, it is astonshing how far Zon has developed and enhanced them.

Sure it's going to divide opinion and create discussion about it's orginality in the electronic community. But idle chatter is much better that than an uncomfortable silence. Its now over to Zon to see where he takes Dismantled next. So far it looks good, as Zon has recently admitted a soft spot for Eminem. Today the Industrial scene, Tomorrow the pop world?

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