As if hurled from the flame-licked mouth of an infernal deity, Enduser comes at your ears with ferocity unmatched in the breakcore world. From Zero, a collection of 18 tracks ranging from various vinyl-only releases to smoking unreleased cuts, barrels at you with pure amen madness, smoldering with emotional depth rarely found in break-centric music today.
Based in Cincinnati, 26-year-old Lynn Standafer, the singular power behind Enduser and founder of Sonic Terror Records, comes across more muted than his records, the likes of which have appeared on his own Sonic Terror, Japan's Omeko Records, Feedthemachine, Bruchstellen Records in Germany, and Canada's Synaptic Plastic imprint. Lynn develops websites for radio stations and other outfits - the kind of thing you'd expect from someone so innately committed to electronic music, going back to his first beat experiments in '97 at a friend's home studio. But when he got his hands on a sampler a year later, "then it was over," says Lynn. After that, it was all about the industrial, hip-hop, and jungle beats he dug since he was younger.
Now, though, Lynn is driven by the sordid decay of drum'n'bass' intensity, the dilution of its original power as a forceful musical style. "One of the complaints that i have about more recent jungle is that the tracks don't sound like songs, really" says Lynn. "It's more like people just throw some boring ass beats together and put a bass line in it. It's so discouraging knowing how the intensity and creativity in a genre like this has somehow fizzled down to the sad state that it's in today."
From Zero illustrates how committed Lynn is to bringing back some of that intensity, creativity, and emotion that's dwindled since drum'n'bass came to the fore in the mid-90s. after all, who in his or her right mind would dare sample the multi-platinum new age diva Enya for a breakcore track? Enduser, that's who: the brilliance of his track "Endya" lies in the careful balance Lynn achieves between the Celtic songstress' long ethereal vocals and a ripping break sequence that would make Venetian Snares coo with delight.
But Lynn doesn't stop there, bringing back overtones of drum'n'bass' forerunners - true jungle, dancehall, and ragga - to throw down the gauntlet for anyone hard enough to pick it up and toss it on the wheels of steel. One of five new tracks, "Def?" bangs the shit out ragga style, with unadulterated amen power permeating dense echo prepping and demonic rolling bass lines. "Wreckin Shit" marries a remade melody from Corey Hart's 80s hit, "sSunglasses At Night," with subtle piano, tweaked hip-hop vocals, and sweaty jungle breaks to make a veritable culture mash-up of the last twenty years. And "Knuckle Fucker" pivots on recycled Atari game sounds clashing with drill beats flowing out like a shower of Mac 10 rounds.
It all comes together to make From Zero one of 2004's most challenging break-based records. According to Lynn, the music on From Zero isn't just about beats like with so many other breakcore artists. It's about something more.
"One thing that I focus on in the overall vibe of the tracks is a definite balance between the hard stuff and the calmer, ambient stuff. I could never sit down and write an entire ambient or experimental record, I would get too bored. Not to say that sort of music is boring, but to make it - I would lose interest very quickly. The beats would sound stale after a while, no matter how chaotic, without some sort of emotion. And thanks to my sampler, I can grab emotion from anyone from Enya to Spragga Benz. It's all about how I feel at the time I'm writing the music."
Illustration by M. Hutter: www.mhutter.de
Enduser
