Listening Diary

 

Listening Diary

Raubbau / Pflichtkauf

Contagious Orgasm - Live At Maschinenfest 2008 (2018)

Cassette tape

Live At Maschinefest 2008 is a tape released as part of a series of live recordings by Contagious Orgasm performing live at various editions of German Industrial, Noise and experimental music festival Maschinenfest. On this particular recording Contagious Orgasm consisted only of Hiroshi Hashimoto himself performing solo with the recording also being a straight sound board recording without audience sounds so you’ll have a very direct impression of the performance acoustically. Diving into the recording we find:

Track by track analysis

A1 Neo For

Starting off with crackling percussion, glitches, slammed piano samples and a Dub like beat Neo For starts off this tape in a quite funky Downtempo inspired way. The bass synth line is lovely and there’s even some guitar in this piece. The signature Contagious Orgasm environmental sound matter of a lot of bangs, bleeps, intercom recordings are the cherry on top.

A2 Ripple Mix

Ripple Mix starts off with further recordings of Industrial action, a bit like wood getting chopped.. Melancholic and mysterious synths quickly move into the sound imagery in an ethereal way backed with scratchy noises and quirky, squelchy bleeps. It’s like a cloud of psychedelic sonic surrealism and noise with some harshness starting to enter the mix. Strange voices fade in and sampled drum loops at times move into the composition like planned incidents of rhythmic anchors.

A3 Smoke

Smoke enters with a heavier atmosphere filled with mysterious rumbling, warbled samples and an eerie pad moving in the background. A rhythmic force does keep this piece moving forward like the pieces before and the music has much more of a clear framework than sounding chaotic and heavily improvised. I do like the funky rippling synth melody that enters pretty soon into the piece which is a very engaging mixture of darkness and surrealism.

A4 Pornography

Pornography starts with honestly quite funny sounding programmed sampled string and brass parts that sound quite upbeat and intense like coming straight from a film soundtrack. We even have timpani samples entering in this track soon enough. Plenty of surprises to be heard on this tape in true CO style. The heavy beat that enters is also really enjoyable and the bizarre text to speech bits only make the music better.

B1 Tragedy Creature

Tragedy Creature starts off with a great collage of war themed speech and bomb samples and quickly moves into a highly saturated type of almost Industrial sounding Techno. The track is based around tube like drones that sound like machinery processing unknown material. The sirens add some great tension to the piece as well. Despite being a more minimalistic piece Tragedy Creature retains its tense immersive atmosphere throughout through subtle changes in texture and additional melodic elements seeping through including a nicely glitched up glassy textural pad near its end.

B2 Die Roboter

Afterwards we have a very fun kind of cover version / remix of Kraftwerk’s classic track Die Roboter filled with its funky Electro goodness. Much of Hiroshi’s contributions in this piece are in the form of melodic changes and a lot of additional noises adding a bizarre layer of surrealism to the song. It has to be heard to be believed.

B3 Firewalker… The Age Of The Rhythm

Firewalker… The Age Of The Rhythm starts with a super heavy Big Beat like rhythm mixed with some great vocal samples and Industrial grind. Hiroshi’s really jamming in this piece, it’s very much a headbanger and a great closing track to this live recording especially for fans of more EBM styled Industrial that is in your face distorted but filled with intriguing sonic layering.