^[SiCk0]^ – Sickness Volume Four

Release date: 15/2/2010
Record label: Intolerance Records

Where to begin with ^[SiCk0]^’s Sickness Volume Four? With such strange and interesting music I find myself inclined to find out a bit about the artists. A good place to start is with the artist’s bio on Intolerance Records -

“Nobody knows if ^|SiCk0|^ is male or female or even human for that matter… ^|SiCk0|^ wears a different type of disguise at every show. ^|SiCk0|^ has been known to dress as an old man, an old woman, an astronaut, Abe Lincoln, Alf, a baby…”

This is an entity that describes their music as sounding like killing babies and claims influences so profound as self inflicted torture on their MySpace page. I wouldn’t agree with a description of Sickness Volume Four as sounding like “killing babies”, maybe this applies more so to ^[SiCk0]^’s earlier work. What we have in this album is something very cool and at least to my music collection, unique.

I’m not going to mince around genres too much, Sickness is what it is. Think of the spectrum of experimental and electronic genres out there – dissected and fused, not in a hack’n slash or copy and past way but with meticulous care and ingenuity. If you need a more concrete description, think Aphex Twin. Don‘t for one second think Sickness is an inferior imitation, ^[SiCk0]^ holds his own and then some.

“Curdledurine” opens the album with what sounds like the dispersed sounds of a synthetic war zone followed by something like a ride in an empty train. With a shock, we are thrown into the manic “Happycartoon” with its chaotic breaks and droning melody, it is like waking up in the middle of a peaking acid trip. This is the sort of thing you should expect from the album as a whole – you never really know what‘s coming next from track to track or even within a track. “Fistula F/ Duma Love” brings a darker melancholic note with mournful sampled vocals that builds into something very hypnotic and quite danceable but watch out for the menacing change, Aphex Twin and Skinny Puppy had a love child!

Sometimes menacing, sometimes manic as crack, sometimes puerile, sometimes funny as hell but always pure genius, Sickness will take you on a trip. Soundscapes so synthetic and abstract but also familiar, meander, build, dissipate and explode, will not fail to hypnotise, intrigue and entertain. Sickness is like Alice in Wonderland or the Matrix – a morphing of realities, an inability to know the real from the unreal, the dream from the reality.

^[SiCk0]^ Intolerance Records page
^[SiCk0]^ MySpace profile



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