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Cracknation
Artifacts II: 1989-1994

Cracknation

Posted: Friday, July 11, 2008
By: Ilker Yücel
Editor

While a release such as this might not earn too many new fans along the way, it's always an interesting to see an established artist return to their roots and present listeners with a collection of songs that date back to even before the band's first album. Usually, such a collection easily shows its age, either by its inferior sound quality and production or simply by virtue of the band's musical development over the years. In the case of Cracknation, the Chicago label founded by the members of Acumen Nation and DJ? Acucrack, the Artifacts releases have harkened back to the time when the band was most revered, drawing back to the four-on-the-floor industrial dance sound that was a staple of the late '80s WaxTrax! era, given a pristine mastering job to give them an updated sheen for today's more "sophisticated" listeners.

Where the first Artifacts release could easily be seen as prototypical of the sound Acumen first gave us on Transmissions from Eville, Artifacts II goes back even further to the band's first experimentations, primarily featuring their old workhorse synthesizer, the Roland W-30. The tracks on this set are much more varied, with some tracks originally written for Acumen, some for DJ? Acucrack, and even an early version of the Iron Lung Corp. track "Chemikaze," albeit without guitars (or The Clay People) and much more suited for the dance floor. The Acucrack tracks such as "Prison Without Walls" and "Momentus" are perhaps the easiest to digest as they could've easily been leftover tracks from Mutants of Sound with their hypnotic synthesizers and sample-laden, trancelike textures. Other songs like the opening "Carthage Six," the appropriately titled "Melancholy Madness," and "Catastrophic Moon" are clearly much closer to the early Acumen sound with discernible verse and chorus progressions and catchy melodies that are hardly lacking with the absence of guitars, although their presence would perhaps make them more recognizable as pre-Transmissions-era Acumen. Of course, the one track that does contain guitars, "Youthinasia" is hardly what one would expect in lieu of the band's more distorted, heavier material.

Those expecting a rehash of the first Artifacts collection will certainly be surprised; where that set was a primarily monotone affair with liberal amounts of reverb that managed to give the songs a feeling of directionless live jams, Artifacts II somehow feels more coherent. Even as the tracks shift between the varying Cracknation projects, there is a cohesive flow from one track to the next, each possessing a feeling of meticulous construction; these feel like finished tracks worthy of a full release. It might be offsetting to fans of the more developed guitar-heavy incarnation of Acumen Nation or even the drum & bass touches in DJ? Acucrack, but for those who can appreciate the old-school Chicago industrial sound, Artifacts II will be quite a treat.