TweakerRay - The Collector Chapter 02

  by Andy Cassidy

published: 12 / 10 / 2012

---

If they ever get around to making another good ‘Terminator’ sequel, then they could do much worse than ask Hamburg’s TweakerRay to score it. Following on from, not surprisingly, ‘The Collector Chapter 01’, this album takes elements of video game soundtracks, grinding industrial and good old-fashioned Kraut rock and fuses them into a nightmarish vision of an all too possible future, reminiscent in many ways of David Bowie’s ‘Outside’. The opening track is an intense, pounding industrial beat over which a narrator paints a picture of a future where only one, government-authorised type of music exists. There are elements of the bombast of Pink Floyd’s ‘The Wall’ and the incessant grinding percussion is hypnotic in its simplicity and brutality. Musically, TweakerRay’s compositions are heavy, throbbing nightmares of sound, the evil twin of Jan Hammer or Isao Tomita, but they are compelling, melodic, urgent and, above all, original. The world that TweakerRay has created owes more to movies than to music – it is the world of John Carpenter’s ‘They Live’, ‘Terminator’, ‘Blade Runner’ or, perhaps more tellingly, Frank Miller’s dark comic book series ‘Sin City’ (later a movie by Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller). The vocal tracks feature eerily evocative lyrics and the vocal delivery moves between spoken word and well-performed songs. The lyrics and speeches are written by collaborator The B S of D and are fairly portentous without being overwrought or hackneyed. This is a really impressive album, and it makes me want to look up more of TweakerRay’s material. Certainly his view of this particular future is pretty bleak, but it is not without its humanity. Musically, his themes are challenging and exciting, intense yet undemanding. I foresee my credit card taking another pounding on the back of this LP… If you do decide to buy this album, I would suggest that you spend a little extra and get yourself one of the limited edition CD-ROM versions. With a feast of extras including demos, instrumentals and a superbly illustrated PDF booklet, the bonus material alone is worth the price of the CD.

Track Listing:-

1 Intro
2 The Collector II
3 Toxic Wasteland
4 Status Report Sgt. Q.
5 Fight Back
6 The Shot
7 They Don't Know
8 The Hunting
9 Interlude
10 Electronic Beast
11 The Collector I
12 Broken Dreams
13 Transmission

Band Links:-

https://www.facebook.com/TweakerRay.de/
http://tweakerray.bandcamp.com/
https://twitter.com/TweakerRay
https://www.youtube.com/user/TweakerRay
https://plus.google.com/+TweakerRay

Post A Comment

---

Comment

Name

your name

Location

ie London, UK

Submit

Check box to submit

Adam Coxon
Adrian Janes
Amanda J. Window
Andrew Twambley
Anthony Dhanendran
Benjamin Howarth
Cila Warncke
Daniel Cressey
Darren Aston
Dastardly
Dave Goodwin
Denzil Watson

Dixie Ernill
Dominic B. Simpson
Eoghan Lyng
Fiona Hutchings
Harry Sherriff
Helen Tipping
Jamie Rowland
John Clarkson
Julie Cruickshank
Kimberly Bright
Lisa Torem
Maarten Schiethart

Malcolm Carter
Marie Hazelwood
Mark Rowland
Nick Dent-Robinson
Nicky Crewe
Nige Nudds
Philamonjaro
Richard Lewis
Shirley Procter
Spencer Robertshaw
Steev Burgess
Steve Kinrade

Steve Miles
Tommy Gunnarsson
Zena Grieg