It seems that electronic music is the last musical bastion without a consistent outlet for political/social awareness. With the exception of a few political oeuvres from
Moby, the Allegorical Power Series on Antiopic Records, and
Matthew Herbert's bold
Radio Boy project, few artists have taken the bold move to use independent electronic music as a medium for political messages. With
Politronics, the forward-thinking Onitor label hopes to rectify this situation. Consisting of artists who have previously made music with political overtones,
Politronics tackles a wide assortment of topics without compromising the quality of the music found inside. And quality is the name of the game here, right from the onset, courtesy of
Schneider TM remixing
Pulseprogramming's "Suck or Run."
AGF lends another brilliant contribution with her dissection of dominance and fascism, and
Matthew Herbert makes a disturbing appearance under his
Radio Boy guise; sampling "Quaker Oats," and bringing to light experiments the CIA conducted using children as test samples and exposing them to trace radioactive materials laced in food.
Scanner,
Lawrence, and
Thomas Fehlmann (with
Gudrun Gut) all make noteworthy contributions, bringing to light various causes they feel strongly about. But the most visceral and seething of these attacks comes from V/Vm, who just launches a full-on attack against everything tangential to the current state of digital media and politics in the U.K.. And while all of these tracks are highly evocative in their own ways, they would fall flat if the music didn't hold equal weight. Fortunately, every track on
Politronics does. Complete with detailed and extremely informative liner notes, this is intelligent dance music with a social conscience, something that is sometimes all too rare and precious. ~ Rob Theakston