Home Read Classic Album Review: Add N to (X) | Loud Like Nature

Classic Album Review: Add N to (X) | Loud Like Nature

The U.K. electro-clashers unleash another fever-dream episode of creeping terror.

This came out in 2003 – or at least that’s when I got it. Here’s what I said about it back then (with some minor editing):

 


If Frankenstein taught us anything it is this: When trying to build the perfect beast, be sure not to govern it with an abnormal brain.

U.K. electro-clashers Add N to (X) have obviously failed to learn this lesson. But their loss is truly and definitely our gain. Loud Like Nature, their fifth album, is yet another fever-dream episode of creeping terror, brutal synth abuse, goat men, industrial disease, tape manipulation, battery-licking, glam-slam beatboxes, pink light, ass-wiggling basslines, sound effects records, insectile skittering, dubby dementia, Polaroid people and freak-out vocal samples that sound lifted from some ’60s anti-drug film. Imagine — if you can — Gary Glitter teaming up with Gary Numan to score an animated remake of Eraserhead featuring Bugs Bunny, and you might have some sense of what’s going on here. Only Loud Like Nature isn’t just some figment of your imagination. It’s real. And it’s alive. Alive, I tell you, alive!

 

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