Lifecutter’s music is a true love affair with saturated frequencies, glitchy anomalies and distorted patinas, exploring the extremes of aggressive electronic music. However, it doesn’t have much in common with mindless fist-bumping, trendy TikTok hard techno dancing and bland distorted techno for big room raves. Although his music is rough and somewhat violent, it still radiates an aura of inexplicable mysticism. He borrows from the post-Einstürzende Neubauten industrial era and the groundbreaking techno sounds of the 90s and wraps them in a high-tech, digitally-enhanced format to underscore the dystopian, post-AI reality we live in.
”Hollow”, his fifth album for the Ljubljana-based label Kamizdat, is a logical continuation of the aesthetic he presented on his last full length album ”Sub Persona”. The new album contains nine powerful cuts that maintain his fascination with the dark and sludgy elements of British industrial techno strains and their connections to EBM, rhythmic noise, no wave and other “dark hued” genres. Melodies are sprinkled throughout the album, but they always verge on “melodic noise” rather than fully-blown melodicism in the Western music tradition. Lifecutter seems to seek a twisted balance between relentless rhythmic impulses and menacing pads that lurk like ghosts in the background of his soundscapes. Admittedly, he also flirts with more groove-oriented arrangements, for example in the opener Hollow I, a track that revolves around an ominous but somewhat funky synthesiser motif before developing into a frontal sonic assault in the second half. – from liner notes by Jaša Bužinel
Lifecutter
Slovenian producer and multi-instrumentalist Domen Učakar aka Lifecutter, a passionate representative of extreme electronic music, has been exploring the border sonic areas between techno, industrial, noise, drone and metal since his debut album Kamizdat in 2015. Lifecutter has shaped the Slovenian scene with his “power electronics meets blackened techno” approach and occupies a special position between the worlds of techno and experimental music. He has played in various bands, including the cult noise duo Ontervjabbit. Since 2021, he has also been a member of the industrial techno duo Warhorse with Slovenian techno wizard Shekuza. Their debut album Atlatl was described by The Quietus magazine as “an ode to hard-hitting dance music that will please fans of producers like Perc, Scalameriya, Surgeon and Blawan”. Slovenian critics describe Lifecutter as “noisetehnsorcerer” (Radio Študent), “one of the most consistent and stylistically developed musicians of rhythmic electronic noise” (Mladina) and “one of the main protagonists of the darkest and noisiest shades of domestic techno expressiveness” (Odzven). He has collaborated with video and visual artist Iztok Klančar and the contemporary art duo P L A T E AU R E S I DU E. In 2018, he was also a member of the European platform for innovative music and audiovisual art SHAPE.
Bandcamp
Collaborators
Domen Učakar · music, mixing
Chris McCormack at Blacklisted Mastering · mastering
Jaša Bužinel · liner notes
Andro Giunio · graphic design
Katja Kosi · proofreading
Maruša Hren · USB booklet, printing, bookmaking
Luka Prinčič, Luka T. Zagoričnik · executive production
Support
Financially supported by City of Ljubljana
Media support: Radio Študent
Availability
Limited edition USB Booklets and digital album (with “Name Your Price”) are available from 2 November 2023 through our Bandcamp shop at https://kamizdat.bandcamp.com.
Some rights reserved under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA 4.0) licence www.creativecommons.com/licence.
production: Emanat
cat.no.: KAM069
