FRONT 242 STILL & RAW EP XIII BIS, PLAYGROUND RELEASE: FEBRUARY 24, 2003 REVIEW: FEBRUARY 17, 2003

After years and years of waiting, we finally get some new music from one of the most influential bands of the electronic genre. To say that the wait has been worth it is - at least by judging from this limited EP - an overstatement. Fair enough, the members have said that “Still & Raw” sounds nothing like the upcoming album, and I hope that this is true.
After that opening, I’ll go on by saying that this isn’t a total disaster. But the things we like with Front 242 are nowhere to be found. The hard beats, the songs, the powerful singing, they are all gone. Instead we have slow, mellow, meaningless pieces with almost no discernible song structures. The rhythms are a bit funkier than before though. “Loud” is the one piece that comes closest to a “real” song, and is actually quite good. It might have fitted well on the “06:21:03:11 up Evil” album.
Of course, all the tracks included are expertly done, and it shows that these guys know what they are doing, at least technically. But songs are not only about knob-twiddling, at least I don’t think so. “Collision” is almost solely about the lads showing off what they are capable of. “Strobe” is memorable only for the cunningly cut up vocals. That track is also featured in another form as “Strobe <fragments>”, but that doesn’t do much for me either. It’s only a boring bassline over a metallic drumkit and some effects, before fading out to weird sounds and dull ambience. Bah.
The EP is not the rave-fest some of us had expected, but it’s not very good either. Two decent songs, “7Rain <ghost>” - also available in another, more boring version - and “Loud” is on here, but decent is not what we want, now is it? And the cover art is ugly too.

JOHAN CARLSSON