The shapeshifting hellscapes of Wackelkontakt (Tomer Damsky aka MC Slice, Marco Milevski Tomasin, and Eyal Lally Bitton) return with new garments in their second album Change the Process, on a collaborative release between Orthodox (France) & JauneOrange (Belgium).
Attempts to define Wackelkontakt’s singular sound resulted in definitions such as Psychotrap and Doom R&B, with their debut album being acclaimed for its dynamism and reluctance to stick to one genre. In Change the Process, the group broadens the palette of styles even further. It is a collection of fragments: each song in the album sets a distinct mental scene, as if created by a different author. As the song sequence unfolds, it paves a journey between psycho-sensory states. Emblematic of Wackelkontakt’s genre-defiant artistry, Change the Process does not conform to a single theme but flourishes as a multiple entity, a schizophrenic crossroads of influences where each pathway gives birth to an encounter with an ever-weirder facet of human consciousness.
The album’s musical universe is set in the enchanted forest of ancient fantasies and proto-narratives: a liminal space of transformation, harboring both unknown dangers and a refuge from the world. A story unfinished and unfinishable, it moves from symbol to allegory; it comes and goes, crossing through various realms of the conceptual imagination, on a route spread over time and space, to be ultimately left pending.
In Change the Process Wackelkontakt steer the heavy, noise-influenced sound of their debut album into a more melodic terrain. They evolved into a new mutation, melting together drone, industrial, and metal aesthetics with bleak soundscapes and soulful laments. Milevski’s blasting percussion, a hybrid of acoustic drums and sample-based beats, couple with Damsky’s sensitive yet intensive vocals to form the core musical storytelling: moving, affective, and at times downright terrifying. The album’s lyrics are Damsky’s characteristic mash of biblical verse and taunting self-irony, uttered in an array of vocal deliveries: terse whispers, spitting rap, and venomous screeches alongside hopeful melodies and cantorial Arabesque. A new addition to Wackelkontakt’s sonic arsenal, the string instruments are woven throughout the story as a cinematic motif, an echo of the emotional states the songs attempt to tackle.
In ever-evolving ways to communicate with their audience, Wackelkontakt will release the album alongside a 35-minute short film, an audiovisual poem filmed in four countries. It features their signature visual-sonic storytelling, smashing together visceral docu-fiction, psycho-drama, mytho-poetics, and religious symbolism.
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Open Edition
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Catalog No. ORTH004 | JO202
