Oliver Ho’s Broken English Club returns on Dekmantel’s UFO Series with an album honoring his late friend and collaborator, Silent Servant (Juan Mendez).
It has been more than a decade after Silent Servant had encouraged and provided an outlet for Oliver Ho’s Industrial, Rhythmic Noise, and EBM experiments on his own Jealous God label. It seems that after many years being involved with his own Meta imprint and having a leading influence on tribal techno worldwide up until 2005, Oliver Ho needed a new direction, and it was obvious that the trends in minimal techno at the time did not track. Some of his other projects as Raudive expressed a lot more creative freedom and expression, but it seems where Oliver Ho shines is where he gets to pursue some of the harder facets of his musical approach and combine dark and distorted imagery while maintaining diversity and expression of dark forms.
Broken English Club’s goal with this album is to say thank you for this as well as provide a place of mourning and respect for an ally and dear friend, Silent Servant.
If we want to talk about the album in a purely musical context, it’s particularly notable that the industrial influences and darker sides of Oliver Ho are present and masterfully crafted. In a lot of modern industrial approaches, the audience is often left with two options: An overly produced and glossy, somewhat amateurish watered-down NIN industrial aesthetic with an emphasis on the front man. Or… we’re left with a grim and sullen heavy-handed approach to machine music that has very little to do with human interaction and response, only serving as a place for your mind’s eye to sweep over the distorted sonic imagery. Different strokes for different folks, of course, but some of the tracks present on this release really do capture the feel of the original late 90s industrial spirit and mark Broken English Club as a contemporary of that sound rather than someone who’s merely competent enough to faithfully recreate a vibe.
The song “Pacific Island Kill” exemplifies this to a T. Oliver Ho knows this sound from the inside, almost as if he was borrowing Skinny Puppy’s Dwayne Goettel and Cevin Key’s collective muse. Similarly, you would not be mistaken for almost hearing Nivek Ogre’s voice about to come into the track “Lost Gods” at any moment.
What really sends it home for us is that Broken English Club comes to the sounds with decades of techno music experience and production aesthetic. It is Industrial that is done from a techno perspective, as opposed to the concept of Techno Industrial, where it’s a techno edge added to the music to make things more danceable and club-friendly, such as with some of KMFDM’s work.
Songs like the title track “Love And Decay,” “Death Cult,” and “Prisoner,” mark where the techno-to-industrial direction is most present. We can certainly hear a lot of the techno mentalism present on the Meta-era Oliver Ho with distorted and hypnotic repetition. But it is contrasted by a proven Industrial technique with distinct sound design that is at home in both. There are definitely some techno ideas gained from the experience of being a techno veteran, whether it’s a choice to EQ a cutoff for overdrive distortion or that certain compression that provides a calming effect to the music. It is all laid out as a telltale, stylistic, unifying idea over a diverse set of tracks.
As a piece for homage and mourning, “Sacred Sacrifice” is a rare chance in electronic music where grief is depicted with such grace and dark reverence. Most dark ambient at times can be spooky or somewhat conceptually with inexplicable grim themes—this is a moment to share the loss of a friend on an equal level. The song is hauntingly beautiful with musical imagery full of real sorrow. Anyone close to Silent Servant has expressed an equal sense of loss, and it has continued to echo throughout our crew and local scene. Many of us have a story to share or a memory we have of Juan, and it still hurts nonetheless, even a year later.
On the whole, we celebrate Broken English Club’s desire to express musical freedom and passion for both techno and industrial influences on this album. We also join in our support and celebration of the life of a pivotal figure in the hearts of many and the techno community worldwide.
All our respects.
-Sean Ocean
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