HIGH-FUNCTIONING FLESH - “LATTICE OF COINCIDENCE”
I’ve been working my way through High-Functioning Flesh’s discography lately, and they’ve impressed me quite a lot. I might even say they’re one of my very favourite bands that got started in the 10s! So far, I think 2015′s Definite Structures may be my favourite work of theirs. On the surface, they seem like an EBM revival act, and that influence is definitely there, but you shouldn’t mistake them for slavish imitators of the old-time greats. The ways in which they’ve decided to try and advance this genre can be a bit subtle, especially if you’re not exactly a connoisseur to begin with, but they’re there. One of the things I find most strikingly different about their oeuvre is the way in which they’ve employed the tool of sampling. If you listen to 80s/90s stuff like Skinny Puppy or Front 242, you’ll mostly find samples that are taken from professionally created media like movies and television, and I think those clips bring with them a certain theatricality, an artificiality of emotion and expression. A lot of the samples on Definite Structures have much less of that feel, and sound like they might be drawn from more quotidian recordings of everyday people, as opposed to actors. It seems appropriate for a band that’s been around for a shorter time than YouTube to react this way, to a world in which there are “movies” of so many ordinary people and things made public online. Listen for some of that in “Lattice of Coincidence” (or “Hunger Cries” from the same record) and see what you think!
