REVIEWS > THE CLEANER

DMC

Angry industrial assault alert and why not? PT was in 90s industrial noise outfit Sonic Violence and has returned with what he calls, 'a journey through the wasteland of modern life', referencing titans like Neubauten, Scorn, Test Dept and others mad enough at society to take it out on synths and inanimate objects. Tracks like 'Fistrip' and 'Wound' recall another group mad at the world called Suicide with harsh clattering beats and incessant factory grind atop the persistent subterranean demon flatulence. Sometimes it's like he's got licence to rearrange Tony Blair's smug, murderous visage electronically, although tracks like 'Pileus' swim into an atmospheric toxic swamp before the drum machine whips out another stiffie. The closing 'Trashed' recalls nothing so much as French psycho-jazzers Magma jamming with Suicide and emerging with a slice of dark modern classical. Music for these times.

Rated: “Essential”

Kris Needs 

Chain DLK (Italy)

Formed by PT, a guy who in the 90's was playing with Sonic Violence, Gusto Extermination Fluid is his outfit for his soundtrack to a decaying world. Mixing industrial, dub and dark ambient, PT composed the ten tracks you can find into his first album (available on CD and download mp3 files). The tracks are ten nice instrumental soundtracks which mix elements of the above genres trying to creating a new blend. For example, if "Scurvysh" is based on obsessive industrial percussions, "Bees tick" (one of the best ones of the lot), is dealing with slow dub/dark ambient atmospheres succeeding into creating a thick atmosphere. On other tracks, like "Below" or "Horselip", PT tries to find a personal way of dealing with the sounds and he made two particular orchestral/ambient/industrial tracks. The only weak point I found about his compositions is that in the process, sometimes, he lose the power and the ambience peculiar to the genres he took inspiration from. This isn't a great loss if these elements are substituted by creativity. This is the main point, some tracks don't seem to develop the initial idea, so they sound like good intuitions that need something more. His work is to be appreciated anyway, because he tries to deal with known sounds in a personal way. Sometimes he succeeds and sometimes he don't but the album does for sure sounds interesting.

Maurizio Pustianaz 7/10

Sideline (Belgium) 

This is a quite surprising signature on the British Momt label. Set up by PT (known from Sonic Violence), the debut release of GEF reveals a very progressive form of electronics (assembling elements of industrial music and minimal electronics) and pure experimental stuff. Except the cool opening piece (“Wound”), which reminds me of the most experimental parts of Front 242’s “Geography”-cd this album is hard to compare with any other band. There’s a constant mix of ideas while some tracks have been driven by a furious rhythmic and other tracks are more into a kind of soundtrack vein. A few more influences like dubby sounds (“Bees tick”) and tribal drums (“Below”) have been added here and than. If there would be one song to propose as reference and high light, I would choose “Trashed” revealing some furious rhythmic merged with excellent electro tones. Together with some other tracks like “Scurvysh” and “Hurone B”, these songs stand for the most powerful side of GEF. This instrumental release comes close to a master release in its genre and gets my total support! This is a pure minimal revelation and sensation!

DP 8/10 

Deadbolt (USA) 

I’ve had this sucker earmarked in my “to review” pile as something unique. I’ll admit—I occasionally judge a book by its cover, and The Cleaner is fascinating in its beautifully grotesque simplicity. Luckily the music is just as strange and captivating, blending elements of electronica, caustic industrial, and purely experimental meanderings into a soundtrack for a distressed and condemned cityscape. Hints of Coil and early Front 242 drip through the cracks, though only in short bursts as the music lurches and scurries on like an army of frantic ants escaping some unknown disaster. The “dirty” distortions and effects on the almost-minimal pieces lend irony to the title, and make The Cleaner so evocative. If the devil is in the details, this disc is surely banned from the Vatican. 

Rock-a-rolla Magazine (UK) 

Born out of the ashes of the 90's industrial noise band Sonic Violence, Gusto Extermination Fluid unleash their vigour to soundtrack an Orwellian nightmare once more on their debut album for MoMT Records, The Cleaner. Coming on like a pulsing score, the music hovers over delayed and decaying sounds striving to bridge a gap between industrial dub and post-everything rock. With titles like 'Wound', 'Thrashed' and 'Horselip' you'd be forgiven for pre-empting yourself but the blend of dark and ambient is balanced on almost all of these tracks. 'Oiskobi' manages to make pan pipes sound ominous and feeds them off the simplistic drum patterns and constant ebbing buzz of bass feedback, whilst the afore-mentioned 'Horselip' glowingly combines string loops with synthesized escapades into pseudo-darkness with washes and stabs slicing the piano melody. Mixing these elements of electronica into their stew of sound works works extremely well on 'Below' and 'Pileus', the later proving to be one of the most essential sonic explorations on here. The bass rumbles and pans across the mix for couple of minutes before the washes of drone and glitches swell into earshot. 'Bees Tick' is incredibly menacing with its constant pound and laser sirens and 'Scurvysh' wells up into one of the most foreboding listens on here. The Cleaner is full of moments that shed light on an immense amount of musical command. Breathing with a dark rasp the music filters on the edge of noise pollution before lulling into something achingly beautiful as delayed percussion encourages.

Oli Marlow

Machinist Music (Belarus)

During a virtual conversation with the boss of English label MOMT Records we quite soon came to the conclusion that “The Cleaner” – an album by Gusto Extermination Fluid – is currently the strongest and most interesting release on the label. 

Really, amongst the radical turbo-generator-like and stormy dance-releases of the label, this recording looks more serious, deep, multidimensional and wide-ranging. The sole author of the music, operator of all machine blocks and synthesizers of GEF is PT – veteran of the electro-industrial movement. In the 1990’s this person was part of the industrial noise-band Sonic Violence, whose recordings were once described as “the soundtrack for your favourite Orwellian nightmare”. This new album, “The Cleaner”, merges elements of classic industrial, dark ambient, Ant-Zen noise, dub and experimental electronics. It sounds like a large-scale musical accompaniment for a bleak urban EPOS where events often take place on deserted, shrouded in mystical darkness, post-apocalyptic landscapes, or on distant contaminated planets with quarantine zones. 

I enjoyed the journey to this fantastic lost world because the music, being 100% instrumental, heavy-weight and truly stereophonic, possesses explicit visuality, emotions and drive. Its cold industrial atmosphere, eerie energy, the combination of powerful rhythmic fragments, soothing ambient melodies and other tribal-exotic-surreal and technological sounds, quickly captivates the listener. This recording sounds equally good on headphones and big speakers, in the calm environment and the dynamic one. 

Rhythmically powerful industrial tracks like “Wound” and “Scurvysh” (open-minded DJ’s should take notice) are joined on the album by heavy rocking electro-dub numbers like “Bees Tick” (also “Oiskobi” – the character of this track reminded me of the main theme of “Resident Evil: Extinction”), explosive surreal numbers (“Fistrip”, “Below”) which will stalk your subconscious, and hard-to-classify tracks (like “Horselip” – where experimental meets neo-classical and film noir). Some tracks on the album instantly overwhelm the listener with the immense mass of noise, rhythm and electronics; the others hold back cautiously before descending on the hypnotised traveller; still the others let you rest and dream, filling the space with beautiful melodies, ethereal echoes, throbs and drones. As to the musical references, in the comparison of GEF you are likely to discover moments reminiscent of Future Sound of London (especially the album “Dead Cities”), Scorn, Test Department, Einsturzende Neubauten, Imminent, Xingu Hill, Monolith, etc. 

my opinion, sonically and emotionally, the new GEF album fits easily amongst the best recordings of the above bands. My favourite compositions on the album are “Wound”, “Oiskobi”, “Bees Tick”, “Scurvysh”, “Hurone B” and “Trashed”. All of them are quite heavy, with a lot of drive and a clear indication of intelligence and industrial composer’s talent. 

I highly regard the musician’s effort and recommend this very strong and anti-mainstream album, “The Cleaner” by Gusto Extermination Fluid.

(9/10)

Gohtronic (Holland)

Sultry like a Cambodian minefield and stalking like a thief in the dead of night, that is "The Cleaner". Even though Gusto Extermination Fluid is a new name, this project has actually been initiated by an old hand in the trade. PT used to be a member of Sonic Violence a British industrial group from the nineties who released two albums back then. Sonic Violence attracted attention because the band had two bass players, GEF also has that specific heavy bass sound. The intonation of "The Cleaner" reminds me of Beat In Zen, not in the least because of the critical stance towards the present corrupted world, but more mesmerizing and with the insane calm of a psychopath who knows he's in control of the situation.

All facets of this record are laden with an unabated tension, like the status quo could collapse any moment and be replaced by a sudden and massive outbreak of violence. Besides humming bass guitars, the prominent presence of nervous electronica with an increased immunity against tranquillizers is hard to miss as well, with or without the accompaniment of inevitable rhythms. Furthermore the participation of wretched dub in the audiotechnical concoction is rather conspicuous, the similarity with Scorn is obvious here. When waves of dark ambient dominate, GEF also has components in common with Forma Tadre or J.G. Thirlwell's Manorexia.

The well-considered composition of the individual tracks and of the cd in general makes sure that GEF's calamitous statements appear consistent and accomplished. You have no choice but to be dragged along by the stream, and with every passing moment the raging waterfall comes closer. Escape is not an option for anyone, the damp abyss claims us all. And since this chasm is the product of our overwrought and globalized society, that's only fair.

Nanhold 8.4/10

Mentenbre (Spain) 

The miseries of a rich and declining society. Gusto Extermination Fluid - "The Cleaner"
 
The schizophrenia of a self-destructive society and the paranoia of its self-serving people are the symptoms of a terminal disease that Gusto Extermination Fluid express in "The Cleaner".
 
As PT explains to us, the name of the project Gusto Extermination Fluid composes three words loaded with meaning that, in essence, define it, their interpretation, its art and its creation. Gusto: enthusiasm, pleasure, relish, a style of artistic execution. Extermination: destroy completely, eliminate, complete destruction. Fluid: able to flow and alter shape freely, constantly changing or fluctuating "GEF is a reflection of the spiralling madness that is 21st century humanity and a witness to its final descent into hate-fuelled oblivion". With GEF, he is transmitting the same messages, but from another perspective, as his previous industrial noise outfit, Sonic Violence, though in a more penetrating way, one which reaches deeper inside.

"The Cleaner" is an album blending, electronic, industrial & dark ambient, and is very well conceived overall. It is not made up of isolated subjects; the subjects, all instrumentals, each one with its own voice and sense, conform to a whole that express pessimism and decay, it expresses a society that is itself anesthetized, self-serving, and without realizing it, walking towards self-destruction... The listener listens to it and the listener sees it, in songs that without words to transmit the messages.

Highlights in this context are 'Scurvysh' and 'Hurone B, these are, perhaps, the most aggressive subjects, those who speak with most vehemently about the monotony of the life that appeases and induces sleep in the essence of the human being. Throughout the album, but especially in these two subjects, PT manages to harmonize strong, dry and acute electronic sounds with the strident noise sounds, by providing melody and bounding musicality. The second cuts, 'Fistrip, contrasts silences and explosions of sound, is also very expressive.

This is, ultimately, a very deep album, full of philosophical discourse, discourse on the determinism or the lack of freedom of the human being in their society. An absolutely pessimistic speech.

Without a doubt, this work deserves 10 in composition, since nothing leaves that context of electro-industrialist and dark ambient undiluted, and 10 in execution, since its expressivity is maintained with great intensity and vehemence throughout the album.

7.5/10

Toxic Pete (UK)

Gusto Extermination Fluid is actually ex Sonic Violence art-noise generator PT and PT goes in for experimental/industrial/electronica the like of which only comes to light every so often; this is bold and brash electronica to test the resolve of even the most arty of you experimentalists. Sitting loosely somewhere in amongst hard-core post-rock and industrial electronic experimentation, Gusto Extermination Fluid goes straight for the jugular with a powerful upper-cut of hedonistic sonic music that steam enthusiasts would liken to an engine room full of heavy beams and oily pistons, of recoiling springs and pressure-relieving valves and similarly mechanically noisy interjections.

Yes, industrial it is - but, somehow PT or Gusto Extermination Fluid makes it all seem very organised and squeaky clean; 'The Cleaner' does indeed cleanse (the senses) as it works its musical lotions and potions into your psyche with absolutely no respect for your sanity or peace of mind. At times 'The Cleaner' is brutal and machine-like, at others its satisfyingly harmonious and soothingly fluid - Gusto Extermination Fluid eases its way inside of you and leaves a numbness behind that's usually only associated with mind-altering chemical intake.

Gusto Extermination Fluid's 'The Cleaner' won't be for everyone - of that there is no doubt. But, if you're prepared to give it a chance it's actually very rewarding and extremely intoxicating. 'The Cleaner' is much more than it may at first appear. This is something that you need to be prepared to spend time and effort with - give it a chance and you may just find yourself feeling fulfilled and somehow relieved to have explored its possibilities and experienced its inner beauty. 'The Cleaner' is something very different but very, very interesting!

'The Cleaner' by Gusto Extermination Fluid is indeed art-noise, it's adventurous, it's experimental - but, I have to say I really enjoyed being part of PT's experimental industrial techno world for just over one hour by way of its ten longish tracks that take you through emotions and thought processes that are scarily diverse but ultimately relaxing. Very clever stuff this - one for the open-minded, one for the mind! A head-trip without after-effects, hangover's or tissue damage but, beware, it's quite addictive!! 

Music News (UK)

GEF is a reflection of the spiralling madness that is 21st Century humanity, and a witness to its final descent into hate-fuelled oblivion.' Nice. But, it’s really not that dark and depressing, honest, despite intentionally sounding like the soundtrack to a decaying Orwellian dystopia!

However, I found listening to 'The Cleaner’ bloody refreshing. Rich with ambience and creativity, ethereal at times, brash at others, it is a captivating album of experimental industrial/electronica. On the one hand, it grabs hold of you violently, but then with the other lays you softly down, almost like a lullaby. It is predominantly hypnotic, dark and foreboding, though it is not absent of beauty.

GEF is the work of PT - 'who?' I hear you say. Well he previously operated in 90’s industrial noise band Sonic Violence. Now, I’m a bit of a novice when it comes to industrial music, so my reference points are limited. But in judging this album purely on its’ musical merits, I personally found it a consistently accomplished composition. Hate-fuelled oblivion? Well, whilst the more furious tracks such as 'Hurone-B’ bash out their arresting industrial tribal beats, there remains woven within the whole a creative beauty. 'The Cleaner’ throbs with life.

Finally, if I might dare compare GEF with anything mainstream, if you like the brooding sound of more recent Massive Attack, though different they both are, you might just like this.

Max Geraghty 4/5

Losing Today (USA)

In essence the sole work of the mysterious PT who during the early part of the 90’s was a member of - I’m ashamed to admit - the previously unknown to us industrial / dub / noise collective Sonic Violence who in their brief existence released a brace of albums and several 12” before disappearing into the night.

‘the cleaner’ is quite frankly just what the doctor ordered, a bleak and grimly beautiful soundtrack for an age of obsolescence yet to come, 10 solemn suites feature within, a future chill of an ill wind assuming its place among the dark abstract ambient / noise / post house community. Both unsettling and clever ‘the cleaner’ deviously freewheels between the classical and the conceptual, its linear universe dappled with dischord and a sense of foreboding, its medium of mutant dust bowl of drone landscapes, binary converses, dark electronica, wired draconian beats and deeply set dub accents.

All at once bracing, bludgeoning, insular and exacting - PT applies his gloom stricken minimalism with much aplomb, the finite structures like pebbles thrown in a pond reverberate into an omnipresent mass of anxiety and hysteria from the opening lunges of the gruesomely psychotropic ‘wound’ the listener isn’t so much drawn in but dragged by the dense attraction of its black hole heart. With its leering hypnotic layers and Kraut cultured industrial isolationism is magnificently oppressive, imparting the sterile blank detail of early Cabaret Voltaire as though with their noses bloodied by the collaborative combative might of 1919, Einsturzende Neubauten and X-Mal Deutschland and SPK this grinding beast takes the recently acclaimed Battles ’atlas’ / ’mirrored’ aural template to the next level to craft an unrivalled sledgehammer of sonic disturbance

The ominous ‘fistrip’ if we didn’t know any better would have had us thinking the creepier moments from Add N to X’s quintessential ‘add insult to injury’ had been ravaged and maimed amid an unyielding hybrid sonic schism whose initial matrix had originated from some doomed fusion between Moondog and Bernard Hermmann. Repetitive loops build in texture and stature creating a pulsating and punishing sound-scape that by its conclusion is literally fractured and pulverised by its own volcanic insurgency. The same trick is applied to the chilling ‘horselip’ to a lesser degree - amid the mooching montage of Stockhausen like treated sparse string arrangements, crooked Radiophonic Workshop like sonic displacements and subtle tribal timbres it manifests delightfully into a fiercesomely eerie carnival of Hitchcockian suspense and noire-ish grandeur.

To some extent lightening the edge and unyielding claustrophobic textures, both ‘bees tick’ and ‘scurvysh’ shift the dynamics towards rhythmic, the former melding binary communications across the dark cosmic divides the latter a head jarring retuning of Front 242’s ’masterhit’ template.

That said in our humbled opinion ’Oiskobi’ proves to be the sets centrepiece, comprising an affecting nightmarish John Carpenter vision, this trip wired gem captures and crystallises perfectly the penetrating psychosis deep in the heart of Tubeway Army’s ’Replicas’ and the early career ’scene 30’ era work of Echoboy and sweetly teases the bitter pill by imparting a whirring Arabesque dialect to the proceedings. Welcome to the new dark age.

Scene-Out (UK)

After listening to this album I think HMV should open a new section and call it Uneasy Listening. Or the Mummy! Make it stop! department. OMG! This would terrorise a small child. And for that reason alone it was worth a listen...

Gusto Extermination Fluid's debut is a very, very dark trip and at times a complete headfuck. Musical boundaries being what they are, being pushed further and further, GEF are right in there twisting and turning electronic music and stripping it to the very core.

The sleeve art alone gives you some idea of what to expect. If you can visualise a black and white documentary about 1960's tower blocks and urban decay and put a soundtrack to it, then this is your record. The track titles themselves give little away - Wound, Fistrip, Bees Tick - and being an instrumental album there are no lyrics to give an insight into the thinking behind the music - you have to listen hard and concentrate.

There are some passages of light - Pileus for example - but for the most part it's a moody, broody and deeply disturbing trip into one person's vision of the future. Bleak House anyone?

If you're scared of the dark and don't like listening to music that will make you think then don't buy this. If you're not, and fancy something different then do. Personally I think we should all buy a copy just to see them end up on GMTV doing a live set and giving children all over Britain nightmares for weeks...

The Music Magazine (UK) 

"Recorded in an attic on a hammock, high above the madness".

Not our words, but those of the man behind Gusto Extermination Fluid's creative centre and conceptual thinker- PT, a guy who quite clearly has taken his disillusion, frustration & angst against the modern world and turned it into a dubbed-out experimental and highly electronic record, namely, 'The Cleaner'.

The record takes us through an hour's worth of PT's bleak vision of the world, which sees his message put purely across with his hard-hitting and at times quite menacing industrial electronica, its by no means an album for the faint hearted or narrow-minded. If your intrigue is heightened by PT's extravagantly titled project, then what awaits you is 10 tracks that you'll either embrace with a glow of anti-mainstreamist pleasure, or discard with the feeling of confusion.

The record opens with 'Wound', a fine example of hardcore electronic noise fluctuating to the point of no return, mixed with a distant sounding beat. The track displays PT's ability to create a sense of menace through the incessant nature of quite minimalistic components. It's a stark and unafraid beginning.

From its creepy stringed intro, 'Fistrip' is the sound of the evil-hitched plan of programmed drums stomping through an industrial electronic shitstorm, the track stoops and rises with pristine fluidity letting up only when the battle's been won. It's important to take into account that there are no conventional vocals on this record. Its tunes such as these which enable your mind to unhinge what it will when confronted by them.

'Oiskobi' is perhaps the most complete sounding track on the album. With a beat not a million miles away from a hip-hop record, the instrumental prowess of the tune is demonstrated by PT's doom-laden and oscillating bass lines and slickly produced metallic synth ad-libs.

The most interesting track on the record arrives with 'Horselip' - 6 minutes of some of the most experimental sound-scaping ever committed to tape. A mini-orchestral intro is layered with some genius dark ambience and off-beat Foley - at times sounding like an electric hand-drill turned to 10 and thrown into a jumbo jet engine. Deranged and off-key piano fills also find there way into the mix in this bizarre, yet affecting listen. Yes folks, you certainly wouldn't of come across this kind of mash up since you last put on 'Revolution 9'. It's epic unpredictability, channelling humanity's decay.

'The Cleaner' isn't always as compelling however. There're tracks here such as 'Bees Tick' and 'Scurvysh' which get too bogged down in the idea of electronic hardcore and in doing so fail to emote and deliver enough reason to give them another go. The record does unfortunately begin to lose its edge toward the latter stages, and it's clear that the album's highlights mainly come from the opening quartet of tracks. This aside, Gusto Exterminatuion Fluid have produced an album which is consistent enough in the portrayal of its concept. Its a record that could soundtrack a multitude of Sci-fi thriller's or psychedelic movies, but when it's here, its left to the imagination of its listener, like all good records should be. 

New Noise (UK)

Decent bracing fun from the new solo project of Sonic Violence man PT (oh, you know him!) mixing up tunnels of scummy, rotten guitar with some ugly beats, that's most interesting when in pummelling industrial electronica mode, as on opener 'Wound', pulling in dissonant shudders of feedback, a dark almost techno punch and some other twists. The slower, creeping tracks that echo into a cavernous, almost dubby space (though it's more Electrowerkz on Slimelight night than Lee 'Scratch' Perry's Black Ark) are less instant but improve with a few more plays, the likes of 'Bees Tick' and 'Pilius' revealing a defter, more varied touch to his work. Constantly unsettling, in a good way.