Lundin Oil - Exploit Divisions
Anthony Linell has created something special with his Northern Electronics label. It's where the lesser-understood electronic music genres thrive. The label head has curated a sound unlike any other in contemporary electronic music due to its consistent high quality and overarching aesthetic. Linell has achieved this by not only curating but innovating with his productions. He stretched the label's identity further into each corner of the catalogue with Abdulla Rashim, a rhythmic journey through techno's deeper trenches and, of course, the melodic-based trans output under his name, Anthony Linell. It was only a matter of time before he breached the final frontier on the label with the Lundin Oil project.
Exploit Division is Lundin Oil's second full-length album, travelling into drone ambient and experimental realms. The head honcho has targeted drone, one of the label's most experimental genres. Exploit Divisions is a brutalist interpretation of a drone that flits between electronic pulsations and heart noise, and it appears as though there are two sides to a densely textured and unstable coin.
Unfortunately, it is not all praise for the Northern Electronics founder. The track 'Melting Skin' in isolation sounds dreary compared to the rest of the output on the album. The static-laden overture lacks the depth of some of the other productions on the record pigeonholed into becoming this giant fuzzy monster full of hazy scratching synthesisers, and its shortcomings more apparent following 'Black Banners'. This track uses hums and static to its advantage by working more rhythmically. It sounds as though electric currents are modulating each other in a massive transformer.
The clear-through line presented by Lundin Oil is the misuse of energy. Most of the track titles refer to some protest, legality, or side effects of using dangerous chemicals. With Lundin being an energy conglomerate in Scandinavia, it should make sense when I say that 'Schengen Burning' sounds huge and croaky, giving feelings of industrial oppressiveness. The repetitive rhythm interwoven into each of these heavily synthesised drones has the added effect of feeling like a continuous Sleepwalk into a climate nightmare, with the title track 'Exploit Divisions' becoming a night terror as its intensity builds into a cacophony of fossil fuels and pollution.
The album's more out-there tracks experiment with morphing textures and provide some of the most provoking listening experiences. Both 'High-Profile Witnesses' and 'Final Notice' embody the genre's weirdness while still making it aesthetically pleasing. The former uses samples of old radio stations to generate surrealist alien qualities that flow over the more metallic oscillations. However, the latter focuses on stretching the sound far beyond what it originally was, introducing these strange, beautiful textures in an uncanny valley way.
What begins as walls of noisy sound intent on swallowing everything under its immense, all-encompassing vibrations, Linden Oil manages to fit a lot more subtlety into this album. Linden Oil's greatest strength is the images he's able to conjure through his music. What starts as rhythmic bass undulations that feel like the power grid has overloaded and raw energy is vibrating the floor turns into more conceptual emotions about capitalist greed and complacency in the global warming crisis. Exploit Divisions pushes the boundaries of what drone and ambient can be while keeping it firmly within the Northern Electronics sound family.
Tracklist:
Black Banner
Unpaid Moral Debts
Schengen Burning
High-Profile Witnesses
Melting Skin
Exploit Divisions
Final Notice
Label: Northern Electronics (2024)
Lundin Oil - Exploit Divisions
