Back catalogue: Leftfield

Review: First released in November 2024, Belief Disconnect's Desire & Discontent follows up on the preceding Decadent Yet Depraved, and cements their status as commentators of our times. If last time took a sledgehammer to the monstrous face of a world presenting as one thing but actually something more brutal and savage, this marks our arrival in different time. Masks, like gloves, are off, sides drawn, and the knife edge society and civilisation now rest upon is cast in sharp relief. This is dark, and we mean very, very dark, stuff. It's industrial. Like, super factory-sized industry. Tracks are full of rage. There's the sense that human aspects, a vocal for example, are emanating from solitary confinement somewhere in the depths of a Borg ship. And yet hearing and listening are acts of catharsis - Desire & Discontent is as much about giving us an outlet as it is reflecting a dystopian sci fi narrative which may be on the verge of coming true. Belief Defect certainly seem to think there's a chance, anyway.

Review: Belief Defect's Moe Espinosa and Luis Flores bonded over a love of early industrial music - and even now, some six years on from the pair's debut album, its influence is still very much in evidence. But that doesn't mean that this, their eight track sophomore effort, harks back to the days of Throbbing Gristle et al. Rather, the Berlin duo take their taste for the uncompromising and sonically shocking and twist it into new shapes, equally informed by experiments from the leftfield of electronica and sharpened up by acute sound design. 'Apprehension Engine' is technically ambient - it's certainly beatless - but the way it steadily frazzles and burns itself up is edgy and unsettling rather than being chill out material. 'The Witching' splices doom-laden, deep voices with lumphammer kick drums, while 'Celebrate Me!' is a gloriously half-Suicide, half-Autechre mix of cyborg aggression and throbbing sequencers. Not one to be listened to with the lights off we reckon... It'll be all fright on the night!