Rhys Fulber
Balance of Fear
Sonic Groove
If you’ve been paying attention to the work that Rhys Fulber has been doing under his own name as distinct from his partnership with Bill Leeb in Front Line Assembly and its various offshoots, not to mention his own long-running Conjure One project, the fact that the Canadian producer and studio magician is making pure industrial techno shouldn’t be a surprise. Indeed, Balance of Fear is the fifth LP of its style from Fulber since 2018, an impressive level of productivity that speaks to his work ethic and level of inspiration, and that’s without even going into the numerous singles, EPs, and live releases he has released during that timespan.
Like 2022’s excellent Collapsing Empires there’s a strain of brutalist design to Fulber’s work, although for the first time in a few years his more fluid and emotional sensibilities are more fully on display. Opener “Fall Awake” is driven by a high tension drum track, the proximity of its kicks and fluttering analogue sound effects slowly providing cover for a sneakily lush arrangements of pads to take focus, albeit spiked with bursts of noise and snatches of programming that slowly sink into calmness. Similarly, there’s a kosmische flavour to the psychedelic synthwork that takes over “European Skies” midway through, and a playfulness to the big doofy kicks, stuttering samples, and bass licks on “Despite the Noise” that give the tracks a dimension beyond their rigid, rhythmic foundations.
Intriguingly Fulber is finding new ways to integrate ideas he’s responsible for helping proliferate in the electro-industrial genre to these compositions. There’s a deliberateness in the use of what sounds like a sample of Underworld’s “Moaner”, as in the underpinning for the phased out groove of “Technology”, and the 16th note bassline on the stomping “The Heir” that are classic Fulber, tasteful self-homage that is less a dearth of new ideas than an expression of ways in which familiar sounds can be reinvented and recontextualized. Hell, there’s even some classic Delerium style pop sensibility hiding behind the warbling synths and panned percussion of closing track “Driven”; just a small cathartic bit of melody that offsets its mechanical nature.
Like so many post-industrial pioneers of the generation that preceded him, Balance of Fear finds Fulber in territory that seems like a natural extension of where he started from, claiming his lineage without needing to plagiarize it. And like Clock DVA or the Cabs’ latter era work, there’s a feeling that this what Fulber wants to do with his considerable skill as a programmer, producer and arranger, and would be doing if anyone was interested in hearing it or not. That’s a confidence worth indulging, and one that offers up rewards for having done so.
