German electronic and Industrial musician Sven Bussler returns this year with his Transform Colláge project. After a twenty year hiatus, the artist has released the limited edition cassette Hymn to Despair this month via the Italian label Infidel Bodies. Having been a founding member of the electro-EBM group Coinside in the mid-90s, Transform Colláge was one of Bussler’s early solo outlets. Comprised of 12 tracks, Hymn to Despair features material from the project’s early days as well as new songs recorded specifically for the release. With the six A-sides laid down in 2017-18 at Silent Place Studios, the album’s B-sides were originally recorded back in 1996 at Noise Research Laboratories.
If Bussler’s sonic work through the years in a group like Coinside, as well as his solo outings under monikers like Ophir and Wappenbund, have represented his enduring interest in the harsher side of experimental electronic genres like EBM, Industrial, Power Electronics, and Noise, on Hymn to Despair all of those strains come together in a powerful statement of existential angst. And, while the artist might be contemplating the personal miseries of being an embodied soul on tracks like “A Silent Place,” “Hymn to Despair,” and “Second Skin,” it also seems that the historical dread of Europe’s World Wars still hangs like a sulfurous cloud over this aphotic collection.
The cassette’s title cut “Hymn to Despair” was recorded in recent years after Transform Colláge’s lengthy hiatus, but listening to it you can hear Bussler picking up just where he left off back in 1996. The distinctive, roiling whir of an analog synthesizer opens the cut with an ear-splitting racket before a mournful organ dirge rises from the smoke like a black sun. While the musician’s dizzying neo-classical melodies have grown more vivid on the recent recordings, on “Hymn to Despair” those reeling carnival-like sounds are slower and more somber–as this is a full-throated lament.
It’s not long though before this noisy threnody erupts with Transform Colláge’s characteristically punishing rhythms. This might not be the “total war” ear-bashing of “Infidel Bodies” or “Second Skin,” but “Hymn to Despair“‘s eventual, machine-like pummeling of kick and snare is no less daunting. When Bussler’s vocals do finally emerge, they are less his characteristically stentorian bark of a general marshaling troops on a desperate suicide mission. Instead, we hear the rantings of a man locked in the turmoil of his own personal agony–seemingly holding the ghosts of his misery at bay by a sheer act of creative will.
Below you can listen to the track “Hymn to Despair” and watch a trailer for the release. In addition, you can check out the album via the Infidel Bodies’ Bandcamp embed below…
