Ad N to X – Avant Hard

Artist: Add N to X

Title: Avant Hard

Label: Mute

Rating: 7/10

Londoners Add N to X have released Avant Hard on the Mute label. The eleven tracks are absolutely cutting edge.

Add N to X have combined what I can make out as video game sounds from the days of Atari, Brady Bunch theme song beats, game show samples, and a ghostly female voice you may find in a haunted castle, and have mixed in electric guitar and live drums. The best way to sum it up is as a collage of random, violent, and sporadic sounds in collision with melody. They collapse the boundaries of rock ‘n’ roll and electronic music, allowing the two types to cross the line and attack each other.

This isn’t something that I would recommend to a first time electronic music listener, unless they are into Sonic Youth. Avant Hard is the kind of thing you might hear on a college radio show at two in the morning on a Monday night. The album sounds rather experimental, but the great thing is that they were not experimenting; Add N to X knew exactly what they were doing when they made their album. We can expect to hear more and more of this type of music in the future.

+ julie wheat