Eleventh

ELEVENTH is shivery, cold techno from Iceland that pounds you into submission like a head-on collision with a glacier. Actually, Exos, like fellow Force Inc-men Justin Berkovi and Age, varies his tempos and tweaks his sounds just enough to keep things interesting. The blunt metallic force of "Inhale" contrasts vividly with the warped mechanistic huffs and puffs of "V4", the latter all chilly handclaps and twisting and congealed synth hiccups.
Tracks such as "Equal" do the Mike Ink "thang," slavering away on propulsive, black-limned kick drums as power plants wheeze and dark smoke morphs into a gaseous cloud of near-hypnotic proportions. Exos smears his rhythms with a dizzying array of textures, making for some invigorating listening and an abstract lesson in how to best extract the torque from techno.