Various artists - The Clock Machine Turns You On: Volume 2

Tick – tick – tick – tick – BOOM!

Malicious Damage’s output is nothing if not inventive. By eschewing a simple consecutive retrospective in favour of two CDs, mixed by Alex Paterson and Dom Beken, the record re-presents the attitude and feeling behind the label.

Disc One (billed as “Side Tick”) all kicks off with Killing Joke’s early-doors single, Turn To Red, before smashing through Paterson’s vocals on the aggressive-but-pointless run-through of his group Bloodsport’s version of the Pistols track Bodies, before heading into space with The Orb, Teledubghosts and more. That one CD can flit between fizzing punk, hallucinogen-rock and dubby soundscapes says much about the imprint, if not the minds of those behind it. Disc Two (“Side Tock”), brings more of the same, with the likes of Japanese mentalists The Sun Paulo’s insistent electrofuzz crackling into epic post-punk courtesy of Transmission (aka Youth & Simon Tong), and that mixed in skilfully to Smartyr’s Dark Mother Dub. As a mix, it’s insistent, occasionally in-yer-face, smooth when it needs to be and, above all, danceable. Just like the label, really.

4 stars 4 stars 4 stars 4 stars

Malicious Damage | MD 635 (2-CD)

Reviewed by Joe Shooman
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