Data Void: information spaces which can be exploited to introduce new and transgressive ideas in order to promote change or disruption.
Data Void is the new project from Don Gordon (NUMB, Halo_Gen) and James Mendez (Jihad, Trial by Fire) who both have long histories in the industrial, dark electronic music scenes.
The sound of Data Void combines the driving rhythms and strong, evocative sound design sensibilities of NUMB with the dark melodicism of Jihad. On their first release, Strategies of Dissent, they seamlessly integrate elements drawn from a diverse range of contemporary electronic music influences - industrial, drum & bass, dark ambient, post-punk, experimental, EDM, dub, psychedelica - into a coherent sound that both seduces and challenges the listener. The album also features a strong lyrical focus that is reinforced by Data Void’s use of 2 lead vocalists, allowing for shifts in perspective and emphasis between and within individual tracks.
The songs on Strategies of Dissent draw their themes from our current era of chaos rather than presenting a faded cyber-dystopian future. This is a world projected in JG Ballard's view that "the advanced societies of the future will not be governed by reason. They will be driven by irrationality, by competing systems of psychopathology." But rather than a bleak, nihilistic rant, the album explores the place of the individual in a world where powerful social and technological forces drive uncertainty; where cults, conspiracies, ego and irrational faith hold more sway than trust, facts and reason. Where words and actions have become untethered from consequence and where corporations and late-capitalist agendas hold more power than governments. Strategies of Dissent is "a soundtrack for the dispossessed".
Tracks:
01. Nothing Changes
02. The Night Goes On Forever
03. So Alien
04. A Failure of Language
05. Crash, Burn, and Resurrect
06. Control
07. What's Left Unsaid
08. Seven Seconds
09. Echoes of Ritualized Performance
10. This Night Goes On Forever (Dub)