The Industrial Music of a Modest Machine

Corruption is a prolific musician based in Funabashi, Japan. There are two sets of tracks on Corruption’s SoundCloud account. One is labeled “Corruption Music Drugstore 2,” and it has 48 tracks at current count. The other is labeled “Lullaby for the Losers/The Baddest of Corruption,” with 25. Those selections are culled from the now nearly 600 tracks in the Corruption account, ranging from tweaked cicada sounds to lounge synth jams, from warped vocal electronics to hardcore industrial noise. One recent favorite, “みぞれ,” which appears to be the Japanese word for “sleet,” appears to combine several of Corruption’s most central themes. These include the everyday weather from which it takes its name (and associated image), the lofi quality of the employed electronics, the slight dub influence, the just-shy-of-earworm melody, and the louche sensibility. Any one of those elements would define a batch of Corruptions tracks, and all those elements are heard here, in barely two and a half minutes. All that is missing is the occasionally forceful sentiment that sometimes constitutes a Corruption track. Then again, the minimalist pacing and repetitiveness of the rhythm of “みぞれ” constitutes a low-key descendent of industrial music. It is the industrial music of a modest machine.

Track originally posted for free download at soundcloud.com/corrption. Note that Corruption drops the “u” in the account URL, because someone else snagged it first, though that person has yet to upload a track. Which is fine, because the missing vowel carries over some of the urban decay inherent in Corruption’s sprawling catalog.