Equitant - Body Vehement Review @ Mishka Bloglin - NYC (Review by Mike Textbeak)

Equitant – Body Vehement (2012) [Black Montanas] // Grade: B+

The EBM-Techno engine known as Equitant is powered by Texan Ray Heflin who, after 3 years releases his fifth full-length entitled Body Vehement on Black Montanas. Although three years since the last release, Dynamism in 2009, time has not softened his sound or dulled his production. Instead, Body Vehement sounds like the time has been taken to intensify the sound and the production sounds even sharper.

Equitant lacks 100% of the cheese factor that a lot of the modern EBM has gotten itself wrapped up in. Where most of the modern EBM scene sounds like nothing more than bad progressive trance from the late ’90s with distorted vocals as the cherry precariously perched on top, Equitant (luckily!) sounds nothing like this and missed the bad trance boat by a mile. Instead, Equitant stays relevant by connecting to more underground electro, EBM, and dark techno. Equitant does what it does well like a finely crafted machine that has become perfected by innovation within the structure rather than frivolous trending and prototypical failures.

Body Vehement would best be described as existing in the space between heavy synthesizer based ’80s EBM like early Frontline Assembly (think bass and synth on Corrosion era FLA) meets Terence Fixmer or David Carretta’s banging dark techno that sounds equally at home on a white smoke machined EBM night as it would in a intense techno set. This heavily synthesized sound is then illuminated by guest vocals by Lea X, Bastian, Illumine Concrete and Yasmin Gate (Ex-Dirty Princess for which Equitant in July 2009 produced her debut track called “You Know What I Want” for David Carretta’s Space Factory Records, along with other collaborators: T Raumschmiere, Ikki, Douglas McCarthy, Migue Garcia and Petra Flur). As an extra bonus, the Body Vehement Remixes will be out in October 2012 on Black Montanas with remixes by David Carretta & Workerpoor, Yan Wagner, People Theatre, Adriano Canzian, Illumine Concrete, Romain Frequency, Strange Connection, Ba, Indira Paganotto, Dylan McBride, Fabio Scognamiglio, Tkuz, Jordan Passmore, Daniel Olarte, Elite!, Lia Organa, Skinovthenight, Ivan Overdriver, Bhasmantam Macumba, Cole Black and Equitant himself. Review by: Mike Textbeak Source: Mishka Bloglin

Equitant - Body Vehement by Equitant