SECT7: Obsessiveness

Release year: 2023
Label: Zoharum

I know nothing about techno. That’s one of the genres I’ve never had much of an interest in or liked very much. This matters because that’s exactly what Polish Sect7 are: techno. But let’s not let that hinder us.

The way I see it, there really aren’t any shit music genres, there are just genres I haven’t found a way to “get.” Perhaps there is an exception, but that’s my rule of thumb. A good example is rap: as a kid, I never got it although a lot of my friends loved it. Then, I got a book from a friend, Grame Thomson’s I Shot A Man In Reno – a book about the history of murder and death in popular music – and it contextualized rap music in a way that helped me make inroads into it. And so, after a decade and a half of dismissing rap music, I finally “got” it… to the point of it being one of my favourite styles of music now.

In a way, Sect7’s style of techno works like that: it offers me an inroad. Whilst containing stuff I, the complete layman, consider to be trademarks of techno – a focus on fervous beats; sparse, even minimalist melodic elements; structurally built upon looping, repetitive elements – it’s also obviously one foot stooped in industrial music.

Techno and industrial combined obviously make one think of EBM, and absolutely: EBM fans will probably dig this. But there’s a deeper industrial element here as well, that’s harder to single out. In part, it’s in the cold, mechanical, industrialized style of the synths. In part it’s in the ample use of speech samples of a rather sinister and subversive nature. In part it’s in the visual aesthetics of the album, focusing on dark, abstract but vaguely unsettling imagery. And very much it’s in the whole all these things build: a sound that is not only rhythmically pulsating and danceable, but also gritty, dark and oppressive in a very classic industrial fashion.

In other words: think not of Ibiza or whatever, and plastic people in colourful clothes dancing happily, fuelled by recreational drugs. Think of an abandoned industrial complex turned into a rogue, makeshift club; think of dystopian cyberpunk aesthetics; think of dark shadows and blaring white strobo lights. An apocalypse without dancing is not one worth having – so people dance to Sect7.

I still don’t know anything about techno. But from the first minutes, I knew I liked Sect7. There’s just something about the pulsating bass synths, the steady beats, the weird speech samples, that appeals to me immensely. I guess it’s that aforementioned dark and gritty cyberpunk vibe.

It’s always fun to get my hands on new stuff by Zoharum. I certainly don’t like everything they release, but there’s always something surprising, something unexpected and something rewarding in there. An album like Obsessiveness offers an interesting way to challenge my tastes – and in this case, with overwhelming strength, I find my prejudices crushed. Obsessiveness rules.

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