Black Manual - Mordendo Remixed [Portals Editions 005]

It's been nearly three years since Black Manual released their highly praised album "Mordendo" on Brigade Kommerz and finally the project lead by Jan St. Werner is back with a new sign of life, a 12" release catering a quadruple pack of remixes put on the circuit via Portals Editions these days. Opening the sequence of remixes is William Bennett a.k.a Cut Hands who's fusing polyrhythmic tribalisms with intense, blurred out and threatening atmospheres of apocalyptic quality whilst the 'Bleed Turquoise Remix' explores the vantablack vaults of Dark Ambient in which echoes of ancient cult drummings and chants slowly trail off until the faraway sun rises and its flickering, distorted rays break through a leaden curtain of ever moving, sulfurous clouds. On the flip we've got the 'Format01 Remix' which, not only for being the most dancefloor friendly cut on this 12", brings a lot of voodoo - or better: candomble - fire to the advanced dancefloors of the globe not necessarily relying on a straight 4/4 bassdrum foundation for maximum excess and a killer Tribal workout before the 'KETEV Remix' evolves into a unhastily moving, yet merciless and rattling suction partly evoking memories of freight cars in super slow motion whilst layers of Ambient beauty provide a nice organic counterpart to the inherent darkness the tunes starts of off. Interesting stuff although the original album still wins for a reason.