Human Pet

Elon Katz (White Car, Streetwalker) aligns perfectly with Diagonal in a prickling debut vocal release, The Human Pet; containing an intensely personal, puckered perspective on electronic dance music and experimental pop. Structured around a schizoid yet coherent juncture of EBM, IDM, curdled rock music and art school techno-pop, The Human Pet is riddled with idiosyncratic notions on "cryptic topics like rebirth, nullification in stream speed adaptivity, dependence and wealth inequality" to portray a unique intellect and sonic vocabulary operating at the crux of his expressive powers. The project began circa 2012, around the time of Katz's relocation from L.A. to art school in Chicago, and cocks a canny snook, both through candid lyrics and obsessive edits, back towards the megatropolis where he was born and spent much of his youth. It can therefore be considered an attempt to better understand himself in relief of big city manias by channeling and parsing his own stubborn outsider personality from the madness. It feels like a concise dissection of Chicago's industrial history and Californian digital psychedelia; probing at their twisted, fluoro-guts with the inquisitive nature of a mad scientist or psycho-analyst between the yelping, warped and hyper-piquant yacht boogie of "The Rhino Powder of New Sensitivity" and a heavily affected dislocation of harmonized pop hooks and whirring body mechanics in "Clean Crash". It all occupies a strange perch between introspective and exuberant, veering from mid-'90s Aphex Twin-like pop reflection in "You Are Alone", to signature Diagonal tackle in the gas-chugging EBM-pop force of "The Human Pet", whereas unarmed twists into fractal phantasies, all of which maintain a thread of logic that belies the record's period of refinement and distillation. There can be little doubt that this is one of the most complex, rigorous and distinctive in Diagonal's catalogue. Closer attention is required. File amid records by Luc Van Acker, Aphex Twin, Savant, Powell. Mastered and cut by Matt Colton. Artwork by Guy Featherstone. Edition of 500.