Speeding in fast from deep space the meteoroid continued to accelerate exponentially, millions of years of inward trajectory steadily building into a crescendo of unbridled forward momentum. Perpetually arcing aeon long revolutions around the dense star pulsing achromatically away across the vastness of space had fractured the object's internal structures, constantly interacting constituent elements melting and fusing to creating Gaussian blurs of brilliant miasma. Beneath the chimeric exterior lay decaying elements, iron, rock, dust and space-ice held together only by constant forward momentum surging ever headlong into total irradiated oblivion. Consistently pulsing the collapsed star screamed radiation at intervals of precise atomic calculation. A single wailing source of energy set forever lonely against the black emptiness of space to be joined in momentary fiery abandon by a streaking missile of galactic debris. Movement, density, deep space and the steady siren call of pulsing radiation agglomerating into a tragically beautiful opera of rhythmic oblivion.
Civil Duty consists of Beau Wanzer and Shawn O'Sullivan, two weirdo gear heads from Stateside who met through NYC's underground party scene towards the end of the first decade of the twenty first century. Wanzer probably requires little introduction with acclaimed releases on Russian Torrent Versions and L.I.E.S. and a self-released album delivered toward the end of last year, further quality work exists under various monikers including 'Mutant Beat Dance' with Traxx. O'Sullivan may be slightly more obscure for some, but this won't last for long: check the shit kickingly magnificent E.P. 'Non Nocere' on Avian as '400PPM', his two releases as 'Vapauteen' on L.I.E.S. or the variety of boundary forcing work littered decorously across a variety of labels and projects to see why. Civil Duty's eponymous album may at first appear somewhat 'big-room' when compared to Wanzer and O'Sullivan's solo work, but this is in line with the aesthetics of Anthony Parasol's The Corner label. Yet even if this is big room techno, delve a little deeper and you find its big room techno that carries a couple of black eyes, bruised ribs and a bloody split lip. Civil Duty: disorientatingly deep yet forcefully assertive techno incorporating rolling tribal rhythms, industrial inflections and minimal wave accoutrements: Regis after a line or two of ketamine, Vatican Shadow on a mildly gabba tip or perhaps even, toward the record's outermost extremities, an anaesthetised Shackleton bound up in a quantized straightjacket and ordered to behave himself with the aid of a rusting iron bar. Certainly no car crash of an album, but one of the finest techno long players of the year to date.