The next release from fantastic, none-darker London label Blackest Ever Black (the clue’s in the title) is a vinyl issue of music by Black Rain from the mid-nineties, entitled Now I’m Just A Number: Soundtracks 1994-95.
Black Rain was a New York based project of Stuart Argabright (originally of post-punk band Ike Yard), which also included Death Comet Crew’s Shinichi Simokawa. Having started life as an industrial metal band (supporting GG Allin on his last ever New York show), their later music took a more stripped back, percussive electronic approach.
The LP gathers together lost soundtrack material recorded by Black Rain for Robert Longo’s Keanu Reaves-starring 1995 flick Johnny Mnemonic and for an audiobook edition of William Gibson’s Neuromancer. Its tracks were originally released in 1995 as a CD issue entitled 1.0, which then swiftly went out of print – this issue will be the first time they’ve been released on vinyl. The tracks on Now I’m Just A Number bear some striking aesthetic similarities to modern music from the likes of William Bennett’s Cut Hands project, Shackleton, Perc and Raime – evidence of how ahead of its time and influential Black Rain’s approach here was. All dank drizzle and sounds of the city’s seedy underbelly, they’re something like what Blade Runner might really have sounded like, were it stripped of the masking romance of Vangelis’ majestic soundtrack.
After an excellent year in 2011, this album and the upcoming Young Hunting EP make for an auspicious start to 2012 for Blackest Ever Black.
Now I’m Just A Number‘s tracklist runs as follows.
‘Lo Tek’
‘Night City. Tokyo’
‘Lo Tek Bridge’
‘Biotechno’
‘Lo Tek Bridge Two’
‘Now I’m Just A Number’
‘Lo Tek Musicm’
