Fret – Over Depth (2017)

April 19, 2020

I was not familair with the Fret project until I stumbled upon this release, but hey, guess what – I now have even more Mick Harris stuff to go back through and listen to! What more could you possibly want? A quick note: Fret originally surfaced in the 90s but has gone largely unused until recently. This dropped in 2017, two years before the Scorn comeback record.

Nearly all of Mick’s projects draw parallels with Scorn, some more than others. Fret’s Over Depth however, is like big-beats-nasty-bass-era Scorn on steroids and acid at the same time (yeah, I actually just wrote that out, deal with it lol). This is Scorn dialed up to 11 on the paranoia-meter; spirit crushing bass and mind-melting drum beats pound you into the ground, turning your innards to a mush of gangrenous paste. Sounds good, right? Its not too dissimilar to some of the stuff Mr. Broderick has been doing with the JK Flesh project.

Truly, this record escalates quickly from “blimey, he’s going a bit hard by here!” to deep, ponderous introspective mind-wanderings about where techno ends and where industrial or even pure noise begins. Scorn has always muddied these worlds. Fret not only toes the line, it kicks sand (or coke dust) all over the line in disgust. Fucking brilliant.