form: press

FORM
SYMBIOSIS (E/X)
rating: 4
"form...skillfully balances and occasionally wobbles between dark tech, hard trance, and drum & bass on the post-industrial techno Symbiosis. With smattering snares, spitfire rhythms, and spurting bass, the ten lengthy tracks of Symbiosis have enough electro industrial flavor to intelligently stomp your boots, as well as an abundance of scorching techno to shake it on the dancefloor. Strangely enough, form doesn’t rely on a strict shape or single genre of electronic music, and while the less-is-more moments of Symbiosis may offer the more interesting aspects, the more-is-more instrumentation is often quite infectious.
5 = “burn”
4 = “fire”
3 = “flame”
2 = “smoke”
1 = “out”

Having seen relative success on the mp3 circut, these electronic gurus have set our to dominate the world's CD players with this across the board first release. The opening cut starts off like a typical trance drenched outing but changes up early on to be a big beat extravaganze kinda of in the vein of some Underworld stuff I've heard. "Contagent" then takes the listener off to more straight beat territority with break interludes. Again, heavy on the keyboards and 303 squishies. That leads into a very syncopated downtempo number and then a frentic, scattered beat episode called "Symbiotic". "Carbon Base (be1 edit) is one of my personal favs with big shuffeling breaks and all manner of spaceship noises leading up to a techno'd out breakbeat in the style of stuff that was comin' round in 1994 (almost Eat Static-esk). The album continues in this vein, drawing influences from multiple genres. Worth checking out if you're into trance/techno breaks.

"..And always you
hear the throbbing drums filling the empty space inside yourself, making you
forget things that clutter your mind, making your body sway to their
rhythm." - Robbie Robertson

Robertson's quote may be the closest it comes to adequately describing the
feeling of what it's like to be surrounded on a dance floor with hundreds of
other people pulsing to the sounds of DJs, electronic artists or
turntablists. And that's exactly the feeling you can recreate by listening
to Symbiosis, the newest release from electronic artists Form...

Dark techno is it's honest form. Symbiosis flows together like a party of relaxed sounds and dance floor inspired beats. (Form) ...continues further from the last album Dymaxion and more into the dark sound of underground rave music, full of wabbles and keys and straight forward rhythms. 4 on the floor dancing robots will be shaking their metal booties harder than Daft Punk, pushing Form to the fore front where hopefully they will stay for a good time to come.