Listening to this EP is like being run over by a goddamn tank. Ren Schofield was one of the first harsh noise artists to take his cacophony to the dance floor and–along with Pete Swanson–he remains one of the best.  In fact, this, his first release for Mute's experimental music imprint, might be one of the finest Container releases to date.  While no dramatic evolution has taken place, aside from slightly more simple and accessible grooves, Adhesive is a perfectly distilled dose of relentless, pummeling noise-damaged techno from start to finish.
The opening two pieces strip the Container aesthetic down to its bare essence and work beautifully for it.  "Glaze" kicks things off with groove that sounds like it was unexpectedly cribbed from Neu!, but Schofield amps up the intensity with a thick, loud one-note bass line and some incremental additions to the pulsing beat.  I cannot point to any specific aspect that stands out as particularly brilliant or amazing, but it is extremely effective nonetheless, simply because an obsessively insistent and propulsive groove being strafed with electronic noise is an inherently wonderful thing.  I suppose it is a very meat-and-potatoes approach, but it definitely works.  In fact, the second song "Slush" is even better, emerging from a cacophonous industrial-noise opening to lock into a rumbling disco groove (and, of course, a similar firestorm of grinding, stuttering noise chaos).
The EP's second half is a bit more varied and adventurous, but occasionally less bludgeoning as a result.  "Complex" is probably the weakest track, though it reprises the "hyper-muscular krautrock pastiche" of "Glaze."  The problem is that it errs on the side of being too "rock" and is not quite wild enough to make it work.  It would have made a very cool breakdown or bridge in an actual, complete song of some kind, but it is not particularly compelling as a stand-alone, contextless vamp.  Much more exciting is the closing title track, which is absolutely pummeling and menacingly mechanized-sounding.  Also, "Adhesive" is on a completely different level than the rest of the album in regards to songcraft, as Ren throws in quite a few satisfying dynamic variations (stops and starts, breakdowns, etc.) and even attempts a hook of sorts with a loop of swooping dissonance.
Unfortunately, "Adhesive" inadvertently calls attention to the flaws of the other pieces, as Ren has a definite tendency to lock into a looping groove and ride it out for the entire duration of a song.  Also, his songs often tend to just endlessly build in density rather than offering multiple plateaus of tension and release–there is much room for improvement.  That said, Adhesive is so brief and so bludgeoning that Schofield's compositional deficiencies wind up being almost totally insignificant.  And Ren's prodigious talents as a producer render them even more so–these songs all invariably sound crushing.
Adhesive is a visceral, unrelenting bulldozer of a release. The details and nuances are ultimately fairly irrelevant, as this EP starts like an out-of-control train and ends before I have much time to think anything much deeper than "woah- that was heavy."
 
 
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