- It would be an oversimplification to say the music James Donadio makes as Prostitutes is techno. This is especially true on the Ecstasy, Crashing Beats And Fantasy EP, his second release for Powell's adventurous Diagonal label. Donadio crafts a caustic sound like a punk veteran who found himself in possession of some hardware. These four productions have more in common with Suicide and Throbbing Gristle than Jeff Mills and Carl Craig; if Donadio had thrown a sassy vocal over the top of "Crawl In From Broadway," some might have even called it electroclash. None of which is meant to be disparaging, as some the best qualities of Donadio's latest EP come from the tension between what the music is presumably meant to be and what it actually is.
Minimal and single-minded, Ecstasy rarely wastes time getting to the meat of each track, save for the android death-march that is "Lovers Run Camp Africa." "Dollars To Deutschmarks" starts with ceaseless drum-machine hammering, and quickly layers on a grooveless bass synth and atonal guitar to fill out the rudimentary arrangement. The result is a kind of broken, mechanized funk tune that desperately wants to overpower the soundsystem of an illegal basement rave. Donadio achieves something similar on "Side Effects Of Living," in which he hijacks early electro and industrial sounds for a blast of claustrophobic proto-cyberpunk. Like the rest of Ecstasy, it's raw, stringent and primitive electronic music, at home in dive bars and dance clubs alike.
TracklistA1 Crawl In From Broadway
A2 Dollars To Deutschmarks
B1 Lovers Run Camp Africa
B2 Side Effects Of Living