It’s time to talk about Van Boom‘s debut LP on Varg2TM‘s Cease 2 Exist imprint & remixes by Deena Abdulwahed, VTSS, E-Saggila, Slikback, estoc & more.
Firmly rooted in the Arab states along the Gulf Region, Van Boom is an outsider at home. With just two EPs having brought Van Boom’s productions within earshot of a wide, forward-thinking audience in the last few years, his debut album, ‘Prosthetics’, continues the acceleration with an uncompromising statement of intent from the Kuwait-based artist.
2023 has just started and we are already thinking of this release as one of the best of the year, can you imagine, the album was officially released in December of last year, but january 2023 saw an incomparable package of remixes coming out. That definitely putted even more this album on an indescribable level, featuring very original and quality music. Both bundles are already out via Cease 2 Exist in VInyl & All digital formats.
Highly recommended music, available in Vinyl. Full details below.
Order Vinyl. Bandcamp
With just two EPs having brought Van Boom’s productions within earshot of a wide, forward-thinking audience in the last few years, his debut album, ‘Prosthetics’, continues the acceleration with an uncompromising statement of intent from the Kuwait-based artist. Orbiting hyper-industrial dread yet threatening to freefall into a melancholic blackhole, ‘Prosthetics’ introduces the scarcely balanced tension at the core of his work with a wicked and combusting fascination.
Firmly rooted in the Arab states along the Gulf Region, Van Boom is an outsider at home. Inhibited by the obligation to limit self-expression and artistic activity due to the top-down restrictions local to the region, his work questions what is forbidden and what is binary in an uncompromising context. Despairing grievances demand abrasive sonics, and Van Boom does not shy from delivering near- noxious doses. Co-production comes from Whiterose on ‘XXX’ and ‘Agora’, who also features on a suite of remixes that accompany the album. Deena Abdulwahed, VTSS, E-Saggila, Slikback, and more provide further pieces of ‘Prosthetics’ in reworked form.
As a mangled mirror to the social and state forces with which he lives, Van Boom’s sharp and metamorphosing music cathartically seeks kinship through depersonalised ciphers born of necessity. The hammering distortion of ‘Prosthetics’ keeps up the turbulence, even when Van Boom relents. All the while, though, a self-reflective edge accompanies every extreme, which allies itself to the existential interrogation at the core of the work. With artistic expression ceaselessly observed from above in Kuwait, the raging compositions that comprise the album feel as terminally self-aware as they do frustrated by their circumstances. And as a rare voice from a burgeoning underground music scene, these transmissions are riddled with a complicated yearning that refracts the heady mix of cultural and theistic intensities at play.
Artist. Van Boom
Title. Prosthetics LP
Format: Vinyl LP / Digital
Label: CEASE 2 EXIST
Cat. No: C2E6
Release Date: December 9th, 2022
Tracklist.
- PROLOGUE
- TORN
- AGORA (ft. whiterose)
- METAL SURFACE
- XXX (ft. whiterose)
- CRUEL
- KAFIR
- MALEBOLGIA
Prosthetics Remixes EP
Format: Digital
Label: CEASE 2 EXIST
Cat. No: C2E6X
Release Date: January 11th, 2023
Tracklist.
- TORN (ENDGAME REMIX)
- AGORA (E-SAGGILA REMIX)
- AGORA (ESTOC REMIX)
- XXX (SORCERY REMIX)
- CRUEL (DEENA ABDULWAHED REMIX)
- KAFIR (WHITEROSE REMIX)
- KAFIR (VTSS REMIX)
- MALEBOLGA (SILKBACK REMIX)
Written & produced by Van Boom
Recorded in Kuwait (2020 – 2022)
Mastered by Nori Kin
Mixdown by Ytem & Van Boom
Artwork by Lecxi Doumer
Remixes by Deena Abdulwahed, E-Saggila, Estoc, ENDGAME, VTSS, Sorcery, Slikback, and whiterose.
Cat. No. C2E6 / C2E6X – All rights reserved
℗ & © CEASE 2 EXIST 2022
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