JK Flesh – Suicide Estate 2LP Hospital Productions

First ever vinyl edition of Justin Broadrick‘s crushing industrial turns as JK Flesh for Hospital Productions, combining the Suicide Estate and Antibiotic Armageddon releases for a greyscale spectrum of brutalist techno, abyssal acid dub, tramadol tribalism, and noxious noise textures that’s highly recommended if you’re into Regis, Birmingham at night, Kareem… It’s an unflinchingly bleak representation of the world described in hard-edged techno and shot through with moments of affective, synthy pathos. In sonic and literal tone, the record forms a stark reflection on Justin K Broadrick Brummie stomping grounds, using demolished tower blocks as cues for some of the album’s most affective moments, such as the wrecking ball assault of “Bayley Tower (New Mix)”, the rubbled roulage of “Stoneycroft Tower”, or the ‘marish zumby techno lurch of “Bromford Bridge Estate”, and all in a way that surely dovetails with the perceptions of anyone who has lived in a built up British area, or anywhere else with lots of concrete and little sunlight. The other half of the tracks are taken from and titled in reference to Antibiotic Armageddon, the inevitable point when pill-gobbling citizens of the world are no longer protected against old viruses, and new ones. The tone of these cuts is understandably bleak as fuck, too. “Tamiflu” dry-wretches a windswept passage of bummed-out dub techno breaks, where “Squalene (New Mix)” glumly follows suit with the clammy synth malaise of “Ethylene Glycol” and the knee-buckled crawler “Thimerosal”, which sounds like one of his Godflesh tracks in the process of terrifying itself to death. Cut at Dubplates & Mastering, Berlin.