Dirty Bird 13 - Girl With The Knife EP

Even though things have improved during the last few years and Synthematik has done a great job promoting Eastern European electro, I still feel it's being neglected by the Western European scene. Ukrainian dark electro duo Dirty Bird 13 is yet another evidence that it?s sure enough time to open your eyes and set your sight to the east.

'Girl With The Knife EP' is a pretty varied release, perhaps due to the vast amount of featuring other artists. The title track is a true dancefloor face slap and it has quite the Harsh feeling with a very South American sound to it with fast paced beats, but luckily enough, there's no overuse of vocal effects.

The second track "Every Planet We Reached Is Dead" is featured by Anagram to Anna that has a voice type and strength that otherwise we only would get in opera or even opera metal. Together with a pretty monotone, and almost electronic march paced beat, the focus stays on the vocals pushing them further, and in this case, it was the right thing to do.

The best track on the EP is the third track "No Longer" featuring Nyku Decode. This track is even more monotone, but where it lacks of different sounds it takes out in power, almost earth shattering and the raw voice of Dirty Bird 13 is perfect. But when you think you've figured it out, the cut it of with a softer chorus with female vocals from Nyku Decode, like the differences between war and the comfort of a warm bosom. Perfect.

"My Soil" featuring GNOME falls a bit short in the company of the first three tracks. It is not in any way a bad song; it simply gets to monotone without any vocals to keep it company, even though the melody is fine.

The last track is a Diversant:13 remix of Dirty Bird 13's title track of their first demo called "Ja Badu Zhit" (I will survive). I'm glad that Dirty Bird 13 has evolved since the demo, because even though it's a decent Harsh EBM band, it sounds pretty much like everything else that is coming out of the Harsh scene today. It's a nice touch to see where they are coming from, but still, feels out of place compared with the rest of the solid material.

You are able to download a free 192kbps version of the EP in our download section. I suggest you do. Apr 29 2011