HEADSCAN SHAPER AND MECHANIST ALBUM ARTOFFACT RELEASE: NOVEMBER, 2001 REVIEW: JANUARY 3, 2002

Many great electronic bands hails from Canada, such as Skinny Puppy, Front Line Assembly and Numb. Here comes another one called Headscan, consisting of two guys from Montreal called Claude Charnier and Christian Pomerleau. Together they have previously played in a project called Insurgent where they explored the realm of mixing both electronic and acoustic sounds. Now they have decided to make entirely electronic music, a notion that resulted in this album.
Dark moods, electronic voices, bubbling basses and relentless beats describes this venture pretty well. It's very suggestive, and reminiscent of darker trance music (especially "Magnetic Immunity" which is all-out trance euphoria), but with EBM elements. Some tracks sound a bit like Funker Vogt, and others remind me of Haujobb. The overall feeling is that of a high-tech future where something has gone horribly wrong, a very common theme in this kind of music, that's for sure. But like their fellow countrymen Headscan succeed in getting the feeling across. Most of the vocals are synthetic, but when they are natural they sound pretty neat, somewhat like Daniel Myer - on a good day that is.
This is the debut album, following an EP called "High Orbit Pioneers", and it is a very promising start. If Headscan would just weed out the more boring tracks next time, they could create a big name for themselves.

JOHAN CARLSSON