Simon Carter – The Bitches Potion

Simon Carter and Fabsi’s original collaboration resulted in them releasing the EP “Beautiful Destruction”. The potential the two producers showed within the single is impressive to say the very least; Fabsi’s vocals paired with Simon Carter’s top-notch hard dance tracks. While promising, the EP contained the same track remixed eleven times by Simon Carter himself. Because of that I found myself listening to a couple of the remixes but never embracing all the tracks; in fact, I don’t think I’ve ever made it through the entire EP. However, never two to disappoint, Simon Carter and Fabsi have returned with a brand-new album filled with limitless talent and fresh industrial-techno beats on “The Bitches Potion”. It is a massive release containing eleven original tracks and a further seven remixes – but not once did I bore of it, nor did I wish to something else. Instead, I sat at my office desk with my studio headphones planted to my ears and bobbed to the beat. 

This will not be a song-by-song digest, unfortunately. With instrumental industrial-techno, I often find myself repeating phrases and the like that can be applied to the entirety of the album. Instead, this will be a digest of the album as a whole with my favorite tracks picked from the bunch, also with my least favorite. To start off, I’d like to congratulate Simon Carter and Fabsi for making sure the music on “The Bitches Potion” is constantly moving and never gets stale. Take ‘Hex Hex (Wir Sind Die Hexen)’ as an example. The first twenty-nine seconds or so is nothing more than just a standard dribble of bass with a very faint and eerie backing ambiance. Once the thirty-second mark hits, the bass almost doubles and I’m brought into a new realm. Clashes heard off in the distance work their way in as samples, and not a half-minute later do I hear the rapping of light drum’n’bass mechanics and static noise as texture. Around the one-minute and forty-three second mark, Fabsi’s spoken word vocals come in and perfectly decorate the song. Once her line ends, we’re thrown back into the industrial-techno beat with synth blasts. Now, that’s only the first two-minutes of a seven-minute and eight-second track. Should I go on, I would be writing a novel about all the twists, turns, breakdowns, and other electronic samples found within. 

 

I am a huge fan of ‘Nanobots (Are You My Mummy-)’. I found that Simon Carter really pushed the envelope into experimenting with various textures and samples. The constant voice asking, “Are you my mummy?” lends a certain horror creed to the single while the metallic elements and other odd, computer-like samples give the song a bit of a science fiction nod. ‘We Are The Witches’ is another song I fell in love with on repeated listens. One of the more unique tracks on the album, ‘We Are The Witches’ takes a chill approach to the industrial-techno format while adding in a few points of lo-fi synths. Generally, it’s a feel-good song on an album filled with oppressive and dark electronics – fun oppressive, dark electronics, but grim nonetheless. Everyone will have to pick and choose their own favorites, but these are mine and I stand by them till death. 

Where I find complaint on the album is absolutely minor, but still worth mentioning. And I emphasize that these complaints are minor as they hardly effected the otherwise phenomenal score. The first is one of personal taste; after hearing the “Beautiful Suicide” EP and trying to swallow all the remixes on that EP, I was kind of sick of hearing any version of the song. Seeing a twelfth mix of the song on “The Bitches Potion” left a sour taste in my mouth. I’m sure that anyone who hasn’t heard the song is going to absolutely love it. But I grumped about it. I also wasn’t as fond of ‘Get Out Of Here’ and ‘The Wiccan Dance’ as much as the other tracks, primarily due to their lack of not necessarily innovation, but randomness. The amount of talent, diversity, and electronic wizardry Carter possesses on the other tracks is impressive to say the very least. But these two songs sound rather tame. Well mixed and mastered, but tame nonetheless. 

The remix section is an entirely new beast to get through considering the quality of remixers on board. Again, I won’t be covering them all, but I will point out my favorites. It’s starts off banging with a remix from Teknovore, who I’ve been paying very close attention to since their inauguration. I feel as if Teknovore takes the original formula and adds in an extra industrial punch, making the track dive into crunchier and dirtier territory. Matt Hart takes the chill and ambient rhythms from ‘We Are The Witches’ and transforms it into an upbeat club track. Something that I didn’t think could work, but obviously he proved me wrong. In classic Ruinizer format, the wicked producer takes ‘Pink Queen’ and transforms it into this dirty, almost cyberpunk-like track. Much like Matt Hart, what Ruinzer was able to accomplish with this single is outstanding and unexpected. Kudos to the rest of the remixers as well, including Moaan Exis, SD-KRTR, Humans Can’t Reboot, and Narconic. 

Simon Carter and Fabsi have taken on a tremendous task with “The Bitches Potion”. Creating eleven tracks of primarily instrumental industrial-techno tracks, each with a length of five minutes or more, is deemed an impossible task by some. It’s rounded out by an amazing remix section filled with mixes that often do not sound like the original in any way, shape, or form, aside from being a dancey industrial track. Sure, I have my minor complaints about the album, but it’s nothing that makes me want to never listen to it ever again. In fact, I do want to listen to this again; it’s going to have a permanent place in my rotation for a long time and, possibly, forever. Eight out of ten.