I would guess it is quite irrelevant what one uses. More relevant what is achieved? Lack of computer doesn't mean that things couldn't sound like it.
A lot of gadgets, really are just "computers" of some sort. It's not tubes and wires, amplifiers and magnetic tapes, but simply ones and zero's all the way. I don't object to it. Pharmakon sounds most often very clean. I assume this is the intention and not only result of gear what is used.
Talking about non-clean sounding stuff...
EROS 4x compilation tape
A Dear Girl Called Wendy
3 years old release already?! Fuck! Box barely takes advantage of its size. Thick vinyl case with four tapes. So, 4xC-30. It's good length theoretically. But seems kind of waste to have 2 hours of music spread over so many cassettes. And instead of large inserts or booklet, there are tiny tape size one sided cards which hold barely any information. Just band name and track title. This could have been printed in body-prints of tape. Artwork also barely interesting. But what counts, is of course interesting line-up. Each tape has one country. Tongue Knax / Mordant Karma from japan offers harsh noise in highly textured and fast paced, but "one idea" type of form. Very good, nevertheless! Blodvite / Arv & Miljö, well, lets say SWEDISH TAPE NOISE! Isn't it still better than talk about hipsters, heh.. Broken sounding electronics, magnetic tape artifacts, well composed material what has start and finnish. Arv & Miljö also offer 3 pieces which all are distinctively different. Good stuff. Endless Sea / Elisha Morningstar are much less interesting here. ES does pretty decent simple live-on-tape harsh noise. Skin Graft / Developer shows that despite these americans are generally pretty good, they are not on same level as the best of the artists on this compilation. I like Developers side more than many of his other stuff, though. It at least maintains the strength through entire side!
V/A TAPE WORKS IV tape
Hästen & Korset
Ochu, Mikkel Rorbo, Martin Herterich, Ornaments and more. Lots of swedish tape noise, hehe, but I assume also guys from other countries.. Some of material perhaps would fall under term music! There is often very tranquil and relaxin feel on rugged reel-to-reel loops and tape manipulations consisting slow moving piano or violin pieces. Always elements of manually crafted noise. This could be perhaps among best parts of the series?
V/A DET TOTALA RAGGARKRIGET tape
Chefsideologens Bolag
One side is "regular". Alfarmania does what he does well. You'll be floored by howling shouts over rugged industrial-waste. Broken Lights is one of those low-profile names what delivered great tapes, but pretty much impossible to get anywhere?! Less aggressive, but always very neat loops and sounds. Händer Som Vårdar does good job opening the way for Treriksröset giving the expected full on harsh blast. Well planned & arrange order of material. B-side is something, what could be perhaps assumed to be audio track of documentary about raggars driven through moderate modulation with.. Korg MS20? Possibly. Perhaps for people outside nordic countries, subculture of raggars (raggare in sweden, raggari in finland) could be mystery? In short, it would be guys with strong interest in old american cars, but not limited to 50's clothing aesthetics or rockabilly music or such. More related to cruising with cars and behaving violent and antisocial, often against punks, hippies and immigrants. American rebel flags, small town totale krieget against prevailing system and its watchdogs by seeking the mythical FTW rebel spirit. Fine with me! Perhaps B-side opens best for those who understand the swedish dialogue. I'm not that good in Swedish, unfortunately.
ABSCHEU "Breviary of Chaos" tape
Unrest
Judging based on online sample, I didn't expect this being THIS good. Of course one could conclude that recent years of Unrest has been pretty much solid release one after another. You could lump this together with AM NOT, KEVLAR, IFOTS and rest of heavy electronics thugs of Unrest, but it's not the same. What is the same, is Unrest aesthetics on graphics and clearly belonging to style, but Abscheu in my brain, goes somewhere between old Operation Cleansweep and new Shift! It has the heavy electronic foundation filled with vocals and samples and proper songs (in understanding of "germanic power electronics"), but there is more force and more distorted saturation than with 90's sound. That what brings the Shift in my mind. My assumption is, that this will be soon as wanted as sold out Kevlar tapes, so if you want proper heavy electronics, I'd say it probably benefits from being on tape instead of CD, so better hurry...
FABBRICO INCUBO "KARKASS OPERATOR" tape
Steel Sadist Rebirth
One of the many Ryan Oppermann projects. Somewhere between lethal dark ambient and death industrial, as many of his projects seem to be? It's sort of "faceless", that relies a lot on what I'd assume to be simply synth and echo, but nevertheless, in its genre its very good stuff! I'd actually prefer this over many bigger names and even C-90 tape didn't seem exaggeration in length! Perhaps availability of this Trash Ritual sub-label hasn't been too good, but if you can see it somewhere, worth to grab.
WERTHAM / UNCODIFIED "Vindicta II" CD
Old Europe Cafe
2014 recordings. Heavy electronics Italia. Often very droning and solid tone on the back and with all sorts of material on the top. This could require deeper analysis to full appreciate subtle variation between other Wertham and Uncodified materials. For reason or another, I like this release more than some of either ones other works. Can't explain why. Fairly clean and crystallic synth elements are quite simple, but there is also levels beyond the obvious. If one hasn't checked out these projects, it's good to start somewhere, and why not this?
