Autogen's Mutagen might not be as black and blistering as 4iB's releases from UK power electronics duo Sutcliffe Jugend, or as ear-destroying as their harsh noise releases from K2 and Hiroshi Hasegawa, but I still dug this one a lot. I've never been shy about my love of certain dark strains of cold n' sinister electro and that classic Wax Trax industrial sound, even as unfashionable as it may be among "metal" circles; recent releases from the likes of Prostate and Chiildren suggest I'm not the only one interested in revisiting some of the more abrasive corners of this sound, either. The Latvian artist Autogen isn't particularly abrasive, but he does produce a severe strain of nocturnal electronica on his debut for Singapore power-electronics / noise / industrial label 4ib, one of the more interesting surprises that I encountered when picking up the label's current catalog of releases. The eight tracks that make up Mutagen move through a near lightless urban landscape, the sound comprised of shuffling breakbeats and fragile electronic pulses rolling out beneath the glow of dark neon and incandescent street lights; there's a definite performance art aspect to Autogen's activity, seen in the live footage of the group that has circulated online, where throbbing dark electro is performed in sparsely filled underground fetish clubs in Eastern Europe, the members of Autogen covering their faces in creepy sackcloth masks, their music playing out as the pulsating backdrop to surrealistic sex rituals and weird installations where hunks of meat swing lazily on thick metal chains, and bizarre simulated acts of cannibalism and autophagia on stage. That strange gore-stained performance art atmosphere is backed by the menacing electronic music of Mutagen, ranging from dancefloor-primed electronic throb to more abstract and nightmarish ambience, the jet-black electrocreep of "Therapist", the garbled clicks and glitches that infest the sinister synthpop of "Obsolete" and "Pungent". At the very end of the album, the final three tracks head into a much more atmospheric direction, the ominous 80's horror synth ambience of "Thou Shalt Not", "Freeze" and "In The Evening" all echoing with the minimal dark synthcreep of classic John Carpenter, Tangerine Dream and Giorgio Moroder film scores. Worth checking out for fans of Skinny Puppy, Twitch-era Ministry, and some of the more subdued sounds featured on the Ohm Resistance label. Beautifully packaged in a full color digipack enclosed in an embossed slipcase with black-on-black printing, each copy numbered in an edition of five hundred copies.