Acting as complement and remix/dub disc for
Mark Stewart
's first release in 2012,
The Politics of Envy
,
Exorcism of Envy
allows
Stewart
and a wide variety of collaborators and inspirations, via reworkings of their appearances on the original, a little more room to explore his 21st century take on electronic echo and aggression. By default it's pretty much a dub mix of the original album more than anything else, with
's serenely voiced delivery chopped up or looped through songs like "Method to the Madness Dub," but with enough twists to make it very much its own beast.
Factory Floor
turn up on a few tracks, including the nervous but clean shudder of "Sexorcist," with
Keith Levene
adding his own spindly sharp guitar (in full echo mode), and the more threatening "Want Version."
Levene
also takes a turn on "Letter (Full of Tears)," revamping the cover of
David Bowie
's "Letter to Hermoine" from the original album into something far more unsettled. Meanwhile, "Mirror Wars" brings in
Lee "Scratch" Perry
and
Xacute
, while
Daddy G
of
Massive Attack
does a nicely whispery part on "Apocalypse Dub." Perhaps what's most interesting about the album in the end is how something that theoretically consists of dated approaches in its bubbling mix of electro-rock and '70s dub and more seems to suit 2012 just fine, a sleek collage no more out of place than any other number of similarly backward-glancing efforts around the globe. If anything, it makes the appearance of
Primal Scream
on "Attack Dogs" all that more appropriate, since there's more than a kissing-cousin feel to both
Vanishing Point
XTRMNTR
at play. Meanwhile, putting both
Kenneth Anger
Richard Hell
on a track -- the closing "Killswitch," a rework of the original album opener "Vanity Kills" -- is the kind of idea that just plain works, and more so when there's a snippet of
Erik Satie
to boot. ~ Ned Raggett