STREICHER

Streicher is an important name in the pantheon of 90s cassette noise. Known for his idiosyncratic noise style, as well as the output of his Zero Cabal cassette label, Streicher’s sole member Ulex Xane is certainly a self-motivated individual. During the 1990s, Streicher released many cassettes under the Zero Cabal banner, and lately Mikko Aspa’s Industrial Recollections imprint has seen fit to reissue the material on the digital audio disc format. According to the sleeve, there is no mastering or any other sort of manipulation, but I suppose the volume of the dubbing to digital sound has somewhat of a factor in the final sound. The idea seems to be to try and stay as pure to the original cassette sound of the releases as possible.

 Along with containing two separate full cassette releases, this disc also seeks to compile the various compilation tracks that Xane recorded during the mid-to-late 1990s, spanning labels including Zero Cabal, Ant-Zen, and Warcom Media. The majority of the tracks use imagery and themes associated with Neo-Nazism, with Streicher also the first artist in the Power Electronics genre to directly associate himself with Nazi Skinhead culture. Far from espousing a political revolution however, the ideology of Streicher is based more around complete nihilism, with the Nazi political element and fascism coming to represent a cleansing force of nature. Although brutal and animalistic, the work of Streicher is strongly intellectual and shows the intentions of a sensitive artist with a very specific vision. Ulex Xane is the voice of a dissident culture that finds no meaning in the ways of the current era and seeks to find meaning in the strict nature of antiquity.