UK’s Kontakte has announced the release of its third album, These Machines. Check out the PR below, we’ll post a track when it becomes available.

“I want to be a machine,” said Andy Warhol.

And so do I dear Drella, so do I, if the music the machines listen to is as exhilarating as These Machines, the third full length offering from London-based Kontakte.

The light, pastoral vibe that consumed much of the bands previous output (2008’s Soundtracks To Lost Road Movies and 2011’s We Move Through Negative Spaces) has given way to a sound that is, on balance, definitely harder edged and more abrasive.

The opening track sums up this transformation perfectly. A gentle, extended, desert-like intro combining slide guitar and incessant drones is suddenly and violently transformed into a riffing, pounding rock beast augmented by a human drummer, a first for this usually machine-indebted band. The onslaught continues towards its inevitable, chaotic climax and then… silence.

Elsewhere Sci-Fi Rising is jaunty and exuberant; Immortal Engines is an instrumental ballad that morphs into a dancefloor nightmare; Fear of Music is a slab of concrete delivered to the face; Alpha Beta Gamma Delta is remarkable, surely the chirpiest, bounciest music ever recorded by Kontakte, and a remix away from a being a huge crossover hit.

But what has prompted this change of musical direction? 

Birth, bereavement, marriage and a painful encounter with ear surgery have all in part forced its members into finding a true path to vent their musical energies. A changing of the times perhaps, or a re-calibration of the core of Kontakte’s heartbeat. All of these things and simply none: Kontakte are in their element with this record.

These Machines is packed full of ideas, both exciting and challenging and more importantly fresh to the Kontakte sound palette. They have found a way to keep things close to their hearts and their original manifesto, yet allow themselves to experiment and push some perhaps tired musical notions aside, while ushering in new, unexpected sounds. Each track is set free to find its own natural conclusion, whether it disappears into the ether or in some cases is bludgeoned to a finish – this is relentless, this is steely eyed determination, all of it delivered in a pedal-to-the-metal machine-like manner.

Prepare for the rise of These Machines.