reviews

The Jeopardy Maze - Rock Sound magazine - UK - 1999

"A violin caustically weaves it's way amongst a collection of analogue synths and organic beats on Attrition's best offering to date, an album as musically stylish as it's artwork suggests. The Jeopardy Maze is an almost perfect example of darkwave-ambient, a subtle and sinister tapestry of electro and classical elements with the occasional female gothic vocal progression strung across the top. Spine-tinglingly atmospheric but not an album to put on at parties, unless you want everyone to leave. This is a very personal listening experience, an isolation in sound and not something to be intruded on. Occasionally it displays too much of the bands industrial roots and some intrusive chanting noises, but otherwise this is essential listening. The perfect gothic antidote to the bloated fuzz of more recent triphop, The Jeopardy Maze is dark, sinister, and impeccably good."
Alex Whitehead

The Jeopardy Maze - London Vampyre Groups Chronicles. 1999

Already familiar with the dark artwork of american artist John Santerineross (his website holds such treats for you) I was immediately transfixed by the cover artwork for Attrition's number twelve and most recent album. An arresting visual that demands intense scrutiny is nothing less than i would expect to represent the electrical wizardry composer Martin Bowes, widely known for his industrial/gothic surreal ingenuity in creating nightmareish soundscapes that you want to delve into.Coming on like an orgy round Lucifer's dinner table, human limbs flung aside like gnawed upon scraps with the in-house bone tub thumping disco in the adjoinging room.
Waste not want indeed! With such a plethora of devilish charm concocting bad ass visions from the wine's vapours, the trip is hypnotically mesmerising. oh how the fallen angel learnt to party with the collective penance.
Are we always cursed to remember life's frail and succulent breast beaten tragedies that brought us to this plateau? or will death allow the skin shredding shrug of noxious memories?
Better ask attrition to put in a good word for you.
Sister Doom

INK magazine/USA. 1999

From the dance floor to the killing floor, from haunting gothic dreamscapes to virtual nightmares. the Jeopardy Maze proves that industrial aint dead yet. Working with Franck Dematteis, the violist from the Paris opera who collaborated with Attrition on the 1997 album Etude, and the gorgeous voice of Julia Waller, Martin Bowes adds his own electronics, samples, and obscure poetic lyrics to craft this fine demonstration of what happens when industrial dance meets classical meets dark ambient.

I never would have dreamed that viola could work with industrial (unless you were smashing it or something), but it does here, and damned well, adding a sometimes ethereal, sometimes demonic quality to the songs. "Dream time collector" is a good exemple, with fractured bits of electronics, distorted female vocals, and viola all pounding past your head at the breakneck speed of dream, like the old twilight zone images warping by, while Martin darkly intones rhymes that are all the more disturbing because they almost, but don't quite, make sense.

There's plenty of danceable material here too, like the beat-heavy "Waste not, want...more", and a strong dash of British humour, as in the "wah" synth version of "God save the Queen", dedicated to Wendy Carlos (of switched on Bach fame) that closes the album.

Judaskiss magazine. UK . 2009

Continuing their archival reissue series, we've now reached what is construed by many to be Attrition's finest moment; the remarkable The Jeopardy Maze. Originally released in 1998, The Jeopardy Maze captured the true essence of what Attrition were all about, presenting it with hugely impressive results during an album that contains a head-swirling myriad of genres, styles and ideas, that are all inextricably tied together with such skill that they intermingle and become entangled together. Throughout their long career, Attrition have bravely forged ahead with new ideas, expanding their sound into constantly evolving musical projections which touch upon a huge spectrum of genres. Whether it be densely layered dark ambient soundscapes, dark electronica, beat-driven dark dancefloor tunes, coldwave, dark EBM, neo-classical compositions or experimental pop, Martin Bowes has constantly strived to blur the boundaries between the styles of music that have found a home within Attrition's expansive canon of recordings. And with The Jeopardy Maze, he has extracted the pinnacle of each of these elements and skilfully interwoven them together to produce an album with a constantly evolving sound that is an absolute joy to behold.

I remember hearing this album on its original release and being wonderfully impressed with its wide-ranging sound and the atmospheres it emanated. One minute there's the pounding beats of ‘Waste Not, Want…More' with its interplay of brooding male and almost operatic female vocals that are framed by a haze of electronic wizardry, before you're thrown headlong into the opening segment of ‘Atomizer' with its haunting string instrumentations and hypnotic swirls of dark ambience framing echoes of an answer-phone message. It's tranquil, alluringly beautiful, and something that you become all too easily lost in if you close your eyes and let its atmospheric presence wash over you. However before you know it, there's an abrupt explosion of electronic beats that are this time more leftfield and are joined by electronic manipulations, violins and the ever-present juxtaposed male and female vocals. It catches you completely off-guard, but before you go arse over tit it pulls you back into place with a darkened charm that captures your interest brilliantly.

This interplay of styles and genres throughout the entirety of the album is one its strong points, along with the way Martin has composed each track so the kaleidoscope of sounds blur into one another. However, it has to be said that I feel this could be perhaps one of the band's downfalls, as those listeners who are exploring Attrition's music for the first time may well be put off initially by the seemingly constant evolution and expansion of sounds. Those who are willing to look a little deeper on initial inspection, or those who already know of Attrition's work of old, though, will no doubt revel in the music's complexities.

Of all the unexpected twists and turns through The Jeopardy Maze, perhaps the most unusual and bemusing is their instrumental rendition of ‘God Save The Queen' (yes, the proper version) which sounds as if it could have been pulled straight from the soundtrack of A Clockwork Orange with its 70s analogue synthesiser sound.

As with the other releases in their reissue series, ‘The Jeopardy Maze' is finished off with the inclusion of an additional track, which is the previously unreleased ‘Infant Joy', a dark piano and electronic composition. It's a beautiful way to draw a close to the album, and once again demonstrates the multifaceted musicianship of Martin and the band.
Listening to The Jeopardy Maze again after all this time, it still sounds brilliantly fresh and innovative, so it comes as no surprise to read that on its original release this album proved to be Attrition's largest-selling release to date.

A brilliant album from this criminally underrated band, and as such it's a compulsory purchase for those who have a love of gothic tinged dark electronic music with a sharp edge of originality.