Cyberaktif

Founding Members: Bill Leeb, cEvin Key, Dwayne R. Goettel.
Line-up Past/Present: Blixa Bargeld, Amy Sinner.
Genre: Industrial.
Biography:
Cyberaktif is a one-time collaboration between Frontline Assembly’s Bill Leeb and Skinny Puppy’s cEvin Key and Dwayne R. Goettel. The project produced one alblum, two EPs, and a track features Blixa Bargeld of Einstürzende Neubauten.

According to cEvin Key, Cyberaktif is reminiscent of tape trading in the industrial music scene which the band members started off with. “Cyberaktif is…the experience of discovering the whole electronic genre”, said Key, “[it] is exploring the enthusiasm we once had for that genre.” Bill Leeb described their work as “rehashing old things”, but said, “it was different this time because we were a bit more established.”

Legend has it that Wax Trax! commissioned the Cyberaktif album to try and determine what might have happened musically had Bill Leeb remained in Skinny Puppy instead of leaving the band in the mid-eighties. Whether that oft-repeated tale is true or not, the album doesn’t really answer the question: for one thing Leeb’s replacement in Skinny Puppy (and arguably the catalyst for that band’s transformation into genre-defining post-industrial pioneers) Dwayne Goettel was present throughout the recording sessions for Tenebrae Vision, providing keys and sample manipulation. Secondly, Tenebrae Vision feels more like a fusion of what the artists involved were up to in their own projects at the time than it does some alternate history version of SP.

In practice the two flavors work reasonably well together without necessarily gelling entirely, or wholly committing to trippy experimentalism or full-on sequencer bending dancefloor assaults. That said, the middle ground between those extremes is explored in some notable ways, like on “Brain Dead Decision” where a mechanical double time bass groove is buffeted by complex delays and oddball blasts of noise, or “Acid Cripple” which echoes Skinny Puppy’s “Clease, Fold, Manipulate” era.Although “Nothing Stays” isthe record’s undoubted highlight.

Tenebrae Vision features samples from the films The Unholy, Videodrome, Dune, and Halloween III: Season of the Witch.

Albums:
• Tenebrae Vision (1991)

EPs:
• Nothing Stays (1990)
• Tempter (1990)

LINK:
Bandcamp: cyberaktif.bandcamp.com