Tracks

Document 3: "End It"

(2012)

By George Bass | 7 June 2012

“Revolutionary” is a word overused in marketing, designed to sell you rival brands of hair conditioner. How much revolutionary stuff have you bought that’s actually ignited cities, or packed the streets full of placards and torches? It’s the same with music: a lot of ground-breaking artists often break less ground than than a blunt-beaked hen. But not Document 3, the man who presumably forgot to save two previous versions of himself. Deep in a bunker in the alleyways of Norwich, Document 3 produces cutting-edge electronica, his claim to revolution certified by history—until machinery got invented, his town was the most populated corner of England.

Unfortunately that’s where the revolution stops. Dangling his feet either side of the electronica fence, Document 3’s music is well-worn, but still strangely comfortable; the Hush Puppy of art installation music. Groaning pads and a voice on a fax machine place “End It” in familiar territory—the kind of place a fallen cop goes to after his family’s been massacred and he needs to be alone, and get rained on. A guitar crashes a long way off in the distance but then rushes suddenly close, building to the kind of speaker-bursting riff a football team could walk out to. Document’s distorted drum programs ride his instruments, and piece together a sparky, carousing instrumental. It may not exactly be the next Arab Spring but a future zombie film has its titles.