“The title refers to fond memories of my roots in making electronic music and the excitement and passion I had for these sounds that were new at the time,” Fulber says. “That style is embedded in me. Going back to them allowed me to make music on impulse, and many of the instrumentals were created from studio jams. The vocalists are new artists who are inspired by a similar era.”
“The Abyss” serves as a visceral opening statement for Memory Impulse Autonomy, plunging listeners into Fulber’s raw sonic architecture with unflinching intent. Featuring the unmistakable vocals of Qual (William Maybelline), the track fuses punishing industrial techno with classic EBM tropes—grinding basslines, scorched synths, and percussive precision that nods to Fulber’s formative influences. Beneath its aggressive exterior lies a pulsing nostalgia: a haunted reflection of early DIY electronics repurposed for the now. Qual’s deadpan, almost ritualistic delivery intensifies the track’s sense of claustrophobic urgency, pulling the listener deeper into Fulber’s constructed void. “The Abyss” is not just a song—it’s a descent, a statement of intent, and a bridge between eras of electronic defiance.
Fêted electronic artist Rhys Fulber takes you further back and forward with his first solo release for Artoffact, Memory Impulse Autonomy. The album harks back to the music that Fulber made in his youth inspired by bands such as Cabaret Voltaire, Portion Control and fellow Vancouverites Skinny Puppy but blends those influences with the brutalist rhythms and harsh industrial techno that he has been pioneering in recent years. Thematically, the record explores his joy of creating music for the first time in the Eighties using primitive equipment with a freedom of expression driven only by his imagination.
While there are distinct nods to the past in the gnarly Richard H Kirk-esque cut ups of All Of You Go To Heaven and Baaderzeit’s eerie Tangerine Dream-like sequences, the album is also very much a modernist collaborative effort, utilising voices from the forefront of contemporary electronic music including William Maybelline (Qual/Lebanon Hanover), Years of Denial’s Barkosina and Hamburg-based aufnahme+wiedergabe recording artist Konstantin Unwohl.
Darkwave and EBM artist Qual guests on two tracks, lending his trademark lugubrious vocals and bleakly humorous lyrics to the dark techno of opening track and first single “The Abyss” and the strident rhythmic “Control.” Suicide disco icon Barkosina takes a moment to shine amid the sweeping synth lines of “Only Love Will Save You,” a moodily atmospheric club banger with timely lyrics while Unwohl, a genre-bending artist with a growing cult following and a series of groundbreaking releases, delivers a sonorous vocodered turn on melancholic electro-ballad “Nichts Dafür Getan,” a slow burning epic with lyrics that Unwohl originally wrote for a punk song. Elsewhere, the chugging dancefloor friendly “Exlavier” and the titanic beats of “New Despotism” contrast with the pretty interlocking textures of “The Elder” and the gently pulsing ambient closer “Further Back And Forward.”
The distinctive cover art comes courtesy of legendary graphic designer Steven R Gilmore, perhaps best known for his decades-long relationship with Skinny Puppy and his work for Vancouver-based label Nettwerk for whom he provided eye-catching sleeves for A Perfect Circle, Moev, Severed Heads, Chris & Cosey and many others.
’The concept for the album is not a total replication of the past, except in the case of the artwork, which recalls that era at its peak.” says Fulber
Fulber is a longtime member of Canadian industrial outfit Front Line Assembly and ambient pop duo Delerium (both with Bill Leeb), and solo project Conjure One. As a producer, he has worked with artists as varied as Fear Factory, Paradise Lost, Sinead O’Connor, Sarah McLachlan, and Youth Code. Canadian-born Rhys Fulber is widely known in the industrial and electronic music circles for his EBM trailblazing with Front Line Assembly, chart topping with Delerium, and dramatic melodies with Conjure One. Additionally holding a grey cardinal status in metal and a variety of other genres, Fulber is a respected producer whose discography and work speaks for itself. Rhys Fulber now opens a new chapter, sculpting both intricate and hard hitting music best described as “Future EBM” releasing on Sonic Groove, aufnahme+wiedergabe and his own imprint FR Recordings.
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