The Artist/Album: Black Rain, Now I’m Just a Number: Soundtracks 1994-95 (Blackest Ever Black, 2012)
Our Review: Anyone who’s blown through stacks of bleak sci-fi novels or watched Blade Runner’s director’s cut repeatedly will feel right at home amongst the soot-sheathed samples and chilly film cues that’re spread across Black Rain’s Now I’m Just a Number collection. Led by Stuart Argabright of the short-lived Lower East Side band Ike Yard and his Death Comet Crew collaborator Shinichi Shimokawa, the long-forgotten group spent the mid ’90s writing cold-pressed compositions for two William Gibson projects: an audiobook version of Neuromancer and the godawful film adaptation of Johnny Mnemonic. The latter never actually made it to the silver screen, so it’s comforting to see Blackest Ever Black save Black Rain’s work from the realm of pure obscurity–Keanu-free and as future-forward as ever, fitting right in with the Sandwell District school of rain-slicked techno and grayscale grooves. Dance music for the undead, or at the very least, Philip K. Dick fans.
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