Adjust the Terminology

Scattered Order’s first album in more than 10 years does little to enhance their post-punk legacy, writes SHAUN PRESCOTT.

[Historical image is withheld pending rights review.] Scattered Order is completely out of time. Listening to Adjust the Terminology, the outfit’s first record in more than 10 years, you begin to wonder why it exists. It follows a familiar template that abides a certain European style of modern (or surviving) industrial music, but it feels like the prevailing ideologies and themes of that niche have been syphoned out here, leaving a formal shell, something that tows the stylistic line but contains none of the purpose or conviction. Like Scattered Order’s final two late-’90s records, Adjust the Terminology is an out-of-time document of an orthodoxy that has been buried for years, though its traces continue to resonate.

Scattered Order maintained only one solid member throughout its career in Mitchell Jones, and his persuasions are evidently mixed. The group’s career-arc mirrors the quirks of its contemporary demands: signing to Volition in the mid-’80s meant that Scattered Order shapeshifted into a synth pop-group, yet the bookending eras of independence (late ’70s/early ’80s with M Squared, and the late ’90s on Rather be Vinyl) marked a sound that, on the one hand was entirely new, and on the other, later on, sounded like the depressive zenith of a waning industrial music. Despite the current incarnation of Scattered Order consisting of Jones and fellow founding member Michael Tee, who originally departed the group in 1982, this record is a neat continuation of the late Scattered Order records.

“Electronic music of this nature is indelibly and unfairly watermarked, but here it’s not the equipment wielded but the sensibilities controlling it.”

Up against rock music, with its mainstay components, electronic music of this nature is indelibly and unfairly watermarked, but here it’s not the equipment wielded but the sensibilities controlling it. Recurrent trends in synth-based rock music are fickle and transient, because while a group like Total Control is purely derivative but oddly now, Scattered Order is the complete opposite. They’re following a B-grade lineage of textural, pop-culture referencing industrial pop music that will sound naff to any ears not calibrated to this very particular niche. No one releases records that sound like this at the moment because the style isn’t adequately canonised. This record is two men who enjoy this unfashionable niche, riding it for all it’s worth with no concession to modernity. It’s admirable on that level but very disappointing on another, coming as it does from a legendarily forward-thinking outfit.

Every assertive element here is strictly bound to, and therefore negated by, another: the noisier elements come from Tee’s guitar playing, which are rendered tame by the uncomplicated and immediately gratifying programmed beats beneath. Vocal samples from films and public service announcements are leached of their profundity by the stock muzak nature of their surroundings: ‘Viral Surroundings’ is one of the most aggressive songs on this record, with a prominent American film sample, but it’s a struggle to connect the dots between the music and what is being voiced. Is there any correlation? Or does it just sound good? Everything on this record seems constrained by convention, and the industrial manoeuvres seem rote and pre-destined: sounds are there because they have to be.

‘I Want to be in a Castle’, one of the most texturally moving songs on this album, achieves some conceptual cohesion with its dystopian minor-key melody and the brash, neo-liberal samples that float above. This song is everything you want a group like Scattered Order to be in 2010: something severe and admonishing, crucial and blatant. But ultimately, that’s not what Scattered Order is. Nowadays Scattered Order is an exercise in sound, and perhaps they’ve always been. But without their trademark innovation, there’s little to recommend it.

During interviews, Mitchell Jones is adamant that there’s a strong sense of humour throughout Scattered Order’s music. And while it’s meant to be a selling point that this darkly aggressive act never took itself seriously, is there any conviction at all here, or is it all just a ruse? Why does it sound so rough but convey so little? And that’s the conceptual flaw in Adjust the Terminology: it activates a once lively and dangerous aesthetic but provides no purpose. It’s catchy and entertaining and forgettable, but that’s not what this sound should be.

In the midst of a retroactive listening culture that slavishly admires the past, re-activated legends are destined to disappoint when they don’t have a cogent message. And when they don’t, what’s the point? With Gang of Four playing Soundwave, Nick Cave acquiring dementia and Peter Hook instigating a depressing posthumous Joy Division road show, the post-punk legacy continues to deteriorate, and this record does Scattered Order’s own legacy few favours.

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‘Adjust the Terminology’ is out now through Rather Be Vinyl/Klangalerie.