Highly anticipated album from Digital Hardcore's first defectors. Sonic Subjunkies are more musical than most of the DHR miscreants, but their hypercharged breakbeat tirades slash through pile-ups of samples and noise in no less confrontational a manner. They can still be harder than the rest - hard as a fist studded with nails on "Das Elektrophon" and "Do You Even Know Who You Are?" - without ever losing the impressive control which sets them apart from their peers. Stomping tank-tread hiphop ("Live From Jonestown" and "Welcome To Central Industrial"), Hooversonic jump-up jungle ("12,000 RPM"), even the occasional low-boil pseudo-ambient interlude - a range of moods and demeanors, all stapled with rapid-fire Uzi breaks and automatic discharges.- Gil Gershman, guest contributor and professional reviewer

JAAP BLONK
Vocalor
Staalplaat

To the uninitiated, Blonk sounds like a madman - babbling excitedly in non-languages, spitting guttural noises and pitched burps like a Speak-N-Spell rewired by a lunatic. He's quite sane, and enormously entertaining, an avid devotee of the obscure history of sound poetry. Dadaist and surrealist poets were drawn to the rhythm of language, applying their cut-up and repetition techniques to words, vowel sounds, consonant clusters and lip and lingual sounds. The results can be as stirringly meditative as Velimir Khlebnikov's "Kolokol Uma (Ringing The Bell of Mind)" or as playful as Blonk's own "Geen Krimp," an exhaustive study in the Dutch language's most problematic letter combinations (lots of "gr"s and "krs"), and the playful lip farts of "Labior." At the other extreme of this vocal-lore is Man Ray's "Lautgedicht," a text with all words gleefuly "XXXXX"-ed out, performed by Blonk like a Conehead love-call. Blonk's choking-victim gurgle and spirited brays, whoops, smacks and hoots would get him tossed from even the most liberal restaurant, making _Vocalor_ the perfect vicarious thrill for those who have had it with the snotty properiety of their local art scene. - Gil Gershman, guest contributor and professional reviewer

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SNOW WHITE: A TALE OF TERROR
Deadly serious psychosexual rethinking of the previously Disneyfied chestnut, with the Seven Dwarves as a group of filthy miners who slobber over the young Snow White's heaving bosom and Sigourney Weaver as stepmother Claudia, whose cursed mirror and a serious case of post-partum bitchiness (following the stillbirth of her son) spell endless trouble for Snowy.

Weaver is delightfully wicked, but the director may have been unsure whether to film this as a symbol-heavy grim/Grimm tale or as an overwrought supernatural slasher film. Too humorless and murkily lit to be a top-drawer item, but it's still worth filing this one next to such superior fare as _The Company of Wolves_ and _Dolls_ on the shelf where you store your adolescent nighty-nightmares. - Gil Gershman, guest contributor and professional reviewer

THE PASSION OF DARKLY NOON
A lesser known (and somewhat lesser) film from Philip Ridley, director of the superb _The Reflecting Skin_, abandoning childhood innocence-lost for the violent sexual awakening of one extremely repressed guy, the titular Darkly Noon (Brendan Fraser). Fleeing from his mysterious cult-like background, Darkly runs right into the arms (well, truck) of Callie, the beautiful lady of the backwoods (a very fine Ashley Judd). The shy, stuttering Darkly soon falls for Callie in the worst possible way, but her mute coffin-crafting boyfriend returns from parts unknown, the lines of a deadly triangle are pencilled in, and Darkly starts wrapping his torso with barbed wire, conversing with the bullet-riddled bodies of his dead parents, painting himself ritualistically (ala _White of The Eyes_) and paying heed to the popular rumors about Callie's seductive ways.

Astonishingly beautiful at times (the underground stream is a triumph of set design), Unfocused and undisciplined at others (what's with that giant shoe?!), the film present's Darkly's slow mental disintegration as a frightening spectacle with a truly horrifying climax. Fraser isn't quite up to the demands of his role, but he attacks the final reels with such gusto that comparisons with a religiously-driven Jack Torrance aren't be unwarranted. Still, _Darkly Noon_ is most captivating when Ridley allows events to unfold with the hypnotic rhythm of a folk tale. He's less successful when he crashes through this sensitive emotional minefield with cameras set on 'stun'. - Gil Gershman, guest contributor and professional reviewer

Uhm, play it loud enough so everyone can hear it.

"Like anybody fucking cares..." - Maurice, a surprised guest contributor