BRAINWASHED 003
The third 7" single on Brainwashed Recordings will be from Greater Than One. This will feature two new songs, Airstream and Bloodstream (samples available on the web page) but will not be released on September 1st as originally slated. The single will once again be limited to 1,027 copies, the vinyl color will be a blue/white swirl, and it will also include a post card and sticker. The single has been delayed due to an unforeseen job layoff experienced by Jon Whitney.

TOMORROW'S PARTIES
Information about the "All Tomorrow's Parties" fest in England featuring Tortoise can now be found at come.to/bowlie2. Other bands on the bill include Stereolab, Tindersticks, Arab Strap, Barbo Pond, Blonde Redhead, Clinic, Gorky's Zygotic Mynci, High Llamas, Laika, Laptop, Oliva Tremor Control, Plaid, Radar Brothers, Salaryman, Scott 4, Snow Patrol, Ted Benson, The Delgados and Yo La Tengo

TRANS AM, "WHO DO WE THINK YOU ARE?"
BABY BABY I'm a Funky Guy! There's no pre-tenses here. Trans Am just belt out another 6 tracks which may have been throw aways from the last recording sessions - but kick major ass over Futureworld. This Australian EP was released to coincide with their Aussie tour earlier this year and features all new things. It's probably the most exciting thing I've heard this week - definitely the most bang for your buck. Starting off with the primitive drum machine crossed with an old vocoder, adding the real time fast drums, analogue electronics and guitars on the other pieces and ending up with a track which nearly completely centers around one chord stroked over and over for the entire piece. Sound boring? Never, in the 35 minutes, not a second is wasted, not a welcome is worn. - Jon Whitney

ORGANUM, "BIRDS' WINGS,..."
"Birds' wings were glued to their bodies and their feet froze to the ground" is some of Organum's best work, up there with Sphyx. The disc has three tracks (and is almost 48 minutes long), but lacking track names. It appears that this is in fact three movements in a single piece. The first and third tracks are short (around 7 minutes each) droning pieces, using what could be an orchestra of bowed cymbals with some birds joining in on track 3. The second track is much longer (35 minutes), and pulses between a single burring tone and the full complement of instruments (whatever they are) producing a fairly soft din full of squeaking, creaking, rubbing, droning sounds. I loved this track the first time I heard it, but got bored with the repetitions the second time (which are as regular as those in "Two Shaves and a Shine"), then fell back in love with it as I listened again and heard more of the distinctness of each of the tones. Organum's music seems to me more like ritual accompaniment than foregrounded musicianship and the usual NWW comparison with Soliloquy for Lilith holds here, although this is more like the symphonic version. - Paul McRandle

FIVE STYLE, "MINIATURE PORTRAITS"
Oy, another post-rock graduate let down. The first 5ive Style release (Sub Pop, 1995) was alarmingly excellent. Chicago post-rock musicians Johnny Herndon (Tortoise/Isotope) and Jeremy Jacobson (a.k.a. The Lonesome Organist) alongside Bill Dolan and LeRoy Bach brought to Sub Pop an instrumental jazz-influenced rock instrument driven album, a fresh breath for most Sub Pop and post-rock fans for the time. Not with this album. The opening tune sounds like an incomplete, instrumental harmonica-less Blues Traveler ditty, the second sounds like an all-too-white touristy Carbbean Island welcoming piece, and the rest sounds like an easy-listening Bela Fleck record. Happy happy happy music, I'm not happy. - Jon Whitney

BOWS, "BLUSH"
With his post-Long Fin Killie outfit Bows, Luke Sutherland gives us a massive debut. Far better than anything put out under the LFK guise (fact or opinion?), it's hard to believe now that I was going to let this one slip by! The marriage of lush orchestration and oft-used breakbeats isn't a new one, but the whole genre sounds great dressed up in Bows' musical poetry and romance. Most of the vocal tracks here (which, along with Sutherland, are performed by two female vocalists with voices like liquid silk) sound like re-writes of Lamb's "Gorecki"... if you're going to copy, copy the best! I'm hard pressed to pick favorite tracks here, since it's all consistantly good. Try the beautifully bitter "Speed Marina", and picture singer Ruth Emond coolly breaking boy's hearts all over the world. The next track, "No.4", is a short n' funky commercial, in which the announcer states the Bows is the cure for "those up and down days we can all do without." I couldn't agree more.- Jason Olariu

STEROLAB/BRIGITTE FONTAINE, "CALIMERO"
Frog-rock hipsters Stereolab return with all new material with this single, title track sung by French singer, Brigitte Fontaine. The same formula is here as the last time around: the spicy beats, tasty bass lines, organ, funky guitar, flutes, along with muted horns and electronic twists. Brigitte sounds disgustingly drunk and the melody is simply okay, nothing as stellar as some of the stuff on 1997's "Dots and Loops", making me sort of skeptical about the forthcoming release, "Cobra and Phases Group Plays 'Voltage' in the Milky Way Night" - due out in September. Track two is a piece by Monade (Latitia Sadier with kind assistance from Tim and Mary) and is decent but nothing to write home about. Find the 45 for a cheap price if you're a collector but don't spend $9.99 on a two-track import CD single. Wait for the album and pray it sounds better. - Jon Whitney

MONDAY
DJ Rap - Good To Be Alive 12"/CDEP [reissue with new mixes] (Higher Ground/Sony, UK)
Kreisel [Mike Ink and friends]- Kreisel 99/35 7" [ltd edition] (Kreisel, Germany)
Omni Trio - Byte Size Life CD/4xLP (Moving Shadow, UK)
Slab - Ripsnorter CD/2xLP [limited boxed CD; limited red vinyl 2xLP] (Hydrogen Dukebox, UK)
Various - 99.1 2xCD [budget priced collection of Moving Shadow artists with disc 1 mixed by Rob Playford & disc 2 by EZ Rollers] (Moving Shadow, UK)
TUESDAY
Nigel Ayers/John Everall/Mick Harris - t.b.a. CD (Soleilmoon, US)
* Madder Rose - Hello June Fool CD (True North, Canada)
Stephen Philips - Cycles 2 CD (Dark Duck, US)
WEDNESDAY
Oval - t.b.a. CD [with Japan-only bonus track] (Tokuma, Japan)

For a more comprehensive release schedule stretching far into the future, please check out the NEW RELEASES brought to you by Greg and Feedback Monitor.

ROGER WATERS IN THE FLESH
Being who he is I expected a lot from this show, and I wasn't let down one bit. The stage was in the back of the arena on the floor so everyone had a pretty good view. The show started off with "In the Flesh" with the spotlight on Roger, who was on a platform above the band, shouting at certain audience members with spots. After that he joined the rest of the band on stage and went directly into "The Thin Ice" and then some other songs from The Wall. As a whole, the show took a little from each of Floyd's Waters-era albums, and some of his solo work as well. The highlights from the first set were a complete and well done "Dogs," and "Wish You Were Here" followed by both parts of "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" where pictures of Syd Barrett were shined on the screen. There was even a model diamond that came up from behind the stage, acting like a disco ball with beams of light filling the arena. The first set was amazing to say the least and I would have been happy with just that, but there was more. The second set started off with the Dark Side hits. The guitarist did a really good job at filling Gilmour's shoes on these. The rest of the set was Roger's solo work with a great version of "Perfect Sense." During one of the these songs he actually broke free from the band for a while and sang at the front of the stage with the spotlight only on him. The show ended with a double encore of "Eclipse/Brain Damage" and "Comfortably Numb." This was definitely an experience I will always remember. For many more reviews and personal stories go to http://www.ingsoc.com/waters/. - Brad Payne

TIMES SQUARE RED, TIMES SQUARE BLUE
Samuel Delany, known for louche, science-fiction urbanism in novels such as Dhalgren and Triton, has cast his fine eye for the social accommodation of desire onto his experiences in New York's now nearly obliterated Times Square porn district. In these two essays, Delany offers first a thick to fairly dripping personal account of giving blowjobs in the area, then turns a more professorial gaze upon the flight of American urban life from pleasant interaction among all the classes towards a spurious safety through isolation. While his polemic will never convince those who genuinely do feel safer in the Disneyfied Times Square, this is not the main point. Rather, Delany's purpose is to provide a humanistic appreciation of often despised urban pleasures. As in his long chat with a Hassidic Jew while at a jack-off theater, city-life is all about contact across the divides of class, race, religion, and gender. It's his emphasis on pleasure which carries the book: it's simply more fun to have places where we can shed the trappings of class and tribe so as to meet people whom we just might care about enough to help or who just might come to help us. - Paul McRandle

THE IRON GIANT
HOLY FUCKING SHIT is this a good movie! An animated film finally breaks out of the Disney formula and does it right. This is a classic for all ages. The animation does an amazing job of showing how large the giant is. Great story, Kaiju (at least I think he qualifies as a kaiju), and characters make this the best american movie this year, and it's animated! - Thomas Guttadauro

GO
I skipped this movie in the theatres because I was expecting a storyline like Can't Hardly Wait, She's All That, Ed Ka'Spell's High School Trilogy and other such lame "teen" movies, and now I'm kicking myself in the ass (I'm agile that way). After some recommendations, I rented this movie and was pleasantly surprised at a Pulp Fiction-like three stories tied into one type thing. Clever, fast-paced and rarely predictable. - Thomas Guttadauro

BRIDE OF CHUCKY
Rented this awhile ago but decided it needed a second look. Ronny Yu, who directed Bride With White Hair, one of my top ten films, takes a franchise character who was tired after the first movie and makes a stylish, fun, wild movie. You read that right, stylish. Style, thy name is Ronny Yu. Comedy, thy name is Bil Keene. Music, thy name is Spice World. My reviews suck, but Jon's a great guy, so someone else write some movie reviews for him, too. - Thomas Guttadauro

You're getting married? Does he know you're a former call girl? Do you know of his fascination with 17 year old Thai boys?

JJ VS. HIS HIGH SCHOOL

autechre    vs. the prodigy
mogwai      vs. Marilyn Manson
RDJames     vs. Timbaland n' Magoo
Luke Vibert vs. WuTang
Alec Empire vs. Atari Teenage Riot