20 September 2015

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Albums and Singles

Steve Hauschildt's new album is his first since the late 2012 release of Sequitur. Although Where All Is Fled sonically harkens back to his earlier albums such as Rapt for Liquid Minister and Tragedy & Geometry, it slowly becomes apparent that it is also a divergence from those recordings.

Both the artwork and the music on this new work were heavily inspired by surrealist landscape paintings, early alchemical emblems, and recurring visions.

The result is a pristine series of cascading melodies, fantastical terrains of layered lattices, and overlapping patterns of synthesizers superimposed with orchestral instrumentation. Hidden in the crevices of the album are processed crowd sounds, re-sampled text-to-speech synthesis, piano, and animal noises which reveal themselves after repeated listens and blur together notions of artificial and natural sound. While slowly unfurling, each sound is given its own place and space, never hurried, never cluttered.

The album is a modern kosmische milepost, and the most accomplished statement of Steve Hauschildt's vision yet.

More information will eventually be available here.

20 September 2015

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Albums and Singles

For synthesizers, sine tones, amplified violin/viola/cello, field recording and custom software.

Written/recorded/reconfigured/mixed July-October 2014, New Orleans.

Dedicated to Pitre's family: past, present and future.

Bayou Electric is the final installment in an unplanned trilogy, with Feel Free and Bridges making up the first and second installments in the series, respectfully. All three works share similar characteristics, compositional processes, alternate tuning schemes, instrumentation and a certain ethos that the composer views as cohesive whole. There is a progression toward refinement over the course of this trilogy, in the overall "sound" of the albums and in their dependence on other musicians to realize them (each less dependent than its predecessor). Bayou Electric, which contains a single, calming and cathartic composition (of the same title), brings this cycle to a gentle and unhurried finale.

The field recording utilized in Bayou Electric was captured on a late night in August, 2010 at the edge of Four Mile Bayou; Louisiana land that has been in Pitre's family since January 14, 1922. Upon listening to what he'd captured, Pitre become enthralled by the fabric of sound that the wildlife on this waterway had created. It evoked many feelings--such as how past generations of his relatives lived amongst these same sounds and walked the same land--creating a powerful connection and a sense of timelessness.

Pitre was set on finding a way to use this field recording in his music, but wanted to do so without simply adding it to a composition as just another layer of sound or by molding it (via 'processing') into something easier to work with. Instead, Pitre decided to start with the unaltered field recording and build the instrumentation around it, in a highly sympathetic manner, with the musical portion becoming accompaniment to the sounds of this remote land. This was the catalyst of Bayou Electric and of primary importance to him, as a way to connect to his Cajun heritage in his own artistic way.

More information can be found here.

20 September 2015

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Albums and Singles

I Abused Animal is Heather Leigh’s first proper solo studio album after solo releases on labels Golden Lab, Not Not Fun, Fag Tapes, Wish Image and Volcanic Tongue. Renowned as a fearless free improviser, I Abused Animal is a breakthrough work showcasing Heather Leigh’s songwriting prowess, foregrounding her stunning voice and her innovations for the pedal steel guitar. Warmly recorded in a secret location in the English countryside, the album transmutes the power of her captivating live performances to a studio setting, capturing her tactile playing in full clarity while making devastating use of volume and space. Heather Leigh explores themes of abuse, sexual instinct, vulnerability, memory, shadow, fantasy, cruelty and projection. I Abused Animal is a personal, idiosyncratic and deeply psychedelic work, ranging from almost Kousokuya-scale black blues through the kind of ethereal electro-ritual of Solstice-era Coil. At times the intimacy of the recordings makes you feel like she’s singing directly into your ear, playing just for you.

The daughter of a coal miner, weaving a trail from West Virginia to Texas and now residing in Scotland, Heather Leigh furthers the vast unexplored reaches of pedal steel guitar. She’s performed and released music since the 1990s as a solo artist and with a wide range of uncompromising collaborators from Peter Brötzmann to Jandek and has toured extensively throughout the US, Europe, Australia and New Zealand. Her playing is as physical as it is phantom, combining spontaneous compositions with a feel for the full interaction of flesh with hallucinatory power sources. With a rare combination of sensitivity and strength, Leigh’s steel mainlines sanctified slide guitar and deforms it using hypnotic tone-implosions, juggling walls of bleeding amp tone with choral vocal constructs and wrenching single note ascensions.

She’s played/performed/released music with Ash Castles On The Ghost Coast, Charalambides, Scorces (a duo with Christina Carter), the Dream/Aktion Unit (a group with Thurston Moore, Paul Flaherty, Chris Corsano and Matt Heyner), Taurpis Tula, Jailbreak (a duo with Chris Corsano) and Jandek, as well as collaborated with Peter Brötzmann, Lynda (as Termas), Stefan Jaworyzn (as Annihilating Light), Richard Youngs, Blood Stereo, MV & EE, Robbie Yeats of The Dead C, John Olson of Wolf Eyes, Smegma, Jutta Koether, Kommissar Hjuler & Mama Baer and many others.

More information can be found here.

20 September 2015

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Albums and Singles

"Liberty" is one of those great terms that contains a trace of its inverse. It is usually taken to mean "freedom from" something, or immunity, as in the diplomatic kind everyone recognizes thanks to televised political dramas and George W. Bush. Consequent to that understanding, the less controlled or restrained a thing is, the more liberty it possesses. So the curtailment of action doesn’t usually figure into conventional senses of freedom, but think of all the liberties secured by the abridgment of desire, prejudice, and fear. License in one space often demands restriction, or constriction, or even conversion, in another. Something like that is at work on Severe Liberties, the benighted electroacoustic product of Kevin Parks and Vanessa Rossetto’s first collaboration. "Severe Liberties" are the kind of thing people take when they need to bend the truth, or when they simply don’t understand something. Here they are the kind of thing that transforms silverware and surface noise into music.

Erstwhile (ErstAEU)

"Seeing as Little as Possible" is a provocative opening statement for a song—and album—that contains so much sound. After an introductory spasm of indiscernible frictions and a very conspicuous length of silence, Parks and Rossetto pour on a cornucopia of domestic noises and electric signals. A contact mic makes love to bubble wrap, someone remarks that a UPS truck is in front of their home, and a lonely guitarist strums a few very Mazzacane-esque chords over the sibilance of mangled cellophane wrapping and the clatter of an undefined home improvement project.

That all breezes by in the song’s first nine minutes. The second half introduces birdsong, feedback, and jump cuts that transport the music from outside a New York City apartment to inside a clogged New York City drainpipe, complete with an auger and unwashed dishes in the background. Plenty happens during the album’s opening sally. What that something is exactly is impossible to know. Even if some of the sounds are recognizable, most are far too abstract to nail down, and their arrangement all but guarantees sensory confusion. If there is nothing to see here, no big picture or secure height from which to look down on the music’s patterns, it is because Kevin and Vanessa have strived to make it so.

Almost every noise on Severe Liberties has been detached from its source in a confounding way. Fragments of conversations, rhythms, melodies, and who knows what else have been strung together so as to be indecipherable or without narrative, and "severe liberties" are exactly the kind of thing someone would have to take in order to make sense of them. Fragmentation and falderal reign over these 18-odd minutes, which is why, in part, so much of the record feels nocturnal. Kevin and Vanessa’s compositions pull a shroud over meaning and eliminate most of the references that would make reconstructing it possible. Whatever liberties they took in sourcing their material, and whatever method they employed for arranging it, the consequence is this constantly shifting web of sensations, ungrounded and unfettered by an appreciable order other than its own disorder.

That is why "They Sit’s" pixelated imitations and on-a-dime turns are even harder to characterize than the events on "Seeing as Little as Possible," and it's why the album’s brief guitar passages fail to pull the songs together: they are as out of place as everything else. "The Details of the Anecdote" merely teases the idea of details in its title, it doesn’t actually illuminate much. Anecdotes are excerpts anyway, short narratives that tell short stories. If they aren’t minor details in a bigger picture, they are private details unearthed and treated separately from everything around them, as if they had a life of their own distinct from the rest of the world.

Parks and Rossetto run with that idea at the conclusion of their project. In its final minutes, a series of tones rise and fall in uneasy agreement, suggesting all the shifting perspectives and noises the album has chewed and spit out up to this point. The drone resolves into a dense rumble, a free falling sound that calls skydiving to mind, or the sound of riding at 100 miles per hour on the back of motorcycle without a helmet. It then slowly collapses into a wall of distortion and fizzles out, disappearing like a soap bubble. No resolution obtains, except for silence. Perhaps that’s because there is nothing there to resolve.

samples:

• Seeing as Little as Possible
• They Sit
• The Details of the Anecdote

 

20 September 2015

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Albums and Singles

I definitely didn't think I would enjoy an all vocal improvisation album this much, or on such a grand level. I simply love the acoustics of the room where Jason Kahn recorded in, where he is belting out such interesting and nondescript sounds where, "In the rooms of a former Swiss-com telephone relay station in Zürich. I decided to use the main room, which was entirely empty. Its linoleum floors, bare walls and many windows made for a very resonant space. Double glass windows sealed off the world outside but many sounds still emanated from somewhere deep in the bowels of the building." I wasn't terribly sure what a telephone relay station is, so I googled imaged it, and saw that it was what I thought it was after all. Lines of machines, with women (sometimes men too?) would sit in front of huge electronic boxes with wires and patches, crisscrossing each other, while the operator there would take people’s requests for phone calls and to be connected with others. To me, then, there is a sense of irony, or even a haunting simile that almost reminds me of an echo of conversations that might have taken place in the building in the distant past.

Editions

Zürich, makes me think of the Swiss Alps, and Swiss bank accounts, and as is with most if not all experimental/avant garde music to me, this album allows us, the listeners, to take the time off so to speak, from the corner of the room with headphones on and be simply enthralled by such sounds that never get much (if any) airplay, or are celebrated in any major media outlet, or even any indie ventures. Kahn’s vocals seem to take a meandering direction, so that it’s kind of like that snakes game, where you eat a dot and then gain a dot on your body until you hit a wall or something; then it’s game over and you start back again, as a smaller snake, until you eat more dots. Are these vocals sung out of a cathartic spirit? To me, it doesn't sound too much like that. It’s not an angry sound that Kahn makes, nor is it sad or a depressing sound.

In "Songline", Kahn’s voice takes the stage, and it is at times almost sarcastic and pitying. There’s a slight aching in his voice, and sometimes it makes him seem out of focus, or misplaced, but there is indeed something special/magical about the acoustics of the album, and his voice too. It’s as if you can hear it and perhaps yourself ravel distinctly from one end of the room to the next, or sometimes it remains isolated in what I can picture a photo booth, even though it’s just a telecom station, but still, images of old telephones and ways of telecommuting appear in my mind when listening to this album.

Maybe I shouldn’t go through my Facebook newsfeed while listening to Side D. Kahn’s improvisations makes my online life on the social media site completely asinine. Going on Facebook while listening to "Songline" is like putting on glasses, while scrolling through your News Feed, that will make you see things in a completely different light. People almost appear too distant, ones you thought who might have been your good friends etc.

Though I wonder why Kahn decided to do a double album of vocal improvisations. His musical output has mostly involved electronics of some sort, so it’s both refreshing and kind of surprising to see him make this record. It’s a perfect record for late at night, with headphones on, while listening to someone who has chosen to take a step in a direction that seems to be in a genre that is definitely often overlooked or over-analyzed. Like I mentioned, this is a good late night record, one that is not boring, or seemingly intrusive.

13 September 2015

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Albums and Singles

Basinski and Chartier have collaborated a number of times in the past, and their disparate, yet complementary approaches to music have always complimented each other perfectly. An uncharacteristic vinyl release for Chartier (a digital loyalist), these two sidelong pieces embrace both loops and melody, coming together beautifully as a sparse, yet forceful piece of music.

Important Records

Basinski is fond of using vintage, sometimes obsolete sound sources and a distinctively analog feel to the music he makes.Conversely, Chartier’s solo work may sometimes begin with field recordings or organic sources, but is most often subjected to a distinctively modern, digital toolkit to render the natural sound anything but how it began.

The first piece of Divertissement clearly carries Basinski’s penchant for loops, creating the foundation for a distant rattling noise and simple, yet diverse sound structures that build and dissolve.The duo carefully mix in a fleeting melody that gives a bit of beauty to the otherwise sparse soundscape.The piece may be sparse, but never is it simple or delicate:the understated nature of the piece carries an unexpected force and presence.Big open spaces and deep bass thumps eventually appear, before they end the composition on a spacy note.

While the first side was pretty consistent, the second sees the duo mixing in odd elements that may sound out of place on paper, but manages to work beautifully in their more than capable hands.The piece opens forcefully, with an almost choral tinged expanse of sound that begins powerful, and is then reigned in to a more nuanced, subtle passage.The feel is bleak overall, but Basinski and Chartier introduce shimmering melodies that come and go, sounding as if they come from another world.

The alien melodies remain, weaving in and out of what becomes a wall of squawking, dissonant electronics.A recording of what sounds like a helicopter is added, along with what resembles distortion laden radio communications, creating a noisy, and very Earthbound, compliment to the melody.The result is a piece of brilliant depth and diversity, with the conclusion slowly fading away into darkness.

The worlds of analog and digital sound art come together splendidly on Divertissement, with neither side becoming too much the focus.Instead it makes for a rich, complex recording that uses both beautiful and ugly elements into a work that expertly showcases both William Basinski and Richard Chartier’s proficiency in shaping sounds in consistently new and innovative ways.

samples:

• Divertissement 1
• Divertissement 2 (Excerpt 1)
• Divertissement 2 (Excerpt 2)

 

13 September 2015

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Albums and Singles

On his previous album for 12k, Twenty Ten, Kenneth Kirschner compiled three full discs of material. On Compressions & Rarefactions, he ups that even more by including a download with the CD of three additional pieces, totaling over five and a half hours. It is a lot to take in, especially given Kirschner's understated approach to composition, but the result is more than satisfying.

12k

Time, in its various definitions, is an integral part of Kirschner’s art and sense of composition.His works are only titled by the date on which they were composed, and their lengthy durations and repeating motifs indicate both the passage of, and the static nature of time.The artwork on this album continues the theme as well, capturing subatomic decay patterns and imagery of the Gum Nebula.

The first of the two pieces on the CD, itself titled Compressions is "September 13, 2012" is a half hour of glistening bells and ringing tones.Kirschner constructs strong melodies from simple, twinkling piano and subtle processing.Even though the melodies repeat, there is a feeling of movement throughout the piece, transitioning into notes of a higher register before returning back to the thicker, rich sounds from which it began.

The second composition, "April 16, 2013" is propelled by a twinkling, music box like series of melodies.Even though there is once again the use of repetition, there still seems to be a fast pace, with the passage of time clicking away faster than it would seem.He keeps the melodic structure rather consistent throughout the 24 minutes, but plays with the tone, sometimes making more soft and delicate, and at other times harder and almost percussive.

On the digital portion of the album, Rarefactions, the extra durations are used sometimes to increase the sense of movement, but at others to sound frozen and locked into place."July 17, 2010" has a more textural sound, as opposed to the melodic style that was prevalent on the CD.What sounds like the same sequence of notes is used to create an echo chamber of wooden percussion, a sharp, glassy passage of noise, and into what sounds like an impenetrable wall of alarm bells.

Kirschner reintroduces melody with "January 10, 2012," at first driving plucked strings that at times drift into shrill, sharp territory.There is clear similarities to the sound of "September 13, 2012," but further deconstructed.It becomes a study of tones, sometimes kept short as a conventional musical note, at other times stretched out to dramatic, infinite drones.On the two hours of "October 13, 2012" he punctuates the pure, clean sweeping sounds with passages of near silence.The tonal swells become varied, dissonant, and more powerful as the silence between them becomes longer.The use of repetition is heavy, but suits the piece perfectly.

Compressions & Rarefactions is another strong entry in Kenneth Kirschner's expanding, yet subtle discography.It is a disorienting release, due to his penchant for using lengthy durations and repetition, but with the subtle use of repetition and change.At times I looked away, then the next time I looked at the clock it was already ten minutes later, and other times the minutes seemed like hours.That psychological effect is a compelling part of this release, but its beautiful melodies and sense of composition stand strongly on their own as well.

samples:

• September 13, 2012
• April 16, 2013
• July 17, 2010

 

13 September 2015

Administrator

Albums and Singles

Fun is too often ignored when talking about experimental music. The language surrounding works by composers like Iannis Xenakis or Luc Ferrari is usually technical or mathematical, and sometimes political, but it’s rarely euphoric or exuberant. Which is a shame, because the flash of their audaciousness and the buzz of excitement their music generates is just as dignified and as worthy as the theory running beside it. Devin DiSanto and Nick Hoffman’s Three Exercises, which takes some inspiration from both Xenakis and Ferrari, is a lot of things. There should be no shame or reticence in recognizing that chief among them is fun. Recorded at St. Thomas the Apostle Elementary School in West Hartford, Connecticut, it spins amusement and pleasure from sources both unusual and mundane, with humdrum objects like ping pong balls and duct tape, and with homemade instruments like the one Hoffman tests in this video, which utilizes dynamic stochastic processes. Tucked away behind these sounds are ideas about the relationships between artists and audiences, structures and performances, and between spaces and sounds. Theory and technicality still figure into the mix, only they are inseparably attached to the noises that DiSanto and Hoffman deploy, and are as much a part of the fun as the chaos of the music.

Erstwhile (ErstAEU)

"Preparation/Introduction," the first song on Three Exercises, drops its audience into St. Thomas in media res. Devin and Nick have already arrived and are nearly finished arranging all of the instruments and paraphernalia featured on the cover of their album. Sounds from outside the building leak into the room, doors open and close, a car horn honks, and various devices are tested before a brief series of conversations ensue. "So yeah, it’s pretty straightforward," someone says. Then, "Did you have to walk around the building at all?" There’s an audience apparently, and instructions, and a whole lot of shuffling of paper and plastic.

Devin then announces the date, introduces both himself and Nick, and "Sequence 1" begins. A voice says, "Devin introduces Nick... and himself," and before the repetition can register, a blast of bass-heavy noise flies from the speakers. It stops suddenly and is followed by the sound of glass pebbles, echoing footsteps, and more voices, apparently describing the actions responsible for some of the sounds. The effect is dizzying. DiSanto and Hoffman perform, their audience describes, and the music is tied into a knot of observations, noises, objects, and actions. There’s a sense that every possible thing Devin and Nick could have included on the album is included: all the tools, the composition (if there is one, and if not, the instructions), the thoughts of the people hearing the music for the first time, the hum of amplifiers, the echo of the gymnasium itself. Even the preparations and notes for recording the album are a part of the album, in a direct, fourth-wall-breaking kind of way.

But there’s a lot of deliberation too. Sounds are cut and layered cinematically, as if to give the listener a chance to see the same thing from two different perspectives. When Justin Palmer and Sharon Glassburn, the two observers who narrate the proceedings, speak, they cycle through a variety of tones: bemused, quiet, like someone on a birdwatching expedition, tense, theatrical. In each case there’s a voyeuristic rush inherent in their speech. There's a secret or a ritual unfolding on this album and these participants are relaying it to the outside covertly. The album’s visual qualities grow out of these segments as well. Had each "Sequence" or "Exercise"  been thoroughly logged, Three Exercises might have become something like a documentary, but DiSanto and Hoffman stop just short of that, teasing the audience with tidbits rather than exhaustive descriptions. The parts are all relatively clear, how and why they fit together is left obscured.

There’s also a sensitivity toward the density of different passages and an appreciation for the sonic similarities among diverse groups of things, like basketballs, shoes, service bells, and synthesizer tones. The space they are in, it’s shape and size, solidifies as moments of high intensity and near silence pass, so that the way the music is arranged, the way the instruments are set up, and the distances between events and objects, all register clearly. To have so much happening on an album, and at the same time to have it all so thoughtfully laid out and superbly produced, is overwhelming in the best possible way. Three Exercises is a complex and stratified album, with a ton of depth and thoughtfulness built into it. Listening naturally elicits questions and insights, about how hearing or seeing a performance changes our reaction to it, or about how audiences help to complete a piece of music just by thinking about it. But it's a boisterous and playful enough record to thrill with its audible dimensions alone.

samples:

• Sequence 1
• Recreation
• Exercise 2

 

07 September 2015

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Albums and Singles

In the mid 1980s, there was no internet, eBay, discogs, and if you didn't live in a metropolitan area, music was expensive. These two releases were the first affordable releases to surface on the North American continent from Cocteau Twins, and while neither were issued by the band themselves in this form, the arrangement of the collection and the pairing of the two EPs are flawless and remain a fantastic listen three decades later.

4AD

The Pink Opaque was the first disc in the short-lived partnership with Relativity in the USA, and features ten songs from 1985 and before. For me, it was the first CD I could buy from Cocteau Twins that was under $20 ($44.60 in the equivalent of 2015 dollars!). Perhaps it was designed by committee to be a sampler of other releases, and maybe my nostalgia skews my objective assessment of the running order, but the flow remains perfect.

Great albums tend to creep in, such as the opening of "The Spangle Maker," as it has a pulsating opening before the bombastic shimmer kicks in. It's a reminder that while Cocteau Twins are cited for their "dreaminess," guitar layers, and Liz Fraser's unique vocal style, their strict adherence to pulse is exceptionally important.

Along with single cuts such as "Pearly Drewdrops' Drops," "From the Flagstones," and "Aikea-Guinea," the collection features music from each of the first three albums, an exclusive remix of "Wax and Wane" as well as a compilation-only song, "Millimillenary," which has still managed to evade every Cocteau collection since. It perfectly wraps up as the clock at the end of "Pepper-Tree," from 1984 The Spangle Maker EP runs straight into "Musette and Drums" off 1983's Head Over Heels.

Tiny Dynamine and Echoes in a Shallow Bay were both issued on the same day as EPs, also in 1985, and once again issued on CD in North America at an affordable price, this time through Vertigo in Canada. Each EP features four stunning songs that everybody reading this has probably heard a billion times at this point. These EPs, along with Victorialand, released the following year, marked a shift in their sound, favoring multiple layers of lush guitars and long, spacious, shimmering echoes.Even Vaughan Oliver's artwork seemed to indicate all three releases were a set.

Tiny Dynamine is certainly the brighter of both, with the gorgeous "Pink Orange Red" and sparkling sounds of the opening guitars in "Ribbed and Veined," while Echoes opens with the more sinister-sounding "Great Spangled Fritillary" and continues with the haunting "Melonella."

Three decades later, I can't listen to one of these EPs without the other, and two sides on a single LP is a better listening experience than getting up and flipping a record over after only two songs.

I can only speculate that the meticulous attention to detail by V23 from day one has facilitated reissue artwork, and these vinyl reissues both feel and sound like they should. The sleeves are sturdy with a heavy stock, and the records look beautiful themselves, with deep, thick grooves. There has been quite an uproar about Cocteau Twins remasters, but for my ears, these both sound fantastic.

07 September 2015

Administrator

Albums and Singles

The origin of this collection is a bit peculiar: originally sold through television commercials by the Polygram TV division in 1995, reclaimed by Beggars two years later, and now presented on LP for the first time, 20 years later. Essentially this is just about every Numan song a curious listener could want, featuring singles and popular album cuts. Aesthetically, however, the quality control in the art department could have taken a closer look.

Beggars Banquet

These songs, collected from the Beggars period of Numan's catalog are flawless. The power is simple: strong hooks, straight up lyrics, and a driving force. It didn't matter if the instrumentation was keyboard-based or guitar-based, the conviction was pure.

The earliest songs are definitely Tubeway Army tunes, the snotty punk of "That's Too Bad" and the more awkward "Bombers" appear sandwiched in between more signature sound Numan pieces. While keeping this order remains somewhat faithful to the original release, the evolution isn't entirely appreciated. "Down in the Park" and "Are Friends Electric" are coupled with the LP cut "Me! I Disconnect from You" and the B-side "We Are So Fragile" to present an accurate representation of the beginning of 1979, where despite being credited to Tubeway Army, the sound is more in line with what Numan was going to do, billed as a solo act. It is in this period that the master template was first established.

Rounding out the rest of the 1979 content is that song everybody knows (thankfully absent is the unnecessary 1995 remix on the prior incarnations of this collection) with fan favorite album tracks "Metal" and "Films." Both of the latter songs were surprisingly not singles, as they are of equal caliber, and possibly even more massive in sound than the big hit. Along with the ballad "Complex," these four songs adequately represent Numan's 1979 masterpiece, The Pleasure Principle. For this moment in time, the template worked perfectly. Vocals weren't overbearing--in fact none of these songs even have a chorus--less was truly more. With the evolution of Numan, and many other notable '80s acts, the music became more bland with increased instrumentation and wordier songs.

1980 is represented with "This Wreckage," the only single from Telekon, along with two non-LP singles, "I Die, You Die" and "We Are Glass." While they contain some decent hooks, the sound is much more mild, and less immediate. Arguably the energy picked up again with the punchier "She's Got Claws" from Dance, and the inclusion of the Numan-sung songs "Stormtrooper In Drag" (released on Paul Gardiner's album) and "Love Needs No Disguise" (released on the album by Dramatis), all from 1981, are certainly fan pleasers.

The three singles from 1982, all from I, Assassin are featured. While the instrumentation sounds like it would work: Numan lifted the signature snare drum from Prince and employed a Mick Karn-esque fretless bassist, all of these songs simply seem a bit too busy and unmemorable. The album's only song that seems to end up in live sets (and arguably the album's best song), "This Is My House," was never a single and disappointingly absent. 1983's album Warriors only produced two singles, the title track and "Sister Surprise," both featured here, and even more bloated than before, the former with a pointless guitar solo and the latter with an unwelcome saxophone. Once again, everything's all shuffled in, so it's almost impossible to avoid the nonsense.

While I praise the completeness of the collection, despite the aesthetic downfalls of the later material, I do have an issue with the artwork. It's a reminder of the double-edged sword of vinyl reissues: trying to find original art files that are of high enough resolution that an LP can be tastefully printed. This, sadly wasn't the case. The edges on the cover photograph are exceptionally pixellated, almost embarrassingly so. Additionally, the extensive biography and photographs from the previous editions is missing, which would have been an appreciated icing on the cake. For the early singles and fantastic early album cuts, it does sit well in the vinyl stacks.