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Divine Frequency
The album is a tribute to the German poet and dramatist BertoltBrecht. Unlike most tributes to Brecht less than half the album is fromBrecht's famous collaborations with Kurt Weill. Massimo and Pierce'sartistic goals are very much in synch with Brecht's—all of their worksare decadent and subversive. The marriage between Black Sun Productionsand Brecht on this album works exceptionally well. Operett Amoraleis littered with guest artists including Lydia Lunch, H.R. Giger,Fabrizio Pallumbo (from (r) and Larsen) and Coil. The contribution fromCoil, "A List of Wishes," is one of Jhonn Balance's final studio works.It is an adaptation of one of Brecht's poems set to Sleazy's music. Thelilting beat is both evocative of Weimarer Republik era Berlinand Coil's own distinct sound. H.R. Giger provides both the cover artand his voice to "Seeraeuber-Jenny". The cover art is Giger's Alienmolesting a woman with its various appendages, I'm not quite sure howthat ties in with Brecht but it is impressive looking nonetheless.Pallumbo's style fits like a glove on this album. Tracks like "BrothelTango" sound like Larsen if Larsen were from twenties' Berlin. Pallumboperforms on most of the tracks with Massimo and Pierce. WhilstPallumbo's influence is evident it never overpowers the songs. The onething that lets the album down is Lydia Lunch's performance on "TheBallad of Sexual Dependency." Her delivery of the words is cringeworthy but then again, I have never been able to tolerate her pseudoart rubbish. Apart from that the rest of the CD is flawless. Massimoand Pierce's vocals are excellent, especially on "Pimp Ballad". Themusic complements their voices, many of the tracks sound like a bandthat have been playing these songs comfortably with each other foryears. Some of the tracks use samples of older recordings of Brecht'sworks, "Johnny Over the Sea" uses Gisela May's voice and "Ballade vonder Hoellenlili" uses Lotte Lenya (who won a Tony Award for one of herperformances as Jenny). This is one of the best tributes to Brecht andthe music of Weimar Berlin that I've heard in a long time. Unlike thediluted nature of Bobby Darin's "Mack The Knife," Black SunProductions' Operett Amorale embraces the sheer decadence andpleasure of the time and place whilst keeping it sounding modern andrelevant to today. Massimo and Pierce would have made Brecht proud.
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jagjaguwar
"The Astronaut" starts things off on a subdued note, as slowly chimingbells toll, an understated guitar and warped vocals slowly make theirway to the fore. Mike Tapscott, in his reedy warble, introduces us tothe protagonist who "spent his days walking the streets with violentthoughts." The astronaut is then launched into space on the next track,"If It Smells Like a Rain Cloud," as plinking keyboard riffs and simpledrums rocket him past strange worlds and stranger characters. Onseveral of these tracks, such as "The Golden Fog" or the childhoodtrauma of "Benjamin," Odawas sound much like fellow low-fi prog-poppersMt. Eerie. But where Mt. Eerie often sound like a reverberating oldgrowth forest, Odawas appear much grander and remote, as though theyare being beamed in as a far away signal. Elsewhere, the band engagesin some unique experimentation. "Songs of Temptation" rides a swingingpiano and a near smooth jazz sax. Along with the female backing vocalsthat echo throughout, it would not be such a lark to assume it were aDark Side of the Moon castoff. Most bizarre though is "Ant Man MessiahElijah," where a harpsichord backs up a near monologue that providessome of the best insights and poses some of the toughest questionsregarding Odawas' antihero. Behind heavily manipulated vocals, MikeTapscott declares "There are lights in the sky that have called me byname; the galaxy's secrets are whispered in rain." By the time Ireached "Virgil," I felt as though I had been gone for years and hadlanded in a world vaguely familiar yet distinctly different. Odawas'journey is an often confounding and challenging one, but it's one Iwon't soon forget.
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Darla
Their songs do everything I expect electro-pop to do: ride percolatingbeats; feature vocals that are coolly detached (or completelydisinterested depending on your point of view); and disappear from myconsciousness soon thereafter. The production here is smooth—likeSteely Dan playing on a Formica counter top smooth—something that soundengineer Gabriel Lucena can take pride in. On "Claro Que Sí," his beatsfloat and laze away behind singer Isol's icy detachment. It's a prettymoment of sugary pop on an album that at times can become overbearingin its sweetness. "De Tener" is similar in its execution, but featuresa strong chorus that keeps things interesting. While there is nothingparticularly wrong with Onda, their formulaic take on electro-popbecomes a bit grating and, well, boring. The tempos here rarely riseabove a mid tempo shuffle, which cause the songs to be bogged down in amid-paced mire. Furthermore, while their songs are sung in Spanish, abasic understanding of the language and a quick glance at the lyricsreveal that lyricist Sebastián Carreras' songs aren't exactly breakingany new ground in songwriting. Ultimately, what saves Entre Rios is thefact that they know they shouldn't be trying to stretch the boundariesof electro-pop. Onda knows it won't be shattering expectations orchanging any lives. Instead, it offers 11 pieces of clean, club-readybeats and breathy vocals. Whether you care enough to accept them isentirely up to you. - Nick Feeley
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"Great," I thought as I opened this CD, "a movie soundtrack about a guywho runs around tagging in abandoned train yards and warehouses andstuff. HAS to be hip-hop, lots of down and dirty backpacker hip hop.Hopefully it'll be as relevant but less whiny than Sage Francis, aselemental but not as blunted as Madlib...wait, what the fuck? It's byKid Loco, Paris discothèque DJ, who spins trip hop and house to hordesof sweaty lycra and polyester wearing Eurotrash."
Mettray Reformatory
Not only that, hesays it's good enough to be a stand-alone album, not just auralaccompaniment to the film. Having not seen the film, I really can't sayhow it functions as a soundtrack- but judging from the music, Mr. The Graffiti Artistis a dark and brooding chap, graffing buildings to a wandering andrepetitive vaguely Eastern sitar and woodwind motif. Recurring themesare apparent in the soundtrack's 80 minutes—the sitar and woodwinds,and a mournful calliope hooting behind a vaguely hip hop drumroll—meaning Loco may be using leitmotif—or he may just have ran out ofideas and mailed this one in. As far as atmospherics go, he's nailedthe seedy, nocturnal feel. You can almost feel the fog and darknesscoming out of the speakers when the Eastern instruments play. However,the calliope and drums aren't very emotive: with one exception, they'rebland and repetitive. The album does seem like it's building to somesort of climax at the very end, but instead of coming to any sort of apeak, the music drifts away, leaving, well, nothing. This may be aperfect backdrop to a post-modern urban nihilist film. This may be theweirdest and most ill-conceived pairing since Mr. T babysat JerryFalwell's kids. The film's perceived audience—kids in hoodedsweatshirts with Sharpies in their pockets and rap in theirheadphones—will probably think it's the latter. Loco is a finemusician, and some will probably enjoy the inoffensive musical banterhe provides here. Whether they will ever hear it—or hear it along withthe film—remains to be seen.
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Resonant
Olvis' Orlygur Thor Orlygursson seems to understand this quiet majesty, and on The Blue Sound,he creates an album that manages to approximate that intimateexperience. The feel and sound of 1960s French and Brazilian pop,Icelandic sound-scapes, and mid-1990s Tortoise all find their way ontothis record, making it a particularly warm and inviting experience. On"Time Capsule," slowly swelling strings provide for a lush backgroundagainst Orlygursson's unassuming vocals (here in Icelandic), allowingthe song to reach an understated jazzy swing. Elsewhere, such as on"Whispering Glades" and "Pacific Island," he beats TNT-era Tortoise attheir own game. With the aid of Sigur Rós members Orri Dyrason on drumsand Georg Holm on bass on the former (both contribute on several othersongs), both songs achieve a dream-like swirl that touches oneverything from shimmering folk to post-rock atmospherics. Though The Blue Soundmanages to be engaging throughout, there are points where Olvis' sonicsoundscapes can lapse into "chill out" pastiche. This is the case with"Warfare and Welfare," which boasts some pretty arrangements, butultimately fails to deliver the subdued hooks and stylistic flexibilityof his other songs. But complaints like these pale in comparison to thepositive things there are to be found on this release. With The Blue Sound, Orlygursson has managed to synthesize his wide-ranging influences into a single vision and we are all to benefit for it.
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- 666dB and Noise/Girl
- Andreas Martin
- Antony and the Johnsons
- Little Annie Anxiety Bandez
- Aranos
- Jessica Bailiff
- Bedhead
- Bomb the Bass
- Bowery Electric
- Cabaret Voltaire (and solo projects)
- Cex
- Andrew Chalk
- Charles Atlas
- Coil, Black Light District, ELpH, The Eskaton
- Current 93, David Tibet
- Cyclobe
- The Dead Texan
- Death In June
- Fridge
- Diamanda Galás
- Giorno Poetry Systems
- godspeed you black emperor!, A Silver Mt. Zion, Fly Pan Am, Molasses, Shalabi Effect, Frankie Sparo, 1-Speed Bike, Exhaust
- Greater Than One, GTO, Technohead, Church of Extacy, John + Julie, Signs of Chaos, S.O.L.O., Tricky Disco
- Christoph Heemann
- HNAS
- Ryoji Ikeda
- Edward Ka-Spel
- Labradford, Pan American, Aix Em Klemm
- The Legendary Pink Dots
- Matmos
- Brian McBride
- Meat Beat Manifesto, Perennial Divide, Jack Dangers
- Mimir
- Mirror
- Gordon Mumma
- The New Year
- Ora
- Organum
- Out Hud
- Nurse With Wound, Steven Stapleton, Chrystal Belle Schrodd, The Inflatable Sideshow
- The One Ensemble of Daniel Padden
- The Silverman
- The Soft Pink Truth
- Stars of the Lid
- Sybarite
- The Tear Garden
- Thighpaulsandra
- Throbbing Gristle
- Tortoise
- Trans Am
- Volcano the Bear
- V/Vm, The Caretaker, The Stranger
- Windy & Carl, 5 Way Mirror
- Wire Sound Archive
- Lucas Schleicher
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Style and substance are constantly being removed from each other asmore and more releases like this one find their way to CD players. Asense of urgency can do a lot for a record or song, especially when thelyrics suggest something urgent; it's hard to believe Wolf Parade aredoing anything other than acting, however.
Sub Pop
It's the same problem I havewith another Montreal band of some acclaim. The vocals, the thumpinghalf-disco driven rock, the exaggerated interludes, and the attempts atfeeling epic all lend to some image of a kid standing on a soap box,but not really knowing what to say. It's the perfect music for ageneration spoiled by the easy, and oversimplified, knowledge providedby being part of the Internet community. No matter how important orinformed a song might make itself sound, there's no getting past thecomplete lack of musical innovation and no hiding from the operaticsingers that try to propel themselves into my mind instead of lettingme settle comfortably into their deliveries. It's the assholes aretrying to stab my ears, stick a funnel down them, and scream theirhorridly pedestrian and adolescent poetry into my brain. The musicitself is more of what is becoming the same: 1980s throwback is all therage and every record is incomplete without dance-intended beats,catchy melodies made by guitars and keyboards,and absolutely redundant verse/chorus/verse structures. And indeed, asrock moves backwards more than forwards, the guitar solo is still beingreplaced by non-existent or uninteresting breakdowns and sudden stops.The punk ethos is beautiful, but it's time to re-apply it to somethingother than guitars and drums. If comfort is the only concern somemusicians have for their fans (and themselves) then so be it, boringmusic has and probably always will exist as long as there's a dollar tobe made and an audience willing to snatch up every last album that hasan adjective like "inventive" or "innovative" attached to it.
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When Blackpool, England post-punks Tunnelvision broke up in late 1981,they left behind a legacy of one single with renowned Factory Records,17 live shows, and the embarrassment of being labeled "spineless heavymetal" by the New Musical Express. Apparently, this was good enough toconvince LTM to release Tunnelvision's complete works to an indifferentpublic.
LTM
Watching the Hydroplanes, though a well-intentioned affair, isan ultimately unrewarding one. This is hardly the fault ofTunnelvision, who existed all too briefly to further the rough ideasonly hinted at on this release. Watching shows a young band,clearly captivated by the sound and concept of pioneers Joy Division,who try to build on that firm foundation. "Watching the Hydroplanes"b/w "Morbid Fear," released by Factory in June of 1981 and produced byresident nut-job Martin Hannett, carries all the hallmarks of theirheroes. Upfront, darkly melodic bass work, echo-laden guitar, sinisterlyrics—all of this make Tunnelvision's first single a study inobservation and mimicry. But the fact is that Joy Division covered thischilly terrain before, and with much more conviction. While only thesetwo songs saw release at the time, the band had written at least 12more songs, eight of which (including the "Hydroplane" single) wererecorded at various sessions. The best of these are a set of songsmixed by New Order bassist Peter Hook. "The Man Who Would Be King" isperhaps Tunnelvision's harshest song, with driving drums and a bassline clearly inspired by Hook's former band. "100 Men" pulls awayslightly from the Joy Division legacy, with its crisp drumming andacoustic guitar, and sounds not unlike a less scary Death in June. Avibraphone reverberates throughout the tense "Guessing the Way," makingit perhaps Tunnelvision's strongest track, and offers a glimpse of themid-tempo tension builders the band may have pursued had they notbroken up so soon. But the fact is that Tunnelvision didn't givethemselves a chance to progress, and as a result the record is paddedwith just about every tape deck recording of the same eight songs.
Perhaps as a way of proving to people that Tunnelvision were in fact a real band, LTM have also released Guessing the Way,which documents two live Tunnelvision performances dating from 1981 and1980. While I was let down in my hope that many of the songs found on Watching the Hydroplaneswould take off in a live setting, what were pleasantly surprising werethe tracks that were never recorded. "The Blue" and "Emotionless," fromtheir set at Bristol Trinity Hall in 1981, bounce along with tambourineshakes, tom-tom beats and stabs of distorted guitar. Though they aren'tearth-shattering, they are solid, driving, rock songs. "Hollow Men" isanother song that benefits from the live setting. Its walking bass linepulls the song along, punctuated by more raw blasts of distortion.Ultimately though, the whole concept of releasing two CDs worth ofmaterial from a band who previously had one seven inch to their namestrikes me as a bit excessive and utterly pointless. Plenty of bandsignored during their lifetime deserve to be rediscovered. Last Ichecked though, no one was demanding a Tunnelvision revival.
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Nothing could possibly convince me that these songs were all conceived to be part of one record. Joke Lanz and Annie Stubbs (of Lustmord and SPK) are either comediansor seriously devout industrial fans gone simultaneously slapstick andblood hungry.
Blossoming Noise
When the music becomes too dense or intense, SuddenInfant doesn't just lighten the mood up with light tones and opencompositions, they include the sounds of shit falling into a toilet anda track called "Tandoori Chicken Scooter II." The cover of the albumwould force me to align these musicians with the prankster efforts ofV/VM, the song titles do little to convince me that I should thinkotherwise, but the music and various lyrics are outright malignant attimes, predisposed to the sounds of pornography, murder, and intensephysical labor with a jackhammer. Going back and forth, Sudden Infantmanage to build a ridiculous architecture out of gimmicks, jokes, andunforgiving noise burps, never quite deciding on which path they'd liketo take more. Variety might be deliver most albums unto excellence, butthe problem with Invocation of the Aural Slave Gods lies in theabsence of any recognizable or enjoyable thread. Other than the albumopening and closing with Stubbs' raspy and esoteric voice, there'snothing to hold onto over the album's 42 minutes. The covers included,Cabaret Voltaire's "Nag Nag Nag" and Roxy Music's "In Every Dream Homea Heartache," are well performed and can do nothing other than fit wellonto an already disorganized record. The Roxy Music cover is, however,the best piece of music on the whole album, the thumping destruction atthe end is absolutely orgasmic in its delivery and the entire song issensually slimy and dark. When Lanz and Stubbs succeed most, they'reeliminating ambivalence and playing a very specific card: theatmospheric and uneasy composition slowed to a beautiful crawl."Angelic Agony" is a perfectly uneasy rendition of noise gone soft andslow and "Putrefied Puppet Master" is the beat-laden arrival of doommade real and heart stopping. Aside from this, none of the originalmaterial is anything new, but worse than that, it isn't cohesive. Hadall the parts come together well enough, the lack of originality mightbe forgiving. Until then, four tracks from this album will likely makean appearance on some of my mix compilations, the rest of the disc cango die along with the failed invocation that the album promised.
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