- Mark Weddle
- Albums and Singles
Biafra's crusade continues with his 6th spoken word album in 14 years. Like the previous album, 1998's "If Evolution Is Outlawed, Only Outlaws Will Evolve", this one is a lot to take in at well over 3 hours on 3 discs (for the price of 1) of live material from various shows and conventions throughout 2000. And now more than ever Jello, always one to expose corporate, religious and political conspiracies, has a lot to talk about: the presidential election and his brief Green Party candidacy, the World Trade Organization, the Columbine shootings backlash, online networking, censorship, the drug war, mp3s and Napster, his court case with the other Dead Kennedys, reports from the Republican and Democratic Conventions, etc., etc. He successfully conveys this massive amount of information with a mildly comedic delivery ... George W. Bush, Jr. becomes 'King George the II' and Al Gore 'Prince Albert', Newsweek magazine 'News Speak', overbearing corporate dominance 'corporate feudalism', genetically altered food 'Frankenfood', etc. The recurring message throughout is for you to actually care and do something about it - become the media through pirate radio and tv, 'zines, online and offline activism and protest and simply communicating to those "on our side who don't yet know it". Jello makes you think about important issues that effect everyone, regardless of whether you agree with him or not. And though the 'truth' is an ever elusive impossibility, I tend to think his well informed version is closer to reality than most 'traditional' media. Four full length mp3s are freely available at alternativetentacles.com. Biafra is currently doing a few shows in Canada .
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- Carl Thien with Jon Whitney
- Albums and Singles
What else would you expect from a group called Lemon Jelly - in a few words: it's mellow, kinda fruity, bright and tasty. The CD on the chopping block is a collection of tunes from three previously released 10" singles from a duo who consists of Fred Deaklin and Nick Franlen (both graphic designers by trade). Fred's got some credit to his name as a unique DJ, as his 'Wheel of Destiny' club nights are set up to decide the musical style every 30 minutes with a spin of the wheel! Nick on the other hand has provided keyboards and drum programming for the Spice Girls and All Saints as well as Primal Scream's recent 'Xtrmntr' and a future slab from overrated Britpop wankers, Pulp. People have tagged Lemon Jelly as bringing renewed interest to "nu-lounge" sound. It's got a fondness of dub and an eye on cheery electronic interplay, not entirely unlike Kruder & Dorfmeister and associated side projects or Arling & Cameron. Yeah, these groups always come in the form of duos! Guitar samples, horn stems, organ-imitating keyboards, and rhythmic percussives are all elemental to each song which could easily provide a backdrop to doing your taxes on a Sunday afternoon.
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- Mark Weddle
- Albums and Singles
Tristan Bechet of Portugal and Sebastien Brault of Madagascar formed Flux Information Sciences in NYC in 1996 and with the aid of a revolving door membership have released 4 full length albums to date, "Private / Public" being their debut for producer Michael Gira's Young God Records. The duo abuse guitars, bass, keyboards and samplers and are further augmented here by drummer Derek Etheridge. An explosive percussive onslaught drives most of the songs, many 2 minutes or less, with occasional breaks for sample blitz, menacing soundscapes and even some genuine tender moments. A delightfully bizarre fun house/show biz humor prevails as lyrics are generally simple repeated slogans yelled in English over and under the sonic fury. Imagine if you can something that borrows a bit from early SWANS, Suicide, Big Black, The Monks, Devo and James Chance ... it's simultaneously ugly, quirky, chaotic, energetic and fun with a thoroughly lo-fi DIY punk attitude. Some comments on a few of my favorites tracks: "Adaptech" dances like a mechanical monkey on crack. "Sit Down, Silly!" is the best Big Black song they never wrote. "Love" seems sincere with lovely organ and backwards guitar melodies, straightforward drums and the single word lyric, "love". I have a single word summary for all of "Public / Private": FUN!
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- Administrator
- Albums and Singles
The man known as Thighpaulsandra could very well be the definition of a modern musical mad scientist—pure genius with a maniacal manifestation of sound. His debut Eskaton full-length release (don't get all semantic on me, this isn't his first full-length nor first Eskaton release) comes as a double CD of all new material featuring contributions from members of Coil, Spiritualized and Julian Cope's band as well as his mum.
The set is incredible yet difficult to swallow at once, with over 2¼ hours of music which can be as non-sequitur within movements as it is between tracks. He has drawn blood from much of his influencors, with elements of modern classical, jazz, art-rock and electronic composers swirled into a magickal mystical audio tapestry. The styles range from lengthy neo-classical half-hour tracks like each disc's closers to angst-filled songs echoing prog-rock masters such as "The Angelica Declaration" or "Home Butt Club." Deep drones provide background for the 13-minute "Optical Black" which features a spoken John Balance bit, sped up without a pitch increase while an intense improvisational-ish piece "Abuse Foundation IV" for clarinet, marimba, violin, percussion and processed electronics follows. Coil fans will definitely hear the characteristics of recent releases shining through electronic drones or glistening piano bits, yet they might be a bit offset by the general underlying free-form aesthetic, loss of congruency, or the creepy uneasiness which has caused panic attacks in one Coil fan from Los Angeles. Don't fear, however, it makes this disc an entirely different adventure from the more frequently travelled roads in the dark series and will prove to be a substantial release once it's completely digested and becomes part of your system.
samples:
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- Tulse Luper
- Albums and Singles
With a name as innocuous as Repeat and a cover as stunningly ugly as the one for "Select Dialect", it's no wonder that I discovered this recording in the "To Be Listened To Sometime Later, Maybe, If At All, Or Perhaps I'll Just Use These as Beer Coasters" pile of CDs at the home of this e-zine's esteemed editor. The cover looks awful. It looks like it was designed with random scraps of construction paper. It's difficult to tell what the band name is and what the album's title is, because of the awkward placement of words on square, green splotches unevenly distributed across a baby-blue (ugh!) scrap of cardboard. If I didn't happen to be turning over and examining every single CD on said editor's table one evening, this fine recording would have gone entirely unnoticed by either of us.
Repeat is the duo of Swiss percussionist Jason Kahn and Toshimaru Nakamura, who plays an empty mixing board feeding back into itself and wired out to a sampler. He tweaks the high-pitched feedback, and samples it in real-time. You may remember Nakamura from last year's fantastic "Four Focuses" CD, in which he performed duos with Sachiko M, Otomo Yoshihide, and the great Martin Tetreault. Both Nakamura and Kahn have been active in the international improvised music community for at least a decade, and Repeat may be their attempt to expand their audience beyond the already initiated.
What is most unexpected is how close this duo resembles the post-techno sound being set forth by labels such as Raster-Music and Karaoke Kalk. Nakamura's mixing desk shimmers with pleasant tones (yes, actual tones!), as well as the expected high-pitched squiggles. Kahn's metallic scraping and occasional synthesizer repeat simple melodic phrases, and his more traditional percussion even keeps a steady beat. In the album's closing track, Kahn's lightly stuck bowls ring and combine with a flute-like sound (the origin of which I will not attempt to locate), for an effect not dissimilar to polite New Age. From two musicians who have existed for years at the outside of the improvised music community, it is certainly novel to hear these song-like forms emerge. There are edgy moments, but not many, so if this is some listener's way into the potentially alienating world of electro-acoustic improvised music, then that's just fine with me. As it is, it's pleasant enough, and if I didn't know who these folks were, I wouldn't think twice about how oddly normal it was.
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- Mark Weddle
- Albums and Singles
This is the first of surely many for 2001 from the young yet prolific Helsinki based producer Luukas Onnekas. The word 'anima' is a psychological term meaning essentially 'an inner feminine part of the male personality'. Both the artwork, a pastel enshrouded woman, and music, demure and beautiful, perfectly reflect these qualities. The disc is indexed as a single 62 minute track, a continuous organic flow that constantly, unpredictably shifts gears while retaining recurrent themes and coherence. Delay's sound set is a vast, atmospheric sonic sandbox of arctic synth pads, low end blips and throbs, fragments and smears of fractured audio and an expansive selection of percussive minutiae. Melody and rhythm are sometimes more implied than expressed, allowing for your brain to fill in the blanks, and at other times coalesce effortlessly, flawlessly and gracefully all on their own. Stagnation is the enemy as a few notes of wash background are about the only element allowed to loop for any great length of time. The piece ends by gradually, almost unwillingly, dissolving and fading away finally concluding with a crash and sampled dialogue ... "I might never go to sleep again, I might stay awake forever!" Absolutely gorgeous. Pure genius. Yet another masterpiece. I wonder how many other slots Delay will fill in my best of 2001 list? Also out now is the LUOMO "Tessio Remixes" 12" on Force Tracks to be followed by a new full length later this summer. samples:
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- Mark Weddle
- Albums and Singles
Monolake is German producer/programmer/engineer Robert Henke, apparently now solo as former partner Gerhard Behles is credited only with additional production. Much of their music has long been both dance floor and headphone friendly and "Gravity" is no exception, though as with the previous album "Interstate" techno and digital ambient lovers will have even more to cheer about. Gone are the dub influenced rhythms (which is a shame because they do it so well) but a dense, open and fluid spaciousness remains as a playground setting for clinically precise computer sounds and calm and collected, levelheaded rhythms. Track titles are as deceptively simple as the tracks themselves, most 7 to 10 minutes, as beat patterns shift in gradual increments and backgrounds evolve. "Mobile", "Zero Gravity" and "Aviation" contain the most intriguing selection of liquid, gaseous, metallic and alien melody making sounds. "Ice" tosses about frozen human sighs and hisses over cool future funk. "Frost" is too stagnant due to unduly repetitious beats. "Static" and "Fragile", like "Frost", are also rhythmically repetitious but not tediously so as what lies beneath the beat breathes. "Nucleus" is a steady roar of night air devoid of all beats that simply fades away over the final few minutes. All in all "Gravity" feels like a darker, more streamlined version of "Interstate". I'm pleased. Monolake will be playing shows in Montreal, Toronto, Lithuania and Italy in February and March. samples:
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- Carl Thien
- Albums and Singles
Former Atari Teenage Riot sound engineer and current DHR artist David Hammer (a.k.a. Shizuo) presents his first release on his own label. All 4 songs have much more color than DHR stuff usually does, (with the exception of Lolita Storm, who I still love). "More Morphine" was written with DJ Scud (Londoner who runs Ambush Records and in collaborotation with NYC's I-Sound, Full Watts). It is filled with vocals and is like a male Lolita Storm. "Nuerology" is like DMZ, The Twinkeyz, or Lou Reed filtered through The Cramps and then some. "16 Licks" goes extreme at the end of each bar. It starts with the guitar lick from "Keep Me Hanging On". It goes on to sample vocals from Crass and David Bowie. "Dealing Drugs" has spoken samples that provide the feel for the song. It is sparse in spots and has the noise wash in others. It ends with a looped vocal that has to be manually lifted from the turntable (locked groove). This single is actually pretty good if you like life hard.
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- Mark Weddle
- Albums and Singles
"Trial" is the fourth cd by Jens Massel as Senking and the sixth of seven releases to date in Raster-Noton's 'static series', all of which are packaged in anti-static bags. Massel arranges effected electronic sounds into essentially single riff songs with dub, glitch and minimalist qualities. The 8 tracks are aptly titled, most between 4 and 5 minutes. "Flaw" fires up with a snap, crackle and pop of static and submarine sonar pings. "Wind Up" is busy with rolling pops, bass bumps, mechanical winding and steam hisses. "Lurk" and "Trackdown" would make an appropriate soundtrack for cinematic stalking, playing down the beats some for dark drone, hiss and click. "Hide Out" is the center and master piece, an 8 and 1/2 minute pattern of warm, melodic dub. "Pell-Mell" rumbles along with blips, ticks and a short vocoded sample. "Dent" skips along merrily with deep bass under the crackle and buzz of a power line surge. "Lift" caresses with high pitched clicks, swooping tones and watery plunks. "Trial" is pleasant enough with a good bit of stylistic variety but not much of a progression and not too terribly memorable. Once again, I'd be happier with a single or double disc compilation of select tracks from all of Massel's many releases to date as Senking, Fumble and Kandis.
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- Carl Thien
- Albums and Singles
A compilation from Cherry Orchard's record label in France. Like Bambini's 'Mystery Date Game' and 'Voyage Romanesque' and Invicta Hi-Fi's 'Special Skool' comps this record attempts to create the cool atmosphere that Siesta and El Records have done on their international pop compilations, with just a dash of the electronic pop that J-pop specializes in so well. Every band wrote a song about Paris just for this compilation. For me the 2 standout tracks are the Baxendale cut "The New Parisienne Pop And Soul" and The Cherry Orchard's "We Could Fall In Love". These 2 tracks are classics of each of the bands that are exclusive to this disc. Baxendale remain one of my very fave bands of 2000. Le Hammond Inferno sound very J-pop on the instrumental "Stylostumpt". The track sounds very familiar though I can't place from where. It is very energetic and catchy. Merrick's (from Munich) do a pretty good song "Fur Paris gilt das Nicht" that is nice even though it's not one of my faves. It almost sounds like a mellower Francoise Cactus (of Stereo Total) singing. She even says "Crazy Horse" (the title of a Stereo Total song from 'Juke-Box Alarm') in the lyric of the track.
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- Mark Weddle
- Albums and Singles
Geographically seperated brothers John and Matt Thorne are Psychic Enemies Network. "Valis" further explores the psycho-sonic territory initially tapped on their 1998 self released, self titled debut. Their music comes from a wide range of world percussion (djemba, toas drum, african kettle, elephant bell, hand percussion, etc.), guitar, bass, trumpet (by David Chapman), synths, sequences and samples. The mix is contained to a point, never allowed to boil over into the red, and a feeling of slightly unsettling transcendence is present throughout. Quite a bit of thought seems to be going in to it all too as track titles reference such varied topics as irregular heart actions, Philip K. Dick novels, henna painting and geographical projections. "Arhythmia" begins as a warm ambient loop later adding exotic rhythms and background samples for a sound similar to late '80s Muslimgauze. "Come Crumbling" is a murky mix of voices and trumpet drone. "Sandfall" perfectly marries shimmering loops with pan melodies, female backing vocals and a deep electro-bass groove. "Tilted Earth" builds a hypnotic wall of sound from trumpet wails, finger cymbals, bells and chimes. "Bowl Cut" is a mildly funky blend of jazz drumming and quirky synth riffs. "Radio Free Albemuth (altman)" amusingly cuts and pastes samples culled from various musical projects the Thornes have been involved in for some Nurse With Wound-like fun. "Valis" beautifully accentuates swirling ambient guitar and samples with light brushed snare and subtle trumpet playing. "Mehendi" swings a little with a jazzy rhythm and moody bass. "8/7/96" rips and tears audio fragments over a few looped notes of clean guitar. And "Gnomonic" concludes the album as it began with a quiet, albeit rhythmic, loop. Altogether "Valis" is varied, flows well and shows a studied progression. Psychic Enemies Network have definitely found their niche! Up next is a series of side projects under the 'Psychic Enemies Network Presents' umbrella including Para!Helion "Midaq Alley" (with John Thorne and David Chapman - more of a straightforward world music project, also recommended) and Fez Dispenser (with Matt Thorne). Info may be found at www.browser.to/psychicenemiesnetwork/ .
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