Richard Zvonar, the composer and innovator of electronic music, died this August 3, 2005. Richard worked with me on Wild Women with Steakknives, Eyes Without Blood, Tragouthia apo to to Aima Exoun Fonos, and Panoptikon, which we were planning on
redoing this year.

Nekesa Mumbi Moody has just published an article on how "Best Of" albums are not so great these days.  But have they -ever- been?  She identifies who's doing it all wrong but bands and labels are often confronted with the task of "how to do it right." Here's a helpful guideline to anybody faced with making a compilation.

This past week, Sony BMG agreed to pay $10 million in fines over their illegal Payola practice.  Payola is as old as the recording industry itself and is basically another way big business labels fuck everything up for the rest of us.

Next week will be the last issue of The Brain. 

This is the second album in a series of three in which McKenziecollaborates with Jónsi Birgisson of Sigur Rós. The double CD comes inthe same style of package as the other Hafler Trio voice series, eachrelease consists of music made entirely from the voice of oneindividual (Blixa Bargeld and David Tibet being the othercollaborations).

CD reissue of Diana Rogerson's second record comes close to being accurately restored.

In the early 1980s, Diana Rogerson was peddling S&M gear at a shopin Kensington, creating her own films and performing in the performanceart duo Fistfuck (sometimes referred to as the "female Whitehouse")along with Jill Westwood. The short films were described as extremeversions of their live performances with urination and humiliation ascontrolled by Jill and Diana.

Once again I'm impressed with the packaging of this reissue. Having thecover and inside photos restored on nice paper in a booklet is farbetter than the flimsy Beastingscard and anything done in a chintzy digipack. While this is the secondChrystal Belle Scrodd record (originally released in 1986), it featuresmusic which pre-dates The Inevitable.

By all accounts I should be loving this album. Matt Elliott has takenmusic much farther than I could have ever imagined from listening toThird Eye Foundation back in the 1990s. He's a fantastically talentedmulti-instrumentalist, composer, producer, and arranger, and Drinking Songsonce again progresses very slightly from its predecessor.

Duophonic (UK) / Too Pure (US)
Despite being the first album with a full band lineup, the whimsical,laid-back sound of Stereolab singer Laetitia Sadier's Monade remainsintact. No longer recorded in her bedroom, these 12 melodies wererecorded on location in France at their Instant Zero studios.

Starting in 2004, the trio of Pit er Pat—Rob Doran, Fay Davis-Jeffers and Butchy Fuego—have been releasing music on a number of different labels, including their latest full-length on Chicago's Thrill Jockey. Their brand of music has drawn comparisons to Blonde Redhead, Soft Machine and Slapp Happy, among others.