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Similar to the Tortoise and New Year albums, the newest Labradford audio document also heads down the path of re-examining older concepts through current methodology. (And like the New Year, this was also recorded with assistance from Steve Albini in July of 2000 in Chicago.) The trio return to a certain purity of earlier albums with the absence of additional players which colored the last few. 'Fixed::Content' could be the most personal recording a group like Labradford can get while remaining completely instrumental. The album is an exercise in patience, symmetry and impressionistically represents the group as the trio they are.
Premiered first at Sonar 2000, this release could very well be an impressionistic aural painting of a thunderstorm which gets closer and closer, unleashes its wrath and then breaks.
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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.
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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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From a small label in Holland comes this amazingly priced double CD set, a singles compilation from Scott Engel, John Maus and Gary Leeds, who are most commonly known as Scott, John and Gary Walker. The collection grabs 45 A-sides and popular hits from the trio both together and in solo form, stretching from 1965 through 1981.
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This Belgian duo consists of John Sellekaers and C-Drik, whose production and performance has appeared on releases from Torsion, Ambre and Snog. The debut release has taken three forms, but the one in my hands is the German CD edition. It starts off being a rather powerful foray into aggressive modern dark drum and bass.
 
They say history never repeats but almost unsurprisingly much of the 2000 Brainwashed Readers Poll looks closely identical to the first time we took the poll, 10 years ago. Thanks to everyone who participated in both rounds this year. Now it's time to go to your collections and dig out the music from 1999 for the nomination round (coming shortly)!
Album of the Year
1. godspeed you black emperor!, "Lift Yr Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven"
2. Coil, "Musick to Play in the Dark Vol. 2"
3. Radiohead, "Kid A"
4. Sigur Rós, "Ágætis Byrjun" [despite the release being in 1999, the international distribution through Fat-Cat will qualify this release for 2000]
5. Yo La Tengo, "And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out"
6. Current 93, "Sleep Has His House"
7. two way tie:
Broadcast, "The Noise Made By People"
Legendary Pink Dots, "A Perfect Mystery"
8. Antony & the Johnsons, "Antony & the Johnsons"
9. two way tie:
Amon Tobin, "Supermodified"
Trans Am, "Red Line
10. two way tie:
Kid 606, "Down with the Scene"
Primal Scam, "Xtrmntr"
BAND
OF THE
YEAR
1. godspeed you black emperor!
2. Coil
3. Radiohead
4. Sigur Rós
5. Legendary Pink Dots
6. Current 93
7. Kid 606
8. Low
9. Yo La Tengo
10. Antony & the Johnsons
SONG
OF THE
YEAR
1. Coil, "Batwings (A Limnal Hymn)"
2. Boards of Canada, "In a Beautiful Place Out in the Country"
3. Radiohead, "Idioteque"
4. Antony & the Johnsons, "Cripple and the Starfish"
5. Current 93, "I Have a Special Plan for This World"
MUSIC
VIDEO
OF THE
YEAR
1. Outkast, "B.O.B."
2. MDMFK, "Missing Time"
3. Add N to (X), "Plug Me In"
4. Eminem, "Will the Real Slim Shady Please Stand Up"
5. Radiohead - all those little short video clips
NEW
BAND
OF THE
YEAR
1. Antony & the Johnsons
2. Goldfrapp
3. A Silver Mt. Zion
4. The Damage Manual
5. Cex
[note: Sigur Rós actually got the most votes but since their first album was released in 1988, they were disqualified. Their current album is their third album.]
CONCERT
EVENT
1. Legendary Pink Dots/Dead Voices on Air
2. godspeed you black emperor!
3. Nine Inch Nails
4. Coil at the Royal Festival Hall (2nd time)
5. Wire
BEST
LABEL
1. Kranky
2. three-way tie:
Constellation
Thrill Jockey
Warp
3. World Serpent
4. Soleilmoon
5. two-way tie:
Mille-Plateaux
Ant-Zen
BEST
PRODUCER
1. John McEntire & Jim O'Rourke
2. Steve Albini
3. Steven Stapleton
4. Christoph Heemann
5. Frank Verschuuren
WORST
BAND
1. Limp Bizkit
2. Creed
3. Moby
4. Radiohead
5. U2
WORST
ALBUM
YOU
BOUGHT
1. Radiohead, "Kid A"
2. Download, "Effector"
3. Coil, "Constant Shallowness Leads to Evil"
4. Chicks on Speed, "Will Save Us All"
5. Badly Drawn Boy, "The Hour of Bewilderbeast"
BEST
COMP
1. Wild Planet
2. OHM - The Early Gurus of Electronic Music
3. Attitude
4. Xen Cuts
5. Chicago 2018
BEST
MOVIE
1. Requiem for a Dream
2. Dancer in the Dark
3. Gladiator [??? don't our readers have any taste?]
4. High Fidelity
5. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
BEST
TV SHOW
1. The Simpsons
2. South Park
3. Futurama
4. The Daily Show
5. The Sopranos
BEST
BOOK
1. Neal Stephenson, "Cryptonomicon"
2. "Apocalypse Culture 2"
3. Dave Eggers, "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius"
4. Naomi Klein, "No Logo"
5. Bill Drummond, "45"
BEST
ACTOR
1. Russel Crowe
2. John Cusak
3. Philip Seymour Hoffman
4. Ed Norton
5. Kevin Spacey
BEST
ACTRESS
1. Bjück
2. Ellen Burntsyn
3. Christina Ricci
4. Kate Hudson
5. Angelina Jolie
BIGGEST
DISAP-
POINTMENT
1. US Presidential Election
2. Y2K and no armageddon
3. lame year for films
4. miserable lives of the readers who think their lives suck
5. Dancer in the Dark
EVENT
1. Endless US Presidential Election
2. New Year's Day 2000
3. Coil live
WEBSITE
1. brainwashed
yuck!
2. theonion.com
3. nosepilot.com
4. amihotornot.com
5. heavy.com
HERO
1. Ralph Nader
2. assholes who voted for themselves
3. George W. Bush
4. Jon Whitney
5. Dan Rather
VILLAIN
1. George W. Bush
2. assholes who voted themselves
3. RIAA
4. Al Gore
5. Jon Whitney
MOST
ANNOYING
TREND
1. Scooters
2. Rap Rock
3. "Whassssup" greeting (shouting or text messaging)
4. cell phones
5. Who let the dogs out
Barrelling forward with releases, John Hughes' Hefty Records has boldly issued a series of stellar limited edition 12" singles.
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It's a strange listen. All the beats are mutated beyond descriptioninto clicks, snicks, slurps, and a very familiar boing that I suspectwas plucked from the old Nintendo game Metroid (another featuredelement in the liner notes). Beautiful melodies weave in out of nowhereand leave just as suddenly -- just as Marumari gets a groove going, itfades out, comes back, reverses itself, speeds up, disappears entirelyinto the layers of background noise. Towards the end of the album therough-and-tumble, loping beats fade into hums and drones, strangemumbles and burbles. I don't mean for it to sound like I'm describingMouse on Mars, though the same feeling is there at times; there aremore straight-ahead rock-on moments and less goofy-fun analogtwiddling, on the whole.
Sometimes electronic music is so unintelligible or inhuman that evenspeculating about its motivation is pointless. Despite this album'stendency to wander in strange directions and sometimes get flat-outweird, I never lost the feeling that someone was behind it all, happily(if inexpertly) pushing buttons and twirling knobs. Confusing, maybe,but Marumari brings a brand of playfulness to his music I've yet tocome across anywhere else. He's not cheeky or smart-assed like ?-Ziq orAphex Twin, or gleefully juvenile and iconoclastic like Kid606 or V/VM.Instead, it's the wide-eyed, naive, incomprehensible joy of (I suppose)alien cyborg puppies.