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.

 

There are certain thingsyou can always count on when purchasing a release from In the Nursery.The melodies are always emotionally charged, the production shines witha signature decadent brilliance and the sounds do an excellent job ofimitating a full orchestra.

Opium Jukebox is MartinAtkins (Pigface, The Damage Manual, Invisible Records) and BobdogCatlin (ex-Evil Mothers, Pigface, Pseudo Buddha) and a dozen othermusician friends. This cd is a contemporary covers album: Nirvana"Smells Like Teen Spirit", NIN "Head Like a Hole", Gary Numan "Cars","Ball of Confusion", Jane's Addiction "Been Caught Stealing", EMF"Unbelievable", "Tainted Love", Devo "Whip It" and Dead or Alive "YouSpin Me Right Around".

Three days in mypossession and I can't stop playing this three tracker over and overagain. For those who have been fortunate enough to witness Antony &the Johnsons live, this provides an excellent souvenir of favorites noton the debut album.

 I am amazed at the madgenius that is Richard H. Kirk, once again he manages to blur the linebetween music and noise as entertainment in a very thought-provkingmanner.

Remember Tricky? Theformer music media darling amicably parted ways withPolygram/Island/Def Jam in 1999 and now calls Epitaph branch Anti homealongside Tom Waits and Merle Haggard. Mission accomplished? This UK EP(also due out February 6th in the States) gives us a little over 16minutes with 3 new songs and 1 previously unreleased old one.

Slammin' mutherfuckingballsy-ass shit. This debut CD release is probably the most excitedI've been about a new rock-genred band in as long as I can remember.The energy is fierce, the music is fast, funky and full of wakka wakkaguitars, crazy effects, beefy bass chops, electronic and organic drums,wild cheering, hoards of percussion and a splash of horns.

Barrelling forward with releases, John Hughes' Hefty Records has boldly issued a series of stellar limited edition 12" singles.

From Morr Music inGermany comes a wonderful offering of many of their fine artists. Don'tlet the title fool you, there's nothing to do with the former Smithslead singer on here. In the last few years, the electronic instrumentalrock hybrid scene in Germany has grown exponentially from what once wasonly a handful of acts who used to share loads of members. Collectedhere are some of the more prominent groups like The Notwist, Arovane,Lali Puna, Flowchart and the Tied & Tickled Trio. Disc one featuresfourteen new and exclusive cuts while disc two features fourteenincestuous remixes of many of the first disc's artists trading mixeswith others. Solvent remixes Kevin & Paul, Schneider TM remixesMicha Archer & Ms John Soda, while Kandis and the Tied &Tickled Trio remix each other. This provides a great introduction toMorr, which appears to be sort of taking off where Kitty-Yo decided toleave off when they pursued trashy cash cow kitch like Peaches andGonzales. Kudos to Morr for keeping the artwork alive.

In an almostanti-post-kraut movement, Ladomat (who gave us the compilation 'L'ageD'or' earlier this year) has unleashed a two-disc compilation of theirown, showcasing their artists like Sand 11, Egoexpress and CommercialBreakup. Flying in the face of the instrumental movements (like theMorr comp exposed), these groups are clearly pop-minded. The groupssing (frequently in English) and bring a jovial bounce and step totheir brand of futurism without going completely off the deep end intosomething that would wear thin after the novelty is gone. Germans canrock as they proved earlier this year, now they're telling the worldthat Germans can smile and make fun artistic music without beingstereotypically overly serious stiffs or churning out disposablecartoon techno.

The disc starts off verypromising. The rhythms are sexy and the music is rich in texture.Driving beats set the disc in motion from the start, but all of the funsoon begins to fade. What spoils the disc for me is when a guestvocalist either raps or sings. The rap is never interesting enough tohold my attention and the lyrics are rather embarassing to listen to.It's almost as if Red Snapper use vocals as a crutch for songs theyfeel need a better lead instrument, but when they keep them out, theintensity of the music grows to epic proportions. Going forward on thedisc, Red Snapper do however make some choices to keep other tracksinstrumental. A very nice option for tracks like the album closer,"They're Hanging Me Tonight," a wonderful play of overprocessed drums,guitars crying backwards and drone-like string samples.

From Tonschacht inCologne, Germany comes this heavy slate, cleverly disguised as a 7"single. I honestly don't think I own a 7" record pressed this thick.Anyhow the three tracks which compose this single bring together bothHrvatski's technical expertise of precision electro-meddling and afondness for outside sources laying down constant voices to be carriedthrough with each composition. Keith Fullerton-Whitman makes songs andsomething like this is a tease to his fans out there waiting foranother full-lengther from the boy. Look for a remix project due outsometime in January. The single's limited to 500 numbered copies buthas seemingly had an easy time making the distribution outside ofGermany.

With every new song thatcomes from this team of people named Jess out in Ohio, my interestgrows. Jessica Bailiff and Jesse Edwards have been collaborating ontracks following last year's full-length from Bailiff on Kranky, 'Hourof the Trace.' The result has been quite expansive for only a handfulof tunes - Bailiff has almost come out of hiding behind the guitardistortion for singles and compilation appearances, but on this single,more electronic space is being explored. Both sides of this limited 10"single average around ten minutes, each being two songs which flow intoeach other without distinct traditional breaks. Looking at the titles,the impression I get is that this release might actually be tributal innature, "Maybe Tomorrow" on the first side is a spacious interplay ofechoed voice, guitar wash and drum machine, "Amethyst Depression" isn'ta Coil tribute but is instrumental, beat-less, pretty and sweet. Sidetwo opens with a looping guitar riff which could have easily beenlifted off of the first godspeed record. "Rene?" is the first time Ithink I've heard Jesse sing himself and the song is rounded out with adrum machine sounding loop which eerily doesn't sound like it's loopingcorrectly. Rounding out the end of the side is "Your Sounds MakePatterns in My Eyes (for SOTL)," which is undoubtedly a nod to Stars ofthe Lid. Unfortunately it's all too short and the gorgeous soundscapeof that gem lasts around two minutes. If we saw the two expand on this,make it a full 20 minutes long and include it on the next JessicaBailiff full-lengther, that release is bound to become a classic.

According to a coupleparagraphs' worth fcof nonsense in the liner notes, "The Wolves'Hollow" is some kind of concept album involving wolves from outerspace. I honestly couldn't see the connection with the wolves, exceptfor samples of wolves howling, snarling, or squealing every now andthen.
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.

My loyalties are somewhattoward the album, with my pathetic excuse for the album being how oftenare we (AMC/Eitzel fans) going to have an AMC tribute album come downthe track? One could take the view that something is better thannothing. However, that sort of argument grows sour very quickly. Wouldyou rather have the shoddy film "Man On The Moon" or would you ratherhave no Andy Kaufman biopic at all? This kind of question irks me whenit comes to entertainment; I'm guessing that a real answer is hard tofind.
That said, for anyone who has yet to pick the album up yet...uh...let'sjust say that maybe you should put it on the back burner for now.Hearing the first chords of the opening song "What Holds The WorldTogether" done by Ida was in itself one of the best music experiencesthis year, priming me for an album in which almost every single songsounds the same. For the most part the songs are played and arranged"as is"--no interesting and/or notable departures that usually make thetedious genre of tribute albums bearable. These are hard words towrite; I can barely play music myself and applaud the kind of effortthat goes into a project such as this, but some of these musiciansalmost make AMC out to be a parody that so many tried to peg the bandas, a sad, mopey bedsit band incapable of rocking or doing anythingrequiring more than emotion.
But in his defense, Paul Austin cops to so much in the liner notes: "Arecord aiming to represent the whole sonic scope of AMC would includenot only songs of love and hope so heart-wrenching your knees mightbuckle; it would include also a dose of flailing dissonance, a dollopof honky tonk pun tossing, and the occasional flat out rocker. This,unapologetically, is not that record." Um, then what is it? A showcaseof 12 very talented musicians basically covering AMC and not doing itwith very much variety? I'm sure we're all tired of the music mediapigeonholing AMC and Eitzel as nothing but dour, sad miserablists.Maybe I'm going out on a limb, but it's the hope and beauty that all oftheir music gives out that make me listen to their music, not what somepeople believe to be their token "oh isn't the world just unrepentantlyshitty" attitude.
But, I suppose, a sub-par AMC tribute album is better than no AMCtribute album at all...and much of this music is quite pretty andsoothing to listen to on a cold Northern Ohio night when there's awinter weather advisory, no less. But taking into account that I am alazy git who applauds the fact that it was put together at all, itcould have been better.

Matmos, Lesser, Kit Clayton, Slicker, Designer, Cex, Hrvatski, Kid 606 and 21 other artists have all exported tracks for this 2xCD release from the German label Klangkrieg. The collection is a fine offering of tunes and will no doubt serve as both a great introduction to some of these noteworthy acts and for current fans an opportunity to collect more songs from the groups.

The uprise andinternational recognition in the last decade of music scenes in placeslike Chicago, San Francisco and Berlin has all been due to a multitudeof factors. I attest their success to seemingly fearless efforts madeby small startup record labels, releasing as much music as they can,with bands integrating as much as possible. I know from my own personalexperience living in Boston that things are tough here despite the fewexamples of some excellent bands. So few groups actually pay attentionto each other, as everybody seems to want to be stars on their own andmake it big somewhere else. With that in mind, big fuckingcongratulations go out to Rick Webb of Archenemy for compiling thiscollection: 20 tracks from Boston and Boston-friendly artists. In theyears I have personally known and worked with Webb, we have had greatmusic discussions, each of us respecting each other's musical knowledgeand taste very much. "Know Your Enemy" features Neptune, Mistle Thrush,Freezepop and many other acts you've never heard of, who have neverheard of me either however. Whether it's the serene electronica wash ofIntelevision or the J-Pop of Freezepop, the 80s retro-trashy tune fromThe Mourning After, the punchy aggressive distorted homemade metalllicsounds of Neptune, or the embarassing cover tune of "To Love Somebody"by The Boy Joys, the heart-felt delivery is genuine all around. Thepackaging is such a stunning reflective multi-fold digipack that itcan't be scanned properly on a scanner, the production varies due tothe multi-genred experience, but it flows quite nicely and I'll standby Rick even if I'm not crazy about all of these bands! Other pastefforts from Boston labels have had a mix almost too homogenous for itto be taken seriously outside of the area: something like this—cleverlypackaged and not presented as a "Boston thing"—works perfectly.

The eponymous thirdfull-lengther from Kreidler is almost a futuristic nod to theinnovators of 70s Kraut Rock. The disc is nearly all instrumental, savetwo tracks with vocal contributions from artful indie clown Momus andArgeninian pop star Leo Garcia (not to be confused with the Dominicanbaseball player, professor, Wyoming politician, classical guitarist, orSalsa dance instructor). The quartet is down to a trio since theirbassist departed as his side project, To Rococo Rot become more of amain outlet. The bass lines are beefier than ever however, and whetherthe songs are serene throbbing electronic easy listening gems like"Bewitched", a Can-like vocal tunes as "Mnemorex" or a Kraftwerkianhook-based ditty like "Do It", the production is slick and inviting.Kreidler's tunes are pretty damned catchy and their generally jovialfeel suggests these Germans are undoubtedly having fun. Put yourlaptops down and start having fun.

samples:

• Mnemorex (with Momus)
• Do It
• Beauties

With almost no down timefrom cross-continental touring and releasing albums as Panacea andDisorder, Matthis Mootz has released this scarcely limited mini-LP onAnt-Zen. Limited to 680 copies, "Kopyright Liberation" is built fromsources from the now legendary Kopyright Liberation Front, a.k.a. theKLF. While this 40-minute mini-LP is rather tributal in nature—withtrack titles "Trancentral," "Ru Con," and "Reefer Spin,"—a scatteringof micro elements have been recycled in an entirely new surrounding.The record strays from the more minimalistic tendencies of the firsttwo m² [pronounced and sometimes listed as Squaremeter]releases (three if you consider Brasilia). Mootz weaves an intricatetapestry of low end rumblings, NASA beeps, clicks for measure and tempomarks, and speech samples with spacious effects. For a man known in thedrum and bass world for his lengthy intros, some of these songs cantake up to six minutes before every individual element introduced beginto play with each other. This could possibly be my favorite Squaremeterrelease to date.

samples:

• Kopyright Liberation
• Transcentral
• Ru Con