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The duo and friends were part of the Invisible Records "Lowestof the Low" North American tour in 1998. The live set I saw seemed tobe heavily improvised and experimental jams but this cd is a variety of3-5 minute electro-organic pop songs. Gry's vocals (most in English)remind me a great deal of Canadian alterna-pop songstress Esthero, onlywith a Danish flavor. Einheit handles programming, piano and synths,'beat' and various effects. A full band line-up is assembled for eachtrack from the impressive guest list: Alexander Hacke (also ofNeubauten) and his wife Meret Becker, Pan Sonic, Funkstörung, Zaki 'thehuman beatbox' Hyrland, Chrislo Haas (DAF), DJ Fetisch of Terranova andseveral others. The music is somewhat surprising as it's pretty mellow,unobtrusive and radio friendly ... pleasant enough but at least half ofthe songs don't leave much of a lasting impression. Four in particulardo. "Rocket" features bombastic horn and percussion arrangements and avery amusing Cab Calloway styled call and response chorus. "PrincessCrocodile" is irresistibly fun with a ragtime sample loop accentuatedwith drum 'n bass fills. Lee Hazlewood's "Summer Wine" (as popularizedby Nancy Sinatra) is covered well with Gry and Alexander Hacke tradingoff vocals. "Ghost" is slow and sexy, much like Portishead, withbrushed snare, singing saw, cello, beat box and nasally vocals. "PublicRecording" suffers from a mismatch of creative and interesting tracksversus bland and forgetful ones. It's just too tempting to skip around...samples:
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Add a third architect to take thematerials and construct his own version, but this time adds his ownsignature style to it. Thankfully in this case, each building is fun tolook at and enjoy. "Mystery Brethren Vironment" with Takemura andTsuyuko bleeds of beautiful guitar wash and subtle female vocals a'laMy Bloody Valentine. Jim O'Rourke's take on "Mystery" is a sereneRoland 808-accented guitar, vibe and electronics interplay, which overten minutes builds into a wonderful wash of reverberated vocal samplesand white noise. A third version of "Mystery" is presented byTakemura's Child's View who uses echoes that trail the vocals andguitars from the first version while incorporating more glitchyelectronics (familiar to Takemura's own style) to create somethingalmost completely new. The other tracks on the CD include a mesmerizingdubby echo-reverberated organic instrumental 10+ minute jam-like piecewith Doug Scharin's Him along with a beautiful guitar, organ, vibe andpercussion bit with Curtis Harvey (Codeine/Pullman). "Collaborations"is the latest offering from Dylan Group front man and Bubble CoreRecords kingpin Adam Pierce. As a whole, this five-track collectionholds together amazingly well in comparison to similar long-players ofrelative artists - being half as long (just over 40 minutes) and hardlyas tiresome as those double-record remix collections with a group ofartists thrown together without much in common. For fans, this isalmost everything you would and wouldn't expect from Pierce - for thoseunfamiliar but interested, this is a great place to start.samples:
- Mystery Brethren Vironment (with Aki Tsuyuko and Nobukazu Takemura)
- Mystery Brethren Vironment (remixed by Jim O'Rourke)
- Mystery Brethren Vironment (remixed by Child's View)
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This is thevery latest remix disc, Bryn Jones re-visualizing 26 minutes worth ofFrench psychedelic spacerock band Reverberation. "Blue E." is a rathergeneric house music loop with a smattering of Middle Eastern dialoguemixed in. There's very little in the way of a Muslimgauze sound in thisone and it unfortunately drags on for nearly 8 and 1/2 minutes. "NiteTime - Praying Time" is my favorite with a hypnotic mix of chants,guitar, scratching and staggered rhythm. "Autogyre (Rocket Mix)" ismore aggressive with a squelchy bass line and uptempo jungle-lite beat,background voices and wailing siren. "Space Goes On" is about the sameas the previous track, though a bit more cut-up and once again too longat 7 and 1/2 minutes. "Free Your Soul" is the nearest to pureMuslimgauze with a big dub bass line and distorted and volume swelledbleeps and sweeps. But, it's only 2 and 1/2 minutes and not all thatinteresting. Altogether "New Soul", like most of the other remix discs,is disappointing. It seems that neither the soul of Reverberation orMuslimgauze comes through adequately. Even the most ardent Muslimgauzefans, like myself, won't be spinning this one very often. Future remixand collaborative works include the new 2 track Bass Communion vMuslimgauze EP out now and "Abu-Dis", a 2 cd remix collection ofothers' tracks (including Talvin Singh and Luke Vibert) due thisSeptember/August ...samples:
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This is indeed that AC/DC tribute he's been threateningfans with for years. The seven songs consist of three AC/DC covertunes, "You Ain't Got A Hold On Me," "Bad Boy Boogie," and the titletrack. In addition to that, "Find Me, Ruben Olivares" from last year'sShanti Project appears as well as a Rachel Goswell-free version of"Around and Around" from the John Denver tribute out earlier this year.For the most part, the short disc is more low key than RHP albums inthat it is literally just Mark and his acoustic guitar. Gone are thebig loud booming guitar noises that add to the dynamics of pastfull-lengthers. Intereting to note: the covers both for this and the John Denver tribute both echo of old 4AD RHP covers.samples:
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Its purpose is to serve as anintroductory primer to the history of electronic music, a singleresource that brings together work from most every field, location,technology and period. Included are many of the names you would expect:John Cage, Edgard Varèse, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Raymond Scott, SteveReich, Terry Riley, Holger Czukay, La Monte Young, Klaus Schulze andBrian Eno. Better yet are all the remaining names you and I may notknow. The variation and history is almost overwhelming as the music iscreated for a variety of reasons and through a variety of means.Traditional composition is achieved via new methods and all new ideasand fields are created through the avant-garde of experimentation. Themachines include theremin, tape recorders, oscillators, primitivecomputers and synthesizers and numerous other inventions. Their mastersuse them to speak many different languages: cut-ups and collage, drone,soundtrack, noise, speech synthesis, ambient and other indescribablegenres. It really is amazing how human and contemporary much of thismusic still sounds today ... you would have a difficult time discerningmuch of today's minimalist and experimental artists from their decadesold predecessors. After one listen of the entire set, two things becomeglaringly apparent: 1) nearly all music of the past few decades owes anenormous debt to this pioneering work 2) the possibilities arefascinating and endless. Purists may complain of omissions (usually dueto legal reasons) and that 15 of the tracks are edits, but the 3 discsare filled at nearly 74 minutes apiece, are in rough chronologicalorder and definitely serve as an introduction. The 96 page booklet isincredible with 18 b/w pictures of artists and instruments, briefessays by Brian Eno, Robert Moog, Paul D. Miller aka DJ Spooky,Thurston Moore, Peter Namlock, David Toop and Bill Laswell, andcomments on every single track, many by the artists themselves. Veryambitious indeed but Ellipsis Arts and producers Thomas Ziegler andJason Gross have succeeded. And at a price of $30 - $35, this is asteal. "OHM" is without a doubt essential for anyone who considersthemselves a fan of electronic music ... past, present or future ...samples:
- Hannah Marcus - Looking for Space
- Paul Lansky - Her Song
- Jon Hassell - After the Charm
- Karlheinz Stockhausen - Kontakte
- Oskar Sala - Concertando Rubato
- Pauline Oliveros - Bye Bye Butterfly
- Terry Riley - Poppy No Good
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While the disc starts out somewhatremeniscent of Pole and Chain Reaction label material, Jirku expands onthe beat, modifying it, molding it, changing the sound and feel fromthe beginning to the end of the CD. Jirku is new and has a lot ofexperience and sounds to explore, as some of the instruments and soundscould have been treated slightly more to give a more personal feel tosome of the tracks. Overall, I think it's a fine release and will belistening to this more and more. See? I can like this type of stuff solong as somebody's doing something good with it!!samples:
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Even if you're into Red HousePainters, Low, Will Oldham or the Innocence Mission, you're not goingto get much out of the album if you dislike John Denver's songs. WhileI do like these bands and these songs are very good, there's not muchaction going on here. I somewhat feel let down as there were morethings these artists could have done to the songs. Perhaps it's just awee bit light for me. But don't take my word for it entirely,please....samples:
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For this album, Tietchenshas been picked up by Ritornell - Mille Plateaux's 'minimal' label.Unlike the drones of modern minimalists, he draws on various differentgenres and influences from classical to process music of some of themid 20th Century electronic composers. Tietchens achieves somethingrare in modern minimalists - a balance between high and low end sounds,where everything has its intentional place - nothing sounds random orhaphazardly assigned. Every sound develops and becomes solid in thelistener's mind. While there is a clear flow to the music, it simplydoesn't go in one ear and out the other. Listen to the sounds below butkeep in mind the crummy computer speakers combined with MP3 compressionwill not give you the rich listening experience and depth yourentertainment room or even a great pair of headphones could.samples:
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Peace Orchestra is essentially Pete Kruder (ofKruder & Dorfmeister fame) and this full-lengther is a serene dublounge journey. With organic drums, bass guitar and lightly treatedorgan sounds, the illusion of a full band on groove mode is well-kept.Droning "ambient" noises and sound effects coupled with the emotionalbasslines could easily make this disc a strong contender for some Lynchfilmwork. Shuffling rhythms combined with spacey keyboards on othertracks would be much appreciated by any Laika or Orb fan. Without askip of a heartbeat, each song flows into each other without steppingon themselves or fading into the distance. (I sincerely hate songswhich end prematurely or get drowned out by a new song fading up.) Myrecommendation: get this disc before your next low-key small gatheringwhere everybody sits in the livingroom after dinner, playing games,talking and ingesting their favorite chemicals or minerals. As an addedbonus the CD comes with a bandage stuck to the front - behind thebandage on the booklet is a small cut!samples:
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Jello has helped expose the evils ofcorporations and government for over 20 years through spoken word andmusic. This past December, Biafra and makeshift band Krist Novoselic(Nirvana, Sweet 75), Kim Thayil (Soundgarden) and Gina Mainwal (Sweet75) performed live, amidst a sea of cops and tear gas, for some of the40-18,000 protesters at the "Battle in Seattle". The introductory trackis a fifteen minute spoken ramble by Biafra explaining the importanceand details of the protest and various other related tangents. Of the 4songs, 2 are new and 2 are old. The band, who were raised on old schoolpunk, do justice to the Dead Kennedy's classic "Let's Lynch theLandlord" and the 16+ minute Biafra/D.O.A. epic "Full Metal Jackoff".The new songs "New Feudalism" and "Electronic Plantation" are fast punkrock anthems that lyrically attack the WTO and big business practices.The 26 page booklet contains all the lyrics (some updated for the year2000), liner notes of the happenings by Biafra and Novoselic,information on the WTO courtesy of the Institute for ConsumerResponsibility and photos of the band and protesters in action. It's ashame there isn't any multimedia footage of the band and/or protest onthe cd itself. The NO WTO Combo helped make a little bit of history, instyle, and this cd does a great job of documenting it and informing thepublic (myself included) beyond the agendas of the mainstream media ...samples:
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