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Aberrant/Dhibac split-hombre lobo-7”-regular cover
/There’s something annoying about Aberrant and it’s this habit US bands have of writing they live in Westminster and letting you guess in what country in the world this is. But there’s something good about them (besides having a skull on their part of the cover) and it’s their music: death/mincecore and yeah, it does sound like Agathocles meets Wadge. There’s something annoying about Dhibac and it’s having this Jean Paul Belmondo old fascist pig on the cover –even if it’s to despise it, why bothering showing or talking about something you don’t like? Aren’t you busy enough with stuff you like? But there’s something good about them (apart from the mesmerize-me record insert) and it’s their music: grind/mincecore and yeah, it sounds like Agathocles meets Dysmorfic.
/hombre-lobo_at_web.de or Bert Blees–Kaiserslauterer Str.11–66123 Saarbrücken-Germany
Accelera Deck ‘pop polling’-scarcelight-
CD-jewel box: do you have to?
/Latest known album of Ultra Milkmaids is called ‘pop pressing’
and I wonder whether these people at Accelera Deck ever heard about
it before naming this way a record the Milkmaids could’ve done
a while ago (sounds more like the ‘peps’ era though). Not
saying this isn’t good and thanks to the music media who were
(again) quite silent about yet another great record there’s little
chance even if they would, A.D. could’ve drawn inspiration from
the U.M. Anyway, this is guitar ambient, isn’t it, and it’s
beautiful, it’s enthralling, it’s minimal, it’s echoed
and tremoloed, it can be as calm and powerful as the Arctic Sea in summer
and it peacefully flows its Aurora Borealis’s colors before your
very eyes and amazed they are.
http://scarcelight.org
Agathocles ‘to serve…to protect/leads to’-No Fashion HC-CD-jewel box yuck
/This is a compilation of previously released material re-released on CD on some very obscure Brazilian label so I guess I can review it now even if it’s not brand new. Just in case you spent the last fifteen years in a bomb shelter on Mars and never heard about AG, let me introduce you to one of the last (and best) genuine indie metal bands in the world. AG keeps the true spirit of late-1980s grind/mincecore alive long after all bands died or surrendered to the business, and this is probably because they were here to feel what the spirit was (first AG recordings took place back in 87-88 and I had long hair these years as well so don’t be too ashamed of yourself). I’m glad there still is people who think racism is something worth fighting against and music is a good weapon to do so, because as clichéd as it may seem it still is. Music is fast, wonderfully simple and catchy in the grindcore way, songs are just short enough with that beautiful sense of melody AG usually have (no more than 5 notes in a riff, that’s what I like). And it comes with the required EXTRALOUD-level mastering. And I could make a whole newsletter with excellent reviews of the tens all-are-excellent AG records I have.
/label: mailto:massiser_at_hotmail.com – mailto:hmrock_at_hmrock.com.br; band: Jan Frederickx-asberg 8-2400 Mol-Belgium
Agathocles
/ Front Beast split – deathstrike – 7” vinyl – ugly usual b&w metal
cover
/Front beast is, erm, let’s say it’s the most lofi black metal played by
a drunkard alone with his clumsy fingers having trouble finding the
right notes on his secondhand guitar after doing something so difficult
as to program a 4/4 160 BPM drumbeat on his secondhand RX-7. As the
guitar is played so badly, the sound is so exceedingly dirty and underproduced,
the vocals bare gurgles straight out of the vineyard, the beats so repetitive
even Emperor would’ve found them tiring, there definitely is some charm
to this release even the stoniest stupidest deafest black metal addict
would loathe (loathe is one of these ‘majestic’ words BM fans like)
since there is absolutely NO majesty, virtuosity, technical performance,
symphony or anything in this long track –that was a long sentence, now
breathe or die before reading on. Agathocles on this record are honest
as they always are, with a raging version of their anthem ‘hand in hand’
(straight-edge title, anti-fascist song, that’s the kind of irony I
like), all four songs featured here being taken from their recent live
in Leipzig, all showing that even past thirty, even with all those hairs
growing out of your ears like they are out of mine, you still can GRIND.
/PO BOX 1137 – 55235 Flonheim –
Agathocles/les Baudouins Morts split-7”-b&w cucarracha sleeve
/Grindmincecore with acoustic guitars vs. surf-influenced punkrock sung in Dutch. Since a more accurate description could spoil part of the surprise (and part of your pleasure) I’ll just say this is the kind of record I can listen from dusk till dawn on repeat mode (if someone takes the put-the-other-side-of-the-7”-on shifts with me to emulate the repeat mode). Besides: someone writing as liner notes the stars and stripes flag still is stained with Allende’s blood is my friend for life.
/see at: www.agathocles.com write to: Jan Frederickx, asberg 8, 2400 MOL-BELGIUM
Aghast/Tekken split-weewee-CD-beautiful&original color artwork on cardoard
/I suppose Aghast is thought of as emo-core by their fans and we all know that emo-kids as they call themselves are thought of as rather narrow-minded by narrow-minded somethingelse-kids. All right as I don’t give a damn about whatevercorethiscouldbe I guess I won’t be influenced by any cliquiness. Something special in Aghast is their singer, let’s talk about him instead of saying it’s probably not the most original hardcore you’ve ever heard (who cares about THAT anyway?). I thought French people weren’t very good at being angry nor desperate but oh-so wonderfully angry and desperate this guy sounds. Even with a somewhat ‘light’ production this time especially on guitars, Aghast sounds far better than most bands I hear coming from major-owned self-called independent labels.
/I used to dream of what my-grindcore-back-when-I-was-15 should’ve become. Relentless speed. Less than 20 seconds songs that manage to include two breaks and four different riffs. Lots of nonsense humor with lyrics against everything especially writing lyrics. Guitar players who think ‘guitar solo’ is a brand of vacuum cleaners. A genuinely punk attitude (and it’s not ‘nu’ or ‘neo’ or ‘the new generation of’ anything). In fact it came close to that when I was 15, so where’s the dream? Now I can get it all on proper CDs with nice artworks instead of crappy tapes and be sure it was MEANT to sound that lofi. And it can be done without any corporate business money. And it’s cheap. And the CD cover reads ‘TEKKEN’.
/c/o David Sechand, 25 rue Goudouli 31240 Saint Jean – France - david.weewee_at_laposte.net
Aidan Baker ‘dreammares’-mechanoise-CDR-beautiful blue painting artwork in the usual horrible jewel box
/Sometimes you wonder what the difference is between the no-audience underground usually reviewed here and the regular, little audience, underground (read: major-owned or distributed labels). Most of the first are CDR labels (with the occasional 7” release) with more or less homemade covers enfolding their more or less homemade music and most of the latter are CD labels with gentle little jewel boxes or gentle multi-coloured little digipacks enfolding their gentle multi-coloured little easy listening music. Sure isn’t the quality of the music itself that’s gonna help us to categorize them labels. Take your regular, little audience underground label, unlimited copies, pressed CDs, jewel boxes, multi-coloured little digipacks and all: music ranges from awful to not so bad. Take Mechanoise, then; home-printed artworks (but very nice ones), jewel boxes (I wish that could change), CDRs limited to 100 copies: music ranges from not so bad to great. And this Aidan Baker record’s great. And I found a brand new category to describe it: it’s post-power-ambient. Post like post-rockish guitar drones coming out of a Maeror tri 7” played 12 rpm and processed sampled beats coming out of nowhere. Power like power electronic tape loops and low frequencies that make your speakers shiver. Ambient like sensory-isolation-tank nightmarish fantasies, when your own thoughts turn into eerie voices speaking of god. And there’s another difference between the no-audience underground and the regular, little audience, underground: you never hear or read about the no-audience underground. Except now, you did.
/www.mechanoise-labs.com
Akihiko Tanigushi ‘improvised particle’-simlog-CDR-beautiful artwork
/Granular synthesis, now let me think. You take a sound, slice it into super-small parts (the grains) then throw them in again in tempo, adding random phase, panning or reverse effects and get this wonderful Ultra-Milkmaids-like stuttering melody effect. This record is the perfect example of what a granulator (the effect made out of granular synthesis, follow me?) a few degraders, a host sequencing program and A LOT of talent can make (and a little beat sorcery adds its spice on tracks 3 and 4 –granulated beats?). If you think this is for computer nerds only, you’re wrong: it’s just great music for everyone. Please note Simlog is a Polish noise/experimental label and they sure deliver
/www.simlog.tk or simlog@hot.pl
Aleph/Eternalice ‘ten times louder than the sun’-CDR in the good old PVC envelope
/I love synth ambient when it’s well made. Slowly evolving drone textures, tunes that emerge like solarwhales out of the sinusoid magma then drown deep back again, tremoloed analogue leads like slowly moving opaque and multi-coloured veils of aurora borealis, spaced out feedback and circular saws of reversed pulse waves. Know what? Yea: this is too short –incredible, ain’t it.
/www.simlog.tk or simlog@hot.pl
Alexandre Aja ‘haute tension’-majormajor, diediedie-DVD (I wish I could get these from home-indie-companies)
/This is a slasher movie complete with the lots of blood and murders with the regular axe, the regular power tool, and the regular sharp razor. Two teenage girls are the main characters in it. There’s the usual sex sequence. The killer doesn’t die in the end thus leaving the usual opportunity for a sequel. All the rules Carpenter established 30 years ago with Halloween are therefore respected. And the mandatory constant references to other cult classics such as Texas Chainsaw or Psycho are also there. But there’s more to it: one, it’s a French movie (title translation oscillates between ‘high voltage’ and ‘high stress’), making it the second French classical-gore-movie I ever saw along with ‘la nuit de la mort’; two there’s a trick to the killer who by the way isn’t by any means romantic or intelligent or beautiful or delicate or any other Lecter-like sissy (being your regular disgusting sweaty pig I guess you can credit these words to the killer himself cause I really think homophobia’s just plain crap); three the gory scenes are impressive despite the low-budget atmosphere and believe me I’m not that easily impressed. And, being a non-American picture you don’t get the usual understated anti-cultural leitmotivs for the same expensive price, just a clever but still nastymeanandirty little B-movie a lot scarier and a lot less pretentious than The Blair Witch Project. Support the French anti-French cinema.
Alphane moon :: Our glassie azoth split-oggum-CD-cliché medieval artwork in a cliché jewel box
/Sweet reverberated guitar drones buried under walls of ear-piercing feedback make the best and most personal part of Alphane Moon. Still good but not quite as good is a long ritual ambient track with a really mesmerizing little melodelay emerging out of the chaos. You also get post-folkish Current93-like guitar-and-voice which still isn’t bad, being short enough –and somehow giving the record a nice&needed breath of fresh spring air. I wonder why this is a split since Alphane Moon alone had just about the perfect length to release this on a 3” and make it a great little record instead of a half-great big one.
/www.oggum.co.uk
Aluminium noise ‘manipulations’-suggestion-CDR-jewel box, ah, sad
/Starts off like a regular noise ambient record. By the time I’m ready to eject the record and throw it away, melodies slowly emerge of the chaos and complexity arises out of the layers of nonsense. And it all suddenly fits and feels right. The noise feels right. Them Theremins-in-the-distance feel right. Them slowly rising ambient drones feel right. Them random glockenspiels feel tightly in place over the deep low end sine waves. If you ever wanted an ambient-noise record, here’s one. In case you never wanted one, you should feel the urge to get this one. And there’s a live bonus disc, as good as the studio one. And both are around the 50 minutes perfect timing.
/www.suggestion-records.de or info_at_suggestion-records.de or PO box 1403 – 58285 Gevelsberg - Germany
Amanonn ‘eLECTROpUNKmODEL’-autoproduction-CDR-b&w pretty arty cover
/You get this thirteenth record of the week and there’s hand-drawn girls all over the cover. And you’re a fat and stupid big-headed bastard like I am so you think ‘power industrial noise whatever… Just another superboring superlong superloud supercrap’. Like I just said you’re stupid. In fact, my wife told me I was stupid when I had the record and talked before listening to it. ‘Come on, you barely grown-up kid’, she said, ‘just play it, and stop acting all blasé and snobbish all the time’.
/I played it. It’s great. It’s nowhere near noisy or even remotely connected to industrial. It’s Peaches on sedatives turned jazzy. It’s all rich and warm kicks, Suicide rhythms looping, groovy basslines pounding (that is, grooving at 26 BPM), far out voices speaking French (I think, but I can’t figure out what they say), somehow bare and minimal and overall danceable if you’re that type of tired dancer. That was a lesson I liked to learn: listen to the music first, try and be smart just afterwards you bastard.
/amanonn_at_free.fr - http://amanonn.free.fr
Amanonn ‘rare tracks’-sexy witch-home tape-girly drawing in b&w cover
/Much less poppy than their ‘electropunkmodel’, this one seems to bring 1980’s newave-synthpop to a new extent. Demixes of existing tracks, mangling them with classical industrial aggression from the same era. Suicide and Visage or Soft Cell are sure still there, but sounds like TG or SPK also put their snorting noses on the record. Great versions of Dolores (must be that track but versions are called Doro).
/amanonn_at_free.fr - http://amanonn.free.fr
Amanonn
‘Jaclyn S.’ - autoprod - CDR - yeah 80’s cover
/If only you could buy pop hit-singles that good in shops, our world would
be a better place to live. People from Amanonn (two people or so I’m
told though I have no idea of who does what) seem to be obsessed by
the Other Half of Humanity (the best half, one could say –not my own
half in any case): most of their song titles are feminine names and
most of their lyrics have something to do with the ‘beautiful sex’ as
we say here; to me it looks much saner than being obsessed by say… the
devil. So what about their music then? TR analogue boom-tack machines,
MS20, real bass guitar, real (but heavily processed) voices, same climate
as their other recordings: 1980s new wave emulation that has a fresh
noisy industrial touch to it.
/amanonn_at_free.fr - http://amanonn.free.fr
Amanonn
‘some girls are darker than others’ - autoprod - CDR - jewel
boxes are the shining symbol of the corporate music business
/Amanonn’s got this talent of making ten versions of the same
song and it still sounds fresh, interesting, new. France’s finest
new-wave-meets-minimal-electro act is now a trio and their best song
ever is on this record (which of course is their best) and it’s
called Young Girls –like a forever young Serge Gainsbourg meeting
Plastikman at 3AM at the pub and they each speak their language: GSB
speaks girls’ names and PKM speaks 16 steps 808 kickdrum patterns.
/amanonn_at_free.fr or c/o F. AMANIEUX 137bis boulevard Ney 75018 Paris
- FRANCE
Andy
Nukes / Marc Van Elburg ‘traphik’ - de honderkoekjesfabriek
- CDR - very beautiful layout/cover/artwork/comic book
/Track 1 is, you know, sort of random noise, like what you’d
get if you set your CD player in ‘random + preview first 30 seconds’
mode with a MSBR compilation inside it. Not bad. Track 3 is, well, this
type of walls of static mastered higher - than - 0db with quiet moments
noise you can fast forward through and enjoy (except if you’d
prefer 12 minutes of it). Track 2 is EXCELLENT digital - type noise
made of 20 - seconds - tracks - glued - together which is to electronica
what Ornette Coleman’s ‘free jazz’ is to Ella Fitzgerald’s
& Louis Armstrong’s ‘Louis & Ella’ if you
follow me. Very nice artwork & comic strip booklet, btw; and I bet
such a wonderful packaging’s not something you’ll see very
often.
/PO BOX 68 7700AB Dedemsvaart - THE NETHERLANDS
Antigama/Jan AG split-dywizja kot-CD-pro jewel box (ox ox)
/Antigama covers Siekiera, an underground polish brutal hardcore band. Sounds like punkish death metal to me, a great loud and aggressive sound, straightforward songs, lyrics in Polish, 5 songs of pure underground metal pleasure. Special mentions go to the athletic drummer for his true-till-death double pedal playing and to the singer for his seemingly tireless scream-throat. Jan AG part consists of songs to be found on the demos already reviewed here and they’re still excellent. Please note two out of the six artists Jan AG says his inspiration comes from are French, who said there was nothing to be saved except cheese here.
/Antigama: c/o Rokicki, ul. Awionetki rwd 3/78, 03-982 Warzawa, POLAND - mailto: antigama_at_poctza.onet.pl - see at: www.antigama.cjb.net - Jan AG: Asberg 8, 2400 Mol, BELGIUM - dywizja kot: PO Box 28, 00-953 Warzawa 37, POLAND – see at: http://dywizjakot.prm.pl
Anton
Lavey’s Fudgesickle Suckfest ‘1st EP’ and ‘simulation paradise’
- Reality Impaired - CDR - as ugly as usual b&w cover
/Their 1st recording is blues made with the help of whiskey
older than the musician’s parents on
/
Arco Flute Foundation ‘everything after the bomb is sci-fi’-cenotaph-CD-jewel box but really nice color artwork
/When I was a teenager (spots + long hair + this Fuck You All But I’d Be Glad If you Loved Me attitude-they still seem to enjoy these days) and a friend told me ‘hey, listen to this, I bet you‘re gonna like it’ it always ended in disappointment, tears and thinking even .my dearest friends bet my mind was full of dogshit. Now I get adult tickets when I want to go someplace and everything‘s so different. Is it because my brains positively did turn into canine faeces that I like music my friends bet I‘ll like? I‘ll bet it‘s because my very few friends now are somewhat great people (and you can‘t possibly be bad when you have great people as friends, can you).
/Anyway apart from my personal life, I was given this record by a friend who bet I‘d like it. He was right. Call it post-rock (but you shouldn‘t, I‘m afraid the name’s not en vogue anymore), call it post-psychedelic pop, call it instrumental experimental old-school post-Sonic Youth circa Evol at its best, call it post-Skullflower post-playing post-ambient with post-electronics, call it people able to do a 9 minutes long song without being boring deserve a medal, call it it‘d fit on an LP so why is it on CD. Or don‘t call it anything, relax and enjoy. And consider quitting post-calling things names.
/po box 81941, Pittsburgh, PA 15217-USA or see at www.arcoflutefoundation.com
Artridge ‘finished soundtracks for unshot
films’-interlink-CDR-I only had the promo pack so…
/I always feel kinda funny bands posing with a circle-A-like logo and
printing on the cover of their records ‘no hiring, no re-selling,
no otherwise unauthorized slicing, mincing or any kind of eating of
this record’… In any case, this is quite good and varied
and not only soundtrackish-ambient as you might’ve thought but
also exp’d’n’b and a bit of space rock as well. It’s
certainly worth a proper release on a 3” CD or a 10” vinyl
since both are format of the gods and the hour presented here is about
three times the length this record should have.
/www.artridge.org
Asphalt Leash ‘theories in sonic warfare’-mechanoise labs-CDR-jewel box + color cover
/Mechanoise define my standards for brutality, that’s for sure and I told you before. But perhaps you weren’t listening, or you could’ve been deafened by ‘playing at maximum volume’ (as madmen at Mechanoise advise you to) one of the tracks on this pain(wonder)ful record, poetically called ‘140 dB’. Did you ever dream of making a song with a chainsaw? That’s what Asphalt Leash do, and not only by opening the record with the sampled sound of a chainsaw but also by making tracks with ultra-aggressive synths that must actually look like chainsaws besides sounding like them. If they use a laptop computer, I bet it looks like a crazed version of a Terminator T1000 force-pushed inside a 10”x10” box which is somewhat too small for it, see. Not the type of laptop you would want to rest on your lap. Or on top your desk. I’d be wary if I a machine capable of such a level of violence and yet perfect self-control, seeming able to keep its cool even in the noisiest moments of the storm stood on mine. Or the people behind the machines could be the T1000s, who knows.
/mechanoise_at_free.fr or www.altern.org/mechanoise
Aspic-‘an ancient song sung too long‘-Vacuum Records-CD-jewel box w/colour sleeve
/Beautiful melodies, clicking rhythms, dense analogue noises, unusual drone textures, complex entertaining structures. Even the length of the tracks forces rather than attracts your attention. Nice. Maybe even too nice here and there, too much perfection for mistakes to add their jazz to the mix. A special mention for the ‘c-Ingalls’ track, Nelly Olson’s favourite Aspic track. Ever. Listening to this left me somewhat nostalgic as this record doesn’t need any promo coming from us and Vacuum Records will probably soon get too big to be featured here anymore. Or maybe it was only the music.
/band: aspic_at_zone51.com or see at www.zone51/aspic
/label: 1 boulevard ker pompon, 35800 SAINT LUNAIRE, FRANCE or see at www.vacuum.net