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Bastard
Noise / Government Alpha feat. Guilty Connector & S. Isabella ‘radiation
snowfall’ - xerxes - CDR - very very nice color cover
/Noise is a difficult genre and that doesn’t only apply to listeners.
This release is a shining example of how difficult making listenable
noise is. On one hand, you have Bastard Noise, Guilty Connector and
S. Isabella whose tracks are allright noise (read: you start to play
this loud, loud, loud but you soon want to lower the volume because
it’s getting a bit boring). On the other hand you have Government
Alpha which is NOISE, an incredible experience for your ears and mind
(read: the louder it gets the louder you want it to be in order to catch
all them nuances Yasutoshi’s put in there). I’m always quite
enthusiastic about Gov.A releases and this record –if you start
it from track 5, the well named Incandescent Sandstorm - isn’t
going to break the rule; get it and show unbelievers what NOISE is all
about.
/xerxes_at_eb.mbn.or.jp and please note: Xerxes is GovAlpha’s own
label, a fine label producing fine noise music finely packed in fine
design (really wonderful color envelopes and thin plastic protective
cover).
Beck/Hession/Thomas ‘the three b’s’-FFR-CDR-new and nice color sleeve
/Free jazz recorded live, how classy on a CDR label! Nice record, fine label and FFR just changed their nice graphics and packaging for even nicer ones and lowered their prices. And these people have trouble in gathering enough money to run the label, blamey. So you lift off your lazy asses, you turn off your TV and you run and buy their records.
/http://www.fencingflatworm.cjb.net/ and new address 16 station parade-leeds-LS5 3HG-UK
Belaska ‘vault’-w.m.o./r-CDs in PVC envelopes are still my favourite
/I hear many-a-thing about industrial music and how the genre died as such in the mid eighties just around the era rock bands started pretending they were doing industrial music (Ministry, anyone?) I have no precise idea whether industrial is or isn’t still alive but what strikes me as true among the what’s said about it is industrial is intellectual music. By intellectual I by no means am saying it’s elitist or it should be (p)reserved for/to a chosen few, simply that the concepts behind it are as important as the actual music, no-music or anti-music industrial projects make or used to. This ambient-percussive-low-end piece of a disc was recorded inside a safety-box inside the bowels of an abandoned bank building –maybe ‘the heart of’ would’ve been more elegant, but definitely bowels is more accurate- using computer feedback and amplified textures (sic) and abusing the natural reverb and resonance of the ancient metallic money chamber. Now tell me again industrial isn’t intellectual.
/www.mattin.org or mattin_at_mattin.org
Bishi ‘bitpop’-brainlove-CDR-could
be out on some mp3-selling horror soon
/Kate Bush gets slapped by Hanin Elias, gently kicked in her private
parts by Rosie of Pram (I’m quite sure Rosie cannot do anything
that’s not gentle to anyone), borrows a dress from RuPaul, a sampler
from Transistor 6 and claims she was born in a Bengali family like she
thought she was Cornershop. After some brewing folded in 8 in a Megadrive
game cartridge she changes her name to Bishi and signs to Brainlove
and we all hope her music always remains short and fresh and all sorts
of lalalala like this record.
/www.brainloverecords.com
Björk
‘medulla’ (music on whatever major whatever media)
S. Soderbergh ‘solaris’ (film on whatever major whatever
media)
/What do these two things have in common? In my left hand, Mrs B. latest shining disc, brand new and I sure didn’t buy it so your guess is right I had it from Someonelses’ Records. In my right hand, Tarkovsky’s classic SciFi movie revisited by Hollywood and I must say I saw it at the cinema and I’m going to buy the DVD when I find it secondhand, although the DivX is quite easy to come by so that’s one point less for the heavy propaganda Corporate Intellectual ProprietorsTM feed us with: people who like things do buy them, p2p or not –you can now breathe, thank you. What do they have in common I said? Asleep you are, Luke? That’s quite simple actually: both advocate for underground experimental, and probably don’t even notice it. Solaris is a wonderful classic SciFi picture by an obscure (and very talented) Russian film maker, from a not-so-wonderful classic SciFi book by Stanislaw Lem but it has a secret weapon: instead of the usual super-digital super-effects you have a great soundtrack and George Clooney’s butt naked (the soundtrack is good all along, but you only got GC’s butt for 50% movie time). If seeing former-Dr-Ross’ ass and back (complete with muscles and all) is what it takes to bring Mrs Normal persuade Mr Normal into going to the theatre & see a love story taking place in space & maybe hear Tarkovsky’s name, then I’m all for it. Besides, I believe that’s what Soderbergh said to raise money for the movie ‘hey guys, come on, of course there’s no big fights, no aliens, no action, no nothing whatsoever, but we have George With No Clothes OnTM!!’ Now what’s Björk’s secret weapon? She’s famous. I’m quite sure NO ONE from the Soniversal crew she works for would’ve bet on a record making such a heavy use of sampled vocals, ring modulators, digital degraders etc. I’m quite sure they wouldn’t even normally LISTEN to such a record but hey, that’s the tiny superstar from Iceland! Yea, the one who made zillions out of singing over tunes that used ALL the basic grammar of noise electronica! Yea, the one that insists on having Matmos or Peaches opening for her! Sonic Youth have earned a well-deserved respect for promoting the rock underground; will Björk ever earn the same for promoting the electronic underground?
/at shops near you or on www.winmx.com – www.emule.com – etc.
Black Leather Jesus – TABULA RASA – CDR – superb homemade package
/WHAT A PACKAGE! I was so pleased when I first saw it I knew I had to write about it. Metal wire netting wrapping up a nice bit of full color artwork. Other releases we had from the label are nice, too but this one's a true beauty, limited to 50 copies. Music is japanoise-like industrial, along with pleasing ambient moments. Problem is the genre can’t stand anything stepping outside of the usual Merzbow/Aube/Bastard Noise path, so the album is a bit too long (but fans will also enjoy this!).
/Tony c/o TABULA RASA calle Acuerdo n18-Madrid-28015 – SPAIN - mailto:tabularasabar_at_hotmail.com
Blind with rain-demo-CDR-forget them jewelboxes (even the slim ones)
/Having someone luring me into a genre I usually hate so much as industrial-EBM is one performance. Let me put it this way: if you ever come to me with a record from Sonar or Noisex, there’s quite a chance you’ll end up with a 12.7 mm armor-piercing bullet in one of your kneecaps. In fact, I never saw a record from Wumpscut at close range because I always was brought to a hospital with severe anaphylaxis before getting closer than 100 feet from it. This man even forgot to forget the press-kit so I had to browse through a full page of self-promo to find the contact info. It really started bad. But the music is nothing short of excellent (and the tracks are excellently short and the whole CD is under 18 minutes), beat programming is really clever (not in the pain-in the-ass-virtuoso sense of the word), great use of reversed vocal samples (see: even the oldest recipes can bring good results when you’re talented), and there’s a level of melody-crafting I hadn’t heard in ages in that style (well, you can fast forward the fourth track). I won’t refer to any influences since most of the names that’d come in mind of most would’ve me puke for over a year, but this man says he pays his dues to early industrial ‘through inspiration opposed to imitation’. Has a sense for mottos, hasn’t he.
/info@blindwithrain.com or A.GLEIS 2809 boston st#223, Baltimore, MD 21224 USA
Bloody Puppies ‘yar’s revenge’-Reality Impaired-CDR-atari bw artwork
/A bass, a distortion pedal, an atari for those 8-bit bleeps and spaceship-explosions make half an hour improvised (or so it seems) experimental record. Not the record you’d listen to every day but where do you find the time to listen to all your records every day? Stan says he’s quite happy about this record. So am I.
/c/o VD, PO Box 1285, JOPLIN, MO 64802, USA
Blue Baboon ‘Hi Top’ – Optical Sound – CD – Pro crystal package (and a nice one, too)
/When you get music from a close friend, you’re either too kind or too demanding. Read the review below then choose which one I was. This record from Olivier is great. Poppy electronica, complete with the usual Oval et al. references, the mischievous use of 8-bit sounding rhythms (made with sounds only very remotely connected to drumbeats) and ring modulators, but without the somewhat tedious Modern Art Concept. A touch of true joy and pure amusement flowing through the music add something fresh to the genre.
/Optical Sound Records c/o P. BELOUIN-9 place des Etudiants, 67000 STRASBOURG-France-http://www.zone51.com/digital_baobab-mailto:digital_baobab_at_zone51.com
Blue satellite ‘recombining tone techniques’-hush little robot-CDR-major-cloned sleeve&artwork, too bad
/One day, Klaus Schultze died (yeah, I know that’s bad science fiction and his music –the old one I mean- will never die; still, please keep quiet and let me tell you the story). He met Syd Barrett in some sort of space-heaven. They had a little chat and started complaining about how The Floyd had become soooooooooo tremendously bad after Barrett left –of course, Mr Schultze forgot to mention how bad HIS own music became with him still behind the keyboards but, hey, who’s gonna blame him. Of course they talked about other people’s music and I reckon they mentioned Midwich. And Blue Satellite, drones and tones and guitars and organs and reverbs and all this sorta stuff you now can have at home because software synthesis became so affordable and everyone can have a decent home studio these days. ‘Floating across a sea of clouds’ opens the record, and that’s just what our two dead genuine analogue superstars were doing in my story. ‘Mercury the messenger’ was the background to their conversation (in loop mode). They wondered ‘Who owns the sun’ (of course, the tongue-in-cheek answer that pops up in my mind is ‘MooN does’). Last tracks are long pieces playing with tone alterations, phases, melodies and structures: surprise, surprise, I liked them as well.
/www.hushlittlerobot.com
Bodycocktail
‘information trials’ & ‘pillows of ear’
- zh27 - CDR - great artwork&packaging
/Groovy experimental music with heavily processed vocals and lots of
humour on ‘information trials’ (long tracks). More experiments,
less grooves and somehow ‘real’ songs on ‘pillows
of ear’ (and shorter tracks –surprisingly I preferred the
long ones). As usual on zh27 you get two releases & a custom made
good - looking sleeve for the great - value - for - money price.
/http://zh27.net
Brain
‘a13’ - alluvial - CDR in a brown cardboard sleeve - that’s what I call
a beautiful artwork
/Starts with three less-than-ten-seconds tracks and comes to you in an
absolutely beautiful cardboard sleeve, abstract colour insert and all.
Extremely varied noisy and not so noisy ambient (even if that sounds
impossible) for 34 tracks and none of them is too long (except of course,
the record itself being blahblahblah well over the hour blahblahblah
vinyl was best cause you had to keep blahblahblah short blahblahblah
more of the usual blahblahblah).
/alluvial_at_hotmail.com or snailto:
/”you used to be an asshole, now you’re just a dead asshole”
gets the best title track award of the issue, although the lyrics beneath
are quite obscure. Quite powerful, quite screamo, quite fast and short
and still under control: did I mention this was good old’n’nice
oldschool hardcore in the vein of B’last and a whole lotta others
who used to make the soundtracks to these good old’n’nice
oldschool skate videos from Santa Cruz back in the early nineties? Yeah,
I did.