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Candi Nook ‘night of the stumbleflea’-Fencing Flatworm-CDR-Plastic envelope color artwork

/I noticed Candi Nook a while ago on various compilations but I never had a chance to listen to a full length record from this talented artist. Candi’s the person who resuscitates all them seemingly long-dead gimmicks of dance music with a good kick in their lazy arses, mixing 303 acid-type basslines with ambient sine wave drones, deep 808 bassdrums with clicking beeping rhythms and heavily processed vocals. It’s rather varied too, parts being quite experimental others quite groovy, and you’ve got a soundtrack-for-a-sequel-to-The-Nameless-type track (#4) for the same cheap price. Move your body to the Candi, baby.

/www.fencingflatworm.cjb.net or 16 Station Parade-Leeds-LS5 3HG-UK

Carrion Crawler / Ptarmigan split-swampofpus-7”-b&w UGmetal cover

/”Satan can’t play Dungeons and Dragons” “ham’n’cheese on steel” I wish I had found such titles myself. This record, they say, is an insult to the black metal 2 D scene. Well: please ask a black metal fan if it is, I have no idea (but I do like the words 2D to describe the black metal scene). I guess that if you haven’t been listening to a lot of metal as a teenager as I did, the endless jokes & clichés on this record aren’t going to be very appealing to you but in case you did, I think you’re going to like it as much as I did. Or the other way round.

/mailto: swampofpus_at_hotmail.com or snailto: PO BOX 1053 Wheatridge CO 80034-1053 USA

Ceramic Hobs–‘straight outta rampton’–pumf-CD-colour artwork

/I couldn’t write more relevant words about this release than those from Jimmy Possession at www.come.to/robots or Mark Wharton from Just Glittering (or is it Idwal Fisher?). Still I wanted to write a little thing about this, just in case you’re not a usual reader of those two great zines. Don’t miss this one: it’s brilliant, like a record from The Residents pretending they’re Neil Young would be. Find it and buy it. Islam Uber Alles.

/www.pumf.net

Chaos Through Programming ‘you bitreduced my heart’

/‘you bit-reduced my heart’ oversampled mine. 8bit, the package is a well-crafted handmade piece of work inside an antistatic bag, the kind used to pack computer hardware. 16bit, it comes with an mp3 remix on a floppy and thanks again for releasing music on the marvellous magnetic medium (although I’d prefer the tracks to be in a light old-fashioned format such as tracker ones but I’m always whining about things). 24bit, the more I listen to it, the more the music’s growing on me. 48bit, the musical references I hear there are obscure and excellent bands from the undergroundest underground. Think ultra-basic (this is a compliment in my mouth, mind you) videogame electrotechno like Darky, melodic poppy ambient like Ultra Milkmaids, add this noisy Trombone-like touch plus acoustic guitars and piano (yes, that’s what you do) and very funny + very silly track names and you’ve got something you wish YOU had released/composed. Could we have some more, please? Ah, I’ve GOT to say something negative, so here it is: I’d rather have track 2 in the end of the record. Not that negative, is it.

/see at: www.pushthebutton.tk or mailto:info_at_pushthebutton.tk

Charles atlas ‘fabricate’-audraglint-CD-beautiful digipack

/I always like to listen to a remix album without having ever heard about the original. Opens with Sybarite sounding like The Telescopes (Third wave era) remixing Matmos. Just really good (and nice trumpets, undoubtly belonging to the original track). Eerie spacey dubby electro follows, a little clichéd for me. Speaking about The Telescopes, here they come: what I like about them is you never know what’s coming next (and you’re never disappointed); this time there’s a piano line layered with stuttering melody lines and digital clicks and tremoloed voices and distorted beats in the distance (and you’re not disappointed this time either). Takes about 10 seconds to recognize Pram’s coming next and should I say again Pram is an excellent band? Nah, you already know that. It’s a remix and it sounds so much like an actual Pram song it’s amazing (missed Rosie’s voice again on this one). Well I’m not going to give you a full catalogue of this compilation cause you should buy it and discover it for yourself since it’s very good and even your mother will like it more that the nu metal you usually give her you sick teenager. Just a final word: Tele:Funken are not even remotely connected to Pan(a)sonic on the track featured there, sounding a lot like Labradford and getting my eternal love at once for it.

/www.audraglint.com or www.charles-atlas.com

Chefkirk ‘(38-40cm)’-CDR in a nice folding cardboard pack

/Digital noise and power electronics and difficult experimental and processed acoustic whatevers that fit in well somehow (processed powertools, processed didgeridoos, processed drums, so on). Short and inventive: nice.

/www.simlog.tk or simlog@hot.pl

Chuck Bettis ‘sonic sigils’-scarcelight-CD, but what a CD!
/This is one of the most beautifully simple packaging ideas I’ve seen in a long time: the CD is mostly transparent except for a few words in green and a few white owls and a black and green square, this mere square being used to write the audio data on the other side if you follow me. The nineteen-and-a-bit minutes on this record are glitchy and noisy and kind of ear piercing but refrain from only being this, keeping a sense for structure and variety and silence and quietness most Mego releases lack nowadays.

/http://scarcelight.org

Comintern.com ‘ausweis’-Earsay- CD in a beautiful sort of envelope

/There was a time I played in a rock band and listened to what I called noisecore all day, and bands like Craw, Dazzling Killmen or Thug or labels such as Bovine or Trance were my references. These were lovely times of hard-work-little-money-lots-of-playing- bass-guitar innocence I don’t miss the last bit. If only I had the chance to listen to Comintern.com back then, I’d have been a rabid fan of their The-Swans-meets-Victim’s-Family thing (and for more modern references like Milemarker or Converge I’m not the man to see). Fine crazy vocals with just the right touch of hiphop and a drummer… Ah, well, I guess if there were more drummers like this one, no one would ever want drum machines. There are even welcome and well arranged experimental/ambient moments and the cover mixes communist and Jew imagery with a German title and there’s a John Lennon cover too (being the greatest unfan of all Beatles’ related crap, I never heard the original but this version of ‘working class hero’ is just perfect for me).

/http://www.earsay.com/ – c/o the Third Ear – 21 Shenkin street – Tel Aviv- Israel

Conscious/Unconscious ‘put 2 part 1: containment’-Audiolaceration-CD-jewel box blahblahblah

/This seemed rather unsurprising, sort of japanese-sounding power-electro-noise for fans of this kinda thing. BUT, then comes track 5 ‘lost prophecies’ and this is a convincing hip-hop/digital noise crossover, a little not bad ambient and another hip-hop/indust crossover even better than the first one, plus another little not bad ambient. I wish I had a whole record sounding like these two tracks.

/mailto:audiolaceration_at_hotmail.com – P.O.BOX 8, SHEFFIELD S4 7YD, ENGLAND

Corrupted ‘la victima es su mismo’-view beyond-vinyl 7”-BW artwork

/No wonder this time, this HAS TO BE played 33rpm. Corrupted is a strange band. Oh, not because of their style, the slowest, slimiest, heaviest sludgecore around, but because… Because they’re Japanese (their drummer is said to be the Boredoms’-RIP-, and that’s strange for a start) and use various languages for their track titles-the ones we can understand, that is-(if someone understands the lyrics and can be sure what is printed on the sleeve is what is actually sang please mail me). Because they manage to make the darkest metal around out of piano and acoustic guitar tunes (not on this record). Because everybody I know seems to know them and I saw no regular album around. Because metal magazines focused on Neurosis the day their music started to sound like we-do-that-same-recipe-of-our-own-all-the-time-crap while Corrupted remained in the shadows of DIY zines. Stay there and keep up the excellence.

/(just in case you didn’t get the point, I like this record, I really like this band and I do think people like that are the future of metal)

/c/o Pavel Tusl PO BOX 26, 34901 STRIBRO, CZECH REPUBLIC-mailto: vbeyond_at_atlas.cz