click on banner to go back to archive index

J. Torrance ‘the archduke of the furrycats’ - sijis - CDR - simple& nice artwork

/Greatest track name of the issue goes to J. Torrance for ‘Gwyneth Paltrow Butt Naked (now that’s what I call Coldplay)’ and there’s no doubt about that. There’s doubt, though, about Sijis’ motto: fine/shiny/n’est pas. Shiny, they may n’être pas, but fine, yes ils le sont. This record’s a nicey jazzy electro bee and a randomly wandering noise technoïd arachnid (hello DJ Komikon) and some darky - ambienty - rythmy - dragonfly and all is 26m03s which is just a perfect kitty. And there’s something funny: last track is named after Roger Corman’s first movie ‘bucket of blood’ which was successful enough to help him make ‘the little shop of horrors’ which itself was so successful it enabled him to produce a long streak of MARVELOUS movies under his own company’s name (AIP) without having to refer to any of the cultural trusts of his time. Doesn’t that sound like a promising future for CDR labels with palindromic names like Sijis?

/www.sijis.com

Jan Ag ‘melodies for melanie’-12"EP

/Just how many times do I have to tell you Jan AG is great? How many comparisons do I have to make before you buy ALL his records? Try this one if you’re not convinced: Jan AG sounds like a death metal influenced industrially rotten version of Metal Urbain recorded at digital hardcore studios (if they existed). And side two is just NOISE that teaches noisicians all over the world a little lesson they should’ve learned a decade ago.

/mincemania_at_hotmail.com or Asberg 8 – 2400 Mol - Belgium

JAN AG ‘hear the whispers-motherfucker-my mind needs to eat’-autoprod-3xEPCDRs-bw skull&bones cover

/Growls with an overdrive and a SU-10, a cheap beatbox, a toy synth and the most distorted and loudest and ugliest and meanest bass sound you’ll ever hear. This thing (because there’s definetely no name yet for what’s the first band of the genre) is the best thing that happened to metal since Mick Harris left Napalm Death. And the best metal I heard since 3D House of Beef which is saying a whole lot. the AND it’s an auto-release, instead of being on Ipecac, probably because guys on indie labels really are too busy advertising for their no-interest shit to listen to what’s going on. Jan Ag is what’s going on so you better catch that train before that train rolls over your house. I mean: run, buy this record, thank these people for being here making this for you to hear and you almost missed it as I did cause I had again this record by accident. Blamey. Whoops, yes, something else: this is Agathocles’ bass/throat solo project.

/Jan Frederickx-asberg 8-2400 MOL-BELGIUM

Jan Ag and the Gajna / Agathocles split-autoprod-7”-bw artwork

/Saying this is nasty is a bit of an understatement. ‘We hates the music – We loves the noizzze’, they say: I can hear that. Anyway this should please fans of any kind of music connected to lofi noise. Great! (and features a not-available-anywhere-else Agathocles track).

/Asberg 8, 2400 Mol, BELGIUM – mincemania@hotmail.com

JE ‘IIII’ – Autoproduction – CDR – No package (but see below)

/I just told you JE was going to be something great. It IS now. Ultra-minimal electronics. Silence. Embryonic beats. Silence. Cold as deep space harmonics. Silence. Robot-animals whining, clicking, crying, screaming, then… Silence. And this silence becomes part of your stereo, plays with the sounds/noises of your flat/house. Plays with YOUR silence, your heartbeats, your ability to REMAIN silent. Wow. Maybe the whole thing is a bit too long, somewhat unfinished, but still: Wow.

JE ‘second demo’ – autoproduction – CDR – no package (yet)

/Well, well, well. Writing this review was a bit hard. JE is experimental music in the literal sense of the word: not because of the sounds or atmospheres but because talented Yann (JE means I or ME in French and JE is Yann alone) seems to be looking for something through his music. Maybe ‘searching’ would be more appropriate: searching music inside of him, searching ‘sound objects’ as people from the Groupe de Recherche Musicale used to say, searching the light, as we all do. Dub, electronica, ‘popular music’ (as Yann often calls rock and roll), metal, ambient, JE is searching for music. All kinds of music, browsing through styles. This release is clumsy, true. Clumsy like Alien’s newborns, not like senile plastic Japanese Godzillas. JE is constantly growing up: I deeply believe the monster’s gonna be fantastic when it reaches adult size.

/JE c/o Yann Fleurance – 6 rue Jean Dabadie – 31600 MURET – France

Jesse Krakow ‘oceans in the sun’-public eyesore-CDR-marvellous color cover on a cardboard envelope: stop mimicking majors and take good example of this, everyone at CDR labels

/It’s a pop record and it’s 42 minutes long and 32 tracks like a grindcore one. It’s not exactly pop, actually, nor grindcore since we're at it. It’s a little like Sebadoh kicked in the butt by Victim’s Family. It’s like No Means No gone songwriting on ketamine or Truman’s Water gone Truman’s Water and back again. It’s no-wave without the arty poses and the goth make up. Overall, this record’s just what the cover promises: trees, a rainbow, birds, a monkey, red balloons, and a black cat. And ‘you do not have to say hello’. Or ‘only you can have friends’. Still: ‘I wanna make fun with you’. Incredible lyrics. Such an amount of creativity in such little space... It just bent the spoon I used to put sugar in my instant coffee (yuck) a lot better than Yuri Geller tried on TV when I was a kid. Do you really understand what you just read? That’s nice; you’re smarter than I am. Buy this and be even smarter.

/www.publiceyesore.com

Jesu ‘jesu’-hydrahead-regular CD, etc.
/It’s not because you’ve never seen something that it may not happen: things improbable aren’t impossible, as Mr Popper pointed out a quite a while ago trying to tame epistemology. A record released by an indie-but-major-distributed-label reviewed here is improbable. Making a song called ‘friends are evil’ and proudly living with it also is improbable. But not as improbable as having two songs over 10 minutes on the same album and having none of them make me yawn after 5. Improbable musical mix between Main and Eyehategod. Improbable sludge vs. hypnopsychekraut crossover. Improbable vocoderized vocals and extra-heavy layers of pounding guitars over twist’o’distorted stoner basses. Improbable playing with the ex-drummer of a band you’ve been claiming for years was one of your main influences. This is the record of the improbable solar winds engulfing in the improbable solar sails of your nowhere-near-possible solar-powered spaceship, gently lifting it beyond the voids for an impossible voyage over the living ocean of Lem’s Solaris, where dearly loved ones come back to life when you sleep and they’re your most beautiful nightmare when you wake up.

/www.hydrahead.com

JW Light ‘rayth’-SDO-CDR-bw artwork on cardboard

/Sounds like good old-fashioned field recordings + melodic ambient, something I should be allergic to. I ain’t this time, probably because this (for once) really sounds like what all these records should sound like: soundtrack for a sad and nostalgic metaphysical old school SF movie (I thought of Tarkovski’s Solaris, but you don’t have to share my bad habit of making sick parallels between things). And 29 minutes is just short enough for me.

/see at: www.sunnydaysout.cjb.net - mailto: wlightj_at_yahoo.com

Jonathan coleclough ‘wedding bell’: UNAVAILABLE!

/Sad news: FFR is closing doors. This being their 30th release, I think they have a right to look back and be proud. FFR released almost every kind of music in all kinds of formats and succeeded in maintaining a super-high level of quality through all. FFR had an especially great reputation for the one-track-dreamy-ambient records they released and this one falls into this subgenre. It’s like a party of Buddhist monks were given laptops and kept their bells and chimes and metal plates and whatever it is they use and invited you for an half hour trip into their reflective meditation about the bittersweet sadness of beauty (beauty’s sad because the eyes witnessing it all die eventually, I guess that’s Buddhist stuff so no one can expect to understand it). CDR labels come and go they say, but one of this quality was better coming than going… Farewell, though.

Jorge Castro ‘sin titulo#2’-public eyesore-CDR-superb color artwork+cardboard envelope

/This is slowly evolving string (mostly guitar) ambient. What I just wrote is a rather plain description of the record, but I guess describing it is not enough. How does it feel? First of all, it feels quite surprising, because one 44 minutes track should be extremely boring: it isn’t. It also feels cosy and comfortable, the transitions from one part to another being natural enough. It feels like floating, like flying (although I’m not really sure of this one since I never actually flew except in a budget airlines plane which I’m sure you can’t call flying –well, that’s what I imagine flying feels like). It feels like closing your eyes. It feels delicate. It feels crafted. It feels thought over and yet not overthought. Melodies come and go, textures pass to and fro and I’m left relaxed and quiet.

/www.publiceyesore.com

Journeys without maps: a tribute to the lord of the rings-Bearos-CD-jewel box why are people still packing records in jewel boxes

/Having to fast forward the first track of a record isn’t a good sign (Dreams of Tall Buildings sure got a nice name and do brilliant stuff people say but this track’s very boring I’m sorry). But when it’s the only track to FF, you got a good album. You got the Telescopes on their psyche side repeating the same riff for 5 minutes and layering it then letting it die to its climax. You got Solway Fifth and their Dawson/Badgewearer noiserock-with-a-jazz. You got Lash Frenzy improvising their free-grind-noise way to Helm’s Deep for 10 minutes like Naked City high on Hobbit Beer. You got Og’s Bunkadoo Band reckoning Boromir with a lofi bluesy rock sounding like it’s been recorded in my backyard. KlusterB found a voice for an Ent far more convincing than Peter Jackson did (hey, this track seems to consist of only one sample repeated for 3 minutes and blamey, it’s rather convincing!). You got Dept Noise X Terror, I guess these people aim to terrorise my grandmother using Gollum’s voice. Radagast the Brown, not a very well known character, gets a funny poppy homage with a tune from Rodney Cromwell. J Foundation is back from the 1970s with a nice track seeming more suited for Barbarella than it is to the Wraithryders. You got acoustic pop on acoustic guitars and acoustic ballads on acoustic piano (hey, Simon of Grover, I too like Radiohead, I’m happy not to be alone, but I’m sure they won’t ever play a ballad ending that way) and ambient of course. I had several fine visuals to come with this fine record, I hope the commercial edition comes with all of them.

/www.bearos.freeserve.co.uk or PO Box 7179-Birmingham B29 6RA-UK

Julien Ottavi ‘for degradable music: the CDR I will never release’-mattin-CDR in a PVC envelope: great
/<quote>The CDR has a different status from a regular CD, a status which makes the creation of a CDR label quite paradoxical. The regular CD proposes something fixed and lasting and its sale is based on these elements. <…>the CDR represents both an intermediate state and an object of transition: the information engraved on it is designed to be rendered, at a certain point of time, to its virtual state of digital composition interpretable by a computer. From CD to CDR, we move to a practice of conserving finalized products to a practice of stocking or transmitting transitory products<…>the CDR is an extension of the computer<…>The nature of the CDR implies another relation to time and to the process of creation<…>the CDR and the Internet become a tool in a process of experimentation and not only means of conservation<…>the CDR has a short lifespan as a physical object, therefore the recorded sound is destined to deteriorate</quote> Apart from me being doubtful that when a CDR deteriorates, the upper and lower spectrum of sound will disappear (which definitely seems a characteristic of analogue media), I find this release amazing and I didn’t even have to write a review since quoting the liner notes as I did would’ve been enough. The sound is like Hecker finally finding his own path out of Mego’s classics and the concept is (as usual with Mattin) absolutely stunning. Headphones mandatory (good ones please).
/www.mattin.org