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Namke communications ‘ice9/salo’-iwari-7”-nice Icelandic artwork
/Someone invented the words ‘intelligent techno’ because he was stupid enough to be a techno fan. Please note these words do not apply to this excellent beat-electro record in the usual vein of Namke that sounds absolutely like its beautiful cover: peaceful, but somewhat desolate; plain without being monotonous; and Human presence can only be seen in the far distance, small, but still here.
/www.iwari.com
Napalmed ‘Komblex’-Autoproduction – MD
/NAPALMED has been making noise for YEARS now. As I wrote before, I do not like pure noise stuff that much and though I didn’t hear it yet I’m pretty sure I won’t like the Merzbow/NAPALMED split out on Merciless records. But these tracks range from experimental ambient to weird jazz-like rhythm manipulations. Lots of ‘real’ sounds seem to have been used here, metal percussion, engines, even instruments from time to time. That gives the album a genuine industrial (in the sense the word had in 1985) atmosphere I liked. Recently, they released a live split tape with Humberg, a Japanese instrumental noise collective, and by the way they seem to be selling tee-shirts, too. Such noise activists do deserve a bit of your attention I think.
Napalmed ‘never mind the MSBR, here’s the Napalmed’-Napalmed records-CD-color artwork
/As you know if you’re a usual reader of this, Napalmed have been around for a while (does that mean more than 10 years?)(it does), gathering a huge number of live performances, guest appearances on split records (a split with Merzbow, recently, wow)(aren’t we talking too much about Merzbow in this issue)(we are), compilations on all formats, various labels and all. As I said power electronics or noise industrial or whateveryoucallit is definitely out of fashion maybe that’s why this is their first full length release alone. Track 1 is good old noise, press fast forward if you’re not a fan of that sort of stuff. Track 2 is a more than 50 minutes long live impro using just about anything you can thing of to make sound with (including a kazoo, I think, but I won’t risk my right hand on it). Imagine an hour-long jam session with them regular jazz virtuosos and their polyphonic fingers. Bore yourself to death. Once you’re dead, replace them with four talented and experienced noise artists in a warehouse with loads of you know, STUFF, and you could get something like this. Multiple layers of alien sounds (was this some Vogon screaming?), I’m-trapped-in-a-robot-factory-gone-crazy atmospheres, rhythms that grow only to get lost in 15 seconds and endless variations (don’t forget them very short moments of pure noise adding their spicy flavour here and there). This is quite an experience to listen to in one go. So I suggest you have a try at it, cause Napalmed truly deserves a larger audience. And I still think Komblex is their best recording to date and deserves an even larger audience.
Napalmed ‘misch masch miksasch’-demo-CDR
/This demo album is something of a mystery. Tracks belong to the lesser-noisy-rhythmic-and-ambient part of Napalmed which is the one I like. Played separately, the four over-10-minutes tracks manage to remain entertaining all the way long (except track 4 - usual classical noise, fast forward); metal percussions, random everyday-life objects and effects used here giving the tracks a genuine live/improvised atmosphere and making them really special. Best is first track, simple metal percussions and effects, a must have for you Einstürzende Neuebauten fans. There’s even a power-electro/dark-ambient track called ‘roomfullscapes’ that manages to keep the noise under control for a really convincing result. Mystery is despite me liking of most material featured here, I could never listen to the whole album in a row. Maybe my short attention span is to blame here.
/R. KOPEL, Lipova 1123, 43401 Most-Czech Republic - mailto: napalmed_at_volny.cz
Neil Campbell + Rob Hayler ‘in luck’-Fencing Flatworm-CDR-plastic envelope color artwork
/You may think I review every record I get and you’re wrong. You may think I review every record I get from FFR and you’re wrong again (no more than a little 50%). But the number of reviews you can read here show how prolific this label is, and how good its releases usually are. This one adds a little something to the somewhat watery melodic-synth-ambient R. Hayler as Midwich usually does, a rhythm there, a little processed guitar feedback here, a little tune elsewhere. No noise on this record but no silence neither, it flows continuously like it had been recorded in a sensory isolation water tank somewhere in space in the 70s or perhaps in the capsules used to grow Lt Ripley’s clones in Alien 4. I guess my favourites there are ‘radiate’ and ‘get down’, the most rhythmic tracks. Perfect background for reading a good science fiction novel.
/www.fencingflatworm.cjb.net or 16 Station Parade-Leeds-LS5 3HG-UK
Nervenotfound
‘demo3’ – autoprod – CDR
/Hello, Mr Bungle-Fantomas fans, I found a new treat for you! It’s called
Nervenotfound, comes (of course) from
/mailto: yasushi_at_owari.ne.jp or snailto: Yasushi Shinoda,
Normal music ‘a short exhibition of normal music’-zeromoon-CD in a nice blue folding digipack
/I spent some time trying to figure out if this album from Normal Music was better than ‘brev’ the previous one I liked so much it still plays on the way to work. I don’t know. It took some time for me to be sure I liked it. I do. It stands repeated listening quite nicely and an album where the only words I can understand are ‘les mathématiques’ cannot be bad. Nope. Do I like its minimal beats and clicking view of dub? Yeah, like blurred black and white photographs of empty landscapes a seagull could take passing over the dam of Pitlochry (that’s in Scotland, in case you’re wondering). Do you need any references? Okay: imagine a pair of tired dub DJs at the Gothfest in Leipzig the day after the festival closed and having a very-laid-back very-tired session with a very-old version of Generator on a very-primitive laptop (so nothing gets uselessly fancy or pointlessly electrovirtuoso) just in front of a pair of huge 100kW-each bass subs. Imagine: they tune to the heartbeat of a Diplodocus Carnegii and you’re soon feeling you’re in the eardrums of the huge slow paced herbivore. Now: enjoy.
/www.zeromoon.com
Noxious
Nub ‘locked in madness’ – mechanoise labs - 3” CDR - nice colour artwork
/If an Alien Queen had a groovebox, a taste for 4/4 heavy mid-tempo beats
and a pair of distortion pedals, Her alias would be Noxious Nub. I bet
you could even feel the teeth of the monster on your neck playing that
record for its 23 minutes if you lived that long in such an uncomfortable
position. Tidily fits in your pocket and rocks your pelvis like Elvis.
/www.mechanoise-labs.com
Please note: this guy Daniele Rossi, apart from making good headache-music
is a great fan of modular synthesis and has got a quite nice website,
too (you’ll find the link on Mechanoise’s brand new .com)
/Guitar and treatments, that’s what according to the sleeve notes, this unusual record is. An improvised duo, they say. Quite impossible to describe, let alone review such a mass of clicks and noises, perverted guitar sounds and walls of static. Sonic Youth’s members solo works would give you an idea. Very interesting (and short enough).
/Fabrice Chambon-30 rue du mail-69004 LYON-France or mailto:ishtarco_at_infonie.fr or see at www.perso.infonie.fr/ishtarco
No Energy–Fencing Flatworm–CDR–Jewel box w/color sleeve
/Sleeve features some kind of full-coloured squid and not much more but the track titles. To speak short this is a great album. One might object (in fact, he did) the tracks are very ‘flat and samey ambient’, that repetitive use of ring modulators and digital degraders make the tracks a whole where the cuts seem to’ve been made at random, that opening an album with a seemingly endless fade in of just one sound is weird at best, that… The hell with objections. I like the ‘deep water’ feeling of the tracks (remember the sleeve?), the use of 45-rpm-played-33 sounds (especially vocals), of lofi-but-high-quality sounds, the ‘nothing sounds normal’ policy (broken for a few seconds only in track#3 and 4 for jazz-like bits) and the dense atmospheres created with so little sounds. Whether you like ambient or not is your concern but THIS is how ambient should sound in the 21st century, I think. A word about Fencing Flatworm: this ‘no-budget, hi-tek, lo-fi, dedicated to electronic and experimental music’ label issues nicely packaged CDRs. What I heard is good quality ambient worth the £4/$7 it’ll cost you. MIDWICH’s ‘Tiny Muscle’ for instance, not being quite as good as No Energy to my noised out ears is still a very good record full of nice melodies and good moods, the perfect soundtrack for your reading evenings. They issue the oTo series, too, a series of 50 tapes ‘document of what’s happening in the no-audience underground’ and it includes one tape feat. Thurston Moore you can have only if you order at least something else. Know what? I like that way of seeing/doing things: these are good people, support them.
/mailto:robert.hayler_at_ukgateway.net or Robert Hayler, 16 Station Parade, Leeds, LS5 3HG, UK
NoName ‘008’-12”EP-reverse-bw sleeve
/Ultrafast noisy hardcore techno, nice to see there are people in the world that aren’t from System Corrupt that still release these kinda records. And do it on vinyl so I can listen to them both 33 and 45rpm (33 sounds better but I guess 45 was intended).
/mailto:reverse_at_netcourrier.com
Normal Music ‘brev’ 3”-CDR-zeromoon- beautiful&original packaging&artwork
/What happened to Scorn? I mean Scorn was one of my favourite electronic projects of the early nineties, Colossus, Ellipsis and even Gyral or Zander still often land on the turntable here. Now that we speak about it, Colossus and them various EP remixes they made of it are the ones that lands most, others just keep on flying around. What exactly all this has to do with Normal Music says you. Normal Music is what Scorn should’ve become if Mr Harris kept on being inspired instead of remixing the same track on and on and on again, answers I. Pole would probably be a more accurate reference than Scorn is as Normal Music is a lot more into minimal electro than into drum’n’bass played 60 bpm but I suppose I can’t change the music I grew up with, not now that my tits sag as a dear friend recently said they do when you’re past thirty. This record, and it’s only 18 minutes long, is the best dub-like thing I heard for YEARS, you know and in fact it just reminded me how much I like ambient dub. And what I think is the best compliment one can get: it actually made me want to play dub ambient as well.
/http://www.zeromoon.com - c/o Surak 4518 Avondale ST Apt. B Bethesda, MD 20814 USA