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Schmürtz
‘salaire facultatif’ - demo - CDR - stick them JB up your,
well wherever
/Bérurier Noir eats Atari Teenage Riot. Underproduced as hell,
terrible vocals growling terrible lyrics in French, breakbeats you heard
more than a billion times even if you’ve been dead for thirty
years, guitars you could play yourself only if you’d been dead
for all those years. Including a pro - condom track. Incredible, that
record is.
/ba_philippe_at_yahoo.fr
Scramble
(Project Mushroom Grip)– demo CDR
/Here come my Welch favourites again with a three tracks demo EP, sixteen
minutes and not a second unnecessary. Hail to the first track which
is ten minutes long and keeps you enjoying it from beginning to end
by the cleverness of its construction: these people don’t make a track
lasting for 10 minutes out of two or three rhythmic patterns plus this
drone and that drone but make a ten minutes track out of five different
five minutes tracks… And you can keep on moving your skinnibodi (in
case you have one) to the two other tracks!
Scramble ‘land ahoy!’-autoproduction-CDR-color artwork
/Scramble sound like no one else. And that’s saying a lot, so often do I think everyone’s music (including mine) sounds like everyone else’s. Pop, techno, dance music, experimental electronica, folk, everything’s in there. Putting this and that and whatever comes handy in a bowl and shaking it for three hours won’t make anything you can eat your fish with (except if you’re this type of lucky fellow). If you want something that tastes completely different from the jellified horror you usually buy at your local superstore you’ll have to choose carefully good ingredients, mix them slowly in the right order for the right period of time, and then add the special touch. Scramble’s music is like good homemade mayonnaise: looks easy and ordinary but when you taste it there’s nothing like it.
Scramble untitled demo–CDR–no artwork but good music
/Scramble do
as they please. Regardless of styles, habits or however you’re
supposed to behave when you make music, they mix Flamenco and post-rock
guitars and dub and rock basses and harps, ultra fast jungle rhythms,
not so fast electro ones, analogue ambient synths, vocals from humans
and from them furry animals from Hoth (you know, the frozen planet in
The Empire Strikes Back, that is back when George Lucas couldn’t
be that obsessed with digital special effects and still had time to
make movies), etc. And everything goes on perfectly well together, as
if all elements were old friends long apart. And when tracks last more
than 7 minutes, yes they do, they manage to keep me entertained all
the way through, without me ever wanting to press my favourite button
on the remote (which is >> fast forward of course).
Scramble ‘herbulees smokes bananas’-autoprod-CDR-silver cardboard DG
/’This record will find its way to your home by means of witchcraft and mediumship’ Scramble emailed me a while ago. It did. Magickal instrumental hip-hop; dub wizardry; fairy tales of acid 303s meeting mutant kotos and bewitched tablas: each track tells a legend of its own. Scramble is one of these too rare bands who’s got enough to say to keep a six minutes track entertaining/interesting/enthralling all the way long. I once wrote Scramble was like homemade mayonnaise (sounds easy, but there’s nothing like it, that sort of stuff): it is, but it’s now with a touch of Hobbit cooking sorcery.
/digerious_at_aol.com
or 96 Dorset Street, BOLTON, LANCASHIRE, BL2 1HR, UK
Second Violin-‘Hospital Fugue of Mad Nurse’/’Victoria’-ZeroMoon-CDR-superb homemade packages w/color artwork
/I read somewhere industrial music was much closer to ‘musique concrete’ than it is to techno and as such was VERY different from other electronic music, probably because calling ‘electronic’ something made mostly with abused acoustic hardware is silly. Making industrial music became quite difficult over the years, fantastic projects such as SPK or Satori having put the challenge out of reach for most. These people manage to keep that ‘genuine industrial spirit’ in their music without sounding old–fashioned. Some ambient parts, lots of vocals (some weirdly overdriven in that good old Atrax Morgue way, some plain spoken word and some moaning, too), very little and minimal rhythms, some tiny melodies looped till death, noises of manipulated objects: good industrial, I tell you. Jeff Surak uses a ‘prepared violin’, something I’d like to see on stage. Packages from Zero Moon rule: the ones I saw were all beautiful, inventive and handmade. And ah, yes, something else: would you *please* stop using this terribly adorned font? Besides looking like the ones used on goth and black metal records, it’s so hard to read it took me an hour to understand the track titles.
/PO Box 4730, LOUKY 40204, USA or www.zeromoon.com – jeff_at_zeromoon.com
Seda E Marg ‘animosity’-mechanoise labs-CDR-jewel box color cover
/So you really thought them ant-zen crew were the most terrorist rhythm activists one could find. Maybe you thought their stuff was oh-so brutal. So now you just send the children to bed and we’re gonna talk about being brutal with Mechanoise Labs productions. Compared to this, The whole tribe of industrial strength techno or whatever silly name it's called again is as brutal as Kylie Minogue’s latest single-they're not naked in their videoclips so they maybe (a little) more valuable than the cocaine-driven pornpopstar. Don’t get me wrong, though, this is not just another Merzbow-wannabe (now that computers made it so easy, there’s not enough room for their records in them huge green plastic rubbish containers down the street). It’s good music, but it’s harsh good music. You got some quiet moments, but those are LOUD quiet moments. Pretty good.
/mechanoise_at_free.fr or www.mechanoise-labs.com
Sedaye Marg ‘frashogard’-Coup d’Etat-CD-jewel box, sorry
/As you probably noticed reading this, I’m not a fan of ambient, especially when it’s noise ambient or worse, symphonic ambient. This record is rather noisy symphonic ambient and for some reason I liked it, maybe it’s because it sounds so much like the revisited score to a 1960’s SF-horror-peplum movie (Laser-Maciste Meets The Daughter Of Dracula or Hercules Comes Back From Outer Space And He’s Not Pleased By What He Sees, starring Steve Reeves as Hercules, Daliah Lavi as The Screaming Maiden From Outer Space and Christopher Lee as What He Sees), or maybe it is because I didn’t listen to such a record for more than 30 seconds in years. Who knows.
/http://www.coupdetat-comm.org/
Shallnotkill-213 records-black vinyl 7”-nice ochre artwork
/Metal emo-core from France sung in French. Ha, gotcha. Sounds like a joke, doesn’t it. Isn’t, though. Good band good sound and excellent singer (and very angry, hey French second of the kind I heard lately, are we getting better at being angry?). You gotta buy it to believe it. But I don’t understand the lyrics and that’s a pity, says you. Now you know how it feels.
/24 rue de Verdun 54560 Audun le Roman – France // www.213records.fr.st
Shallnotkill 2001-2004-213-2xCD in a jewel box nothing’s perfect
/Shallnotkill still ain’t from Brooklyn or DC. They still ain’t such a famous band, but that’s because they still ain’t from Brooklyn or DC and maybe because their opaquely beautiful lyrics are written in the idiom of Antonin Artaud instead of the Wonder Language of Shakira. They still ain’t doing easy-pop with a death metal distortion (i.e. they ain’t remotely Nu even if they do sometimes sound Metal). They still ain’t compromised and the promo-email they sent a while ago to announce this record said they’d be eating pasta&sausages for a while after releasing it. What they are is the greatest hardcore band in France these days (whatever chaos or emo or anything you wanna call it) and I do realize how definitive this statement sound: truth has to be sharp sometimes. I remember a day when Neurosis made music instead of goth-like death rock and my heart pounded to their heavily pulsating beats and was torn by the screaming desperate vocals and stopped during the quiet piano parts as it did for this record. Also features a ‘reconstructions/deconstructions’ remix CD and do have a listen to Shizuka there. And please note you people at SNK that in case you ever run short of pasta, our door is open and they cook in 10.
/www.shallnotkill.fr.st
Shrinkwrap ‘upon the fruited plains’-RN/NF+suggestion-mauve 7” !!!!!
/If Splintered and Melt Banana had a Yamaha RX-7, a sampler and a fuzz pedal, they might have sounded like this (since this was recorded in 1995, I haven’t got the slightest idea if it’s still available or not but I absolutely don’t give a damn). I like their aliases, too, like Anna Rexia and M. Physema.
/www.suggestion-records.de or info_at_suggestion-records.de or PO box 1403 – 58285 Gevelsberg – Germany
Shy Rights Movement-kawtapes-beautiful clear vinyl 7”- b&w artwork
/Lofi pop songs. So difficult to make aren’t they. Too much melody and it sounds like the worst track Pavement ever made. Too much noise and it sounds like the best track Pavement could’ve made, but it’s not pop anymore. These two songs don’t achieve perfection as Trilemma does and sure walk more marked out paths, but they’re nice and I listened to them several times with a non-fading pleasure. Only the lost can find their way, they’re damn right: I guess people in the band could afford to lose themselves a little more, only to find a more personal way.
/94 main street, Forth, Lanakshire ML11 8AB – UK or mailto: kawtapes_at_hotmail.com
Sideation ‘dress me up’-greywork industries-b&w classic old school industrial cover
/The frontier between metal, repetitive music such as fuzz/space rock and industrial is a thin line. Not saying industrial metal is industrial, though, it’s metal (you already know pigeonholing stuff into super-tiny subgenres is stupid, don’t you so you guessed I was joking didn’t you). This record is halfway from all the above categories, with no wave/exp rock elements, a bit of metal (sludgecore?), Tangerine-Dream-like synths, feedback and overdriven noise, sampled beats with an industrial approach (although integrists would probably tell you the use of a sampler isn’t remotely industrial). Short tracks, short and efficient record.
/www.godlessbitch.com
Siemers an Albrecht/d. split-one brain-3”CDR-very beautiful folding cardboard sleeve with nice liner notes on coloured cardboard
/Spontaneous compositions from albrecht/d., some remixed by fognin, some not, and the usual excellent improvised weird electro stuff from Siemers. Reeds, flutes, percussions, drones, effects and far out voices saying ‘next’. Short and inventive and greatly packaged, my type of record.
/kuntstmascher, eisenbahnstr. 58, 70372 Stuttgart – Germany // see at http://albrecht.de or http://fognin.net or http://krch.org
Siemers
‘interpares interpares’ - retinascan - boxed set of 3 CDRs
+ a 3” CDR + a full color booklet and the paper used is nice as
well
/The 3” is Siemers 1979 to 2003, 43 tracks in 20 minutes and yes
that’s what I call being creative over a long period of time and
yes I wouldn’t mind some Beatles for breakfast –not the
dead ones, I do prefer fresh meat thank you. This record is just about
everything from power electronics to nowave, from tunes that last 10
seconds to ambient that lasts 50, from musique concrete to electronica.
A wonderful record. But there’s more wonders to come, dear friends:
Mr Kerlin of Retinascan was as fascinated as I was by this record, so
he decided he had to do something about it. And what he did, dear friends,
is just amazing: he asked 43 people to make 43 remixes and released
them as a boxed set of three CDRs with the nicest design you could imagine.
Highlights? NQ, Chaos Through Programming, Askesemann, Unyx, Lea, Mizati
(great, that one –I bet dancefloors on Mars get crazy on this
one and what they like most are the sampled Earth animals), King Kerosene
(Thee Mighty Faust resampled beats + post rock), Xenoton, Hypercut (soundtrack
to Martian videogames –on Saturn of course) –third disc
is my favourite, This is the underground, see and shows how totally
irrelevant the Normal Music BusinessTM happens to be these days.
/www.retinascan.de
Silent
Block – live _at_ emo-son festival dec 13th 2003-
/I’ve seen it all. Y’know, prepared instruments, modular synths, beatboxes,
ambient, NOISE, F** LOUUUUDDD NOIZE, y’know: I’ve been around for a
while. Well, not quite. A beatbox consisting of a real drum kit powered
by a complex mechanical structure including a bicycle chain and several
automatic hammers –even if someone also actually drums on the drum kit-
definitely is something unusual. One 3 meters long table full
of electric motors, dingdong glockenspiels dingdonged by metal nails
hanging on nylon strings attached to a rotor (and this makes melodies,
believe it or not), a three meters long industrially brutalized sort-of-contrabass
and a foot-played one; and distortion pedals, mouth-and-tongue-generators,
antenna percussions and more DIY stuff than you could find at your local
Sunday car boot sale. And the modular synthesizer table, looking as
homemade as the rest (that is if your home looks like the warehouse
where big-brained-outer-spatial-creatures store their spaceships) viciously
invading the atmosphere with strangely computer-sounding although analogue-generated
ticksandclicksandbuzzesanddrones. Here we go for 50 minutes of improvised
ambient noise and that isn’t saying anything of the physical impression
of being immersed deeply into the music I had this night. Obviously:
I hadn’t seen it all.
/flejunter_at_nordnet.fr
Sirkut Electronics SNB-black piece of hardware musical gear
/Black box, 12x6cm, twelve switches, three rotary knobs. Power in, mono audio out. Synth Noise Box its name, power-noise-to-harsh-beats its game. Handmade excellence for those of you out there focussing on harsh textures and looking for something definitely new and exclusive. Pure powerish hardware electronics for those of you tired of cabled feedback loops and looking for something to force-feed life back into afterlife experiments.
/http://sirkut.sinkhole.net
Six and More ‘oisi voci’ – ARCHEGON – CD-pro crystal package
/There again, the concept would be enough for the record to appear here. The 47 (oh, YES, they’re more than six) members make improvised soundscapes out of the ‘situation and musician combination’ (that’s what they say). To be a flattering idiot, one could compare the result to Mr. Klaus Schultze works with a touch of modern electronic / industrial. Let’s try and be creative instead: the atmospheres inside tracks are very rich and deep and always different (that’s not a creative statement, you fool, OF COURSE more than 40 different people create interesting atmospheres!), but though mostly analogue sources are used here, there’s a sometimes too ‘digital’ feeling (which is not creative neither: mastering is probably made with a home computer, as we also do!). Let’s stop being creative: this is a good record, and the ‘band’ must be simply great when playing live. Oops, while we’re at it: was it really necessary to give so much details about each track? (oh, shut up, you do exactly the same thing for *your* works).
/ARCHEGON c/o Gunter Schroth Muhlgasse 31 – 60486 FRANKFURT – GERMANY orhttp://www.archegon.de/ or mailto archegon_at_t-online.de
Six and More ‘way out’-archegon-CD-jewel box-color cover
/The Improvised Noise Meets Jazz Orchestra is back! 16 tracks recorded live as usual (four performances between 99-01). 10 years, they’ve been around for 10 years. And there’s a mere 43 of them. I mean band members, you know, although not more than 26 play together at the same time on this record. They make the most original and inventive kind of music and I met these people by COINCIDENCE you see, because autoproduction is their game while Universal is selling computer-generated crap labelled ‘panflute music’ and goes to court for it (and they loose, maybe there’s some kind of justice over here in deepest France). Hooray for Six and More, buy their records and give yourself a chance to listen to the most adventurous, dangerous, NOT-easy listening top-quality live experimental with a soul. And the biggest Go To Hell for Universal Unmusic, burn their records and give yourself a chance to be free.
/http://www.archegon.de/ or mailto archegon_at_t-online.de
Sizzle
‘LTDA’ - facthedral’s hall - CDR - jewel boxes suck, do you hear me?
/Quiet & melodic & low end/lofi dub ambient made circa 1999 by
a French duo. I only had this record last week and these people live
40 Km away from me. And I’ve been in touch with System Corrupt (who
live in
/http://go.to/facthedrals_hall or snailto : Notre Dame des Marins bat Brick/apt 354, 13500 Martigues, FRANCE
Socialistc Jonny Goblet-Reality Impaired Recordings-CDR-BW Xeroxed artwork
/Sometimes things aren‘t what they look like. I bet that‘s something you discovered yourself if you‘ve been under the sun for more than 20 years. So a record with a Xeroxed nasty pencil drawing as a sleeve and track titles such as ‘dildo‘ or ‘virgin sink‘ AND musicians playing ‘reciprocal flatulence‘ or ‘undermining aerial sonic snort‘ has to be another boring japanoise horror that‘ll sure clean the cobwebs off your ceiling uh? Wrong. I was, you were, they were. Terribly wrong. Because this is instrumental experimental music. And it’s GOOD, mind you, real good. I mean, of course it won‘t be your breakfast background and it probably won‘t be the type you listen to 35 times everyday for a year. It IS uneasy listening, but it DOES stands more than one listening, just as the earliest Whitehouse, SPK or Satori albums did and remains interesting enough all the way through its 50 minutes. I still like industrial music, see, especially the type that uses prepared guitars. This probably is all-improvised stuff, so I‘d be rather curious to know what those guys and gals are able to do when playing with structures. Anyway, glad to get some stuff like this one coming through the mailbox. Since we’re at it, I have a tape from these people (out on the Australian noise label Smell the Stench), too and probably will review it when my tape player is fixed.
/c/o VD, PO Box 1285, JOPLIN, MO 64802, USA
Sonic Disorder ‘kings of an empty palace’ and ‘splitstream’-both on US-CDR labels with the usual b&w xeroxed terrible paper sleeves
/These records remind me of this junk-powder we had when I was a kid (it was called TANG I think) that was supposed to taste like orange when put in a litre of water. When you actually did the proper dilution it tasted like disgusting alien vomit, but when you ate it straight out from the packet… It still tasted quite alien but more like a substance aliens could become addicted to, in fact it was weirdly delicious. As these records total more than two hours, I’d like to point this out: 1-tracks on the ‘splitstream’ resampled to be a little shorter (7’ instead of 70’ would be perfect) could be power electronics with a touch of irony and 2-there ARE less than 3 minutes tracks on the ‘king of…’ and they all are listenable stuff and have their touch of humour as well, like much of the likewise hardware-produced-noise I get from the US. SO, you just FORGET the water, you keep it pure and basic and the next review is going to be a lot more enthusiastic than this one is.
/Erik Disorder-1987 Nevada Street-SLC, UT 84108 USA
Sound in the absence of light, ‘behind closed doors’ live-Shame File-CDR-colour sleeve
/‘The concept began as locking the audience in a darkened room with nothing but speakers that assaulted them with noise and was gradually tamed down to the audience being seated with blindfolds provided whilst the performers played two long pieces out of sight behind a screen. We wanted the emphasis to be totally upon sound to the exclusion of any other senses‘. This is an excerpt from the liner notes and doesn‘t it sound appealing (even if not new or anything)? 10 performers from Australian noise/exp bands including a flute player (‘Anna, the conductor‘, yes, ma’am), real (and unreal, I suppose) instruments, doesn‘t THAT sound even more appealing? I was so disappointed not to like this. The record, although I felt some ambience, something, here and there is way too long and flat. We can hear Anna’s flute, yes we can, but not often enough to my point and I searched in vain the ‘structures’ she was supposed to ‘maintain’. Maybe this performance shouldn‘t have been recorded elsewhere than in the audience‘s own hard drives. Too too too bad. Anyway, please consider what I wrote as pure shit and try and try and try again, record everything you play till I find your records are the best. I’d be so glad to like your works.
/15 Neil Street, West Footscray, VIC 3012, AUSTRALIA
Sq ‘__moments imaginaires (8988)’ and Pengo ‘climbs the holy mountain’-Carbon Rcds-CD-pretty color cover
/Carbon records is a little mystery of its own to my little mind. Could you expect a label to release what can be called difficult records in the difficult field of improvised experimental music on CD and get on with it? They do. SQ is drowned somewhere in the sea tired of floating and perhaps waiting for its brother Pengo to get back from the sky. SQ is the quiet ambient brother, and Pengo the loud rock and roll one. They’re not exactly twins I think, but it could be because one record seems to be a studio work and is an hour long while the other sounds like (and is) a 40 minutes live impro in front of people. Both records show the same taste for metal percussions and cymbals, real drum sets and guitars with no attack and drone-like sound. And SQ’s is too long, while Pengo’s is too short (yes, yes, YES, he SAID a record was too short, that’s what he said I tell you).
/Joe Tunis PO Box 10718 ROCHESTER NY 14610 – USA or mailto:joe_at_carbonrecords.com or http://www.carbonrecords.com/
Straight Outta Mongolia - fencing flatworm - CDR - the usual very nice ffr packaging (& the sleeve picture is exceptionally beautiful this time)
/Synthetic pop is pop music made with a synthesizer, ain’t it –that’s what this record’s all about: the ultimate evidence synthpop isn’t a genre devoted to recycled gothasses dressed in shiny greased latex & metal - plated platform boots who wear welding - glasses and scream they’re gonna kill themselves twice per minute. ’Baby drove a spaceship’ SOM says, I say Baby’s playing a great record in her spaceship’s stereo if she’s playing this one.
/www.fencingflatworm.cjb.net
Straiph ‘thin bony scour’-demo
/Noise and melodic analogue ambient, ultra-harsh beats, power electronics w/distorted vocals and genuine industrial with chain-clangs and metal (?) percussions, very short (25”) to very long (10’) tracks, and pieces of clever d&b; this is an illustration of the old motto ‘difficult music for difficult people’. Could also be one for this one ‘varied music for varied people’. A nice effort: let’s eagerly wait for the next one.
/loomsl@yahoo.ie
Strong as Ten / Shallnotkill split - 213 - vinyl 7” // The Flying Worker - destructure/WANW/weewee - vinyl 7”
/Musically, I haven’t got much to say on these 7” apart from the usual ‘yea, good hardcore’: the great songs from Shallnotkill are on the 7” I reviewed last time and Strong as Ten is Agnostic Front that has a touch of modern chaos hardcore to it, Flying Worker’s emo - core, they say and there’s a New Order cover on side B and I never heard the original so I sure don’t know what I’m missing. But I did want to review these cause if bands like these came from the United Stupids (S.A.T. from say Southentralellay and ShallNK from say the Big Pineapple and FlyingWK say from WashingMachineTon), all would be reviewed in hardcore mags and signed on somewhat big - but - indie hardcore labels (Revolution, anyone?)… But they live in the country of non - pasteurized cheese so they’re reviewed here and signed on my ass if you’d pardon my French. Pity, ain’t it.
/www.213records.fr.st for SAT/SNK and david.weewee_at_laposte.net for TFW
Stylus ‘mynydd presell’-elsie and jack-CD-so very nice brown cardboard emulation of a vinyl packaging
/Ritual ambient is boring. Well, not this time. I should better say Elemental ambient, cause the artist says inspiration came from the four Elements more than from musicians, and attempted to re-create some sort of Neolithic atmosphere in this recording. He succeeded, so let’s say ritual ambient still IS boring and Elemental ambient (that has absolutely nothing elementary to it) isn’t. What I feel listening to this recording are major traditional music influences, which is quite surprising in such an electronic record. Like listening to music them Welch cyber-faeries could make. So that’s another great record from a Cymru. Please note although being quite expensive the MAR/INO ‘complication series’ all come in this beautiful cardboard folded sleeve with color visuals and liner notes on tracing paper that definitely makes them worth the price.
/www.elsieandjack.com