click on banner to go back to archive index
Taku Unami ‘intransigent towards the detectives of capital’-w.m.o/r-CDR in a nice PVC envelope and a beautiful neon orange cover
/This is a record about frontiers, about differences, about limits. Speaks of the wafer-thin frontier between sound and music, of the slight difference between an individual sound and a constructed collection of individual sounds that are music. Speaks of the tiny limit between nothing and something, of what’s between silence (i.e.: the sound of the wind in the trees, today) and non-silence (i.e.: organic sounds made with a computer). Yet most of the sounds are organic. This is meditative, quiet and interrogative –it’s a compilation of sonic haikus of winter.
/hibarimusic@nifty.com or www.mattin.org
Tanz mit fueuer ‘a tribute to flam&krush’-lfa-3”CDR the format of the gods
/Well, Lith is as usual, I guess fans of 4/4 distorted 909 kicks will love them as usual. Hey, come Shizuka and this man has rhythm mastery, sort of dark/dub/instrumental hip-hop cousin to Scorn (colossus era, my favourite). Muckrackers and Shizuka again and know what, our industrial metal East-Northern French crew are less and less metal and more and more industrial, thumbs up for you guys. Shizuka again on track 4, good but not as good as his downtempo tracks. VUK ends the punishment with a genuine power electronics track. Yea.
/www.muckrackers.fr.st – www.213records.fr.st
Tekken self-titled demo-vendredi 13-CDR
/You can find most of the material here elsewhere but it’s good to have it all in one place, press play, set the repeat mode on ‘forever’ and enjoy France’s finest grindcore, as loud and fast and one-two-three as usual and as good as expected. Live tracks as well and remixes (my personal favourite is DSR's, grinding-EBM), buy it & that’s it.
/25 rue Goudouli-31240 Saint Jean-France or mailto: david.weewee_at_laposte.net
Tekken ‘all I wanna do’-puzzle-floppy-b&w ramoney sleeve
/As you probably already know, I’m quite a big supporter of Tekken, the French grindcore act. And I love records on floppydisks. So here’s Tekken covering the Ramones and the mp3 is on a floppy. Thanks Puzzle records for those 1’19 of happiness. Thanks a lot.
/puzzle records, 4 cité d’aleth, 35000 Rennes-FRANCE see at www.puzzlerecords.fr.st
Tekken/Jan AG split-weewee-3” CD-jewel boxyes are horriblyes
/No need to review this, it’s just great. Something you oughta know: both bands are. Buy it.
/25 rue goudouli 31240 Saint Jean-FRANCE or mailto : david.weewee_at_laposte.net
The apollo program / Short supply split-multilabel release-12”
LP
/Do you wonder what Rollins Band /Do It era –back when Henry was Brain and muscle, became? Well it certainly didn’t become Rollins Band /nowadays era –when Henry is Muscle and left his brains to rot in the boys’ locker, it just became Short Supply. Short Supply is good old punk hardcore, the gold old school way: good old tunes, good old tight and compact structures and it all reminds you of good old memories –y’know B’last, Black Flag, Ritual of Spring, Hüsker Dü, that good old Fugazi (Repeater era, my favourite). Nothing modern there for a change but a good old band with a great singer and great lyrics. Makes me feel a bit nostalgic, not only because the music’s quite emotional: reminds me I’m 20 years older by now than the first time I ever listened to a record with the mighty ‘SST’ letters printed on the back of it. This side of the record’s been spinning on the turntable ever since it arrived; I bet it isn’t going to leave it for a few days. Nothing much to say about The Apollo Program on the other side: quite in the same vein, only with an underproduced sound and a lot less catchy tunes. Know what: feels strange to say but I wish both bands sang in French –if you had told me I’d said that 10 years ago I would’ve laughed at you, you’re right.
/www.shortsupply.fr.st or www.theapolloprogram.org
The atlantic manor ‘special is dead’-doo too-CD-jewel box, alas
/I wish there was a world where kids would learn to play the guitar with the Atlantic Manor’s ‘depression drama’ instead of Nirvana’s ‘my girl’. Not that I have anything special against Mr Cobain but what’s left of him is a half good album, dozens of awful ones, a wife you wouldn’t want sleeping in your house in fear she’d throw up on the carpet and that aforementioned girl who’s gonna be our next generation symbol when the majors decide she’s old enough. Well I have something special for Mr R. Sell, the Manor’s frontman: he dedicates all his records to his kids (I know you know that cause you read EMPTY all day long but still, some of you don’t), he uses what he calls the ‘Gorilla Recording’ method (record quickly without rehearsing, do as little overdubs as possible), he writes and plays tunes that are simple without ever being simplistic, his lyrics are as heartfelt as his guitar is lofi and his voice is like one of a dead friend coming to comfort you in your dreams.
/atlanticmanor_at_yahoo.com or R. SELL 2526 NE 41 AVE - FL33033 Homestead USA
The Atlantic Manor –‘The hate we get going’ Do Too-CD-pro jewel box w/BW artwork
/A flyer coming with R. Sell’s albums reads: ‘if this record is not your cup of tea, pass it on to a friend’. Besides, he seems to be sending them to reviewers in large numbers. That’s how I got three of his albums and chose to review my favorite. Pop ballads, lofi, noisy, simple though still able of expressing delicate feelings in a genuine way like a clumsy wooden puppet moved by a very sad 10 year old kid would. All but one, a raging punk tune. The songs are very short. All but one, more than 8 minutes long. The whole album is under 30 minutes, but these minutes I listened to over and over again. Being moved by a record doesn’t happen very often to me so I’d be glad if a copy of this one ended in your CD player. This man seems to thank his children and/or wife on every album and to use their voices a lot. I’d like to see more of this, too. Much sweeter than all those bodybuilded blokes thanking their sponsors for shoes or tee shirts.
/R. SELL 5013 SW 154 CT, Miami FL 33185 USA
The better thoughts to come/Tielnich split-multilabel release-red
7” yeah!
/TBTTC starts with Gaïa (like in Final Fantasy, uh? –great movie but begins with a sample from another Japanese movie: Princess Mononoke, can’t go wrong withit can you) for a mere six minutes of superloudandfast(butwerenotmetalsee) sludge/hardcore. Tielnich is RAGE. Wow. Each song is half an ultra-pessimistic vocal sample from an ultra-pessimistic movie and half pure in-your-face hardcoRage (and they seem to have digested their metal influences real well, too). Please note both bands have lyrics in French and given the average level of excellence of French-speaking hardcore bands these days, you better get yourself a dictionary –and they all really sound like they’re really pissed off by something: is it by people who don’t speak French? Still haven’t got that dictionary? Uh?
/aurel-ch_at_wanadoo.fr or decauxgc_at_aol.com
The chopstick sisters ‘l’une bouge, l’autre pas’-3patttes-3” CDR in a folding cardboard sleeve (still the format of the Gods)
/Enfolded in a nice sky-blue-with-digital-clouds-and-a-drawing-of-a-South-Eastern-Asian-woman-(and-flowers) stays this 20 minutes beauty reminiscent of traditional Chinese singing but heavily processed in the vein of what Josephine Truman used to do back when she used to do it. Great!
/http://3patttes.free.fr
The Duds ‘tracts from the ontodungeon’-eeriephone-EP-boy, goths also use medieval visuals but without the humour this one shows
/I once was a teenager. I’m sure you wouldn’t guess I was from the tremendous mass of neuronal tissue I now am, but yes I too passed through (I’d like to say unharmed, but I have a little honesty left) the brainless desert of adolescence. Amazing how your own body can use these horrible hormonal weapons against you. Against itself, in a way, how stupid. Speaking of this dreadful period of myself (and no I didn’t wear Lamp Buzzcut teeshirts on my skinny chest because 1-I’m not such a youngster I could ever be immature enough to like nu-metal and 2-I never was skinny long enough to wear a girly tee shirt) reminds me of this band I loved back then –I’m pretty sure I’d still like them should I come across one of their records: The Jazz Butcher. Almost every good pop record I hear now makes me think of them, probably like they make you think of the first Smiths’ record you heard or the first Madonna’s (in which case you should ask yourself why you’re reading this). Well this record echoes in me as an electro version of TJB, with real bits of noisylittlethingsyoucallsynths for the ambiences, kick-clap beatboxes fresh out of a Prefab Sprout record and folky guitars riffs, with that special laid-back melancholic way of singing the Butchers’ singer also had. Lyrics are pretty funny too, although I probably don’t get half of them jokes and get half wrong most of the rest (review courtesy of BilboBaggins’ InstantGobbledegookMakerTM).
/PO Box 208 EXETER EX4 7WD-UK or mailto: thedudsuk_at_yahoo.co.uk
The groove criminals ‘kicking up dust’-kitchen-7”-black’n’kool sleeve
/Kitchen is that sorta label. They send you a bunch of 7” and a CD with friendly words carefully written by hand. The records you get are ALL excellent –like , you know, The Stars Of Aviation, Trilemma and so on- and damn, I wonder which one I’m going to review. Kitchen is that sorta label, nothing short of excellent. So I picked the one originally was the less likely I’d like if you get me. If James Brown and Muslim Gauze had a son I bet he’d do this kind of music. Caterpillar smoke (the B-side) is especially great, with its nostalgic vibraphonic pianoïc line and post-rocking guitar and wah bass and it’s all birds that sing and water that bubbles and how you feel good although a little sad through this sunny but so cold afternoon in the park in winter. Kitchen is this sorta label: music with emotions.
/kitchensounds@aol.com
The Goslings ‘spaceheater’-self-release-CDR- nice plastic envelope
/Some days are good days. Days when a few hours of nappingdoingnothinglisteningtomusic are ahead. Days when we’re not moving house (just kidding). Days when I have no exhausting gardening work planned. Days when all the people who usually send press releases with their ‘works’ just forgot my address. Days when all I have to wonder about is how great records such as this one found their way from the US sunny East coast to my home buried deep in the deepest sunny as well South of France. Think Skullflower recording in Bombay just after breaking in some German modular synth workshop and robbing all they could at random. The miracle of electricity: a little talent, whatever plugged into a 4-track and manipulated and it’s wonderful music you get, somewhere between droning ambient, traditional music, post-psyche-fuzz and many other meaningless genre names I could make up for you on the spur of the moment. Go Goslings, go! I’m sure Maeror Tri would be proud of you: I am, whether anyone else is or not.
/thegoslings_at_hotmail.com
The grand hotel ‘extra tiger’-feltrecords-CDR-supernice cardboard pack
/Look what Santa Claus has got in this huge backbasket of his. He’s got a record with a good old stamped, Xeroxed, glued, pure-DIY folding pack. He’s got acoustic guitar and tambourines and hiphop vocals and vinyl cracks and noise and pops and lofi beats and birds singing and all sorts of other stuff. He’s got delayed oohs and aaahs. He’s even got a bit of noisy guitar ambient. He’s got thirty three minutes of pure pleasure in one go. But that’s because he’s Santa Claus, in case you forgot.
/www.feltrecords.com
The
Guy Who Invented Fire ‘The Guy Who Invented Fire’
/Reviewing one song is stupid you think. I think I have to review good
material, no matter how well hidden or buried under tons of fudge-smelling
or sweetened-to-death pop it is. This is just one song, a Shellac cover
as the name suggests. It was released on some fanzine compilation and
can be easily emailed because the original file is a tracker module
but that’s not the point. The point is: this is the best Shellac cover
(or should I say tribute) I ever heard (not that I heard many) and it
quite competes with the original song, which given the average level
of quality of Albini’s band is amazing. Could someone release this on
a more appropriate format, alongside with other nice material GuyFire
has in stock please?
/www.listen.to/guyfire
The Guy Who Invented Fire-‘I didn’t get where I am today’–Intellectos-CD-Jewel box w/color sleeve
/He invented fire and he invented a new musical genre: three finger electro. If some self-called musicians I know only had one finger of the three, they’d be called musicians by other people, too. My favorite track is ‘pretty girl’, involving the voices of a middle-aged man and this pretty girl (at least the man says she is) carrying a metronome in turns in order to test your stereo. According to this test, mine is fine so I decided I would like the record and its minimal drum patterns, its simple melodies and its ‘I’m not taking all this seriously’ spirit. There’s a negative point, though. I really don’t think including a remix from 22-metre-band was necessary, the record’s just the good length to me without it.
/www.hifiart.com/intellectos - intellectos_at_hotmail.com or 1009 Spruce Street, 1F, PHILADELPHIA, PA 19107, USA
The Inspired Riders ‘so long and thanks for all the fish’-HalloGallo-CDR-nice handmade cover
/I don’t exactly know what the connection between this improvised guitar noise and the ‘Hitch-hikers’ guide to the galaxy’ book it’s named after. Humorous song names like ‘you don’t win friends with salad’ (I’d daresay this is true, except if you want rabbits or snails as friends), and noise, well, noise.
/Narburn Close-Brinnington-Stockport-SK5 8JQ-UK
The large, slow maturing pigs of Yorkshire-eeriephone-black 7”-very nice kindanaive artwork
/These series (yes, it’s a series, I just chose to review my favourite record but the two other ones are pretty nice as well) of beautifully-packaged 7” hold a music that’s quite different. Quite different from the one you’d expect looking at its beautey-sleevey: no, it’s not another-Dead-Can-Dance-clone or any The Goon Play Ridden Underneath a Mould soundalike. It’s quite different pop. Not synthpop even if it uses synthesizers. With quite different lyrics going ‘you are my incubator, a place that’s cosy and warm’ (what a declaration to make to your loved one, ain’t it). And a quite different use of vocal aaaahs and a quite different use of analogue-sounding beats topped with whipped analogue-sounding bleeps. In fact, this ‘my incubator’ is the best song (you know, SONG, not track, if you see the difference) I heard in ages. Yeah, that’s something different about Eeriephone releases: with all the electro/experimental background I sense in the bands, they’re all about writing/playing/making good songs –quite different from your regular song-writing background band trying to look electro/experimental.
/mailto: eeriephone_at_yahoo.co.ukor see at www.eeriephone.n3.net
The
/Music doesn’t have to be long or complicated or high tech or fashioned
or anything to be good. Sometimes just one song on one side of a seven
incher gets you flying or whistling the tune or enjoying yourself. Here’s
one, it’s Pink Sticks and it’s on side A of this. Beautifully simple
and inspired and elaborate and spontaneous all at the same time.
/www.staticcaravan.com
The $hit - self released promo EP
/The $hit appear on the wild west midlands compilation, but there’s more to say about them: yeah, they’re Big Black kicking Trio’s butt as I tell you below (remember Trio, Da Da Da and a Casio VL1, yes I’m sure you remember and nope you’re not that young so you that you can say you don’t) and yeah they use distorted hip hop style vocals and they’re punkish as hell and they got as much energy as Winterbrief. Their website is excellent. Their dresscode is excellent. Their constant references to the shittiest of the 80s are excellent. They seem to be as much of Peaches fans as I am. But there’s something MORE to The $hit: Alec Empire isn’t part of their line up so you’re not gonna get any ‘buy my fuck capitalism stickers, brother’ crap. Or maybe it isn’t crap; it’s just the way things have to become when you grow up or grow big. Fuck growth: let’s remain kids and let’s remain small.
/www.thefuckingshit.cjb.net
The smile adventure/Iron bitchface split-push the button-CDR-jawajawajawal box
/There’s something kinda funny about black metal: it’s so pathetically serious it’s a great source of inspiration for caricature. Even if you don’t like BM (and how is it possible to like it after the age of 12 I wonder), you have to honour it as a great provider of nonsense humour as a reaction to it. I have no idea whether the bands featured there are Swedish or not but Push The Button Records is a Swedish label: shitting the pants of black metal is definitely mandatory when you live there and want to keep a little of your sanity. So what’ve we got there? Ultrafast hardtech beatz + from-hardhouse-to-videogame toysynths&basslines + BM-style vocals + hilarious titles in the vein of Nervenotfound from Japan reviewed here a while ago or like a Mortician with a lofi sound + irony and without all the assholeposes. 14 tracks, a little more than 13 minutes sounding like one track for each band sliced up for barbecue. Okay, buy, okay.
/www.pushthebutton.tk
The Star and Key of the Indian Ocean – live_at_le bonobo café march 15th 2003
/Do you like rock and roll? Basically, I don’t. But I do like my good old garage surf punk thing when it’s dirty and mean and funny (no wapdoowaps and no shitass Beatles pop in disguise for me thank you-and leave the hammond and the farfisa at home as well). Them Star and Key play dressed in black with Robin-style black masks, sparcely use vocals and make qualitee-guaranteed zero pretentiousness loud&fast surf rock that’ll make your knees twist and your hips shake before you know it. We saw two 45 minutes sets, one-two-three-four basic beats, reverberated guitars complete with vibratos & tremolos, fuzz bass and everything, We came back home with no hearing left and a wide smile on our faces at 2AM. And when we woke up at 8 to go back to work, we both felt being tired and deaf and dizzy all day was damn worth it.
/http://www.star-and-key.fr.st/
The telescopes ‘winter EP’-hungry audio-7”-beautiful, really is
/The perfect needle, in my memories, was kind of a noisy-poppy song from ten years ago by a band that was here before Radiohead or Mogwai and has achieved wonderfulness by being compared to famous bands they influenced (as my friend Jimmy P. pointed out recently). This is version #4 so maybe that’s why it sounds like a remix by Corrupted of a Flying Saucer Attack track: slow and dreamy and sad and beautiful and psychedelic and 33 rpm (and even 16 rpm, if you be so lucky to have that on your turntable). On Winter, a more recent song but this is version #7, Jo’s and Stephen’s voices blend over a musical magma of trumpets (or is it the Antonelli wind organ or the Flugelhorn?) and guitar noises and static and bassey sub-oscillators, making all the little hairs on my spine raise and oscillate with them. And there’s tin foil. And a whole suitcase of prepared instruments. The best Telescopes release so far -given the fact that like Chassagne-Montrachet, The Telescopes only get better with age, I might say that again in the not-too-distant future. Please note this seems to be the first 7” release of the label and its astonishing sound and layout quality should make it sell enough for a river of great others to follow.
/www.hungryaudio.tk
The Telescopes ’third wave’-double agent-CD-beautiful digipack
/Such a record hardly needs any advertising coming from us. Who cares. Don’t be mislead as I was by the first track, a pure pop-rock song quite clearly labelled to be a hit single and please give the record a careful listen in one go before you think anything. This is truly a record with a soul. It’s somewhat ‘classical’ pop music, yes it is, but it’s so inventive, rich, varied (and guitarless, though due to the use of fuzz bass it strangely often reminded me of The Jesus and Mary Chain). It sounds so natural and relaxed, so easy and effortless. And it’s got trumpets and theremins and piano and old school analogue synths and distorted 808/909 and videogames beats and… This could be the set for a quite weird electronics performance. I heard this one sells okay so the telescopes have now enough money to travel to more experimental soundscapes and I really can’t wait to share their journey. If we had anything like an album of the month here, this would be it. #5 is something special: soundtrack to a Twin Peaks’ episode starring Mr Elvis Presley and oh my how I’d love to see it.
/c/o Antenna PO BOX 603 Burton on Trent DE142ZX-UK or mailto:antenna.records_at_lineone.net
The Telescopes ‘as approved by the committee’-bomp-CD-silver artwork and oh my do I HATE those pro jewel boxes and 8-page booklets
/The Telescopes are not interested in looking at their shoes cause they’re too busy looking at the stars someone said. But that’s only because watching your shoes with a telescope is so difficult. Hey, let’s talk about me instead of talking about NME reviewers. We all have those secret memories of things we’d rather haven’t done. I have this one: I rehearsed once with a noisy-pop (that’s how we called it) band in the early nineties. I think their name was ‘Insight’, I had a try at singing for them and it was a disaster (my singing was bad, their music was awful, but we together sounded like Ed Wood’s Nightmare Band). This is only a little secret but I sure ain’t gonna tell you anything about the darkest blackness of my heart, at least not while you pay nothing to read this. Noisy-pop, I always thought there was nothing to save of this era except My Bloody Valentine’s EPs (I’d like loveless a whole lot, too, if it was an EP). In fact, I’m just a total fan of MBV EPs, but don’t you never, EVER say the word ‘Ride’ before me (except if you’re offering me a trip to somewhere on your rocketbike) or I’ll kick your teeth out and eat you before you realize there are some mistakes one cannot forget nor forgive (and while you’re still warm, I never liked cold meat that much-not even the label). The Telescopes manage to be as great as MBV on tracks 1-7 (earliest tracks probably) and to have me instantly throw up like (Ride – don’t speak that name aloud I warned you) on the first measures of track 8 (I fast forwarded the rest I’m sorry but I’m always bullying my dog when he vomits on the carpet like the carnivorous untamed beast he is so I’m not going to pass the evening doing so otherwise I’d have to bully myself and I can’t think of a way of doing it). Something, though: these tracks are ten years old and I realize The Telescopes are one band I shouldn’t have missed. I’m glad I didn’t miss their come back and I can easily forgive the songs I don’t like, even forget them listening to the wonderful stuff they make now (already reviewed here). Something, though (v2.0): they have a track on the Robots and Electronic Brains CD #11 (free with the zine, go and SUBSCRIBE, damn you), my favourite track of the comp (which given the amazing average level of excellence of the record IS saying a lot). Please note: if you read this review till the end you’re a sturdy fella, congrats.
/PO BOX 7112-Burbank CA 91510-USA or see at: www.bomp.com
The telescopes ‘altered perception’-spaceage-CD-jewel boxes suck but nice pictures of the telescopes don’t
/What do my ears hear through this Altered Perception TelescopeTM? Something they should be utterly allergic to: super-melodic laidback voicelines, shaker/maracas perclines, chorus/verse/chorus/break songs, trumpets, FM synths, girly backing vocals and so on. What does my soul perceive through this Altered Perception TelescopeTM? Something it quickly became addicted to: magic, fuzz, beauty, space, emotion with delicate hands getting out of the earphones and rubbing gently your temples to ease a day’s pain away. What do my eyes see through this Altered Perception TelescopeTM? Very nice original photographs of the band, taken from long-lost negatives. What does my heart feels through this Altered Perception TelescopeTM? For some pop bands, being noisy’s just an alibi; for The Telescopes being pop is just another way of lurking you into their noise maelstrom. What does my mind think through this Altered Perception TelescopeTM? It thinks Radiohead with no electronics, the Jesus and Mary Chain on their best days, early Mogwaï with genuine songwriting talent, and of course My Bloody Valentine (did you ever stop thinking about MBV?); it thinks this record’s an absolute must have.
/www.spaceagerecordings.com
The Tleilaxu Music Machine-demo CDR (I don’t think there’s more than one copy of this but I guess you’re free to ask)
/This is a random collection of stuff from an American noise artist, nothing close to an album. 14 tracks of just about every kind of noisy noise (mostly digital I think) you can figure, quite inventive and spontaneous and all in all an interesting one-time listen.
/mailto:diebenetleilax_at_junglescene.com
The tleilaxtu music machine-minor-CDR-machine sewn envelope: great!
/I think we have to create a new genre: ‘stuttering glitch industrial’ where we could pigeonhole Groxyo and The Tleilaxtu music machine. Saying his tracks are ultra-complicated anti-structured pieces of work gives just a remote idea of the hundreds ideas he puts in his little minutes tracks. Keep an eye on this.
/www.minorlabel.de
Thee mighty king kerosene ‘goodbyekanadasongs’-CDR in a paper cover
/Beauty is a heart beating and a guitar tune. Melancholy is a mellotron and the famously snappy 808 cymbals. Quietness is a flow of sweet waves from the sea of noise and a contrabass standing upright by itself in the spaceship. Plenitude is a d&b beat with a piano line that goes on forever. That’s a beautiful and melancholic and quiet record (in the vein of Deserted Village’s cosmo-folk projects) that’ll bring you 49 minutes of plenitude and that’s almost a full rare hour: enjoy.
/www.retinascan.de
Thee mighty king kerosene ‘family album’-CDR in a golden wrapping
/This Mighty whatever band is slowing climbing in my top ten of the year and a record like this one isn’t going to make things better. Having a place in my heart isn’t probably something any musician would like but still, this Mighty whatever band has it. Copypaste what’s written above if you wish an actual review, simply emphasize this is sorta more post-rockish than post-folkish and it also is a great record.
/www.retinascan.de
Timo ‘I must be right’-kawtapes-beautiful clear vinyl 7”- b&w artwork
/This nice record comes with quite desperate liner notes complaining about how people do not listen to music anymore and how it’s killing music (as far as I know, majors kill music in a much more effective way than home-taping ever did or p2p mp3 exchange will ever do). How going places and doing things is slowly turning us all into thoughtless jelly pieces. Modern music is the soundtrack to modern stupidity, Timo says, but this record isn’t. Raging rock and roll on one side, a folkish ballad then a country-sounding metal tune on the other, I guess Timo still wants to play music despite what he says and that’s good news. Final words: I think this record sounds better played 45 rpm as it should be played, do you believe me?
/94 main street, Forth, Lanakshire ML11 8AB – UK or mailto: kawtapes_at_hotmail.com
Toecutter ‘real sexual people’-system corrupt- CD-great cover+envelope
/So next time you think or say ‘hey man, your music is gay’ (referring to something you find mellow or poppy or easy listening, you homophobic bastard), just remember this record. This is a sickoid distortoid remixoid of all types of club shit you can imagine, all of them barely recognizable and the whole record sounding like the deconstructed gay pornstar featured on the cover (imagine Leatherface naked except for a G-string and a pair of working boots & socks with a luscious look on his face).
/www.systemcorrupt.com
Toshio 609 ‘music for babies’-Earsay-CD in a beautiful sort of envelope
/Actually starts like melodies a baby could listen to but rapidly indulges in a fine Skullflower-like instrumental improvised mess your mother sure couldn’t. Circa 15’ per track for a 45’ total, live, one take, no overdubs, heavy use of toy sounds and effect pedals, super-free-noise moments and calm sweet ones i.e. the whole circus of not-so-serious improvised rock (which I always thought should be called jazz-rock). It does the trick allright and I listened to it several times yet and didn’t find it boring: a fine record in a fine package (Earsay releases packaged in envelopes are uniformly beautiful).
/http://www.earsay.com/ or mailto:pidrus_at_netvision.net.il- c/o the Third Ear – 21 Shenkin street – Tel Aviv- Israel
Travis ‘abort’-autoproduction-CDR-b&w sleeve (and a funny drawing on the front you should discover by yourself)
/What Travis says makes him instantly sympathetic to me: he says he uses that name (his name) in the hope he’ll be sued by the crappopoppy band, he says he doesn’t remember recording any of the songs on this CD and doesn’t know their names. I can’t quite come to find words accurately describing this explosive-although-depressive mixture of weird humour, nonsense noise, pop’n’jazz, bluesy guitars and even more bluesy drunken&distorted&echoed vocals, so you just grab this record and we can make names for the tracks together. A very special mention for the seventh, The Naked Lunch Blues being my name for it. An excellent release in a most unexpected genre, thanks Reality Impaired for sending it.
Travis ‘afterbirth’ & ‘from pussy with love’-various long dead labels and / or autoprod-CDR-usual b&w xeroxed artwork
/Take whichever country-or-blues star it is you like most. Kill him/her (or wait till he/she dies, I love you Mr Johnny Cash). Chop off the head and lay the body to marinate for a decade or so in something that smells funny. Take Alan Vega’s head and rip off it whatever singing organ you find (don’t forget the built-in echomachine). Kill some guitarist (that’s the best part of the recipe) then steal his telecaster and distortion pedals and melt everything in the digestive fluids of an 8-legged freak. Take beer. Yes, huge amounts of it, one has to suffer for his art. Stitch Alan Vega’s organ to the marinated and decapitated body (fix the echomachine firmly), then force feed the huge amount of beer into it, give it the melted guitar-and-effects and say ‘play the guitar and sing, My Creation’ with a deep German accent. You just built Travis. Can I kiss you?
/mailto:groundzro2002_at_yahoo.com – Travis Straub-107A E.Culton Warrensburg, MO 64093
Trawsfynnyd Lofi Liberation Front ‘Llofrud Digidol’-F1!-credit-card CD-great homemade package
/The idea to use a 3-minutes-credit-card-CD for this digital murder is absolutely great. The idea of writing a 16 words review would have been, too, but I got 33 more words to say. The two tracks seem to come from a very angry mutant home computer: super-short, super-violent and super-effective. Go and buy this one, while there are some copies left.
/Fitamin Un! 8 stryd Tywysog Leopold-CAERDYDD-CF24 OHT – WALES
Troum ‘tjukurrpa (part three)’-drone-CD-great round cover+envelope
/Now let me check. This record does weight less than 100 grams. How come the music inside is so DENSE and the CD weights as usual? I guess the cover once was a normal square one and was turned into a circle shaped one by the laws of gravity when wrapping the record. Part three means ‘rhythms and pulsations’; don’t be mistaken though: it’s not drumbeats or Bboxes pulses, it’s thick walls of echoing and swirling patterns in loop mode building the beat of the Sun’s plasma core, it’s layer upon layer of harsh melody painting the pulse of the Universe, it’s the bare rhythm of Creation. A mesmerizing, enthralling, and exhausting listening experience. Buy.
/www.dronerecords.de
Troum ‘tjukurrpa (part one and two)’-drone-CD-great round cover+envelope
/I quite extensively reviewed part three of this above and I only had the first two parts recently (this being a three parts release –you look tired today, are you following me?). SO just a quick note to let you know these two first parts are twice as great as the third one because there’s two records and each one is as good as the third one (you really look tired -go to bed).
/www.dronerecords.de
Truant-‘zellaby’s beautiful sacrifice’–Fencing Flatworm-CDR-Splendid colour sleeve
/Wowow. 1 track = 38’30”, says the CD player with grey LCD letters on the backlit-in-blue screen. I bet you’re wrong, you stupid machine. Can’t read CDRs properly. Too bad audio gear manufacturers also own record labels. Or maybe it’s a private joke on me cause at FFR, they didn’t like my latest reviews (in fact, I think they did). So I pressed play and sat in front of the stereo, just after lunch, waiting for sleep to come. I waited, and waited, and waited again. Read the minimal liner notes again and again, two people for ‘electronics’, one plays the guitar. Oriental (Indian?) sounding loops (or is it just one loop?). Very minimal changes occurring here and there. 38’30”, the backlit-in-blue LCD display wasn’t even kidding. Nap never happened, as if I tried to sleep watching the stars in summer and could never get tired enough of their beauty to ever close my eyes. So what? An attempt at ambient-assisted mesmerism? A modern electronic version of Mahavishnu Orchestra? Believe me or not I liked this record, but I bet I won’t listen a lot to it, simply because having 40 minutes in a row to listen to one track doesn’t happen very often these days. Part of what made me like this record, probably.
/mailto:robert.hayler_at_ukgateway.com or c/o Robert Hayler, 16 Station Parade, Leeds, LS5 3HG, UK
Tumour/FCKN BSTRDS!-autoproduction-superb 10” RED vinyl-wonderful homemade cover
/This came unexpected by the post as a result of our massive trading policy. Red 10’’ translucent vinyl, DIY sleeve, weird artwork, real noisy and short record, now that’s how I like my grindcore. Buy it if you find it (no readable contact info or anything on the sleeve).
Tystion ‘I Meistri’-F1! – EPCD-pro crystal package
/And you thought you’d heard it all? Now have a try at this good old HipHop in Welsh language. Really sounds alien to my continental ears! The music itself is neat though traditional, but the flows really are something! I’ll make another suggestion here: since I do not speak a word of Welsh, could it be possible to translate the sleeve in French so I can at least understand some of it? (I sure won’t ask you to translate it in English!).
/Fitamin Un! 8 stryd Tywysog Leopold-CAERDYDD-CF24 OHT – WALES
Tzii ’12 variations on tango 40’s’-autoprod-demo CDR
/A tango-power-electronics crossover is something to throw away instantly you say. Mmh, not quite, not before listening to it. Because when you start listening to it you realise anything can be crossovered when it’s done with ideas and a soul, not with commercial ideas in mind (that’s why Shakira’s attempt at surf-punk is ridiculous while this record is a happy listening experience). Tzii calls this a demo but it sounds quite finished to me, so: could someone in the audience offer a proper release to that man?
/mailto: tzii_at_n-ox.com