click on banner to go back to main page

Amanonn ‘BootlegGirl’-self-released-CDR in a slimbox (but that’s a mistake I heard it should’ve come in an envelope)
/Sure you already know Amanonn. And as the words opening this record say, you probably already have all their records. Amanonn were on their way to being famous this winter: they were like 4 people like in a rock band and their 808 called Orlando and was supposed to be the fourth member (Big Black’s TR 606 anyone?) –only they reversed to their good old duo half man half machine formula recently and that’s excellent news!
/http://amanonn.free.fr

Autodidact ‘devotional hymns for the women of anu’-public eyesore-CDR in the usual great cardboard envelope
/Public Eyesore’s a great label. I heard they were the biggest CDR label in the world which I have no means to know for sure (and what kind of a glory is this anyway) but what I do know is they have one of the greatest pair of ears this world has known. Not that I like all their releases, but they’re all likeable if you follow me. This one is super heavy mostly instrumental droning sludgecore (like most sludge is nowadays since I should call this drone metal –ain’t you tired of the 12450th genre name of the week?) that’s as good as Sunn O))) and quite a lot more original and personal than say, yeah, Isis if you wish. And if a title like ‘cry me a river, Elisabeth Nietzsche’ doesn’t convince you then I guess over an hour of quality for such a cheap price will.
/www.publiceyesore.com

Concrete creeps filth 1st LP and 8001704 ‘zoriani nac thair nac thairi -cnccr-CDRs in a fine cardboard packaging
/Well I had no news from Mechanoise for a while (and saw they were not that much into rhythmic stuff anymore these days a while later, as you’ll read below) so I was sorta craving for harsh distorted beats and I found some with Concrete Creeps Filth. It’s more jungle-like than your usual beat-industrial record, less chopped-and-minced-techno-like than your average System Corrupt release and it’s 13’20’’ long, with not a second removable which means it found a cosy home in my CD player. 8001704 is harsh guitar noise and walls of palpable hisses and ear-shattering feedback and a welcome 3 minutes guitar piece of peace in between. Both records’ll sure help me keep the faith I always had in French CDR labels for a while more.
/http://perso.wanadoo.fr/cnccr

DDD ‘breakfast with doctor dathan’-alienation-CDR jewelslimshit (but does fit in an envelope and that’s a good thing)
/Computer, amplified contralto clarinet and electric guitar, that’s what this trio is and these ingredients definitely prepare you to what you’re about to hear: experimental contemporary-classical-like music. But does not prepare you to how good it’s going to be: static, noises, clicks, low-end hums of the processed clarinet, pops, buzzes, hisses, nano-melodies, all somewhat déjà-vu components all arranged (live?) in a delicate and sensitive beauty – Ikebana ain’t it: you’ve already seen’em all flowers but the bouquet itself is something of a new and loveable experience.
/www.ops.dti.ne.jp/~thirdorg

Dead For A Minute / Muckrackers ‘la destruction est aussi création pt1’-LFA-floppy!!!!!!
/Two mpthrees were on one neon green floppy. Sounds like the beginning of a nursery rhyme but it’s the new diamond from Frenchie label ‘les forces alliées’. Industrial-type noise on one side and grindcore on the other for a total of 74 seconds –that is if floppies still had actual sides these days. Find this, cause it’s just brilliant (as their brand new website).
/www.muckrackers.org

Drog_a_tek-1001Tilt-3”CDR format of the gods in a cardboard package
/That’s a live gig recorded on MD and released ‘as is’ in the usual laidback vein of 1001Tilt releases. Excellent electro jazz second track and that’s why this is featured here –don’t get me wrong: electro jazz usually is pretentious and boring but well; this isn’t.
/www.geocities.com/tiltrecordings

Fuck the Facts/Narcosis/Midget Parade/Archer multisplit-CD & the throw-away jewel box
Fuck the Facts/Sergent Slaughter split-CD & the throw-away jewel box
/Fuck the Facts are from Canada and they’re to ‘normal’ metal what noise/glitch is to ‘normal’ electronica which isn’t saying much if you’re not familiar with any of those words (that is, if you can read at all). Anyway, that’s a bit like Eyehategod jamming with Mortician engineered by Naked City remixed on the fly by the Boredoms. Their thing is nothing short of excellent and since it’s still somewhat metal it gets the privilege to be kinda widespread with tons of genuine crap on splits like these.
/www.fuckthefacts.com

Full & Frank ‘vol III’–smell the stench?-3” CD format of the gods again
/That was a bit of a surprise, 22 minutes of psyche/folk/noise experiments that could’ve been released on Deserted village released instead on this good old Aussie label Smell the Stench (or so I guess from the contact email). Recycled cover taken from boat ads or mags, pretty listenable improvised guitar-only taken live (hear the players breathe and all), a great release!
/ful_frnk@tpg.com.au

Gone bald-narrominded-I had the promo CD so no idea of what the real package will be
/I get this ‘ten years ago’ nostalgia once in a while and it’s these days. So I’ve been listening a lot to Craw and Distorted Pony and Dazzling Killmen and Guzzard and stuff from Bovine and Trance and Amphetamine Reptile (I bet these names strike a soft spot in your heart if you’re about my age) and all these records that kissed my adolescence goodbye a decade ago when I started realizing in my own flesh people actually die –meaning I will die too, eventually: we all know the end only not its day. Has this anything to do with this Gone Bald album? Hell, yea: I would’ve loved it ten years ago, and these days when nostalgia strikes, I also do.
/www.gonebald.net or www.narrominded.com

Hosome ‘white reality’-yousns (R.I.P)-2xCDR in the lame jewel box but read below
/This is a set of two records totalling just over 5 (yes, five) minutes of just excellent Japanese chaos-core for all you out there who’re as huge fans of Melt Banana as I am. A must have. And a soon-to-be-sought-after collector on ebay since the label stopped.
/hosome7jp@yahoo.co.jp

Junkplanet ‘not if this was the last planet on Earth’-brain love-promo copy
/This is a collection of this and that. This is electroclash. That is sampled bits of things distorted Maladroit and Toecutter won’t reject. This is noise. That is copypasted hip hop bits of everyday life, TV commercials and B-movies. This is super-short tracks going everywhere in a matter of milliseconds with fingers glued to the sampler’s roll function. This is kinda synthpop. That’s kinda jungle. This is our planet. That’s junk.
/www.brainlove.com

K-Iman ‘rouge’-autoprod-CD jewel and it all
/From what I guess this is quite old (1997?) but since I have no means to be sure and only had it this week, I’ll write a few words about it. You all think France musically is the country of Mireille Mathieu (that’s if you’re Japanese), Céline Dion (that’s if you’re American, since you’ve got no idea she’s from Quebec) and Jean Réno (that’s if you have no clue about music since he’s an actor) –yeah I know that’s clichéd. Certainly there’s no raging, loud, repetitive metal hardcore with inspired lyrics that could (again) be compared to Craw over there… Not on any of our labels for sure but anywhere else… Well, there is.
/any idea if this band still exists?

Kryptogen Rundfunk ’22.SZ’-mechanoise-CD in a great grey pack
/As I said before & elsewhere, Mechanoise has cut down the mecha and the noise a bit but not the quality. In fact it’s not so much the Noise or its Mechanical character that’s been turned down but mostly the harsh- foreword that usually qualifies it. Deep analoguish drones and low sine waves and lots of static so you could call this ambient Noise without being too far away from the truth (which, of course, isn’t The Truth) but it all strangely keeps quite listenable and entertaining –for the strong-hearted, needless to say but still said.
/www.mechanoise-labs.com

Loopool ‘dunes soon’-sycophanticide-3” CDR still the format of the gods
/”Whether from above or below, oil will make the land a desert”. That could be a motto for a documentary about the wasteland awaiting us if we all keep on being as careless as we are now –careless enough to only see the light in the expendable and careless enough to only consider genius what’s closely or remotely akin to dogshit. And this, of course, could be the soundtrack to it. Like slowly drifting guitar ambient or like slowly shifting synth ambient.
/www.loopool.tk

Marcel Ruijters ‘machina mundana’-le dernier cri-comic book
/That’s a collection of fantastic drawings, where fantastic doesn’t only mean the drawings are beautiful and original. Flying fishes falling from trees, a fake Jesus watching the world through the hole in his left hand, a two headed priest, a snake bicycle and lots of snakes in general; they’re all there in this modern vs. medieval print compilation –on heavy paper with pink, yellow, and blue. A must touch for your hands and a must see for your eyes (and all the rest in between)
/Le Dernier Cri 41 rue Jobin 13003 Marseille - FRANCE

Martoc (some different tapes from some different centuries)
/A song named ‘BEMS (bug eyed monsters)’ is quite guaranteed to grant you my instant sympathy. Especially if what you do is sort of tongue-in-cheek new wave with fifteenth-degree humour ironical lyrics and super-cheesy pad synths and slappy basses and the mandatory monolithic 4/4-kick/snare pattern. I always say Visage is one of my favourite pop bands ever (not forgetting Soft Cell, though) but what I like most is what people inflicted on them by being influenced by them. Especially if you’ve actually been doing this sorta stuff since the mid-eighties. And somewhat especially too if you use a cheesy and dated format like the magnetic tape. Martoc, I sing-along in Sing Sing with you.
/martoc@martoc.demon.co.uk

O ‘numéro 0’-antenna-CD, nice package, great visuals
/Our Future is Primitive, like in the song from GBH. Now that every teenager wears his hair spikey like GBH used to in the 80s, this is the true sound of our Primitive Future and it’s all about acoustic guitars, more or less processed, filtered, altered, prepared, noised and misused. It’s all about doing something new with something old. It’s all about being different but not for the sake of the difference itself. It’s all about ripping the instruments apart to show unbelievers they’re as much flesh and blood as we are. The sound of our Primitive Future is the clink of a tuned string detuned, the sound of fingers on wood, the digitally-exhausted sound of flutes. The sound of our Primitive Future is more electric than it’s electronic and even more acoustic than it’s electric. And what’s more, it’s indescribable because you know what? It’s the Future, and no-one can foresee it.
/www.antennarecords.com

Pi cab alter ‘miniatures’-verato project-3” CDR always the format of the gods and a nice cover too
/Had them people from the GRM had computers back in the 1950s I’m pretty sure this type of micro-glitch would’ve been among the stuff they’d have released. Each of these ‘miniatures’ seem like a minute reproduction of a Lovecraftian God, or perhaps they actually sound like the language Dagon uses when he’s got something to say to Tindalos. A little painful (even sent our faithful dog out of the room) and certainly not for the weak of heart but definitely worth your attention.
/www.verato-project.de

Step on it / Schmürtz split-autoprod-nice paper wrapped CDR
/Step on it are from Hungary and they’ve got what it takes. It takes 39 seconds to play a grindcore song. It takes a Brutal-Truth like bass sound. It takes a lot of punkish- and blast- and power-violence-double-kick-beats and whatever it’s called again. It takes fans of Madball and Agnostic Front and Sick Of It All, probably. My guess would be that when you come from Hungary, it takes a lot more than when you come from famous initials like NY or DC.
/www.steponit.org
/Schmürtz makes the ugliest possible digital punk and says his music is shit in a lot of colourful French words, if you’d pardon his French. If only Earache could’ve kept on releasing shit that smelly and nasty, I’d probably still wear their tee-shirts these days. Schmürtz sounds like Metal Urbain remixed by Anal Cunt and like he could release stuff on V/VM, only he probably won’t. Excellent.
/http://schmurtz.chpunk.org

Team LG ‘big man’-earsugar-vinyl 7” still rule
/”Team LG is a glimpse into all the ups and downs of a relationship, sometimes funny, sometimes sad but always honest”, says the press release. And I say “leave the press release out when you send a record, for even if I like your zero-pretentiousness approach of toy-pop, my laziness could’ve me compelled to copypaste it to add a review to EMPTY”.
/www.mutante-inc.demon.co.uk

The atlantic manor ‘the trouble that you left’-do too-CD, jewel, blahblah
/There’s this Chokebore live album called ‘a part from life’ which is a nice title for a live album. And the singer there he says once ‘this is a new track for us… It’s gonna be sad and slow… because we like that shit’. And The Atlantic Manor instantly blinks in my mind. Chokebore’s music is sad (but not always -and from what I read and hear the people behind the music aren’t) and slow (although not all the time) indeed and it for sure ain’t shit. The Atlantic Manor’s music is sad (most of the time –but from what I read, the man behind most of it isn’t, most of the time) and slow (although not all the time) indeed and it sure is as far from shit as Chokebore’s is. And there’s this record that’s Gorilla RecordedTM as usual and has a lot of straightforward guitar and piano lines and a bit of feedback and a lot of Mr Sell’s nasal and slow-paced voice singing with its crazy southern US accent and a bit of children voices with an overdrive.
/www.theatlanticmanor.com

The brown paper bags series from PUMF records
/If you’ve been looking for creative music of almost any creative genre including but not limited to lofi-blues noise ambient weird pop creatively burnt on CDR creatively wrapped in almost-impossible-to-open-without-creatively-damaging-themTM brown paper folds (hence the name), I guess you found something to your taste. A great effort, and that’s not saying much, and there’s like 20 of them.
/www.pumf.net

The telescopes ‘#4’-antenna-regular CD, jewel so on (but that’s lack of money I’m told so don’t be too harsh on this)
/The Telescopes are like Predator®. Although you wouldn’t think of the dreadlocked alien as the most obvious alias to their music, he does have the number one Telescope feature: you never know where they’re going to be next time you hear or see them. They used to be psyche pop on Creation then shoegazing pop in #2 then Third Wave took them into electronic-influenced songwriting territory and this one wanders onto the drone/noise planet even more than their recent ‘winter’ single on Hungry Audio… This record is, like all the ones before it, the sum of their past influences and walked paths plus a new layer of something completely different: they kept the swirling walls of fuzzed guitars, they kept an acute sense for melody and what a song (in the sense you could oppose to a track) should be, and kept the electronic weirdness. And added everyday sounds, random noise, and manipulations of every kind. And they still drive their space vessel from one solar system to another, avoiding what is easy and what is obvious to concentrate on the uncommon, the extraordinary, and the fascinating. Follow their trajectory today like you’d watch a comet in one of those summer nights: laying on your back with half-open eyelids and a smile, slowly rising your hand to touch the skies while being perfectly aware you can’t, because that’s part of the beauty.
/www.antennarecords.com

V/A ‘time and relative dimensions in space’-rebis-CD, alas for the jewel box
/The logo for Rebis is an egg. The opening track is from the strangely-but-appropriately named Number one. And the compilation features My Cat Is An Alien. That’s for what should’ve made me love this compilation. 5 artists for a 50 minutes record with tracks going from the over 9 minutes mark to the over 12 minutes one. The CD is in the Loathed Jewel BoxTM (but has a nice’n’simple cover). And it’s a genre-orientated record featuring all more or less noisy ambient. That’s for what should’ve made me hate this compilation. So, do I like it? I do, mostly because the opening track is so great (saying it sounds reminds me of Troum is sort of a compliment isn’t it) and because the one by Taurpis Taula is so inspiring (although I’m not sure a full-length of this wouldn’t be tedious). A nice journey into the Continuum.
/www.imaginaryyear.com/rebis

V/A ‘the breath of forgotten places’-elvis coffee-CDR in a plastic envelope
/A journey into the psychedelic, experimental and ambient is this compilation, Earthman. It sounds like Jebus caught a Voyager space probe, recorded the sounds therein and chopped the whole bunch of Sounds Of Humankind in a tremolo. Like Directive 4 recorded the sounds of their own dark and ill-tempered planet. Like Green End Listening Station turned your Human guitars into dervilish (that is half-devil, half-dervish, Earthman) hypnotic devices. Like SWN made melodies with a broken toy piano, beats with whatever analogue was left in the toxic waste and drones with 1-an amphibian Mesozoic heart 2-lots of reversed metallic sounds 3-glassy synths. Like Ulysses Girelle sugarcoated their surround stereo effects with high-pitched textures. Like The Buff Monkey Ensemble psychopomped the mind of a long-dead Wendy Carlos dreaming of guitars. Like Psychic Space Invasion recording the music of Dromers in the alkali whirlwinds of Jupiter in a Simak novel. This compilation gives but a glimpse of the excellence contained in Elvis Coffee Records, Earthman, and you should rush visit their website and buy their stuff.
/http://ecr.homestead.com

Ward ‘it might be useful for us to know’-loca-CD in a sadly conformist jewel box (but I bet they’ll change soon)
/What might be useful for YOU to know is: Loca is an open-source label, just like Linux is an open-source OS (in case you never heard of open-source and Linux, I suggest you remove your head out of the arsehole it has been stuck in for the past decade, doubleclick on Mozilla Firefox –the open-source web browser- and visit Loca’s website) which also means their works can be sampled and used legally as it should always be and there’s a lot more about open-source than just this but this sentence is long enough by now. What also might be useful for you to know: Ward is an experimental electronica duo that uses any sound source from Spanish guitars to their own voices to stringers to live audiences to make as inventive and as indescribable a music as might possibly be; Ward are a bit of Richard and a bit of David and both are also bits of many other things. Something else that might be useful for you to know: how babies are made, but I think you should ask your mother about this one.
/www.loca-records.com

Zdefekt ‘complex breeding program’-scatological liberation front-CDR in a real nice folding packaging
/So you thought instrumental improvised noise&rock à la Esplendor Geometrico was dead uh? Well, yeah, sortof. But there’s a few people still holding up, like Zdefekt are. This record although perhaps it would’ve been better released in 1983 really has something to it, sincerity and inventiveness not to be found easily these days. And people using prepared instruments, Moog synths and real drums cannot be bad, can they.
/www.scatologicalliberationfront.org