Various Artists Compilations

Various - Advance 2000.3
Label: Mute Format: CD

What are the folks at Mute up to right now?

Advance 2000.3 isn`t really an album as such. It's a compilation of the up and coming Mute (and Novamute) releases. You won't find it in the shops, unless you work in the shops.

2000.3 has new releases from Erasure, Goldfrapp, Add N To (X), Cristian Vogel, Echoboy, Holger Hiller, Foil, Luke Slater, and Recoil. That's a pretty varied mix, better than many compilations for sale. But this is Mute Records, after all.

Here's a rough digest of the CD. Erasure are back with their first single in three years. "Freedom" is boppy House number with sprinklings of Kraftwerk-y vocals. Beneath it all the tune is still driven by a Synth Pop heart. It's like the Eighties never went away. Goldfrapp's "Utopia" is generally pretty epic track with lots of big synths.

Add N To (X) and Luke Slater provide moments of cute and groovesome Electro with "Plug Me In" and "All Exhale (Electropunk Mix)" respectively. Cristian Vogel's latest single "Whipaspank" is a curious and wonderful chunk of techno.

Echoboy are one of the revelations for me. "Telstar Recovery" is Hawkwind for the post-Big Black epoch. (How many times can Big Black be safely mentioned in one month of reviewing?) It's a drone Rock epic that's been dragged kicking and screaming though a playground full of broken glass. Great fun unless you happen to fall off the swings. Holger Hiller is back with the minimal and demixed "Curmbox". Foil are in the noisy Nirvana realms with their track "Superhero No.1". Recoil's track "Jezebel" is the other revelation of the CD - a bizarre and biblical rap with backing vocals provided by Diamanda Galas.

Yep, another packed month or three for the people at Mute.

-ap-

Various - The Answering Machine Solution
Label: Staalplaat Format: CD

"This CD celebrates the 100th cd release of Staalplaat. Not a mere compilation but a tool. It contains a wide variety of sounds that you can load on your answering machine . The first part of the CD are ready made pieces, followed by a series of sound-only material. You can use these to speak your own text (the Karajoke part). The third section contains material which you can leave on answering machines that you have called. And the fourth part is something special... This booklet contains a lot of texts for those who practise karajoke for their machines. Needless to say that you have to translate the text in your language!"

And that's precisely what is. One of the best compilations ever, I guaran-f'ing-tee it. It's a great collection of sounds with which one can hector the answering machines of friends and enemies alike. Some of the contributions from the European contingent share a fascination with American evangelical speakers and Jack Chick-level Christianity. Others hold a particular inquisitiveness and fascination with the human voice, and about the telephonic medium at large. Nigel Ayers' field recording of shamanic songs of Yemani upon installation of telephone equipment - to bring good luck - are particularly illuminating.

-David Cotner-

Various - At The Threshold Moment - A Tribute To Coil
Label: Else Format: CD

At The Threshold Moment - sleeveThe negative thing about tribute albums is that they can be an outlet for a bunch of otherwise unknown bands and artists to get some attention by producing variable-quality interpretations of their influences' music. This seems for some reason to be a particular problem with dodgy Goth cover bands taking apart their Eighties heroes, with all the panache of a pub-rock band in full boozy flight. Fortunately, this is not the case with At The Threshold Moment, in that the contributors, drawn from members of the Coil email list , have chosen largely to make their pieces resemble remixes more often than not, or to produce tracks in the spirit of Coil instead of straight covers.

A case in point are the two versions of "Absolute Elsewhere", the joke for the uninitiated being that the original track was a blank B-side to the "How To Destroy Angels" single. This could easily have led to some "covers" as interesting as those which have appeared of John Cage's "4'33"" - and to a point, Steven Stapleton already did that schtick a few years back on the official How To Destroy Angels remix album. J. Frede's "Elphswhere Mix" opts for what sounds like the ungrooved disc played through various delay and mixer effects to make a wash of glitches and screes, while COH sneaks out what might possibly be considered an extended mix/cover of the track as a suitable closing moment of the CD.

Among the occasional Coil covers/smaplings was the appalling Great White Hype "Protect Yourself" track a few years back, which twisted up "Protection" into a bizarre, horrifyingly unfunny Rap track about the group's back catalogue. So it's particularly ironic and not a little bit gratifying that Jowonio Productions choose to turn the same sources into a weird and strangely affecting analogue bass and breakbeat soundclash with Presley singing "Falling In Love With You" on "Coil vs Elvis" - definitley the oddest track on the disc. The other Jowonio track, "Tea With P & J" takes an equally strange wander through squelchy analogues and distended vocal snippets of a Punch & Judy show to Plunderphonic dimensions.

Likewise, Mkka's "Coiluntitld" takes various slippery snickers and moulds them into a meta-mix which has all the attributes of Coil through the years (pianos, eerie circlings and vocal samples included), made into a gloopy Ambient track. Other atmospherics and rumblings come in the shape of Amenti Suncrown's ominously minimal "Pzoar" and the tinkly snitches, frazzled chords and phased aetherial voices of their "Pollen", while a short interlude of layered insect noises makes up 3Z13's "And They Shall Inherit". Equally narcotic are Anne Drogyness' drone swirl "Cyproterone Acetate", Dhex's effective slo-mo collage "Broken Piano Remix" with its ascent into electronic noise, and Else's own mysteriously half-intelligible voice and deftly-snipping electro irritant cut up. The Feigenbaum Point construct a mesmeric slap-back shimmer of thudding beats and distortion in "God Please Fuck My Mind For Good" and Paul Roth provides a noisy "Precursor To Entropy" as well as a shortened take on hallucinogenic synth project Time Machines' "2,5-dimethoxy-4-ethyl-amphetamine: (DOET/Hecate)". This has a less urgently buzzing feel to the original - but possibly similarly trans-chronic results in the right chemical conditions.

Of those who choose to tackle the song-based material in more direct covers, Les Cochons de L'Amour bring a nice balance of hushed dynamics and dread to their sinister breakbeat and tape-mechanism rewind cover of "The Anal Staircase", and even if their vocals lack the full intensity required they're also quite an effective intro to the full-on (but nicely restrained) chunky beats. R's "Thump" smears feedback and echoing room recordings over a faithfully stop-start bass beat and melodica line. It's hard to tell if this version was recorded in a Thai kick-boxing ring like the original, but it certainly does simple justice to the source, rising to an ear-splitting finale. Inimikal's "Red (Green Blue) Queen" mucks around with wibbly effects and disjointed, rolling breaks behind a chopped-up album version of the song, but doesn't add a huge amount to the Coil original along the way. What Pox's "Gunsmoke" has to do with Coil isn't immediately apparent, as it's a Funky little groover involving samples of arguments about watching TV and Biblical quotation, but no doubt there's some connection somewhere...

So as mailing-list tribute albums go, At The Threshold Moment proves that there are some creditably talented musicians and interpreters out there. What's also gratifying is that the contributors have largely had the imagination to be neither too respectfully literal nor blindingly obvious in their methods and choices. Above all, the best recommendation is that this CD sounds like a rather good compilation which just happens to be inspired by Coil.

-Antron S. Meister-

Various - Audio Odditions #2
Label: Influx Communication Format: CD

Audio Odditions #2 - sleeveTen tracks of drifting psychedelic ambience from Influx Communications of San Francisco, bound together into a compilation of evolving moods and quite effective unity of purpose and result - especially as the main idea seems to be messing with the listener's head as well as expectations. U-R-I's "Mel and Cholera" gently rises up as the first track in a mode reminiscent of Coil's more ambient pieces from the Love's Secret Domain era, as delayed and volume-controlled sounds, including flute of decidedly non-soundtracky sibilance. Ion Sports ring into more shrply-attacking squalls as a telephone calls up a storm of processed environmental noise, tape-adjusted vocal snatches and ominous twinkling guitar detritus. So far, so Isolationist.

The mix of appropriately odd sounds with the more beautiful selections which the compilation title suggests continues in a laid-back, whispery Dub Electronica fashion through "Touch" from Voice Of Eye and the expectantly-layered bloops and whooshes of S.Q.E.'s "Don't Leave Me", which deteriorates nicely into cut-up samples of various moans and crashes before a virtual orchestral close. Bloodbox's "The Sky Is Falling" makes the requisite apocalyptic manouvres from bulging atmospherics on to distant deep-level bass rumbles and vague rhythm terrain in tectonic fashion; Edward Ka-Spel's "Dream Stealer" is remixed by CD compiler Fruitless Hand into a suitably semi-waking muse of psycho-mythological storytelling merged in and out of the tidal synth reverberations.

The mood is broken, but not destroyed, by Orchis' "The Innocence", a lovely little acoustic guitar-based song featuring effective female vocals and some subtle electronics which could call both Dead Can Dance and The Wicker Man to mind, should the need arise. After this interlude of more direct beauty, Kaosmik Kitty and their "Kaosmik Afterbirth" are even more unsettling than if heard in isolation. Cats yawls are run through echo boxes until they become a supernatural chorus of auto-flanging voices from the aether, and the interleaving of moans and whimpers with the more disturbing kind of synthesizer settings make a darkling return. The end of this track is unpleasantly effective in a manner very reminiscent of Monte Cazzaza or Hafler Trio.

So it's left to Troum to whistle up a windtunnel of layered drones to bring everything back down to a more stable plateau, even if this might not be as comfortable as it first seems. The sort of big sound which at once quietens and fills the void of sounds between the everyday noises in the background (or the skull if listened to on headphones) "Rigor Vitreus" makes for a soothing descent into the canine shenanigans from Sebastien (the avant-guard dog) and his family portrait. If this is what his home is like, it's not a comforting place to live, but at least an eventful one.

-Antron S. Meister-

Various - Audio Odditions #2
(A Second Opinion)

U-R-I twists the tones from the harmonium or something very like it. The winds bring another place to bear, someplace filled with cliffs and faraway but not so far that it couldn't be seen by looking over the shoulder, by looking back. The horns ride hard against the growing mist but the circles are so alluring, they gravitate towards them instead. Ion Sports calls you on the telephone. An answer and breathing up cubic yards of hiss. Twirling feedback travels over the breadth of a guitar and a faintly familiar reverie casts various palls over various places. Voice of Eye summon shivering tones and whispers whispers and a certain amount of gas, which the piece can quite rightly be claimed to be. It flows seamlessly into "Don't Leave Me" by S.Q.E. - mists of notes/tones and how closely do the themes of experimental music parallell the themes of "popular" music? How far removed is it? The sounds collapse into a snatch of conversation and how deeply is the undercurrent running? Much crescendo, rising and falling. "Atonal music" and a weeping precedes the bowing of the strings.

Blood Box seeps in sidiously, a hand of sand across the depth of twilight and yes, another fine example of fuck music, except that it is too long for anything but the direst quickie. Edward Ka-Spel, in turn, steals the dream, and he can take every one I have except the dreams of the snake wearing a vest rolling a big doughnut, and the one where I find out what his real name is. It's a very slight piece - an almost-forgotten kiss in youth - and one wonders what was cut and what was kept.

Orchis sings a song of "Innocence" and must all our vaunted ideals be capitalised? Can't they be accepted at face value - are there some ideals that have escaped questioning? The haze of effects drapes itself gracefuly across the singing and thrum. Kaosmik Kitty is just that, and meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee ow. Its alleyward sonatas chime in time with the feedback of non-felinear maschines and is it the return of Katzenmusik? No, just the dulcet tones of a panting hellsbellscat, woof. Oh, and in addition, and quite rightly - barf out, fer sherr. Troum brings the rain of drones, this one short, that one tall. A faint metallic taste is divined. A gentle rhythm buoys the sea of sounds, into port, onto a later (but not final) destination... Sebastien weighs in with the sound of dogs and squealing - a family portrait, so it would seem.

-David Cotner-

Various - A Bell Is A Bowl Till It's Struck
Label: Beta-lactam Ring Records(US)/Beta-lactam Ring Records(UK) Format: CD

A Bell Is A Bowl Till It's Struck - sleeve Opening with the first version of the Legendary Pink Dots' "Stitching Time", which reveals what is initially a much slower original to the stunningly psychedelic track which eventually appeared on Shadow Weaver. Instead, a slow vocal chant from Edward Ka-Spel rides flatly over a cirling, untreated guitar melody as the electronic emerge into a swirl of wibbly synths and keyboard choir sounds over un unrelenting pulse. As the vocals become increasingly coloured with tone and emotion, the song takes on a similar character to the final version as the guitar and keyboards soar as effects and pitch bends are added, falling down into the lengthy memory of yet more sinister cut-up additions in line with the LPD's "Premonition" series and a briefly emergent sax line.

Troum's "Lumen" sweeps up from the echoing hallways into an undefined state of levitated Ambience and disquiet; it's parameters are based in a recorded real-world environment, but the results are strangely redolent of dreams of passing through limbo or purgatory and onwards into choral electronic redemption as the heavenly host play their keyboards to a detuned Doppler shift. As is to be expected, journey times through non-material states may vary, but this one takes a good 23 minutes. Eric and Tanith Lanzillotta bring their sound sources back down to earth with a bump and contact-mic scratch, pursuing the sound of diaphragm in close proximity to target object, more often than not unidentified and unidentifiable fodder for the microphone. Audio squiggles. Buzzes. The rustling of wire grille on object, and what might be the deconstruction of the pickup itself into hums and gentle feedback. It's odd to note the amount of comforting familiarity this recording process brings, like being under the bedclothes with a tape recorder as a child.

A return to musicality comes via Stimulus, who are "Setting Moods For Sending Information" at the piano. While the keys play out the sad melody, extraneous noises point towards other means of enjoying sound; the data might be obscure, but its transmission soon becomes clearer as the chords rise up through effects processing with a cross-echoed hum and a background scrawl of radio noise. Gently distanced, this piece evokes timeless empty rooms where the echoes of music play after the pianist and party have moved on and the ghosts await the arrival of transdimensional investigators. A different aetherial channel is playing on The Abrasion Ensemble's receiver: as the staticky voice sings into the void, the Ensemble play their pipes and drums around about. Only these instruments are literlly of the plumbing or metalwork variety, and they make their workers' playtime one for the improvisationally-inclined with the addition of bowed power tools or power electronics alike. Lastly, but not at all leastly, Okazaki Fragments uncurl their oscillators with a relaxing jaunt from the mid-range over the low-end before turning up the audio heat to higher pitches and stabbing disgorgments of synthetic noise into the mix as hints of wordless voices echo off the vaults.

-Antron S. Meister-

Various - Below The Radar
Label: ROIR Format: CD

Below The Radar - sleeve detailSubtitled The Best Of Wordsound Dub, this compilation provides a decent snapshot of the label which brougth the world DubHop and Illbient by the bucketload, and bass is quantities previously only available in small earthquakes. It is a truisim of Dub reviews to make that sort of statement - the paradigm of bottom-end analogies leans into descriptive excess in direct proportion to the lowness to which the artists can go, but there's a particular quality to the rumbling sound which emanates from the speakers at Wordsound HQ and then on to the listener.

This possibly has something to do with the artist's preference for slow bassline which linger with malice aforethought, contempating chest-excavations and heartbeat-slowing rhtyms aplenty. That Dub tendency towards time-suspension is evinced by masters of doomy nodding Illness including Wordsound I-Powa'a terrifically miserable "Dungeon Of Dub", Dubadelic's meandering "Operation Duppy Conqueror" and the similarly Hammer-haunted scat-Dub operatics of "High". Both this track and Slotek's more than downtempo breaks, horror film samples and scratchy vinyl atmosphere on "Born God" hold much transatlantic affinity with the spooky landscapes of The Third Eye Foundation, while "One" brings Gospel shouts and Baptist praises into conjunction with detuned Dub Electronica of a similar unfriendly mood.

Ditto Spectre, whose "Mayday/Nightstalker" reminds just how dark and moody the Illness album from which it hails really is, riding on a spine-tingling staccato violin theme, isolated screams, shivery/squittery analogue synthery and Reggae bass of the wall-warping variety. The Ill Saint's second track "Revelations" is warm and welcoming by comparison, but only marginally with processed vocal snippets making for a dismal aspect. Mick Harris shows off even more dirty sounds than he presents as Scorn in his guise as The Weakener, and "Closed Door" shivers with live drums and disturbed electronics in familiar style, Scarab bring more spooky moans, chimes and bass from the edge of the pit on "Fall Of The Towers Of Convention", whose flutes, gurgling samples and drums conjure images of Lovecraftian rituals more than they do pleasant ambience. So it remains for Wordsound mainman The Eye's compilation exclusive "Stolen Moments" and Bill laswell and Style Scott's "Crooklyn Dub Syndicate" tracks to provide the relative return to lighter areas in more (relatively-speaking) upbeat form, chugging away on a more traditionally-skanking (-skunking?) Dubwise donner und blitzen groove and Islamic digital bass and drum workouts respectively.

As a sampler for Wordsound, Below The Radar does an excellent job, showcasing and teasing the dirtier parts of the Dub palette. The proper recommendation is of course to search out all their releases, but this compilation provides a neatly-condensed sample of the dark delights on offer for the uninitiated.

-Antron S. Meister-

Various- - Beretta 70
Label: Crippled Dick Hot Wax Format: CD,2LP

Once again, those sleazy peeps at Crippled Dick unleash a selection of long-neglected exploitation soundtracks on an expectant world. Here it's the sound of (presumably) tough, street-smart and suavely violent Italian cop thrillers of the Seventies which get the archivist's treatment in a showcase of often derivative but frequently fun gems from a genre which mixed the kick-ass style of Dirty Harry and Shaft with the turbulent political and economic realities of a country which showed a capacity for extreme state, criminal and paramilitary violence - naturally with a hefty dose of sexy chicks in macramé bikinis and heroes with alarming moustaches if the cover's anything to judge by.

The tack and film titles speak for themselves - "Blazing Magnum" from Una Magnum Special Per Tony Saitta; "Folk and Violence" (from Napoli Violenta); "New Special Squad" (from Roma Violenta - there's a definite theme detectable here) -and the music itself is brash, propulsive and highly kitsch in a Funky kinda way (or Disco as the decade's flavours change). Prime perpetrators of the (Hammond) organic groove are Goblin whose "La Via Dela Droga" doesn't quite have the visceral insanity of their Giallo (horror) soundtracks for the likes of Dario Argento or (later) George Romero, but sets the scene for the bombastic themes to come.

Key moments are the sub-Tom Jones wailing of "Goodbye My Friend" (Guido and Maurizio de Angelis) or the disturbingly Goodies-like "Mark" (Adriano Fabi and Sammy Barbott) - and this is just in the first four tracks. The de Angelis' are also responsible for "Driving All Around" - Isaac Hayes with curious guitar inflections - and "Life Of A Policeman" too, which has the classic Seventies interest in flutes, folky acoustic guitars and choirs which dogged more soundtracks than was probably healthy, and feature on quite a few other pieces here - as does a Bluesey harmonica on their "New Special Squad". Also worthy of note is Bixio- Frizzi-Tempera's "Nucleo Antirapina," featuring a "Peter Gun" bassline, phased analogues and choppy, hypnotic road-movie guitars in an end-title theme which is possibly the best piece here.

Where Beretta 70 scores is on the interface between low-budget brio and commercial bandwagon-jumping, filtered through both European interpretations of the Hollywood template and a couple of decades of relegation to late-night television to realise the possibilities of what were ultimately disposable cultural artefacts. They certainly don't make them like this any more - they just pastiche and remix them instead.

-Antron S. Meister-

Various - Between Or Beyond The Iron Curtain
Label: Crippled Dick Hot Wax Format: CD,2x12"

Between Or Beyond The Iron Curtain - sleeve Ever wondered what Jazz was like in the days of Cold War on the far side of the Iron Curtain? Well this album, subtitled Rare Grooves from Eastern Europe 1967 - 1978, is full of the dark and devious music that was all set to subvert the prevalent ideology and make the youth jump and jive in outrageous Western manner. No matter how hard I try I keep seeing images of unsmiling uniformed stiffs desperately seeking to keep this from the ears of the proles. But you can't keep the Devil's music down, can you?

These rare tracks come from Poland and Czechoslovakia with one from the GDR and, as you might expect, they are a mixed bunch. Some sound like the kind of thing you hear when you're being kept waiting in a phone queue and your call 'will be dealt with'. Others, like Gustav Brom, offer Jazz-Funk that recalls the more restrained moments of the Baden-Baden Workshop Band. There are some muscular solos from trumpet and baritone sax on this track though the rhythm section seem unable to rise up and give them the push that might have sent them even further into exploratory flights. Grupa Organowa Krzysztofa Sadowskiego offer a similar take on the genre and have equally exciting trumpet and tenor solos that raise the temperature somewhat. A rather limp Hammond solo takes it down a bit, for me.

I expected Adam Makowicz's "Drinking Song" to be a more raucous affair but the drinks on offer would probably be of the cocktail variety. It's all cool electric piano and relaxed percussion and there's nothing wrong with that. The Novi Singers do a kind of group scat with some vocal soloing which was never going to trouble Poland's regime but it might have suited certain sixties film scores. More interesting is Jazz Celula, a band that boast a guitarist who, at times, sounds like Phil Miller, and they also have a tight brass section, including a tenor saxophonist who displays some of Coltrane's influence. They are a band I would like to hear more of. Prague Big Band is equally worth hearing and feature a valiant flautist over a massed brass and Jazz Funk soundscape. For a change from that Karel Velebny & SHQ lay down a vibes and sax dominated piece that contains echoes of Zappa's "King Kong" riff. There is also a freer feel to some parts of this track which is refreshing.

So, throughout the 16 tracks there are lots of Funky riffing bass and keyboards and since the subtitle says 'grooves' that's what you might expect. You won't find anything here that represents a challenge to the boundaries of Jazz. There is nothing as daring as the music produced by many of the South African musicians who injected life into the British scene during this era. They too were used to working under conditions of oppression. Maybe in Eastern Europe this was as bold a statement as was possible. I'm glad it's survived and outlived the regimes that thought it posed such a threat. It is a partial picture and I hope there will be more to come to reflect further the diversity of Jazz in the Europe of those times.

-Paul Donnelly-

Various - Bip-Hop Generation V.1
Label: Bip-Hop Format: CD

Bip-Hop Generation V.1 - sleeveI was accused of "wiggling a little bit" while this CD played in my unaware-ish background. Putting it on with my full attention, I can see why. The overall sound of this is one of repetitive beat club music, easily danceable for the most part, nicely ambient in a lot of cases and noise turned to music start to finish. V.1 is the first in a ambitious series of an promised four per year compilations of various artists who seem to have completely free licence as to how they create their music. With an empahsis on machine sounds, experimental computer tricks and so forth, as promised in the text, I was a prepared for a little more experimentalism. Not that there is anything wrong with the results thus far, I just feel it all sounds a bit standard. The collection of players is impressive: Marumari, Schneider TM, Massimo, Goem, Ultra Milkmaids, and Phonem. Schneider TM does noise up some simple beats into a fuzzy electric Goth dis-symphony. Goem's sampler is most assuredly disturbing and the highlight of all is Phonem with the darkest of any fax machines and ominous space botherings cooked into minimalized Garage Drum-n-Bass.

Philippe Petit did a good job in finding artists who could compliment and mix together on plastic when he assembled this collection. I believe an ongoing series of showcases such as these could promise the dance world a more interesting future. It always seems that the overriding desire of experimental artist is not to become mainstream; however, if these people all get a break into clubland, they may indeed find their niches. If this sort of noise became the convention, all dancers would be better off.

-LIlly Novak-

Various - BiP-HOp Generation v.2
Label: BiP-HOp Format: CD

BipHop Generation v.2 - sleeve This is the second in BiP-HOp's series of international compilations of glitches and blips, and very good glitches and blips they are. v.2 contains music by six different artists from six different countries, whose Minimalist techno and Musique Concrète mix together in ambient loops and Electro corruptions.:

Bernhard Fleischmann's acoustic/digital squeals sit comfortably on top of dreamy avant-Pop melodies. The single track by Arovane, "Uwe Zohn", is a delicate texture of analogue melody and static rhythms. William Selman, AKA Warmdesk, provides some pulsating noise Techno, a mixture of thumping beats and glitched interference. At present he is working on an album of Musique Concrète based on public transportation. Köhn's Jürgen De Blonde has contributed a four-piece short story about Hubert, his landlord. Wang Inc's tracks are delicate Electronica inspired by NATO disasters in Kosovo or based on the random notation of three notes. Laurent Pernice mixes 4-track tape rendered Musique Concrète with cascading techno rhythms.

So that's the detailed description of the compilation. BiP-HOp themselves hope to create a document of today's creative forms of Electronica, which they do very admirably. The artists' agendas may be different, but the quality is there throughout.

-a.p-

Various - Bip-Hop Generation V.3
Label: Bip-Hop Format: CD

BiP-Hop Generation V3 - sleeve Third in Bip-Hop's engaging series of showcases of international electronica brings further developments from six artists to the attention of the discerning masses. Neotropic's two tracks mix Dub diversions with reflective swings of virtual brass, big electronic percussion blasts and an ambient sensibilty which doesn't condescend. Instead, Raz Maslen prefers to make her samples chatter and laugh eerily to the slow, solid clunk of a rhythm which doesn't go anywhere much but still manages to do so as if with a purpose.

Bovine Life's tracks are short sprinkles of chimes and electonic warps, pretty enough until the feedback convinces otherwise. Echoes make beats make buzzing ditties make fragmentary chills on simple filtered analogue themes, then bringing up some thumping low-end pulses or arrhythmic bleep and squarks on "Cabin fever". Charming, in their own way, and quite warmly so. Pimmon exacts micro-surgey on the innards of whatever the sound sources he favours might once have be, resurrecting them in reversed, glitched and thrummed formats. Progress is obscure yet open; the density is there, occasionally it just lies under the digital surface somewhere. Sometimes "When Heddon Falls" sounds like a Seventies psychedelic trip track cut up and folded on itself, backmasking and all. "Twilled" gets closer and nastier, building the intensity of the spluttering samples to boiling point and back down to a laptop simmer, while "Matthew Flinders" loses itself in the innards of software playing tag with the sounds and never quite making ends meet.

There's a deep-down love of linear beat programming evident in "Artificially Amplified Raindrop Deepest Thoughts For Sale" from Zonk't, and despite the title this one's a bit of a rhythmic wrencher, doing things with distortion, bleeps and drum machines around the eponymous water globule and sundry echoed effects. Atau Tanaka opts for big swirling sounds, derived from the sampling and processing of images converted to digital information taken by Nobuyoshi Araki for "Bongdage.rmx". Wherever the sound sources derive from, they end up getting sequenced into a cyberpunk shower of shrill delay effects on a bed of reverbed sample beats. "Sv_vs" scrunches a Prophet synth into unrecognisable shape to similarly digital if more restained effect. Last up is Novel 23, whose music attempts tugs on the heart strings through the application of distended melodies which inspire immediate reference to both Vangelis and Synth Pop, and Autechre back when they were keeping the rhythms vaguely linear.

-Freq1C-

Various - Bip-Hop Generation v.4
Label: Bip-Hop Format: CD

Bip-Hop Generation v.4 - sleeve This fourth instalment of "sound adventures, ambient landscapes, creative and melodic musica" draws on artists from France, USA, Australia and the UK to give some impression of what is happening on a global basis. There are inevitable similarities but individual voices begin to emerge after a couple of listens. Mira Calix opens the UK contribution with a track which is hypnotically minimalist. There isn't much happening but the blend of electronic percussion and the croaky voice that is almost buried in the mix is somehow compelling. At times it made me think of the dry rustlings of insects, at others it was more like a primal strangulated blues.

Si-cut.db is really Douglas Benford in solo manifestation. The first of his two contributions is a spacey contrast to the Calix with touches of Dub. Keyboards, samples, percussion and some unidentifiable noises are mixed in a piece that seems to float or hover, expanding and contracting, in an exotic universe of its own. His second piece kicks off with a more 'Funky' set of beats and the ghost of a slapped electric bass. The percussion pops and rattles around another Dub-ish soundscape and, again, I found it hypnotic. Music you can easily lose yourself in. From the USA, Twine produce a soft-focus sound where small bells collide with objects running up and down the strings of an unnamed instrument. It's gently melodic and trance-like with occasional jarring instants and the contrast works well. The combination of electronics and conventional rippling guitar creates a constantly shifting sound surface.

New Yorker Datach'i is much harsher with static crunching and maniacal voices surfacing briefly through a dense electronic web. At times, the abrupt changes of direction made me think of certain constructions conjured by Faust. His second piece, "Truax" is less frantic and uses more sparse electronic percussion. It is similarly web-like but the material is finer and more delicate. From France, Vincent's_Price has a leaning towards Dance in places, with electronic rhythms being prevalent, but its an arid sort of dance. Maybe it would be better heard in the context of a piece of contemporary dance since this is one of the areas he composes for. The final piece comes from Australia's Cray and somehow combines elements of other tracks on the CD. Using grating static, cut-up samples and threads of dessicated melody he runs the range of Electronica and sets up a twitchy landscape of shrunken and magnified sounds.

Inevitably, some pieces are more memorable than others and offer glimpses into sonic palettes that will be worth watching as they develop. I look forward to the next instalment.

-Paul Donnelly-

Various - Blue Haze: Songs Of Jimi Hendrix
Label: Ruf Format: CD

Blue Haze - sleeve detailTo me, Jimi Hendrix's "Angel" is one of those songs that always makes me dread the ending, simply because that means the song's over and I'd be perfectly happy with a 90-minute version of it. So it's only fitting that the artist covering "Angel" on this tribute CD is one of my very favorite musicians, Eric Bibb, and his version of the song, performed exclusively on a delicately-miked piano, is just as heartbreakingly beautiful as the original. Bernard Allison's version of "Hear My Train Comin'" is good, too - a well-done, subtle, solo steel-string version of the Blues song. These two songs are worth picking up the disc for, but the 14 other songs are fairly unmemorable electric Blues renditions that near-completely obscure the depth of the originals.

-Holly Day-

Various - The Bronze Story
Label: Essential Format: 2CD

As indicated by the title this is a musical history of the independent label Bronze Records. It was started towards the end of the Sixties by Gerry Bron, even though he does not really remember exactly when. That is how things were done in those days. When I was first confronted with this double CD-set I recognized how many Metal pioneers had seemed to have graced the history of Bronze, and this notion mixed with the name made me think it was a specialist label, directing their attention to a specific genre of music, like a Seventies Wax Trax or Earache. I was wrong.

Bronze seems to have been a dumping ground for anything that wouldn't fit into the mainstream in the Seventies and early Eighties. So we are confronted with a maddening eclecticism from the second rate, Neil Young-ish crooning of McGuiness Flint, to the dull Prog fusion of Paladin and Mike Gibbs, to the unique punk of The Damned and onwards - or rather downwards - to the tawdry and outright incapacitated rock(so-called) of Tempest and other wannabe Pop hits that never quite made it. These include the downright puke-a-delic awfulness of Robin George and his song "Heart Line", complete with early Eighties synth work that would make Starship proud. And there are many more, but let us not get bogged down in the swamps of distaste, it was after all Bronze that brought us Uriah Heep, Angel Witch and the mighty Motörhead.

As far as Metal goes the label was a paragon of virtue, but it was probably due to the fact no one wanted to touch those bands just as they didn't want to touch Sally Oldfield (another failed Bronze Bossa-nova pop act). But there is also Hawkwind on this collection, which when picked up in the late Seventies by Bron were painfully uncool, but who were also obviously geniuses. And lest we forget, there is also the brilliant symbiosis of Beefheart and Skynyrd that is Juicy Lucy. All in all, the thing to do is to get the original albums and stay clear of this history, cuz it ain't pretty. Get down to your record shop and get Uriah Heep's Look at Yourself, Motörhead's "Ace of Spades", Hawkwind's In Seach Of Space and Angel Witch's brilliant self titled debut instead. That will do!

-Dag Luterek-

Various- - Chinese Whispers
Label: The Sprawl Imprint Format: CD

A kind of musical game of tag played with a set of samples originating with Stereolab, passed through various remixers' studios before final re-assemblage at the hands and samplers of Tim Gane and Andy Ramsay, Chinese Whispers brings a certain novel structure to the usual lack of methodology inherent in the remix album. Perhaps optimistically billed as "The remix album with no composer ... the track with no name," each piece is turned over by the next producer in line, starting with Sons Of Silence'senergeticly-tumbled "Agent XX", with the surprise element kept up throughout by anonymous onward transfer of the source material .

So much for the theory - the practice reveals a process which is often largely transparent to the listener, an ultimately results in what is basically a rather good compilation, held together by a shifting sense of common origin and progression. Ultramarine make a funky post-House contribution, which segues into Mike Paradinas' attenuated Cheese & Bass routine of "Unbutton My Coat", splattering the melody under intermittent noodly squalls of electronic detritus; Freeform (digi-)dub this into "Chiney Biskers" to Ambient-ish effect, while Slang apply the gradually accreting breakbeats from nought to about forty. It's Bedouin Ascent who has the wisdom to apply some parallelism to his processing (and yet more echo and delay), plus some variation in the onward rush lest it build too far too fast.

Si Begg picks up the baton, slips in some sarky samples and into bleepy semi-Funk mode before the slow-down taken by Subtropic's chilled "Tanje" squarks the low end nicely. It's around here that the original samples seem to have got thoroughly lost, and T-Power helps the confusion with "A Hamster Is Not Just For Life," showing what all those years of Junglist paranoia lead to - a highly admirable disrespect for source material or danceability, even if this leads to some Jazzy tendencies which can easily be forgiven by the queasy slipmat treatment given to the beats and resulting pieces. Final say is given to Stereolab, who close the circle in a style which shows a decided influence of occasional collaborators Mouse On Mars - and is no worse for all that - slipping Latin inflections and Mood Music fragments into a surprisingly abrupt closing vignette.

Perhaps Chinese Whispers represents one avenue for the remix album to explore - rather like the themed compilation - where the collaborative is emphasised over the solely interpretative, as with Thurston Moore's Root project, and as Techno Animal vs. Reality hinted at the start of the year. There's a lot of single artist mixing going on to variable effect - it sometimes seems that every other record released is a remix - and this sort of more considered effort could go a long way to invigorating a practice in danger of stagnation.

-Freq1C-

Various- Classic Plant
Label: Leaf Format: CD,3LP

Drawing together a selection of tracks from the last three years'-worth of EPs on the Leaf label, Classic Plant certainly contains a few highlights from an impressive back catalogue. The number of artists who have gone on to wider recognition following their Leaf debuts include Boymerang, whose "Autumnal" combines a post-summery bass warmth with a frigid undertow of sustained keyboards, and Witchman, who seems to be operating the Gothic breakbeat franchise from his suitcase of tricks, ably represented by his darkly wasted "4am On Point". Likewise, The Sons of Silence cover the ground from splattered digi-dub skank of "Silence Go Boom" to the micro- macrocosmic head trip samba of "A Grain of Sand" with aplomb, while the bass-dropping breakbeat track from Luger makes for a speaker-trembling proposition.

An old monster dub favourite from Twisted Science, "Cold Fusion", presents a pleasingly fucked-up sensibility, as do Richard Thomas' skewed jazz ambiences and A Small Good Thing's smoky, sinister, lounge-noir constructions. Less inspiring are the sub-soulful wails slipped into the otherwise engaging Four Tet offering, which rudely distract from the quality on display here. As label compilations go, Classic Plant is head and shoulders above the average sampler, containing similar levels of gems and rarities as such previous worthies as Blast First's Nothing Short of a Total War.

-Freq1C-

Various - Clicks + Cuts
Label: Mille Plateaux Format: 2CD,3LP

Clicks + Cuts - sleeve Since the groundbreaking emergence of what was once lazily definable as the "Oval sound" - glitched CDs, sound sources processed through sequencer, sampler and soundboard into esoteric, ill-defined fragments of noise - in the mid-Nineties, there has been a steady development in the bitstreamed swatches of muscial and sonic detritus. This is a transitional form of non-linear music composition several stages removed from the mere programmed formulae of MIDI: the bastard child of the breakbeat and the sound loop, super-stratagem of the studio automaton. Clicks + Cuts comes with a handy mini-manifesto outlining its aims, to present "an introduction to the functioning of 21st Century minimalism, the collection of schools of sound to come, the schools of life to follow." Such assertions may be a tad grandiose, but of course the key word in that sentence is "introduction" - a primer perhaps, a next-gen catalyst for digitized deviance to come.

Does it succeed? Yes. Why? Because, however familiar this sort of granularised re-sourcing and regurgitation of the snips and slices, manipulated by the very mouse clicks and buffered cuts of the collection's title, has become, it still sounds largely fresh, exciting even on occasion. Some of the essential names are here, of course: Pansonic, Pole, SND - and some less obviously known for their abstract collages than their dancefloor destructions - Panacea being the prime example. Many are perhaps more obscure or quietly making names for themselves where it matters - Stilluppsteypa, Kit Clayton, Goem, Ultra-Red - and some perhaps pseudonymous or just as yet unknown in their unfamiliarity: Autopoesies, Vladislav Delay, All. Largely their names and faces are irrelevant, except as markers and pointers waypoints for those drawn into auditioning the compilation as a whole, hallmarks of competence, pointers to patterns ready for extension, and nodes to recognize in future.

Functionally poised between the ambient and the engrossing, on the cusp of experimental and the eerily mental, Clicks + Cuts bubbles, clips, coils and uncoils, grooves even with a dynamic, machined dub sympathy for the pulse beats of more analogue realms. Switchbacked and banked by bass beat particulates for the cruise to fizzing, scratchy meditations, track follows track with the apparently predictable elements of what fervently assumes itself to be of a new, self-titling genre signposting a course subjected to the composite intelligences of humans and the hard-disc, RAM and software capabilities of their cybernetic minions and friends. What does it sound like? The spaces between the databank walls of the shiny digital future which is seemingly back on the broader agenda after its traverse into the dead-end directions of space travel and universally democratic, clinical minimalism. A bitmap played directly into a soundcard and taken as the template for something musically other. It is feedback replayed upon itself, far advanced beyond the primitivist delve into the primal keen of overdriven amplifiers and string on wood of the Post-Rockers (for all its viscerally emotional fascination), layers within layers emerging suffused with the glow of its own possibilities and promise.

-Freq1C-

Various - Clicks & Cuts 2
Label: Mille Plateaux Format: 3CD

Clicks And Cuts 2 - sleeve detailA year on from the scene-shifting definitions of Clicks + Cuts, and already that compilation has had the accolade of being used as the handy catch-all term for a sound (or is it the other way around...?), joining the glitch as the rapidly evolving term de jour of Twentifirst Century software music. Sounds largely taken not only out of context bu time and place, run through a bundle of exponential programmes, plug-ins and filters emerge with a curious warmth. Slowly the mechanistic worlds of sequencer and quantising have come under the spell of fractal processing, micro-surgery conducted on music, texture and amplified bitstreams.

Now the discs are three, as most of the artists who contributed to volume one return to the series, so too are newer arrivals, well-established, alter-egos or otherwise: Cyclo, Geeez'N'Gosh, M2, Auch, Full Swing, Taylor Dupree, Fennesz, Mikael Stavöstrand, Clicks & Cuts 2 easily becomes a who's who of the glitch circuit, and the comparisons and contrasts are there to be made between artists and sounds. There are so many though - 36 tracks in all - that dedicated individual listening can soon become subsumed in the ebb and flow of styles. Deracination is the name of the game, as HipHop, Dub, Techno, House, Ambient, Electronica, Musique Concrét, Electro and as many other styles of sound arrangement merge, fold and are manipulated into a dynamically evolving whole. What stands out too is the forward-looking feel of most pieces; the wheel may not exactly be being re-invented any more, but it is being given a thorough-going rethink.

For once, the feeling that post-everything music and sound design is struggling for a place in the general scheme of history (remember that?) is assuaged by this collection. Processes are being still worked out and have a lot left to offer, but the general sense is of a well-understood set of tools undergoing widespread exploration. Of course, the downside is that the eerie factors once engendered by unfamiliarity have receded; clicky-cutty glitches are not just on the verge of accessibilty, but heading off in (admittedly mostly leftfield) mainstream directions as may perhaps be evinced by Björk's choice of compilation contributors Matmos as her tour band for 2001.

Electronic music has upgraded itself again; the alpha and beta test stages of v.9-10 (v.11 perhaps?) are largely understood; the bugs may not be fixable as such - thay are after all a major component of the sound - but the current edition are less likely to crash the entire system. For better or worse, the laptop and their meta-systems music are preparing to take over the world.

-Freq1C-

Various- - Collision Course
Label: Ill/PIAS Format: CD,2LP

Smash and grab time at the Breakbeat-HipHop interface; fourteen tracks of boomshackalacka bass and scuzzy production values from several sides of the Atlantic, Baltic and a few other seas. Noisy rowdies like Biomuse, Patric Catani and 2nd Gen rub shoulders with the effervescent Raggabastardisations of DJ Scud & Nomex - whose "Total Destruction" gives as good a kicking to the vocalist-drum machine pairing as has been heard in a good while - and so much the better, especially when inviting the chastisement of Neo-Nazis, courtesy of Alec Empire's chaotic reading of Ice's "Trapped in 3D".

The twisting rewind, the frantic (former) hihats, the snatched and garbled vocals of toasters or record-samplees - and the all-encompassing BASS - make Collision Course not just an apposite title, but a statement of intent on occasion. Where would the world be without Fever to get queasily ill with the beat? How can the enveloping low-end of Elastic Horizons be denied without industrial-strenght earplugs or a short yank of the power cable? Imagine driving down the idealized-version of the Euston Road with this loaded in the boot-speakers, fuelled on a musical amphetamine rush... and too many years of hyperspeed virtual car stunts (or digital Wing Chun in Bomb 20's case) - and wait for the impact, as whatever else it may be, this collection isn't one to encourage limitation or safety.

Drums and bass, bass and synths, samplers on overdrive - what the producers of this corruptingly synapse-bypassing music seem intent on is a downhill motor-race into the flames, or at least a shot in the head from a grassy knoll. As a fragment (some original to the collection, some not) of the vast selection of such material proliferating out on the fringes and seeping into the (increasingly less relevant) middle ground where the Funk mashes up to the Industrial and as much Technoid noise as you can eat, this album makes for a half-mindless, arse-wobbling excuse to fall just as close as required to the edge; or even right over the top of the world, Ma...

-Freq1C-

Various - Copier Collider
Label: Quatermass/Sub Rosa Format: 2CD

Wherein a sound bank is established by one of The Young Gods as La Batie Festival and several individuals make withdrawals and deposits.

Scanner comes out of the corner with very adept typing and where are the cheers?  Whither goeth the "live sound"?  It's slightly reminiscent of the letter sent to Maximum Rock'n'Roll where the author thanked the Punks for buying the bootleg Misfits CD.  Said recording was merely old 7"s played on a boombox to a chorus of drunken, bawdy friends and then remastered. To Rococo Rot further steep the equasion (and in this corner) with the eternal cheep of deep space transmission and the opening of a package of Tang.  Their reflective, meditative tones hearken back to a picking up of rocks on earth which make the moon glow silver.  Bump and Grind - do just that.  Of course, as there are 360 degrees in a circle (and even more in an oven) - so, too, are there as many ways to describe the movement.  It's upbeat and beat-up.  Reversal of coin and the train is entering the station...

David Shea rides the graviton rainbow from poor Barugon's back, through the aviary and down amongst the primordial soap.  Lathering in whisltes, he nod-nods the beat into curlicued existence, slap slap slap slap.  Rehberg and Bauer shuffle their scratches through the fleshy bond that has by now no doubt formed between them after so many releases.  Tubular whorls of sound stretch, totally awesome, from their computer world and what food was served at La Batie?  What fueled part or all of this?  Extra sound ticks at the imagination and bursts free as a question.

Second CD-ed DJ Olive herds a crowd of crows across the devotional pipe organ/acetylene torch combo.  They disperse - thoughts of Graeme Revell drummed into their heads.  The scratches are slowed down to a bacterial consistency, flitting here and that way like the orgone energy you see in the very blankness of this page.  It ends(?) with the screaming of the jingle-lilies.  Kreidler delves into that sambaesque underworld, drying out a bottle of loneliness.  It is as thought you've waited in the car for the bomb to explode and your wristwatch beats louder than your heart.  Yes, YOU.  The snapping of the timing mechanism; the hiss of the fuse.  A narrowness edges on, into the eardrums.  A ghasp and the loop of sirens - faint contents under pressure?  And no sound has blossomed up that sounds like any other from the sound bank; the mother box.

Vincent Haenni plucks the umlaut from his name and punches holes into a stainless steel pan to fit them.  After this, the tension crescendoes until until until the bass and popping locks onto the speakers.  The explosion of the previous comments knocks pipes to the pavement periodically and the rain begins to fall. Finally - on to Stock, Hausen and Walkman.  These emperors of A.D.D add carnal knowledge of anarchy (the nice, apolitical kind) into the bank, replacing the notes with portraits by Boggs and is this why there's no group that follows them on this copulation?  They drop sonic stalactites onto stalagmites of sound, so turvy-topsy is the pressured process.  In the end, they refrain from trying to get the car keys they've dropped in the lava, because hey, man - they're gone.

-David Cotner-

Various- Compact Disc Volume 4
Label: Ladomat 2000 Format: CD

They`ve done it again. The saga continues, here`s another Ladomat to bring back the colour to your faded music collection. Once more they bring you some rather nice hand crafted German House garments. Needless to say, House wasn't the only thing Ladomat and the artists on this CD put into the wash. Electro, Funk, and individual experiments were put in there too, their colours ran in the best possible way.

The problem with House, and dance music generally, is that its getting rather conservative. It all sounds the same, and it sticks to the tried and tested formulas. But the music is banging and the dance floors are still banging too. After all, people on the dance floor want music they can dance to. You can dance to the music on this CD, believe me. Its more groovesome and funky than a hundred of last year's floor fillers put together. And best of all, its just as good to listen to on a Sunday afternoon when you're cooking lunch. Yes, Ladomat have brought us a collection of artists who make good music in its own right, not just because you want to strut ya thang.

I could go on at length about all the tracks, churning out wild metaphors `til the cows come home. They're all good, they all have their own character unlike many dancey compilations: where track follows track with little discernable difference. I`ll just stick to a few examples though. Some familiar names to Freq readers are here: the prodigious Arj Snoek and Forever Sweet.

Initially, I wasn't too fond of the Justus Kohncke Remix of Forever Sweet`s "Don't Speak", as it's a remake of Abba's "The Winner Takes It All". All the hype surrounding the Abba revival mystifies me. I`m glad of the second look at this track, though. Its grown on me. Its dreamy and drifts in and out, the lyrics just happen to come from an Abba song. This is by no means a revivalist carbon copy. In retrospect I`ve hit the mental undo button on my original run down review. Popacid's "Bonny" starts off the compilation. It's laid-back House that blends into 303 Techno very well. Whirlpool Productions` "From: Disco To: Disco" is superb. A synth processed voice starts off the mantra:

"From: Disco To: Disco
From: Disco To: Disco
From: Everybody
From: Everybody"

James Brown would be proud - this tune is just so damm funky in its own weird geeky, off the wall way. I love it. Egoexpress' "Telefunken" continues the strange Electro. Egoexpress are more on the side of Hip-Hop sampladelic Funk. Grab James Brown and stuff him a bank of filters. All in all, this is a great compilation. Why? Go back to the start of this review and read it again.

-Alaric Pether-

Various - Counterintelligence
Label: ECR / SPV Format: CD

Dandy emerges with a subtley whooshing hiss. The channel is changed and static rules the roost for a short while. Bells distort into ripples heaving into crackles. The seamless transition leads Aube to his lead, or some other kind of metal; it is not specified. Tones pool to their heights, but slowly, slowly. Rhythms intercede and the ghost of improvisation hovers well above, ending in a clear tap tap tap. Kreidler's rhythms are slightly more conventional - helicopters in the background and the drum beat behind the zowies with the bass as a strong horse, flowing into the fast Motorik of Newt, clap clap clap. It is as if zippers are racing down a fabricsoaked raceway and the bottles whistle from the bleachers. The music of a drive down a deserted downtown that is not as lovely as our Lulu once painted it.

Voltaic sneaks in on databitten skis, slaloming down the course in seamless energy - the agony of the feet? The flange carries the sounds up to separate parts of sky, and back again. Converter rides in on the wind of the moan of exertion, grainy and sweaty as that may seem, forming a cloud of intention. "Only you can kill the brain". A quote. And grainy beats decapitate, left and right and back again. The hair of the dog whips around and bites down hard. It is not for nothing that this piece is called "Denogginizer". Monolith carries in waves of rougher statics and places them on the table. Contemplative. Sonar's engine seeks and seeks, idling and ready for the rhythmic race through all time. Pail's synthesizers spill out a rainbow of beats, the metallic ring caught in the hurricane and swept up beyond sight.

Mimetic Field hides a woman's voice deep within, speaking from beneath the grassline and up through the fog that expands and contracts at each of her breaths. The mist vanishes at the daybreak of the breakcore beats. Si-[cut].db, whose phrasing of name changes more often than his tempoes, brings in a gentle meditation on the Beat and its attendant chilluns - a fine respite and repose. Haujobb? It's reasonably mild-tempered and if there is such a thing as hot-air-balloon-morning music, it has arrived. Nude softly pushes into view a whispered woman, and then the hectic beats flood in. Is it this way - the whispers of a woman and the crackling beats - juxtaposed for explicit purpose? Bit-Tonic starts the slow, langorous crawl from the amniotic fluid swirling about her, and up into this world, shedding the carapace and all those little pops and zings that it entails...

-David Cotner-

Various- Crippled Champions - The Crippled Bargain
Label: Crippled Dick Hot Wax Format: CD

In which Crippled Dick Hot Wax showcase their current roster of Sixties (mostly Porn-related) sountracks and Nineties noise. Divided betewwn the Soundtrack Generation and the Young Nerds Generation, the first category naturally includes a track from their most infamous release, Hübler and Schwab's swinging score for Vampyros Lesbos. Thoughout the Sixties half, the key word does seem to be be swing - with brass section, Hammond and walking bass, with sitar, synth and drum, across Europe's seamier soundtracks to kitschadelic action films whose production values are those of Spaghetti Westerns, with music to match.

The pieces collected here are fine examples of the genre, far more explosively raunchy than the tamer (though no less engaging) Sound Gallery series. Virtuoso works of hyperdelic banality, there hasn't been much pop music of this intensity available until the recent emergence of Japanese groups on the Western consciousness in recent years, a link which is made less tenuous by Ubaldo Continello's scatologically funky "Shit Sushi", which is about the most bizzarre track here, a disco extravaganza which simultaneously boggles the mind and turns the stomach.

The Nineties collection is less obscene, but no less strange, collecting tracks from recent releases by the likes of Earthlings, Dandruff Deluxe and Lydia Lunch. Jonathan Fire*eater provides a rocking "Search For Cherry Red", which is about the best of the rest, telling the tale of switchblades, lost loves and motel rooms to the accompanying swirl of organ and rhythm section in a direct continuation of the mood of the Sixties low-rent thriller soundtracks of the first part of the collection. Similarly The Valentine 6 mix bold sax and energetic R&B thrash up in sleazy crooner style, but by the time Plainfield, H.Oilers and Bloodburger BC kick in, the mood has gone decidedly arsequake Noisecore speed thrash, even if the latter bung in a sitar among the distorted guitars. Collaboration of the year must go to Marianne Faithfull and Oxbow, who take Rhythm & Blues into rasping territory with aplomb.

Crippled Dick are genuine eccentrics in a world gone slightly off-kilter, and this collection showcases not only their commitment to re-releasing some of the strangest music of an over-revered decade, but the more unfathomably unfashionable contemporary groups who quite possilbly couldn't have found a better home anywhere else.

-Antron S. Meister-

Various- Death Garage /Kata Jungle
Label: Katasonix Format: 12"

Katasonix' debut release is a collection of some of their roster in various remix combinations, mashed up into sides defined very loosely by the genres they aim to corrupt. The Death Garage side dumps XXignal's "Anticlimax (Inhumans Moreerotic Female Orgasm Analog Mix)" straight off as a clattery dose of moans and pumping beats which make a mockery of a genre which is itself already quite aware of it's own limitations - but is nonetheless on the darkside of the neo-Disco force. As for Bobby Diablo, he Meets The Inhumans Uptown to produce the churningly off-rhythmic "Diabolique," bringing some sub-Speed Garage rewinds, dropout bass and an edgy skunked-out feel into the Illbient equation for good measure.

Stelco's "Off The Rails (Pandemonic Katatense mix)" is an even more paranoid track - taking its time to get going with the spookily restrained breakbeat assault, and biding its time with some ominously tingling trebly bits in the interim. Not some much a dancefloor piece as one for the spine-chill out area. Kode9 complete the descent into psychotropic unease with the curiously unfunky sprays of hypertrophied snares and thoroughly mangled bass splurges of "Katak:heatseeker" (Intercept Desertfox remix)," which wraps up the EP in misanthropic hammer-drill & bass style.

Contact Katasonix for ordering details.

-Freq2D-

Various- - Deutscher Funk No. 02
Label: Caipirinha Format: CD

Deutscher Funk No.02 - sleeveThirteen tracks of Germanic Electronica from the likes of Tarwater, the liquid machinations of Lithops (AKA Jan Werner of Mouse On Mars), Holosud and others equally well-known but in various collaborative guises, none of which are exclusive to this compilation, which is selected by Burnt Friedman, (AKA Nonplace Urban Field) and also appearing here with Atom Heart as Flanger for their scurrying, springy, and slightly faceless "Music To Begin With Part 2". To add to the interlinked feel of a community at work, Atom Heart also appears in Naturalist guise with another slice of attenuated bass-heavy, post-Jazz-Funktronica, while Holusud is of course Cologne's very own Fx Randomitz and Schlammpeitziger in busy mid-range mode.

Jazzanova's "Caravelle" opens up the CD in typically exuberent style, with their furiously rollicking Jazzy breaks tumbling over Bossanova rhythms in collision with some decidedly Housey grooves, which is all very nice, but not a patch on the deliciously warped "Overlooking Is" by Subtle Tease (Justus Koehnke of Whirlpool Productions and Kai Althoff of Workshop). This is one of the more slyly insiduous little grooves around, travelling on an effective base of a simple bassline and wobbling main loop (apparently sampled from a suitcase), but with some seriously skewed improvised lyrics (in English) and samples on top - this one is not only very odd, but makes tracking down the The Goings Of An Offer album it is taken from essential.

In fact, Lamé Gold's interpretation of "Heartbreak Hotel" is a little peculiar too; electronic strings and strained vocals combine in a downbeat TripHop style which wrenches every last melancholic drop from the Rockitschmeister's old standard to quite good effect. The odd lyrical theme continues with Tarwater's rather marvellous "No More Extra Time" from their excellent album Silur, while string samples also seem to be be popular choices alongside the electric pianos and rewound snares, cropping up on Wunder's elegantly tea-dancing (with two lumps) track "Noitz' Cacao", alongside Felix Kubin's slightly cheesy poppings and whirrings on "Bruder Luzifer", and at various points throughout.

Harald Ziegler and Frank Schueltge make a fascinating polyrhythmia from a selection of toys, naturally bringing to mind Nurse With Wound's similar tinkerings, with equally amusing/ominous results, and it's nice to hear something again from Asmus Tietchens (adopting the persona of Hematic Sunsets) with an extract from Music From The Aroma Club, which is quite different from his usual concerns with more abstract soundscapes, showing a predelicition for brass samples and rather sprightly grooves. In all, Deutscher Funk No. 02 provides plenty of samples of the burgeoning German electronica scene, though it would have been nice to hear some exclusive tracks, and will take a reasonable tolerance of neo-Jazz Funk to enjoy all the pieces on offer.

-Freq1C-

Various - Dope And Glory : Reefer Songs From The Thirties & Forties
Label: Trikont US Format: CD

Anyone who still thinks the Sixties were the great dope era should have a listen to this. Fifty tracks which unashamedly celebrate the weed and, in most cases, make no attempt to disguise the subject. OK, maybe "Spinach Song" could just be about the stuff that Popeye used but Julia Lee & Her Boyfriends' spirited Jive leaves you in no doubt which greens are on offer here. Some great trumpet and sax too.

Titles like "I'm Gonna Get High", "Weed Smokers Dream" and "Save The Roach For Me" don't even pretend to be ambiguous and Tampa Red delivers the first in that list like he means it while The Chicago Five kick along behind him. Fats Waller had a prodigious appetite for many things and on "Vipers Drag" he sleazes his way through a dream about "...a reefer 5 feet long". He sounds as though he's having a good time anyway. The song appears elsewhere too as "If You're A Viper", though with out Fats' dopey Scat. The Meltones' crooning makes "Mary Jane" seem like an innocent song about the girl next door who is "...just the kind you could take home to mother" but they also remind us how "stunning how cunning this girly can be". Less innocent, perhaps, is "Sweet Marihuana Brown", whose dangerous allure is captured in lyrics like "Every time you take her out/she's bound to take you in". Little devil.

Some songs highlight the reefer lover's struggle with the law. Imagine their chagrin when "The `G' Man Got The `T' Man". The song is still delivered with verve by the unrepentant Cee Pee Johnson & Band. There would be other `connections' who could step in and supply the `jive' after all. `Jive' "this modern treat makes life complete" is celebrated by the fact that "Stuff Is Here" and that "The Man From Harlem" really could cheer up the gloomiest gathering. Other herbally refreshed characters like "Reefer Man" and "Dopey Joe" flit in to deliver their goods then vanish. Most of the songs are celebratory but a few register the need to escape from grim reality. "Knockin' Myself Out" is featured three times and each woman's voice is desperate. Take your pick from Yack Taylor, Lil Green or Jean Brady. Larry Adler's lugubrious "Smoking Reefers" also suggests that dope is only "to get beyond the misery" while Jazz Gillum warns about his "Reefer Headed Woman".

Of course you can just enjoy some of the music. "All Teeed Up" and "Golden Leaf Strut" don't need words. Marvel at how the surface noise keep perfect time on the first track. Then listen to the superb New Orleans Jazz circa 1925 of the second track. And while you listen there's an informative booklet that tells you something of the lives and times of reefers and those who championed them. Whether it comes to a canablis café near you or is supplied direct, Dope And Glory is a thoroughly life enhancing experience.

-Paul Donnelly-

Various- Dreamscape Vol. 1 - 12 Old Skool Classics
Label: ESP Promotions Format: 3LP

What ever happened to Hardcore? At some point after the schism with Jungle Hardcore became this abomination cross between the music from Play School and Gabba, in my opinion most of it's throwaway shit. Dreamscape tell us: "Over the past year we have noticed an ever increasing popularity in Old Skool/Classic Arenas . ." This triple vinyl set (yay!) is a fat slab of just that . . . blistering breakbeats, spazzy rave synths, and sped up stolen rap samples. In short it rocks like a mother fucker.

For me the classics have to be DJ Solo, DJ Red Alert & Mike Slammer - "In Effect", and Manix. I could become very self-indulgent and unobjective about these tracks if given the chance. Another thing I love about this record is the diveristy, it`s geared towards DJs and you could have hours of fun with this slab of vinyl and a set of decks. Obviously it adds plenty of gems to an Old Skool set, but listen to the tracks - DJ Solo`s "Darkage" would sit very well with a serious Jungle set, and at a squeeze I think some of the tracks could fit comfotably with a tough breaky House/Garage set (not least because House and Garage have caught up with the Old Skool tempo.) Great record, the only thing that worries me is its availability. It think Dreamscape may have released a record that suffers the problem they wanted to counter: rarity of the tracks. This is a limited edition. Of course, all this means is that you might have trouble getting your hands on it, but once you have don`t let go of the fucker!

- Alaric Pether -

Various - Drum And Bass: The Collection
Label: Classic Pictures Format: 2CD+DVD (PAL only)

Drum And Bass: The Collection - sleeve detailThere's certainly a lot of Drum & Bass in this collection, with a substantial selection on the DVD while the two CDs stacked onto the spindle contain the same tracks as on the video disc, with a load more for good measure on top. While the merits or otherwise (never mind longevity) of including The Knowledge magazine's Drum & Bass Awards 2001 as presented by Goldie are not only debatable but downright questionable, the video selection has some entertaining highlights of long-term value. However, one of these isn't Kosheen's live PA with their track "Suicide", which embodies all those supposedly impassioned Soulsy-Bluesy vocal clichés while riding along on what is a fairly reasonable breakbeat groove which tears along pleasantly enough at chart-friendly speed.

Far better are the "Drum & Bass Mix" sections, where instrumentals and the odd vocal track inluding an icily technoid video to Goldie's "Ghost" fuzz, bubble and twitch the beats to footage of happy ravers dancing hard to the squelchy bass boom. What lifts the mixes up into the realms of psychedelic entertainment of the best kind is the way that the otherwise dull images of party crowds are filter through every liquid, gloopy, colourful effect in the digital box of tricks imaginable. As the foreground and background alike are sent shimmering and strobing off into abstraction to the stepping mania, the sure and certain satisfaction lies in knowing that any party, club or space where people are gathered together in chemical and herbal union will appreciate the largely abstract trippy visuals more than a little. Quite highly, in fact, and these sections are quite good for lying back and getting lost into the flickering, pusling textures for relaxation too, especially the intense high-contrast kaleidoscopes which pulse and morph on the "Mix II".

Similar trickery when applied to the shuffling masses attending the live "Helter Skelter At Sidewinder" club video brings things even further into the realms of MDMA madness, as distended varicoloured throngs spill with fish-eye logic into the bulging figures of DJs working the shivering bass and relentless percussion off the decks and into the fabric of the imagery itself. While the presence of figures in motion largely recognizable as humans doesn't quite have the same cybernetic impact as the "Mix" lightshows, the live delerium has its fair share of spasmodic moments. DJ Craze's live set has a heavyweight bass and rewinds galore to the yet further dissociated computer versioning of what was probably once a live image. Dominated by shades of grey and colours as often implied as included in the palette, the effect is once again lysergic to the best of its abilities. When the MCs get all active calling on the whistle crew to blow their horns for a sudden return to straightforward documentary footage, it's an odd intrusion of representative normality in the beginning of "Mix III", but once again everything disappears into a welter of retina-jarring strobes and solarized club scenes. Abnormal unreality resumes it's cyberfunkadelic course to the churn and skip of fragmented beats and throbbing low end of Dark Spirit's somewhat Tranceish "Blessed Be The Funk" accompanied by multiplexed patterns of glow-stick kaleidoscopes, but it's left to the bleepy circuitous rhythms of "Fever Pitch" from Lights Out to draw a hallucinogenic curtain to the main DVD in a last spasm through colour-washed psychedelic oblivion.

The extras on the DVD are basic - a few hard-to intuitively-navigate profiles of some of the DJs involved (largely redundant) and a nicely-done animated menu front end which does somehow manage to imply there's more on the disc than there actually is. No matter, as Drum And Bass: The Collection functions rather superbly on the abstract level as a selection of dazzling eye-candy accompanied by some well above-average Drum & Bass of somewhat Ambient tendencies.

The two CDs are pretty much a bonus in this pack, but also do well enough on their own merits. Studio versions of the tracks included on the live video mixes make for variety, and there are some twists and turns to be extracted from the molar-drilling stabs, gurning grooves and hyperspeed beats on offer from the likes of Rough Rider, Kickin Joolz, the sinister Bad Company or Ray Keith and his dynamic segues from smooth to frenetic. There's plenty of sinister, tearing darkness edging in among the more blissed-out, Jazzy and/or Souled-up stylings (often within the space of the same track), and the mood is mostly hardcore and heavyweight, if not especially full-on innovative. One of the benefits of Drum & Bass as a genre having lost its fifteen minutes of fashionability to the sheen and gleam of UK Garage is that there's no longer the urge to sell, sell, sell. Instead, the bulk of the artists here plough their rhythmic furrow in the certain knowledge that the future for which the genre promised itself is already here, so they might as well get on with it and make some stomping tunes for the faithful.

-Freq1C-

Various - A Dubber's Guide
Label: Dubhead Format: CD,LP

A Dubber's Guide - sleeve detailWhile I was listening to A Dubber's Guide I was trying to fathom why I enjoy a lot of Dub. I mean you pretty much know what you're in for; the deconstruction/reconstruction of sound, the stretching out of rhythms, the creation of new textures. Or, as someone put it to me once, "they fuck around with the drums and bass a lot". OK, so that may not be what these and other artists set out to do. Whatever it is, I find myself coming back to stuff like this. It's great music to relax to and let it wash over you.

One outfit I've heard and enjoyed bits from, The Love Grocer, has a mighty horn section and generate a full sound while Jah Warrior's "From The Bottom Of My Heart" is stripped down to skeletal drums with a few keyboard and vocal layers thinly spread over the track. The shifting percussion is given plenty of space to ricochet around in. Goldmaster All Stars occupy ground somewhere between the two, sparse in places but powerful brass beefs it up with a simple but memorable theme. This is what I enjoy most, the blend of stark rhythm with layered melody bringing colour to the construction. But, having said that, the barest of all tracks here, from Etherealites, is a fascinating Dub with percussion way up front and metallic keyboards splashing about deeper in the mix, surfacing occasionally.

There aren't many vocals on the album but the voice on Headmix is used as another texture, sometimes acappella , shredded and echoing along with the simplest of drum and bass backings. Some brief but melodic brass too. So, a good and varied selection of Dub and, no doubt, a useful shop window for other releases from Dubhead.

-Paul Donnelly-

Various- - Dubhead Volume Four
Label:Shiver Format: CD

Where has all the Digi-Dub gone? Timewas, there were mountains of new releases shivering timbers and vibrating the walls, electro-dub style. The answer is of course, back to the underground of clubs and festivals - where would a British summer (no matter how grey) be without a collection of trucks and tents in an East London field, gently vibrating with the earthquake bass of the regular sound systems and the throb of Trance Techno?

For the dubplates required for the sound system, look no further that this compilation. Mixing up the digital roots in a (mostly) familiar sample-heavy way are the likes of Dub Organiser's Classical-dropping skank, Armagideon's "Spontaneous Combustion" - which throws in a beautifully sliding digital bass with a stomping stepper's rhythm - or the Basque Dub Foundation with their light confection of sparkling echoes and good old-fashioned analogue bassline; and this is just the first three tracks.

Each following track delivers little in the way of surprise or astounding invention. Instead there is the uplifting chant of Jah Free's thoroughly enjoyable "Dub One Another", the clever echo chamber of Hydroponics' virtual cut and paste Ska-dub "Here Comes The Judge" or the heavyweight propulsive chug of Drumhead, and none the worse for that. Spliffed out and still managing to be as eclectic as previous editions, Dubhead Volume Four is a far more pleasurable if mainly undemanding celebration of a self-reliant group of producers and artists less dependant on hype and more on delivering the head-nodding goods.

-Antron S. Meister-

Various - Early Modulations:Vintage Volts
Label: Caipirinha Format: CD+book

Max MathewsA speech synth singing "Bicycle Built for Two" accompanied by a Bontempi may sound rather cheesy. Why? You may ask. Well imagine that you'd never heard a speech synth before - or even knew that computers could perform speech synthesis. Max Mathews changed all of this, hacking away at Bell Laboratories on a computer that had less memory than your toaster. It becomes a little more impressive, if still rather cheesy.

"Bicycle Built for Two" is a good introduction to Early Modulations, and while it doesn't necessarily sit comfortably between the works of John Cage, Iannis Xenakis, and Pierre Schaeffer - but that's beside the point. This compilation isn't aiming for total consistency, it's a sampler of early electronic music - and the first speech synth is quite some landmark. It helped earn Mathews the title of "Father of computer music". Why else did HAL sing "Bicycle Built for Two" in 2001: A Space Odyssey?

- Early Modulations sleeve detailEarly Modulations doesn't set out to preach to the converted. It doesn't want to present us with another compilation of modern classical pieces. What it wants to do is bring us the roots of today's electronic music. It follows on from the Modulations Soundtrack featuring artists such as Derrick May, Donna Summer, and Juan Atkins. It's a reminder that electronic music didn't start with Techno, Disco, or even Kraftwerk for that matter.

It may sound like stating the bloody obvious to say that electronic music has roots - but in a room full of people going ballistic to Acid Trance or Jump-up House, how many would necessarily know or care for the roots? The same could be said for the roots of Rock and Roll, so it's not a unique point. Will Early Modulations succeed in converting the fervent hordes of Acid Trance into roots-aware Electro connoisseurs? Somehow I doubt it. For God's sake, stick a drum machine through a P.A. and crank it up to full volume - come 4 a.m. people will still go ballistic to it. This album is not a compilation that requires amphetamines to derive any sort of positive appreciation - thankfully.

Early Modulations is a mass of patch cables and screechy tape loops. Ultimately it's the kind of thing that's going to appeal to wierdos like myself who are into Autechre and other mutilated Electro masterpieces ... people who are likely to know most of the artists anyway. In that sense this collection probably fails in its intentions. Don't hold your breath waiting for this to kick it large on the dance floor. Early Modulations is not about dance music - not by any definition I know of. Who cares though? It's nice to have the Electro roots recognised - even if it won't alter the fact that the charts are still going to be choked up with the likes of Alice DJ. Personally, I think its great. I want a DEC PDP 11, I want to make Mainframe Gabba.

-Kirk Diamond-

Various - Easy Tempo, Volume 10 - End Titles
Label: Easy Tempo Format: CD

Easy Tempo 10: End Titles - sleeve detailTime, once again, to don dark shades and wonder where to have coffee tonight, where you and she cannot be seen by prying, gossipy eyes. Now, if someone's eyes are spreading gossip - run, run quickly! You don't need that kind of supernacheral trouble! Piero Umiliani sets the stage with a jaunty jalopy of sound, bouncing on malefemale vocals ma nah ma nah, and the organ and wire percussion speeds us along on our Vespa - quickly, or the world will end! Either that, or, at the very least, you'll be fashionably late.

Bruno Nicolai's menace of horns juxtaposes with sultry femme vox and strings and do the trains run on time if exposed to this propulsive-yet-lackadaisical music? Ennio Morricone, ah yes, signore. The usual? The usual. Vittorio Paltrinieri's "Rhythm of Life" brings together a couple of minutes of lively vocal blah blah blahs, melding into the French chanteusery of Philippe Sarde's "On Ce Voit Ce Soir". Wee wee! Slow dancing before you go out to fight SPECTRE. As you saunter out to your Aston-Martin, Carlo Rustichelli's "Swing e Sesso" gives you fortitude la vita sessuale after those spies are histoire. Many soothing harp sounds and police chases abound.

Piero Umiliani, Armando Trovajoli, Carlo Pes, Stelvio Cipriani, Gino Conti, Armando Trovajoli - oh, it's all too much, too late, too suave and too debonair for my nimble fingers to get out into the world, but if you see this re view, you know that you should acquaint yourself with all Easy Tempo releases - volare volare ichitare!

-David Cotner-

Various - Emre (Dark Matter)
Label: souRce Research Format: CD

Emre:Dark Matter - sleeve detailA smattering of shattering, and the volume is checked quicker than a mongoloid goalie at the Stanley Cup.  Source Research:  how should volume be approached in terms of full appreciation?  Define "full" and "appreciation"?  Cyclobe's baby cries in anticipation of a spoonful of jelly, which itself is attacked by birds and bats.  Is a group beholden to a carved-out, personal atmosphere to tote around for the reasonably near future tense?  Fingers stab from the fog - an oaken directional finder gesturing many hands toward many paths.  A voice kicks the grinding wheel down one less travelled.  It's heard to wheel around, falter and wobbletumwobble like a flipped coin missed.

Andrew Poppy plays the hesitant automatic bells, encouraging more heady resonance the better they get to know him.  Raindrops fall and the scene is that of the female protagonist (heroin) discovering something loathesome but enduring the indignity of having seen it from afar.  COH turns the tuner on his netmork, moving from station to station.  Has he found the apocryphal dial?  A hum suppurates the speakers.  Shazbat.  And there are few places left on earth where one can escape the sound of a motor.  The dial fractures into a miniature sun with countless solar flares radiating eternally outward, infiltrating even telephone tones...

Leif Elggren joins souRce research with a garbled word and a sweep of sound.  The uttered mutterings hang softly in the air, made of sand - a smile that gently sifts itself to earth.  Angel?  A passage erupts - which should be reprinted at some point, or stamped.  I'm glad the powers-that-be got tired of nuclear winter, because it sure hasn't shown up in the 'paper lately. Coil's aura breaks as John Balance falls into the water.  The slow fracture of sound that ensues - interpretation of falling?  Slipping?  Breaking?  A synthesis?  Bells pool around the motion of all three; a slow motion it is.  "It's going to rain..." - a Fortean time in the old town tonight?

Ovum divides his sound - no matter how small - over 15 tracks.  How Swede it is.  The spiralling wind slices a statue from the shadows, hectoring the roughewn edges away and continuing, ever-grating, vanishing from whence it came.  souRce research ends this world on a palindromic note, and beyond that, there just isn't that much more to say...

-David Cotner-

Various - Errorcycle
Label: Throat Format: CD

"Win/Mac Datatrack" - or so it is written. And inside such a lovely transparent wallet! The shortcomings of the CD-R can sometimes be overlooked due to really nice packaging. Memo to myself... cdt sends a sam:o:gram. It melts into the next piece, by Svstriate. Prepared in shivers and sizzles, in anticipation of the time when sounds last for days and days instead of mere compilative moments. Wipeout. It is as if the sounds of the crash are being experienced in slow flowmotion - faraway, so close? Iot whips the speakers into the airline frenzy, testing the tweeters in such a way as to hide the source but dazzle with crackles and thrum. What may be even more surprising than the sounds used - are the intervals of time in which they EXIST.

Wolfgang Rottger's "Burnt Out Carousel" pulses, reflections in the mirrors directly beside the show-ponies. Speeding, slowing, telling the story of the title in a very peripheral way. How deeply do memories inform soundworks, even so solitary as these? Musical Nature pulls its sounds and voices (?) slowly from some other point in time - and it seems that the focus of these minimalist works is not necessarily "less", but "more". Their durations. How long does it "last"? A rhythm piece knits the sounds from that time - together, but in what direction? "Static Conditioning"? Rather.

C.M. de Giere breathes that fire of circular motion. Apparently there are four ways to describe sounds but may motion be the fifth? I'll take it, in any case. ABF vs. IST OP conduct a rhythm study, which dissolves into a match between this timbre and that bloo. What cycle of erorr moves in here? It solemns into the onward crackle of Drizdial; perhaps this is all one elaborate peacock waving of styles? Of one person? It is unclear - mysterious as the "Htirdadcekn" that winds everything up...or down...

Remarkably remarkable, et cetera.

-David Cotner-

Various - Extreme Music From Women
Label: Susan Lawly Format: CD

The way to defuse a loaded situation is to see that it is not loaded - just filled with a different substance. Rosemary Malign creates a vibrating reflection in amber that will last and melt and be distilled. There is something writhing inside it that was outside all along but as in most amber, the light plays tricks so that there are twelve ways to pronounce the suffix "-ough". Lisa and Naomi Tocatly move through their sounds in such a way that the old clawfisted bathtub is scraped of older baths and the resulting cleanliness is viewed as through a diamond. Dolores Dewberry speaks a paragraph 64 as the twitters of Kurt Schwitters range their ways through the calm and multilayered meanings of the past that inevitably emerge from the numbering of a paragraph. Candi Nook hafts her sounds through a television set and speaks to the broadcast, several of them, several million of them. All twisting and curling and hafting themselves, much as the sounds are imprinted into a subconscious and this is why one fails to recall the name of the bully from fourth form but why another remembers that Steven Stapleton played live with Whitehouse at one time.

Annabel Lee brings forth the wolves from another place, which could be grounds for grievous slander if revealed. Mira Calix pulses several voices and windings and balls them into a piece that creeps out as velvetly as it rolled in. Clara Clamp's answering maschine moves from one speaker to the next, and is revelation ever properly recorded? Are there things left unsaid that lie coiled in the hiss of cassette tape, no matter how small? And, ultimately, recording devices fail to catalogue those nuances, in the way that is vital and living in the face-to-face confrontation and taste. Debra Petrovitch narrates in dislocation - and how long does rationale go through surreality and freeforming until a beat, a cadence, a pattern is imposed on the action? Where is the portion of the brain that imposes order on chaos? And this, even in the apparent face of entropy; two lines of the = sign are equal until you look closer to see that one is longer, one is shorter - yet both remain straight lines, utterly, for an instant.

Karen Thomas kicks ticks and pops from the speakers as the deepened glare of a rotating pail crumbles through the air, it is so difficult to figure out from whence comes the sound, and deeper still the mystery of the words because how often will I actually speak with this person? Beth Cannery wishes luck with a capital "F" as the treble clef is rent and at least two distinct tones rise their heads, biting towards the pineal glad and the words are clearer, grabbing those tones by their necks and then. Gaya Donadio storms out the thunder - and it oscillates across the space of a room. If the memory of a piece of music resonates, can we say that it gives a space (cf. of a room) resonance itself? What rôles do sound and memory and space play within each other? Maria Moran and the prurient interest - does a conversation immersed in heavy sound make one actually listen more intently? The clouds clear at times, go live in another speaker at others. Fräulein Tost paints a panic as perhaps Rupert writes a rainbow - vastening washes of flange across the canvas that is 2:07, 2:06, 2:05 and onward. Measured. Finite. If one paints with sound, is time the canvas? Wendy van Dusen speaks of dog, saturating and calculating. Much echo, and is this how the dog hears commands, again and again? Is this how the dog tries to speak, barking, again and again? Cat Hope's sounds vacillate in time, and something is broken, many times. It is reminiscent of the aural Rorschach test given to inmates in the asylum - repeating words until they become sheer sound, and Neil Hill, we still miss you. Diane Nelson mounts and subsequently dissects an insect. Wings beat and voices inject outwards through the pins impaling them. The final kick of the impulse, and does it really take so many seconds?

I have the gravest regrets that I did not call upon a female colleague to assist me in recording a literalist version for Extreme Music From Women. It would have been so...

-David Cotner-

Various - First Steps
Label: Klangbad Format: CD

First Steps- sleeve detailFrom the label which is home to Faust, First Steps is a sampler which features artists who have gathered to record a variety of left field, often equally unique, music. They are not simply Faust-alikes. In fact none of these bands sound much like their godfathers. Could you imagine them allowing that to happen anyway ? Not, perhaps, unless it was some sort of ironic statement.

These artists share a label but have their own identities. Dälek, for example are a trio featuring a rapper of the same name and some turntable manipulation. It is an angry relentless sound but very much shaped by a song structure not the free Industrial noises of Faust. More delicately, S/T create post-Kraftwerk melodies with tinkling keyboards and distant deadpan vocals while Audiac dabble in some the vacant territory created by the silence of Portishead. It is not as disturbing perhaps but the use of strings and Hammond organ creates an unsettling atmosphere. A sense of alienation prevails.

There are some unusual sounds here but perhaps the oddest combination comes from Ole Lukkøye, a band from St. Petersburg. At first I thought they'd been mixing influences from India and somewhere vaguely Nordic. Not easy to categorise but very trance-like with chanting, drones, bells and percussion blended with what must be a brass or wind instrument. They have a very passionate sounding singer too though I've no idea what he is being passionate about. Does it matter ? It sounds great. And so do Circle, who, in parts, do reveal some Faustian influence in their use of relentless drumming and swathes of guitar noise that boil and shriek then fade away. Space Rock rather than Krautrock, maybe. They also utilise some gentler atmospheric acoustic guitar on "Northern Sky", andd apparently they sing in an artificial language too but not on these two tracks.

Finally, solo Faust man Hans Joachim Irmler and the whole band contribute a piece each. The keyboard man constructs a dark suspension of sound, at once liquid and brittle, that swells and ebbs. It is an identifiable sound, a portion amputated from the collective Faust sound, and is part of a solo project. The whole band hammer into "I Can, U 2?" with more of their trademark maniac drumming dominating that mesh of Industrial thrash. There are sketches of keyboard and what sounds like Michael Stoll's scraped acoustic bass but, as ever, the whole matters more than the parts and it is an exciting example of their open-ended approach to musical construction.

What I like about this album is the sense of musical diversity and a stubborn drive on the part of the artists to do it their way and see if the listening world catches on and keeps up.

-Paul Donnelly-

Various - Flesh On The Floor Vol. 1
Label: Flesh Format: 12"

Flesh On The Floor Vol. 1 - disc label detailFlesh Records take on the dancefloor with their blend of extended Electro-Techno-Gothic, neatly introduced by the throbbing smash-to-be of ST AP 00's "Mr GD", in which someone with a very keen enthusiasm for David Bowie describes a sinister encounter of the less than savoury narrator with the little old Mr Gravedigger. All this is set to a pounding dance track with some seriously groovy beats underneath to the brassy echoes of Yello and some foregrounded synth-cymbal smashes and rewinds for hands in the air effect - only these hands are probably groping from the grave, á la Italian Giallo film posters of the Seventies. This is a blindingly good track; redolent with rhythmic dynamics and a foggy atmosphere which could only be enhanced by massive great gouts of smoke on a suitably darkened dancefloor.

Second up from ST AP 00 is "Nanobots", which turns the tables into stripped-down, somewhat flatulent beats which would make Muslimgauze proud while a weary voice intones the title over a swirl of scarred synths. Odd. For the AA side, Flesh mainstay Midnight Mike remixes Zongamin's "Blind Holiday" into a high-clapping detour from the Madonna track, for which the repeated airy female "Holiday" vocal is offset by a rather harshly pitchshifted man observing "It would be so nice" with an air of pulsing Dark House menace. Mike's own "Halloween" is indeed the title music from the film of the same name, put through the Techno shredder. Those bleeping John Carpenter synths get a tearing accompaniment to bring up the shivery chill factor among the spine-tingling drum rolls and yet more sinister low-mixed voices. You won't know whether to laugh or scream as the bass and mid-range keyboards set jangled nerves a-tingling; definitely one to bring down all those over-happy dancefloor fiends.

The shame about this EP is that it's not getting a general release, so start trawling those dodgy clubs to get a taste of the grave in advance of hoped-for future Flesh appearances for these tracks, especially "Mr. GD" (though it also appeared on the Flesh Records Presents LP. However, there are full-length MP3 downloads currently available of "Nanobots" and "Halloween" from Flesh, so get 'em while you can.

-Freq1C-

Various - Flesh Records Presents
Label: Flesh Records Format: LP

Flesh Records Presents...- sleeve detailThis record is to House music what Digital Hardcore is to breakbeat Hardcore. Flesh Records describe themselves as taking "great delight in unveiling the stenched schematics of a long imprisoned beast." And this is just what they have done. This is dirty and nasty music that comes in some of the most rotten, unstable, and schizophrenic forms imaginable. Moments of nice Funk are brutalised with excessive bass distortion. This isn`t a pretty record, but corpses seldom are.

That aside, Flesh Records Presents is a collection of their up and coming releases. It features Cain 777, Zongamin, Sonavac, The Perversions, and a whole host of others. You probably wont be hearing the decayed offerings of Flesh in your local night club, unless your local night club happens to be on Elm Street.

-ap-

Various - Fluorescent Tunnelvision
Label: Submergence Format: 2CD

Flourescent Tunnelvision - sleeve detailThe psychedelic Rock freak out is not dead, despite rumours to the contrary, and Flourescent Tunnelvision is here to prove the point, ramming home on a coasting scrawl of fuzz, wah, delay and phasers set to half-past stun; the amps probably go a long way over eleven, too. The full benefit of this collection is naturally to be gained at the maximum volume the speakers and neighbours will bear, conjouring up wind tunnel audio effects across the stereo spectrum - as a good proportion of the tracks do in spades. The rest of the bands here do their best to blow minds through other methods for a pastime, and whatever the approach, the results are generally trippy in several senses of the word.

Circle blast off first with the controlled groove of "Veisti" which has all the libelly-sprinkled FX settings Flying Saucer Attack used to do so well, but with far tighter group dynamics and an almost viscerally-felt surge of dissolution into their intruments. F/I are in the spacey camp, swishing analogue synths around the old familiar Space Rock interaction of noddling guitar, bass and drums with a nod or too to Cul de Sac (who really should have been on this album) before filtering things through an Avant Garde lava lamp to wobbly effect. Pseudo Buddha like their hallucinations full-on, so layer echoed voices around the scrawled fuzz guitar and improvised liquid rhythms. The spirit of Amon Düül lives on, thankfully. Somehow, so does that of Nikolai Tesla on Russian group Zelany Rashoho's offering which is as jumbled up in its wandering cross-rhythms and discordant pipes and keys as the unreproducable title (not because it's in Russian, which it isn't, but because it's a string of symbols...).

This is only half way through the first disc; more Spacey synthery from Oranj Cllimax leads to false memories of the Ambient future where Hawkwind run things on Mars, circa 1973; Djam Karet wash up on an undertow of pink noise and oscillator bends before stoking up the beats and bass without once resorting to Techno clichés, while Quarkspace's "Brainhaze (D.O.B.H #3) nods back to the Seventies free festival daze as if it was, um, last week. The hash was so much stronger then, wasn't it? As for The Melodic Energy Commission, not only do they have an amusing name but they gat a prize for being uncategorizable other than in the sense of doing a very nifty job of making heads spin on their somewhat queasy freeform uncoiling of their instruments from inside out, especially the mightily-thumped percussion. Finally for Disc One, Ektroverde (which like Circle, is Jussi Lehtisalo) shut things down for the moment with "Suru" and all things fed back and riffed-up into big chugging chunks.

Faust emerge "From The Upper Underworld" into the opening track of Disc Two, and the subtitle "Little Ravvivando" fails to prepare for the occluded pulse of beautiful organ swirls over the unsteady thumps of weight-lifting percussion as the dub mix rises to the fore. It's almost like the Faust Tapes in miniature, as snoring, shouting, fragments of singing, conversation and chanting drift across wavering tones and crashing metal sheets, and the (un)structure becomes what can only be described as gloriously Faust-shaped, and chaotic in excelsis. To follow, Volcano The Bear's "Strausshand" wheezes and skims on strings and breath with a hint of ominous Tibetan threat and a swooping turn around brazen fanfares and a conclusion where it sounds like the drummer has taken a passing dislike to the drumkit while a Folk melody gets a bolshie balalaika bashing.

So some more laid back synth'n'ebow groovology from Escapade makes a pleasantly linear interlude on some choppy riffs and energetic rhythm section work beofr etaking things a few steps to the left into outer s