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Neck Doppler – Future Hits Vol. 1 Label: Consume Format: CD
 Another very well-produced CDR – this one has the Consume label’s name printed out on that sticky tape with the raised letters, as used on many office products. It’s very clean, which counts these days, believe it or don’t. Echoey drums and vocals urgently exhort on to listen . The vocals are rudimentary, brutal; cut off suddenly in some cases. It’s as if these are little songs that have been marinating in ruminations all day, buzzing around in the head and neck of Mr. Doppler, and this is his way of exorcising these annoying little demons. Distorted voice and laser beam percussions now, amidst the smoke of the odd-timed melody and incongruous piano. Scratching and xylophonies now, underscoring
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Vidna Obmana & Serge Devadder – The Shape Of Solitude – Suite For Electric Guitar, Atmospheres And Recycling Label: Multimood Format: CD
 Ah, how Swede…erm…suite it is… (Ouch – Ed.) Sound that often appears on the Hearts of Space broadcast (recently sacked from Los Angeles airwaves in favour of something called “Classical music”) manifests itself now. But what atmospheres do they mean? The sweatsoaked haze deceding carnal explosives? A dreamstated journey down a warm corridor of gold eaten by worms? A session of sexual exploration seen through eyes leaking ejaculate? That’s right, folks – more fuck music.
The sound sparkles like sunset through abandoned mansion windows. Guitar bows and pigeon coos and where is the lowest level of fondness and longing and sorrow in a house? How deeply-steeped
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Pacou – Symbolic Language Remixes Label: Tresor Format: 12″
Once again, we can rely on Tresor to der the goods. Think Jeff Mills, think Adam Beyer. Pacou is in that vein, with a slab of tough minimal techno. Symbolic Language Remixes is a belting EP, nasty hard and fucking groovesome. It sweats rhythm like a heavy weight boxer.
“Texture # 1″ wins it for me. It’s as dark and garbled as you like – and I like it lots. A spazzy synth (vaguely reminiscent of Synewave) does its thing above the all pervasive beat. Out of nowhere comes a high pitch fucked- up discord, it buzzes around for a bit then leaves the same way. I love this in a Techno toon, morphing itself from one thing to another without ever having noticably done anything. The Memory Foundation Mix is
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Rachel’s - Selenography Label: Quarterstick Format: CD
Rachel’s may be the logical conclusion of the tradition of Tortoise and Slint. This is not to say that they sound like either of these bands, but rather that one may trace an evolution in contemporary American music from a highly developed No-Wave to an end of millennium conservatoire music. Of course this music is not really specifically millennial either and at its best achieves the still point of timelessness although it is neither traditional nor futuristic. Pieces may arise as naturally from drum machine patterns (refreshingly played as drum machines rather than simulations of drums), or string trios as they might from guitar riffs or harpsichord motifs.
Their previous work has included a disc about sailing ships and music for a theatre work on the life of Egon Schiele. The latest album
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QT?/Alejandra & Aeron – Split Label: Fat Cat Format: 12″
Thirteenth virus, this Split Series release is also called – quite appropriately for QT?‘s tracks, which mix down bleeps and glitches into something which sounds like the record player’s got a worm infection. With titles which progess mathematically from “qqq” via “?q?” to “???”, the nine pieces drive abstractly from snicker and blasted track-reformatting noise to whittled electronics and drilling fragments. Not easily assimilated within most definitions of music, but quite comfortable in the noise aesthetic, QT?’s work might get labelled minimal digital concrèt, should anyone care to.
Alejandra And Aeron progress through their domestic audio settings by taking on the kitchen for the 18-minute track of the same name, which is only appropriate given their alter ego as Lucky Kitchen. The resulting mixture of radio soundscape and processed field
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Rachael Sage – Painting Of A Painting Label: Mpress Format: CD
 I think Rachael Sage is on the verge of becoming something great. I don’t think that she’s necessarily reached that “great” point with this album, but you can already tell that she’s growing into something here. There’s just not enough confidence or strength in her voice at this point, though, and for the subject matter and the quiet type of sparse Jazz-Pop accompaniment (guitar, percussion, piano, etc.) she’s singing along with, her voice is the centerpiece of these songs and needs to be strong enough to take that position. However, at this point, her voice quavers and trips just enough to detract from what is good there to hear, leaving the listener wondering if perhaps turning up
Continue reading Archived reviews: S [...]
The Tape-beatles – Synthety No. 5: Good Times Label: Staalplaat Format: CD
 Stepping to an appropriately martial, mechano-deconstructed beat, The Tape-beatles‘ Good Times weaves a mix of political speech snippets, training-film educational banalities deleivered with the wooden certitude of a rigid economic concentration on accumulation of capital and the promotion of that greatest lie of all, free-market competition, into a sometimes thumping orchestral soundscape. Delay is the key, as fragments of a cultural canon splinters in the guts of the very technology Capitalism worships above all else. Electronics turned back on the blind idiot money men who fund their developers – it has a nice ring of just desserts to it.
How much of this is going to affect anyone not already disenechanted (to say the least) with the way
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Ui - The Iron Apple Label: Southern Format: 12″,CDS
Named in respect of the vitality of the 103-year old owner of the cider house in Pennsylvania where Ui rehearsed for many years, The Iron Apple shows the band in further abstracted territory from their “post-Rock” roots. As ever, the combination of tightly-controlled energy in Clem Waldmann‘s drums, Sasha Frere-Jones‘s guitar and keyboards, and the beautifully-restriced bass rhythms (synthetic and string) courtesy of Wilbo Wright are constructed into something both other from alomost any other band and the group’s own highly Funky live performances.
Jazz-Funk would be too restrictive a label for this music – though it contains elements of that particular form. There’s a bit of Musique Concrete, some Electronica sample tricknology, and always the looming presence of floor-shaking bass to move the knees along of their own
Continue reading Archived reviews: U [...]
Mika Vainio – Kajo Label: Touch Format: CD
 More than just Pan(a)Sonic without the bass oscillations, Mika Vainio‘s second solo outing still bears obvious connections to his work with Ilpo Vaisanen on their last album release under that name as A, a recording which featured moments of unsettling stillness and texture among the distened beats and noise. Naturally, it’s also more about making a different kind of sound to Pan Sonic’s – wavering, exploratory, semi-consciously aware of the noises Vainio is mixing into the listening environment. Headphones are one thing, but putting Kajo among the hummings of fridge mechanisms, birdsong, passing cars and train horns is as vital as settling down for an intense listen in a darkened, soundproof room.
Turn it up loud, and some of the pieces here
Continue reading Archived reviews: V [...]
Ka – Terrarium Label: Jazzassin Format: 2×7″
The exquisite paper, smelling of the tire it represents on the cover – “Superior 2000″. Confidence. The vinyl is clear – the speed at which it is to be played is not. So, this re view comes at you from 33 rpm.
It is as if one is standing at the roadside – the drone and grinding Dopplers past. And now the earsplitting taxis on some runway somewhere, from the heart of twilight to another heart, somewhere else. Now taking off side one and now side two takes off. The organist saves the church from burning by driving up and sneaking inside. Some voices now. Spectral items tumble in and out like snowflakes, no two quite the same but comforting in their familiarity.
A focussed rhythm fucks a buzzing upon its entry into
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Miriam de Waard – Voor Elise (an electronic welcome) Label: Staalplaat Format: 3″ CD
Rhythmic ratcheting enters from the fog and brings it along besides. Fuer Elise – but only the most familiar of the notes. Plinky bells tinker along, as if trying to catch up with its larger, more melodious brother. More of those notes, only with more air in them. A kitty! – and a music box. The ratcheting re-exits.
It is such a little thing.
-David Cotner-
Wäldchengarten – Was Kommunikation? Label: KFI Records Format: 10″
 The epigram on “Was Kommunikation?” reads “If you ever discover what communication is, you’ll be saddened, since you’re really not making so much sense right now”. Wäldchengarten‘s form of cummunication on this EP/mini-LP is fairly straightforward; big blasts of rising feedback
Continue reading Archived reviews: W [...]
Xinli Supreme – All You Need Is Love Was Not True Label: Fat-Cat Format: 7″
Short description: Xinli Supreme sound something like the Japanese Flying Saucer Attack.
Longer review: Xinli Supreme sound from time to time like Flying Saucer Attack when they were so much more lo-fi than recently. Monospaced drum machine beats borrowed from the Jesus & Mary Chain or just set to full speed ahead and damn the engines; muttered vocals from too much looking to find swirly patterns in the clouds, or screams of drill-bait intensity; every guitar effect raised to 10 and turned on at once, and then mixed up again to at least 11. Frying pans full of chips set to stun instead of fuzz pedals, tingly walls of sound which swell around the general miasma and set off goose pimples as the majhor chords
Continue reading Archived reviews: X [...]
Akira Yamamichi – Sémiologie Label: Fire Inc. Format: CD
 The word to sum up Sémiologie is pure. Akira Yamamichi has produced on of the purest expressions of sub bass. This is the kind of album you can really share with your neighbours. He does this by working with pulse beats, constructing his music from very basic and pure sounds. The comparison with Pan Sonic is obvious, but this is more digital and glitchy. The sound is even more clinical too – whereas oscillator-driven Pan Sonic have a warm and curiously organic feel. Sémiologie has that same single-minded and stark quality, though. The second half of the album mixes pure tone with processed acoustics. Jazz drum patterns are warped, pushed around, and overlaid with the pulses. Ambient minimal Techno meets Jazz head
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Z‘ev – Face The Wound Label: Soleimoon Format: CD
 Face The Wound is a Sprache Opera, a dialogue between the male and female voices. Known for working with found sounds, Z’ev assembled the narrative of Face The Wound from 30 cassettes collected from thrift shops, garage sales, and flea markets. The rhythms of the voices mix with the rhythms of electronic percussion and electronic textures. The journey through Z’ev’s assembled narrative isn’t an easy one, I’d go as far as saying it’s apocalyptic. Scene three deals with incest. “1 + 1 = kill your parents” and laughter punctuate the ever shifting and unsettling voices. Religion is never far away. One of the sources Z’ev worked with is recordings of media evangelists. References to the end times appear again and
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Label: Decay/Target Video Format: DVD,VHS
 Originally released on VHS in 1987, this collection of the Dead Kennedys live in concert and the studio finds them in fine Punk Rock form. As is to be expected, the sound quality of the gig footage (mostly recorded at Mabuhay Gardens 1979-80) is less than optimal, but at least it’s in stereo and captures the band’s tightly-whipped performances in the lo-fi essentials. One simple expedient to improve the viewing experience is of course to turn up the volume. As far as DVD extras go, they’re minimal – song selection, concise biographies for each band member after they called it a day in 1986, and the amusing addition of singalong subtitles for each song. DKs karaoke anyone?
Each track is intercut with short sections
Continue reading Dead Kennedys – The Early Years Live [...]
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