Label: Mute Format: CD Holger Hiller‘s first album in a long time is a self-titled melange of the musical styles he developed in the Eighties and Nineties for Mute, plus a load of new tricks picked up along the way from his time as producer, remixer (including a stormer on Can‘s Sacrilege in association with this album’s producer Christoph Kaiser) and even writer of muscic for adverts in […]
album review
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Label: Nettwerk Format: CD While we’re all waiting for the Legendary Pink Dots to come back, and for Skinny Puppy to repeat last year’s German reunion with a local gig for local people, cEvin Key, Edward Ka-Spel and associated LPD and Download crews have crafted another Tear Garden album, and it’s a blinder. You know the score – a gothier Dots, maybe, or a more psychedelic Download, or […]
Label: Conspiracy International Format: CD Surely Ms. Cosey is the empress of electronic bliss. Time To Tell (2000) is nothing if not the most complete guide to a woman who stirs, blends and folds her life and art more comprehensively and with more sincerity than just about anyone else I can think of involved in modern performance and media manipulation. This re-re-release (with additions and enhancements) of Time […]
Label: Nonplace Format: CD There’s got to be something in the water in Köln – so many weirdly talented musicians who mangle Electronica, Dub and World musics into a bizarre hybrid music of sensational grooviness and quirky humour… or maybe they all just took notes at the sleeve of noted resident Holger Czukay after all. For this release, Burnt Friedman (what an apposite name he has…) is in […]
Label: CEE Format: CD Caste collects together five years’ worth of guitar-based noise sculpture from Colin Bradley and Julian Coope, both once involved with the intriguingly angular Spleen. Their work as Dual is densely textured, layering spluttering gushes of string-wrenched gasps into feedback drones the like of which haven’t been properly explored in this guise since Main went further into the digital relams of CD-R mixing and live laptop processing. That Isolationist sense of marking the outer reaches of possibility […]
Label: Sonig Format: LP Recorded live by Markus Popp and Jan Werner, Improvisors takes their studio-bound sampoling, glitching, cutting and skipping CDs into an edgier space. As ever, the estranged whirr of motor-driven sound put in its place and then removed again makes for distracted listening. Sometimes it even becomes uncomfortably ripped from the context of linear sound. They push it into one shape, and it comes out another. The stutter of effects and source […]
Label: Universal Egg Format: CD Zion Train affiliates The Tassilli Players have always offered up intriguing themed Dub CDs, from their debut Great Sporting Moments in Dub via their guide to Outer Space to the interactively-designed Wonderful World Of Weed In Dub (this latter wasn’t a CD-ROM in that interactive sense – each track was designed with different varieties of weed in mind for the listener to consume […]
Label: Wavetrap Format: CD From the opening storm-warning of drones ahead, Iron fulfils all the promises its churning digital riffology and humorous dedication to “Heavy Metal fans all over the world” could possibly fulfil. Staccato loops click and swarm from one ear to the next, and possibly invite the application of a third. Deliciously dirty splutters and organic wafts of processed feedback or sample residue distract from the […]
Label: Virgin Format: CD,2LP Sad to say, this self-titled return after all those years in over one and a half decades really isn’t all that interesting; at leats, not as much as it should be, especially considering that the Industrial Funk pioneers have got a legend in the shape of Pharoah Saunders for a couple of tracks. It’s all so easy listening now, by comparison to what the […]
Label: Sub Up Format: CD Well I am supposed to listen to this CD and be amazed at what technology can bring to life in the antiquated traditional sounds of Cuban music today. While the production techniques of Holger Hiller are undoubtedly very masterful, what impresses me most is that they do nothing to water down the sumptuous vocals that obviously take their strengths from a long-earned heridity […]
Label: Durtro Format: CD So the story goes that David Tibet of Current 93 found this act in some seedy New York drag cabaret and was so knocked out that he brought them to his Durtro label and released this CD as soon as possible. Well, it is little wonder that Antony & The Johnsons would cause such a stir. Thematically the most “Goth” music I have come […]
Label: DiN Format: CD A buried thud and muffled melody curve out from this unexpected source of sounds. Collaborations are infinitely fascinating – well, they can be – and yet relatively few happen. Are we really so victim to the village mentality as all that? The headlights of the automobiles along the highways are conjured – passing sounds garbled and warbled as they drive, drive, drive…and how difficult is it […]
Label: Ash International [R.I.P.] Format: CD This is the third in Andrew Lagowski‘s excursions into the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence, and perhaps the most disengaged from the planet of sound. The theme is escape from Earth and oneself – hence the title. Much more Solaris than Apollo 13 in other words, and with nods to both the end sequence of 2001 and thirty years of NASA research and/or […]
Label: Tone Casualties Format: CD As they say on “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory”, the Can man can! The Can man can! Uh… hold on a second, that”s candy man, isn`t it. Not Can man. Oh bugger. So what can the Can man do? Fucking tons, as it happens. But this is something of a surprise. As is the fact that, as we reach midsummer, every fucker […]
Label: 13th Moon Format: CD Mr. & Mrs. Fiend sure know how to evolve. First listen to this go ’round of Nocturnal Emissions admittedly made me wonder why they bothered with a pared down version of their sound. Production is nice, artwork is good, and there are the bonus tracks which is a quick mix or two of “Evolution” (the “Hup 2-3-4” mix, the “Back From The Dread […]
Label: MDZ Format: LP Here’s a House record with a difference – the tracks are based around a real drummer and bassist. This isn’t to say that Upper Disker should be listened to for the difference, it should be listened to for the music – which is something Oh. do very well. They didn’t give the track “We Rock For You” it’s name for nothing. The five guys […]
Label: Touch Format: CD Clocking in at a nadge over quarter of an hour long, Live At Revolver, Melbourne makes up for its shortness with some intensity instead. The whines and drones of clickety-snickety underpinnings meet tones at fifty paces then closing to quarters more uncomfortable. These things should sometimes be kept at arms length, but bringing the sound of what resembles a wardrobe being manhandled into a […]
Label: Hologram (North America)/Fünfundvierzig (Europe) Format: CD O that wacky Joel Vandroogenbroeck! I am on about my eighth listen to Alchemic Universe and what keeps happening is that I forget it might not mean to be so serious. What a bunch of flexing of the ole keyboards! This is Prophet 600tastick! ooo, the DX-7, the Korgs, the Junos even! An Eighties sort of extravaganza of synthesizer music gone […]