Kosmische @ Upstairs at The Garage, London 25 March 2000 When consumer electronics expanded sufficiently to include musical instruments at relatively affordable prices for the average band to use in the Eighties, the result was synth pop, unfortunately with some quite dire results. Then came the Techno revolution, and sampler-based […]
Freq1C
66 posts
Label: Touch Format: CD Richard H. Kirk is one of those electronic music producers who seems content to have found his groove, and stuck with it to good result for years, refining, developing, tweaking his sound palette into variations on themes he long ago helped pioneer in the justifiably lauded […]
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 […]
Label: Digital Hardcore Format: CD Recorded at the end of an exhausting world tour in November 1999, with Hanin Elias out of action and Carl Crack gone loopy, as the sleevenotes describe Alec Empire and Nic Endo “were finally standing in front of a sold-out crowd of 4,000 people, Nic […]
The Water Rats, London 2nd November 1999 The Water Rats seems like a broken place, barely still pulsing with the life of the twenty or so people inside. I wonder if it was once posh, evidence: rubbed-off velvet on the too few bar stools, forgotten glass cases built into dingy […]
Label: Sub Rosa/Quatermass Format: CD, Limited LP Simon Pyke, AKA Freeform, has shown himself to be one of those producers of electronic music who fails singularly to conform to rigid genres and substylings thereof. He simply seems content to produce music within the formats open to someone with a bank of samplers, keyboards, mixers […]
LA2, London 25th October 1999 Prepared and hyped for Atari Teenage Riot, I was ready to hear loud fast music. What a treat it was that the fun started long before ATR ever came on. Other girls have done this, face it, MANY other boys have done this too, but […]
Label: Caipirinha Format: CD Datach’i sounds like a deranged child given a selection of technology, old and new, to play with, abuse, and generally mess up sound with. From the get-go, it’s a stream of blurting noise, scrawled low-end mania and samples to reinforce the infantile world of an unsatisfied […]
Label: Domino Format: CD,LP Mouse On Mars‘ sixth album continues to expand on their almost self-defining genre of energetically marvellously nice Electronica, spinning outwards from the opening processed acoustic guitars into to the humorous-interuptus whoopee-cushion funk of the highly appropriately-titled “Yippie”, and all points silly from there. Neither “nice” nor […]
Label: Force Inc. Format: 12″ The title track is something of a typical Techno Animal bass monster, with their characteristic funky breakbeats assuming the usual clattery position in relation to a rather pleasingly warbly bassline, shot through with some relatively restrained splatters of synthy knob-twiddling. As its Kevin Martin and […]
Label: DHR Format: CD,2LP Lurking behind the Atari Teenage Riot pastiche cover and name is of course none other than Alec Empire, but in ever so strange a mood as to be simultaneously at his most inspired and deranged. Sourced entirely from the programmable music edition of a Gameboy, We […]
Label: Output Format: 12″,CDS Opening with an astrological description of someone with their aspect in Mars, “Glasshead” soon makes it like the groovy number to be expected from Four Tet‘s post-Trip Rock excursions in the last year or so, only here magnified, intensified and refined. Sonorous virtualised brass, real-world breakbeats […]
Label: WEA Format: CD,LP More Dub-based at heart than anything else, Bengali Bantam Youth Experience shows a musical development from Black Star Liner‘s début Yemen Cutta Connection which results in a more streamlined experience, with crisp production letting the bass reverberate around and under delicate keyboard tones, Bollywood strings and […]
Label: Warp Format: 12″,CDS A curiously accessible mire of vocal samples splutter and waft from and electronic soup from almost the first moment of “Windowlicker”, before Richard James applies some customarily deep-fried production to what could otherwise have been a languorous bass and kickdrum smoocher. Instead, linearity gets a darned […]
Po Na Na’s, London 2nd November 1998 Po Na Na’s is a bit of a new venue in London, emerging from underneath a pub on the increasingly busy (musically as well as with traffic) Highbury Corner, and decorated in a faux-Moroccan style which actually suits the sounds emerging from The […]
Label: 13th Moon Format: 12″ Taking one of the best tracks from Nocturnal Emissions and sticking it through the electronic mangle, Mr. & Mrs. Fiend embark on a high-octane blast through all the electro, techno, breakbeat and goddam’ rock machinations possible at once, topped off by Nik’s unchanged vocal style […]
Label: Domino Format: CDS,12″ Exhibiting a kind of Bristolian faux-gangsterism with sampler firmly in cheek, Matt Elliott is definitely getting more proficient with the drum & bass these days. Still spooky and atmospheric, the use of choral samples on the title track recalls the early unsettling soundscapes of Current 93 […]
Label: Asphodel Format: CD Love Is The Devil is a reasonably arty film about the traumatic love-life of painter Francis Bacon in the early Sixties, whihc despite may flaws is an engaging and occasionally powerful depiction of an alcoholic artist and his relationship with a young stranger who appears from […]
Label: Disko B/V2 Format: CD,2LP Adopting an international playboy persona to rival Yello‘s for its ridiculous embrace of the notion of artist as fantsatic sportsman, Bond-age lover and all-round suave entertainer, DJ Hell bundles together a collection of tunes which restore the front to upfront. From the paen to its […]
Label: Warp Format: CDS, 12″ Plone have a nice ear for the uses of old technology, turning in three deceptively simple songs (which happens also to neatly provide the title for track two) , equal parts Pram and retro elevator music. “Plock” is a shimmery analogue bossanova featuring that most […]