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 Third Eye Foundation‘s DAT player and mixer quite nicely. Matt Elliot tweaks levels and twiddles knobs to suit […]
Freq1C
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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 – demented. The amphetamine groove ASF have been on for most of their career seems somehow to be […]
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 but with a beat – which is a pretty damn good idea too. Religious art is probably best […]
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 the roof of his studio one night. Sakamoto‘s soundtrack, heard in the context of the film, is a […]
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 author from a West Coast American female voice of “This Is For You” to the bizarre cover of […]
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 marvellous of processors, the Vocoder, while the aforementioned “Simple Song” recalls the naivete of early electronic music with […]
Label: Mute Format: CDS, 12″ How to make a remix EP, 1998-style: take a track from your last album (Control Data, in this case). Process in a variety of styles by Ultraviolence (Gabba, twice), No-U Turn (Drum & Bass) and, last but not least (apart from the original mix, naturally), current king of the version and the rewind, Alec Empire (er… JungleGabbaTechnoHipHop). Guaranteed to break the eardrums at […]
Label: Mute Format: CD As acerbic as their recent gigs together, the collaboration of Alan Vega with two-thirds of Pan Sonic shows that the loss of a vowel has not affected the latter’s ability to construct minimal sine-wave beats and blasts, nor the former’s anomic bile against The Man and his system. While the Finns lay down the tearing glitches, chundering basslines and hard stepping thuds of analogue […]
The Festival of Central European Culture Queen Elizabeth Hall,The South Bank Centre, London 10th July 1998 Across between political rally, religious service and Thrash Metal gig, tonight’s appearance in the centre of High Art’s temple of culture simultaneously enthralls and overpowers with meta-kitsch imagery and extreme volume. From the mechanistic coupling of video projections with the thunderous music, via the part-Rock, part- militaristic poses thrown by the band, […]
Label: Mute Format: CD There’s no doubting Diamanda Galás’s intensity, integrity or innovation; more than anyone else, she not only bridged the underground-overground divide while such tactics were still relevant, but has created some truly spell-binding works of lasting impact on the subject of AIDS in Plague Mass. Malediction and Prayer is a record of her global performances in 1996-7, showcasing her dynamic range to full effect through […]
Label: Asphodel Format: 12″ Sub Dub‘s percussionist Raz Mesinai manifests here in his Bedouin guise, deplying five tracks showcasing his cultural heritage through a New York filter. “Final Warning” has a persuasively swaying main drum loop, topped with stretched ululations and sirens which lend a hallucinatory character to the cross-pollinated groove, while “Do We Belong” shows that bagpipes are not a purely Celtic invention. Badawi mixes pipes, chants […]
Label: Fat Cat Format: 12″ Supremely mellow, fascinatingly layered micro-dubs from a country (Germany) teeming with super-proficient Electronica. Ripples, pulses, flows and then grows. Crackles, lo-fi sound sources and bass bleeps celeverly arranged to produce an all-suffusing glow of satisfying serenity, without descent into Ambient earwash. Why don’t record players have repeat buttons? -Freq1C-