BAD SECTOR – PLASMA (CD by Old Europa Cafe)
This is the follow up to the widely aclaimed debut ‘Ampos’ on God Factory
from some 3 years back. The main concept, if there is any, is the use of
radio signals, coils and other forms of electricity. Bad Sector samples to
death various VLF atmospheres recordings, holter test neon tubes and the
like. But unlike Disinformation, Bad Sector produces something that could
easily be described as ‘music’ (whatever that is). The radio waves are
transformed, transposed, trans-whatever, but the outcome is densely
layered, almost ambient-industrial soundscapes. A rather surprising
outcome, since we would expect noisy, feedbacky or hissy: anything to
upset the listener. Bad Sector delivers a CD that is a true surprise for
me.
NOMEX – ANAGOGIC ARM (7″ by Adverse)
This is DJ culture taken to it’s limit, or maybe taking the piss out of DJ
culture entirely. Probably a bit of both. Nomex uses a drill (up to 12.000
RPM) with a record that is played by a pick up. There is some mysterious
effect added, the Emencifier. The result is a fast, say ultra fast, collage
of noise, not unlike Merzbow or the likes. Not really music to dance to,
but old school industrial for sure (and, God, I saw people dance to that!).
Not bad at all, and the idea is simply great. Simplicity is in? Of course
Nomex doesn’t reach world fame, since it’s no sandpaper and food processor
being played, but who cares about that? Nice! (FdW)
Address: Adverse – BM Fuzz – London WC1N 3XX – UK
TELEPHERIQUE/ULTRA MILKMAIDS (10″ by Rendezvous Radikal)
The first vinyl for Rendezvous Radikal and also the first in a series of
10″s with collaborations. The French-German meeting is quite succesful,
with two bands known from their ambient droy, yet partly rhythmical work.
The underlying process is beyond, but probably both bands exchanged a bunch
of tapes with sounds, and each band worked out a mix. Ultra Milkmaids set
the big touch of drones, and a slow, pounding rhythm, the mating birds are
their melodies. The spectrum of the sound is full of effects, a wall is
built.
The b-side is mixed by Telepherique, and a wash of sea sounds, insect calls
(or is it those birds again?) and drones and drums underneath. A subtle,
even bit unsettling atmosphere. In it simplicity for me the better side.
The insert has the complete discography of both bands to round off a nice
record.
Address: <fam-eckloff@t-online.de>
VOYAGER (CD Compilation by Adastra)
This is one of those CD’s about which I like to say a lot of positive
things, but that I have a trouble with. Cover wise it seems that this new
label focusses on ambient – misty colours, ambienty title. Yet a lot of the
music covered is in fact in wide territory here. There is downright ambient
stuff alright, such as on the excellent opening piece by Saul Stokes. But
it is followed by one of those aweful etheral female sung piece by a band
named Falling Down – damm, they have 3 pieces on this CD. Viridian Sun
(also from the Hypnos label, like Stokes) offer darkness in their
atmosphere. Lycia and Life Garden offer also darkness, but much more gothic
(too gothic) directed – in Life Garden’s case also with heavenly vocals.
Exit also has vocals, wordless and not very well recorded. Lead doesn’t
focuss on anything in his short, yet pointless piece. Gone Postal, which is
a collaboration between Totemplow and Dr Sup is quite dubby rhythm based –
in itself a nice track but then again, maybe out of place here. John
Micheal Zorko cosmic outing could have been on any of the old Silent
compilations and let’s regard that as a compliment. Ambient Temple Of
Imagination were on those comps before and Larry Kucharz is styllistically
in similiar vein. It is with these last three tracks we get some coherency
on this CD – not necessarily something new & great, but that selection made
sense. In total this CD has it’s good moments, along with bad. The problem
is: who wants such a collection of unknown names? (FdW)
Address: <www.adastra-records.com>
FARMERSMANUAL – EXPLODERS_WE (CD on OR)
Two CD’s for the price of one; at least for the first thousand purchasers.
Included with this studio CD is a live disc with two tracks. The press
release (but not the packaging) suggest that listeners use the
Random/Shuffle knob on their players to get the most out of the ‘dead’
(studio) CD, which has 60 tracks and certainly benefits from this
instruction. I have listened to it a few times in as a linear composition,
and must say that I really like the way it starts off, dragging itself,
staggering, into unholy life. However, I found that it lacked the
structural surprises of earlier FM stuff, when played from top to bottom,
and it certainly works best by following the user’s instructions once the
beats drop in. Random/Shuffle generates a wild hysteria which I think is
synonymous with FarmersManual music. As always, it’s the crushed rhythm
patterns that make this music such a pleasure, plus seeing the horrified
expression on your best chum’s face when his speakers rupture and
disembowel themselves through the bass ports like so many Ebola victims.
It’s a bit like connecting two power cables to the same machine. Lovely,
crunchy, over-excited bursts of unrestrained machines enjoying the pain
being inflicted on them. Occasionally I had the feeling I was listening to
the Residents after they had taken the wrong kind of drugs, or perhaps the
TeleTubbies when they’ve had theirs taken away from them.
The ‘live’ CD contains two tracks, which consist of masses of digital stretches
layered over each other and which come across more as an electro-acoustic
exercise in demolition with less attention paid to the beats.
Well worth getting and shuffling loud. (MP)
Address: <or@touch.demon.co.uk>
R&D2 – DISINFORMATION (CD on Ash R.I.P.)
8 more tracks from Joe Banks, which continue where the first R&D CD left
off (with Track 9, bacause the first CD ended with Track 8). In many ways
this is a more gentle collection of material, and all tracks were recorded
live from single sources of radio frequency atmospherics and interferences.
It starts and ends ruff with VLF harmonics of the 50hz ELF frequency
radiated by AC current electricity – apparently a very difficult signal to
escape from if you’re busy recording VLF sounds. This signal is generated
by all things electrical, most especially by power lines, so it’s very
difficult to actually exclude them from VLF recordings unless you’re
prepared to remove yourself far enough from civilisation and it’s power
grids. It seems though that there are some isolated places within our great
urban environments where it is less apparent – try the southwest corner of
Richmond Park in London, for instance. Mr Banks uses high and low side band
filters to modify the recordings in these two tracks, and additionally
bungs the opening piece through a pitch shifter.
The second track is a perverted, yet gentle piece for five performers: Joe
(VLF band radio noise), Rob (on TIG welding), John (lathe) and additional
ambient field disturbances by Network South East and Eurostar. It’s like a
moment of static, frozen in time. This is follwed by what could almost be
the sound of a dentits’ drill when it hits the edge of a broken tooth.
There are also two tracks on this release which appeared previously on (now
deleted) vinyl, ‘Stargate’ and ‘National Grid’.
I really like the piece titled ‘Theophany vs. National Grid’ which sounds
like something very compacted cracking very slowly – but is really High
Frequenvcy AC noise with intermittent lightning strikes. Lightning strikes
create electromagnetic impulses which can be picked up by receivers
thousands of miles away. Apparently there are about 2000 storms worldwide
each day and the earth is struck 100 times a second when lightning strikes.
This is what creates the flashing effect. Lightning strikes emit radio
pulses in the lowest end of the radio spectrum, which travel great
distances, following the surface of the earth as ground waves. What sounds
like waves of static in this piece are really sounds produced by clusters
of individual bolts of lightning.
Ghost Shells Part 2 (Part 1 was released on a mini-LP Ash 2.7, probably
also deleted) is a blend of pings, drips and whistles created, once again,
by lightning strikes, but this time blended with Royal Navy data
communications with nuclear submarines.
For those of you who wish to find out more about these radio phenomena, I
suggest you contact Mr Banks (via the label, I guess as there’s no other
address given) or else get yourself a copy of the excellent double CD
released by Irdial several months ago titled ‘Electric Enigma: The VLF
Recordings of Stephen P. McGreevy’. Listening to the R&D2 CD inspired me to
re-read the extensive notes included in this Irdial release, and despite
the fact that all sources are listed on this ASH CD, I do wish there was
more comprehensive information included with it. Perhaps Mr Banks is
planning to incorporate some extensive text in a forthcoming release? (MP)
Address: <ash@touch.demon.co.uk>
VARIOUS ARTISTS – EINE SONNE VOLL BLUT (CD/CD-ROM by DV).
An interesting release, if you only look at the format: This CD-R contains
48 minutes of Audio-material, but also a Video – clip and lots of
information (discographies of the involved groups, and a funny photostory
of DEEP) you can watch with your PC if you have a CD-drive. So even if you
don’t have a PC you can play this as a normal CD. The Audio-part, though,
focuses more into the darker fields of music, and we can listen to a
mixture of “rock” and more symphonic / ambient influenced tracks, with
music by NULL(who participates with two tracks), FINAL FRONTIER (dark synth
ambient), HYBERNOID (melancholic metal), DEEP(a group from Augsburg, which
play a kind of experimental emotional rock) ENDURA (occult heroes from
England, who just sound too sacral for me), and ORIGAMI GALAKTIKA (they get
all the honour, because they have the longest track [15:37] and I think
this is also the best – after their two long tours in 1998 EVERYBODY should
know them!!) , plus this bonus video by RED HARVEST which I can’t hear
because I haven’t got any loudspeakers anymore (they just were too bad, so
I gave them away.. shit), but I know they do a rich and melodic dark metal
(!), so you may agree that this is really a strange mixture, which makes
this compilation in my eyes even more interesting! Nice large-format
full-colour CD – cover also… and it’s cheap! Ohm, by the way, you need a
486 Windows PC with 33 MHZ and 8 MB RAM to play the CD-ROM. I guess
everybody who can read this Internet-only mag might have such
requirements…
This is the first release of a label from Cologne which seems to have
NOTHING to do with the A-MUSIK-family. (BAR)
Address: <Adroullier@aol.com>