CLOP NEPLAT (2LP by Some Place Else)
A while ago an interesting, obscure CD was released, simply entitled ‘CD 1’ by Clop Neplat and this new release is both a retrospective aswell as a follow up to that CD. One LP is new material by Clop Neplat, and other are remixes by various friends.
The new work sees a continution of the work on the CD. Slow, at times pulsating pieces, in dark ambient industrial setting. At a few occasions Clop Neplat bursts out into howling noise, but it is kept to a minmum. The ‘softer’ pieces are more intense, building to nice crescendo’s.
But what is there to remix? Clop Neplat’s music is already full of sounds, and there are no beats to pick… 10 years ago this would have been called ‘recycling’, but the times are ah-changing, and so does it’s vocabulary. Of the remixers, only the names of Lasse Marhaug and Kapotte Muziek will ring the vaguely familiar bell. Marhaug opens up ith decayed drones, which quickly distorts into noise and ends with the shimmering of nordic sun never fading. Kapotte Muziek takes likewise drones, but kept to a minimum, like a cosy campfire. Last on this side is Medit, who a more synthetic approach to the offered drones. Niko Skorpio goes into low resolution sampling and guitar effects. Then Janko, Krul’ Albanskaj, more like Medit and quite static. Augustus M. takes also the cheap foodpedals for the most noisy version of it all. With the limitation offered by the original, a likewise limited remix version… (FdW)
Address: <place685@netti.fi>
SWANS – SWANS ARE DEAD (2CD by Relapse)
Last saturday me and some friends watched the Eurovision song contest (like many of our readers I’m sure and such a shame Germany didn’t win!), and of course we widely commented on songs, persons and the politics of it all. None of us watches popular music programms, so what gives us the ability to comment? I feel again the same, now that those nice boys of Relapse send me this double CD in gorgious digipack – what a coffin. I was never a fan of the Swans, and just occasionally i heard my friend (oh Joy) playing it on our joint radioprogramm. So maybe I am the last person to say anything about it, but then again looking at my fellow writers, who is?
Some statics then: one CD was recorded in 1995 and the other in 1997. The music is dark, loaded with atmospheres of more darkness, heavy, ultra heavy (not in the sense it’s loud, because I never play music loud, but just heavy as in draggin’ on). Even though, to go back to a favourite topic of mine, this is the format of music, I don’t seem to like, I did enjoy playing it. Tracks like ‘I See Them All Lined Up’ may be rock formatted, but it has an appealing agrressiveness and sound unrock. Dead can be fun. (FdW)
Address: <relapse@relapse.com>
PSYCHOGEOGRAPHICAL DIP (CD by GD Stereo)
A thematic compilation CD around the McWarren Park Play Center built in 1936 and ‘gutted by fire in 1986 and is now closed’. According to the cover ‘Psychogeography sets for itself the study of the precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment on the emotions and behavior of the individual’. Many of the sound contributions deal with soundscaping: every day sound, mainly parks and children playing, are set into settings of electronic sounds. Gen Ken Montgomery who opens up is a perfect example of this approach. Others like Chop Shop take on a more monochrome approach, using single sound sources which are stretched and sampled. Or the wind-blowing-in-the-microphone of F. Lopez (bytheway an audible piece!) or the banging the metal gate of Sean Meehan. Others included are John Hudak, If Bwana, Pat Courtney and Brian Conley. A strong and personal compilation this one (FdW)
Address: GD Stereo – P.O.Box 1546 – New York, NY 10276 – USA
BLACKHOUSE – SHADES OF BLACK (CD by Blacklight)
I guess I have not much to say about Blackhouse – I like few of their old recordings, like ‘5 Minutes’ or the split LP with Nightmare Lodge, but their big rock/hard rhythm/let us shout the name of Jesus approach is a very thin package altogether. They can add rap (as in Shout!’) or abandon lyrics altogether (as in ‘Warp Drive’), but I don’t hear much progression from much of their previous work. Sorry boys. (LW)
Address: <label@blacklight.com>
VARIOUS ARTISTS – BENTO BOX (CD by Caipirinha Productions)
At last something on Caipirinha I can be enthusiastic about – I really tried with some of their previous releases but they never really cut it with me. This is a very groovy compilation and one well worth getting. I’d rank it along with the totally brilliant ‘Darque Fonque’ compilation on Middle Earth which came out earlier this year, although it’s not as menacing by half.
The CD starts with one of the best – it’s by Stellar Jungle, called ‘Visit Venus’, and it contains a sample from some very famous, possibly seventies space-pop track (called ‘Magic Flight’, maybe, and it could have been performed by the band which wore space suits in their cheesy video. Help me somebody, before I resort to taking the drugs and forcing a flashback !).
Next up is by Big Duck, which would not have been at all out of place on the Darque Fonque set – brittle filter sweeps right from the start. There’s wicked jazz bass on the track by Squarepusher disguised here as The Duke Of Harrington, and this is followed by wonderfully easy madness by Lisa Carbon, aka Atom Heart, with it’s totally enjoyable and completely senseless squidgy synth line. Track 6 has the sample ‘It’s all mine, and your woman too’, set against an hallucinatory, exotic semi-eastern soundtrack. Yet another excellent piece. Then there’s more dub, fractured jazz,more dub and some jittery space dust. Safe for children and highly recommended. (MP)
NEGATIVLAND – HAPPY HEROES (CD by Seeland)
Another CD by supergroup Negativland, albeit a short one, all about, yep you guessed it – advertising (one more time, please). It’s hosted by Neglads creation Eddie Idle who shouts between all the re-arranged and appropriated bits. This time the Jolly Green Giant, Colonel Sanders, OJ Simpson (and his personal trainer, dead wife and doubly-dead Ron) all come in for a hammering. And yes, Little Mickey Jackson is in there somewhere too. Listen to the battle of the egos between the producers of advertisments and the people who do their voice-overs, when they dare to think about what it is they’ve been given to read. Listen up while the people who do the voice-overs struggle with overly alliterative texts and the character accents they use. ‘Happy Heroes’ (from their previous CD ‘Piedpiss’) is remixed here, but remains a scathing commentary on public opinion and how easily it is manipulated after the details of the crime shock the nation, which all too soon forgets the various transgressions made by the famous boychild abusers or wife beaters who do a good deed for charity and maybe donate the proceeds of a tepid song to the legal profession. Then they die and the world mourns, right. (In these cases it’s probably best to get shot)
Fred Mertz resurfaces – remember him in the ‘I Love Lucy Show’ – as indecisiveness personified. Mertz, the little brain-shaped pill that makes up your mind. Too many choices and not enough time… then these are the tabs for you. Take only as directed. The contents of this CD were prepared for the Ad Companions Group, A Spellrite Division of Fririte Naive Novelties. Now licensed to One World Advertising, Howland Island, Mid-Pacific Zone 17. And if that all sounds like gibberish to you, then get a copy of ‘The Time Zones Exchange Project’, also on Seeland and fill in the conceptual cracks in your cranium. Nothing is sacred and no stone of American cultural mythology is left unturned by this wacky crew.
“I’ve spent 20 times more for you people that any other commercial I’ve made. You people are such pests !” (MP)