BIP HOP GENERATION V. 1 (Compilation cd by Bip Hop)
BIP HOP GENERATION V. 2 (Compilation cd by Bip Hop)
TAKU SUGIMOTO – ITALIA (CD by A Bruit Secret)
TOSHIMARU NAKAMURA – NO-INPUT MIXING BOARD # 2 (CD by A Bruit Secret)
MOTION – PICTURES (CD)
FIRST FLOPPY – LEGION OF HATRED (CDR by Burning Emptiness)
PAR TOUS LES TROUS NECESSAIRES (compilation CD BY Cavage)
PRINCESS DRAGONMON – PATCHES (CDR by Time Stereo)
THE MEMBERS OF TINNITUS – 28-33 (7″ by Promenade)
NAUTICAL ALMANAC – TRANSCRIPTEDIVISIONS (LP by Hanson Records)
RONSUN – ONO, SC:R, YEAR_0 (MP3’s on www.ronsun.net)
BIP HOP GENERATION V. 1 (Compilation cd by Bip Hop)
BIP HOP GENERATION V. 2 (Compilation cd by Bip Hop)
In the 80’s it was Hip hop. Then it was Trip Hop in the 90’s. In the first
decade of the 21st century, Bip Hop could be the name that separates the
sheep from the goats when the talk goes to musical trends. No obsolete hip
hop-scratch, no dragging Trip hop beats. The style is ultra-innovative,
super-experimental and constantly searching for new unexplored grounds
within electronic music. The result on the first two volumes of the Bip Hop
Generation-series is experimental but still quite accessible electronica.
Bip Hop Generation V.1, being saturated by minimalistic sound-expressions,
reaches its climax around the haunting repetitive sampler-minimalism of the
always exciting Dutch trio Goem, the minimalized darkside-jungle from
Phonem and the surprisingly aggressive contribution from Schneider TM. In
the second chapter, the expression generally turns more ambient. Highlights
on V. 2 peeks around the fragile ambience of Arovane, the melancholic
ambient-experimentalism of Köhn, and Wang Inc.’s beautifully dark
reflections on the disasters made by the NATO mission during the last
Kosovo war. Two promising chapters, that makes us long for more from the
Bip Hop Generation. A great opportunity to become acquainted with the
electronica-scene of today. Excellent! (NMP)
Address: www.bip-hop.com
TAKU SUGIMOTO – ITALIA (CD by A Bruit Secret)
TOSHIMARU NAKAMURA – NO-INPUT MIXING BOARD # 2 (CD by A Bruit Secret)
A new label from France, with two Japanese musicians as their first
releases. The covers are minimal, yet ugly. The typeset is naively done on
a computer. Even if you want a minimal design, you should do it good.
Taku Sugimoto offers his third solo CD, but he has played and released
music with the big names, like Keith Rowe, Kevin Drumm, Toshimaru Nakamura,
Günter Müller and Otomo Yoshihide to name but a few. This solo release is a
delicate piece of softer then soft music played on guitar. Most of the time
barely present, seemingly playing random notes with long intervals of
silence. Three pieces, all recorded live in Italy last year, of austere
power of silence. You need to be sitting and fully concentrate, otherwise
it passes without noting. Great stuff.
As far as I can remember this is the first solo release by Nakamura that I
heard, after various works with people like Keith Rowe, Jason Khan and
Sachiko M. Nakamura, it might be known, works with a no-input mixing board,
meaning he feeds the sound out put of say the headphones into the general
input, or the outputs of the effect rack into the input. It might result in
a load of noise (if you have a mixing board, it might be worthwhile to try
it yourself), but Nakamura has mastered this technique excellently. I was
surprised by the fact that it was much more rhythmical then I would have
expected. My expectations were that of a streaming dark ambient, but for
the most part these six tracks dwell upon looped sound (which sounds better
then rhythmical, because you may think some rhythm machine is involved),
which slowly builds itself in layers, with a few dbs added here and there,
an extra layer of noise and in general is not an obnoxious loud affair.
It’s more a held-back and distant sounding album. One that stays on for a
while. (FdW)
Address: <m_henritzi@club-internet.fr>
MOTION – PICTURES (CD)
A self-released CD from the UK. Motion previously released a split 12″ on
the Fat Cat label, and was also involved Emiliana Torrini remix project
from the same label. Here they/he present 12 tracks of microwave like
music. To make life even more difficult, a particular branch of microwave
music. Not dwelling on beats, high ticks and low end blops, this hovers
around with sound files in an ambient sort of way. Points of reference are
Oval, Microstoria, Tone Language, Hem or Nacht Plank. Careful fragile
music, that never the less moves forward and backwards (sometimes at the
same time), with strange little sounds dropping in and out of the mix.
Sometimes its not easy to detect the structure of his compositions and at
times, one may find some of the tracks too long (in general they last
between 5 and 7 minutes). This beside this is a nice album and limited to
500 copies. (FdW)
Address: <chris_motion@hotmail.com>
FIRST FLOPPY – LEGION OF HATRED (CDR by Burning Emptiness)
PAR TOUS LES TROUS NECESSAIRES (compilation CD BY Cavage)
Notes from underground, from France this time. A CDR with hardly any info
by First Floppy. Six long tracks of ultra heavy rhythm pieces, too slow to
be gabber, more up tempo industrial music. Far away are voices, maybe from
the good ol short-wave, and an overall distortion on the synths. I imagine
a dark concrete bunker with hardly any lights and a small crowd dancing to
this.
More underground can be found on a compilation from France by Cavage
Records. Their releases are all packed with a simple, direct black and
white imagines. Sixteen tracks according to the cover, seventeen according
to my CD, of at times brutally raw techno, a hip hop track, gabberesque
tracks and microwaves. Names include White Mellow Bean, Lolita Killa,
Saoulaterre (the band behind the label, who collaborates on various
pieces), Nomex, DX Media, Daempe and many more. Probably these names mean
as much to you as they do to me, but overall it’s a very nice compilation,
if you are bored with top 40 house shit. True techno remains underground.
(FdW)
Address: http://tinrp.free.fr
Address: http://c8.com
PRINCESS DRAGONMON – PATCHES (CDR by Time Stereo)
Princess Dragonmom presents us a four track CD-R, lasting exactely 35
minutes, in an edition of 50 copies, with the P Dragonmom patch of course.
Princess Dragonmom are both a noise and performance group. The four pieces
on this CD are no doubt part of a bigger thing, most likely their recent
tour in Japan. The music itself is quite static, with a powerful mid-range
sound. It sounds like these guys stood on a cable from a guitar and which
resultant is being fed through a couple of effects and done. Quite alright
if you are into the noise thing already, but maybe if one could watch the
performance it will get more value. (FdW)
Address: http://timestereo.com/
THE MEMBERS OF TINNITUS – 28-33 (7″ by Promenade)
The Members of Tinnitus are a group of people who present themselves as an
open group, members seem to fluctuate. I have yet to find who’s in charge.
The lo-fi 7″ here is packed between 2 hardboard plates and very naive
collage styled cover. The music – six tracks in total – range from free
style playing on bass, drums, and organ to free jazz and an occasional dash
of noise. All in all less noisy and punky then suggested by the package,
and therefore quite enjoyable. The long cut ’28’ is my favorite cut here: a
psychedelic, almost F/i space rock tune. (FdW)
Address: http://hem.passagen.se/promen/pfr/
NAUTICAL ALMANAC – TRANSCRIPTEDIVISIONS (LP by Hanson Records)
The two members of Nautical Almanac have been around for a while,
collecting loads of electronica toys, releasing records and touring the USA
and Europe. Their equipment is depicted on the cover, including a list of
what it’s called. Many of these are very simple keyboards and children
toys, which are modified according to the band wishes. All of the fourteen
cuts on this record were recorded live, as real live in front of an
audience, or live without overdubs. There is a lot of scratches going,
broken equipment being re-animated, in addition to such love beats as
created by such fine machinery as the Maestro Rhythm King. This movement of
re-wiring and modifying equipment, circuit bending, or what shall we call
it, moves far away from the laptop movement, which may result in the end in
the same sort of sound treatment. But the circuit benders will always sound
more raw and more analogue. There is a hit and miss character present here
of course, but such is life in the misery of broken equipment. Certainly on
the b-side, some of the cuts are a tad bit too long. On the first side they
keep things short and clear and it moves around. With the silk-screened
cover and music like this, the eighties were never closer by. (FdW)
Address: <hansonrec@hotmail.com>
RONSUN – ONO, SC:R, YEAR_0 (MP3’s on www.ronsun.net)
A change in name, but not really in style: rsundin has becom ronsun. The
website is minimal and basically informative. The three pieces are actually
albums, each 30-40 minutes long, so downloading them may take some time.
The first one, ONO, is from 1999 and contains 7 tracks. it is quite noisy,
not unlike some of the older Bad Kharma material. Playing with feedbacks,
cuts and loops, it sometimes reminds me of the Mego crews. The dynamics of
the tracks are more or less the same, with an exception here and there,
which is not so good for my attention. Track 5-7 are certainly the ones
that stand out. They are more subdued than the others and have more tension
at the same time. In all this is not my favorite release. SC:R consists of
material from ronsun’s first solo concert in june 1999 and starts totally
different: soft rumbles with some hisses and clicks introduce the first
piece and end abruptly, leaving faint sounds that vey subtly build up the
second part. Track 2 starts in a similar vein as track 1 ended. Soft sounds
create the basis for a slow build up of the piece, to which low bit rate
samples are added. Everything stays quite soft, but gets more complex over
time, until there is a cut to a new sound and then again. Then the whole
builds up again to get a bit more uneasy. More my kinda stuff. The third
track starts with a clicky loop, that changes all the time. Sometimes
glitchy, sometimes industrial. Then a sudden burst and there is the second
part: more crackles, hisses and weird sounds, with changing tones here and
there. Later it’s back to loops and cuts again, in a noisier way. Last up
is YEAR_0, containing live files from concerts played in 2000. The first
part again starts quietly with samples of unknown nature and a high hiss.
The complexity of the sound slowly becomes clear with the rising of the
volume. There’s a lot of material present. A sudden cut and new sounds are
introduced. This part builds up and down and leaves a very light crackling,
almost like a small fire burning (which is probably not the case). During
this, tones are added and then it stops. A very good piece. The second
piece starts with a very short white noise composition leaving a high
whining sound that fades in and out. Very slowly another sound is faded in,
then a cut and more sounds enter, all the time in a pretty low volume. This
builds up and the white noise burts in again sometimes. After this it
slowly builds down. Again a very good piece. The third part is basically
more of the same, with clear environmetal recordings present. This is the
quietest piece of them all. As you may have noticed, YEAR_0 is my favorite,
then SC:R, then ONO. But all of them are worth downloading. (MR)