The Ancient Gallery, a dark industrial dance project hailing from Dresden, Germany, is a group that I have to admit being unfamiliar with before this disc came across my desk for review. Sleekly produced and chock-full of potential dance-club anthems, I was pretty-well hooked right away and left to wonder where this band’s been all my life. Clearly I need to get out more.
Alles Ist Nichts is apparently the third installment in the band’s growing industrial discography, following up 2001’s Deinstallation and Kopfdelay released shortly thereafter in 2002. I’d be remiss not to allude to the band’s inescapable similarities to Rammstein, although I hesitate to make a big thing of it – it would definitely be a mistake to carelessly dismiss this band as simply another member of the Rammstein wannabe club. The Ancient Gallery holds their own. Still, the metal-tinged guitars layered over entrancing synths, topped off with raspy, aggressive vocals should definitely appeal to fans of Rammstein, Project Pitchfork and other Deutsche industrial frontrunners.
The album starts out instantly captivating and accessible with “Mit Mir,” (With Me) and “Vorwärts” (Forwards). Heavy guitar and dark, rhythmic bass riffs blend effortlessly with pulsating synths, pretty much setting the tone for the whole CD. The stark vocals, delivered unforgivingly by Robin W., manage to sound appropriately enraged without sounding unapproachable – passionate without being preachy. Varying in tone and depth, a combination of sung, spoken, whispered, screamed and snarled, this band has something to say – and whether you understand it or not… they’ve got you listening.
Tracks 3 and 4, “Was Wir Wollen” (What We Want) and “Teil des Ganzen” (Part Of the Whole) throw in some middle-eastern sounding vibe in the opening synths, (which I’m always a big fan of) before the guitars crash the party, and “Ich Leer” (I Teach) ventures into some cool spoken rhythm – the rap-punk stylings of SMP definitely come to mind. The disquieting vocals of “Very Hard To” are undeniably Manson-ish, while the chorus of “Was Wir Wollen” treats us to an almost operatic experience. Yep kids, there’s something here for everyone.
Lyrically, this CD carries a strong self-affirmative, “kiss my ass” sort of tone throughout. Most tracks have an anthem-esque quality, sneering in the face of adversity, speaking out against shallow materialism, that sort of thing. English-speaking fans needn’t be too frustrated at not understanding the lyrics. While they are mostly clever, angry and appropriate for the music they’re written for, you aren’t missing any profound, life-changing revelations here. The “points” the songs are trying to make for the most part aren’t in-your-face and leave a lot of interpretation up to the listener. Translation is difficult, as illustrated in “Druck” (Pressure) by the clever usage, twists and variations of the word “druck” which simply can’t be translated into a single English word that would make the same sort of sense. In short… don’t think too much. Just kick back and rock out!
That being said, here’s a stab at translation of “Ich Leer,“ which I feel is pretty representative of the album’s tone:
Ich muss bewahren was ich
weiss I have to warn of what I know
Ich muss glauben was ich
denke I have to believe what
I think
Ich will wissen was ich
lüge
I want to understand my lies
Ich will glauben was ich
rede
I want to believe what I say
Muss sagen was ich denke
Must say what I think
Ich will suchen
I want to search
Ich will wissen
I want to know
Ich will wissen
I want to know
Das wissen sind die hügel
The knowledge is the mountain
Die täler weit
The valleys deep
Die reden klein
The speeches shallow
Nicht leben wie wir denken
We don’t live the way we think
Nicht spielen wie wir fühlen
We don’t play the way we feel
Wir wollen wie wir müssen
We want what we have to want
Und reden was wir brauchen
And speak of what we need
Und lieben leben wie wir
lügen And love,
live the way we lie
Lieben leben wie wir lügen
Love, live the way we lie
Wir rennen, laufen vorbei
an dir We run, walk right past
you
Wir rennen, laufen vorbei
an dir We run, walk right past
you
Ich will
I want
Ich leer
I teach
I’m impressed with the band’s decision to keep the vocals for the most part in their native tongue. It definitely lends them more clout, less cheese (and I’ll save my rant about foreign bands scrambling to sell out to the largely English-dominated music industry for another day). It also struck me that, despite the fact that the band comes from a city in former East Germany where they’ve likely witnessed their share of political upheaval (not to mention the resulting tension and mutual east/west resentment that still sadly persists), The Ancient Gallery doesn’t appear to want to make any overt political statements with their music. (Even though they’ve undoubtedly got plenty to be political about.) The main goal and emphasis of their music really seems to be on entertainment value… and I applaud that. Mission definitely accomplished.
I find it an interesting decision on the band’s part to include 3 or 4 songs on Alles Ist Nichts that already appeared on their last release, Kopfdelay, which don’t appear to be remixed or revamped versions of the first. With 2 years between CDs I can see that sort of thing becoming a bit redundant for die-hard fans. And while this is obviously an impressive and consistent release from start to finish, I do still see room to grow for the band, especially in adding diversity from track-to-track (resulting hopefully in more unique and stand-out tracks on their next venture) and a bit more instrumental variety. That being my only constructive criticism, I’d like to thank my good friend Jyri Glynn for my long-overdue introduction to this talented act, and I’ll definitely be keeping an ear on what will hopefully be a long and successful career for these Dresden industrialists!
http://www.theancientgallery.com
ALL MY FAULTS
Euthanasia: Memento
Mori (A&F Promo)
~review by Mick
Mercer
Oh blimey, electronics with a jaunty edge, now that can cause me problerms! Very upbeat and squiggly, ‘Sand Of Time’ has a simple dance pulse cutting through, and cleanly sculpted vocals sensibly careen through an efficient arrangement, in what you’d call effusive electro-rawk. Nothing soppy here, but nothing excessive. It pounds away, he howls in time and it has stages, because he’s shrewd enough not to go for a simple route. The main beat and pattern comes back to emphasise the melody but he overlays well with rough patches. What lets it down is having so much keyboard work to suggest power, and not enough guitar, although the press release suggests he’s changing that for the future, so this could end up a real torrent onstage. There’s also a weird piano phase at the end which introduces a sweet shock, especially given the vocal cheek, but it stops the song becoming a true explosion.
He goes a bit feeble in ‘Forest After Midnight’, as though gripped by Herculean mental dilemmas, before the guitar impersonations comes to his rescue and he can frolic again with lots of faux rock bluster, grunting treated vocals, followed by the frisky aerated chorus, just so you remember the world is a nice place really, and it’s working well. I don’t like it at all, but the Modern Goth Clubber will feel like they are Zeus on a night out. ‘These Hours Of Emptiness’ again has a decent chorus, because he knows his structures this guy, but the incorporated noises, which are there to keep things busy, are actually a pain when he could have beefed up the rhythm of a cohesive onslaught, and it leaves the song fairly empty. ‘Alles Ist Gesagt’ then closes as a rabble-ranting sound which again fits in an orderly sequence, for accessibility, and seems almost camp. It rolls along quiet steadily but I kept forgetting it was on, because it’s full of so many expected sounds and professional sounding ‘effort’, with roary vocals, twinkly synth and some dour riffs. I seem to be hearing that week in, week out.
A job well done, clearly, but not for me.
Amber Spyglass
Accelerating Parcae
~review by Kevin
Filan
Although they’re only a duo, Boston’s Amber Spyglass makes enough beautiful noise for a symphony orchestra. Kelly Godshall’s vocal stylings and keyboard work complement the guitar and programming mastery of John DeGregorio like spiced port complements a cold Cambridge winter. Far too many synthesizer-driven duos create music which is cold, detached and mechanical. The sounds of Amber Spyglass are warm, immediate and organic.
Much of this is due to DeGregorio’s choice of instrument. Striking a string produces overtones and harmonics which the best synthesizer cannot duplicate. (Don’t believe me? Find a synthesizer which can duplicate the sound of an acoustic Baby Grand piano, a flamenco guitar, or even a feedback-laden Jimi Hendrix solo). Simply put, the notes produced have more individual variation and more personality than the notes generated by a computer program.
DeGregorio puts this to fine use in songs like “Pearls of Blue” and “Hands in Position,” combining an acoustic intro with a clean electric accompaniment. He also takes advantage of the multitude of sounds a talented player can produce with an electric guitar. His Middle Eastern-flavored fills throughout this CD reminded me of a less ego-driven Robert Fripp.
Equally important is Kelly Godshall’s throaty, sexy vocals. She combines the passion of a blues diva, with the breath control and tone of a trained vocalist. She handles the tricky progressions on “Pearls of Blue” like a pro, catches the longing and sadness of “Her Dark Swan” and blasts out the Siouxie-esque moans of “Catalyst Groove” with equal flair.
Amber Spyglass could have been Another Soulless Darkwave Synth Unit: they could also have been Another Pretty but Forgettable Ethereal Unit. They’ve avoided both traps: instead what they are is one hell of a band, and one which deserves wider notice. If you haven’t heard them yet, do yourself a favor... buy this CD.
1. Pearls of Blue
2. Red Dust
3. Hand in Position
4. Little Things
5. Silent Ravine
6. Catalyst Groove
7. I'm Afraid of Americans
8. Her Dark Swan
9. Divide
10. Venus in the 8th House
11. In White
Kelly Godshall: voice, keyboard,
lyrics
John DeGregorio: guitars,
samples, programming
David Chervenak: bass guitar (Pearls of Blue, Hand in Position, Silent Ravine, Her Dark Swan, Divide).
American Music Club
Love Songs For Patriots
(Cooking Vinyl)
~reviewed by Stuart
Moses
One of the wonderful things about my time at University in the early 90s was the access I suddenly gained to other people’s record collections. American Music Club were just one of the bands I discovered at this time. One of the less wonderful things is the amount of time I spent depressed - when I should have been out meeting girls. I don’t think American Music Club caused me to feel melancholy in the first place. I don’t even think they made me feel worse. Just when I did feel down this was the band I reached for. So you can understand if I approach this album with a little trepidation.
When singer Mark Eitzel and his cohorts went their separate ways ten years ago it was the end of an era, both for me and the band. I had been underwhelmed by their final release, 1994’s San Francisco, in any case. Eitzel continued releasing increasingly bizarre solo records. Among these were The One With Peter Buck of REM (West), The One Filled With Unlistenable Covers (Music for Courage And Confidence) and The One Where American Music Club Classics Are Redone With The Help of Traditional Greek Musicians (The Ugly American). It felt like there had been a time when Eitzel and I were close, but that our routes through life were becoming increasingly disparate.
Yet as time passes you sometimes forget what you fell out over and wonder what the other is doing these days. When I heard American Music Club were reconvening for this album my trepidation was mixed with excitement. I’d missed Eitzel’s late-night tales of drunks, lowlifes and miscreants. It was no surprise that he would make a record with Peter Buck. Imagine R.E.M at their saddest and you’re in the American Music Club playing field. There are plucked acoustic guitars, tales of sadness and regret. Yet this doesn’t really tell the whole story either.
Love Song For Patriots stars with the lumbering “Ladies and Gentlemen”. It’s a curmudgeonly electronic beast, which on initial plays sounds woefully out-of-tune. This isn’t the place to convert the casual listener. Give it time to settle and actually it sounds much better. The discord is deliberate, a statement of intent from some old punks that never lost their ideals. Sure they could play in tune, but they aren’t going to compromise the raw emotion they feel just for the audience’s benefit. It’s a call to arms which begins: “Ladies and gentlemen it's time for all the good that’s in you to shine…” Alcohol is a regular motif in both Eitzel’s life and music. The idea behind the song is that having been drinking all night the people in the song are going to do something really constructive with their life. Eitzel knows that failure is all too often an option and offers an alternative route: “If you can’t live with the truth go ahead try and live with a lie.”
Musically the next song "Another Morning" is a much more delicate creature. At first I think that we are in familiar AMC territory. Then listening to the words I realise that Eitzel is urging the listener to move on from painful times. He invokes his long-time muse Kathleen, which won’t mean anything to the casual listener, but will strike a chord for anyone that knows the story, or even just the song “Kathleen” from 1989’s United Kingdom album. It’s interesting that American Music Club can have a more upbeat message and still not sound trite. Ultimately Eitzel urges: “Lets smash all the violins at the symphony, I wanna see you smile with a real simple melody.”
Eitzel sounds cantankerous
on “Patriot’s Heart”. Maybe if Tom Waits had come from San Francisco this
is what he’d sound like. There’s nothing of the rampant experimentalism
of Waits’ recent work but thematic links between classics such as Heart
of Saturday Night and Blue Valentine can be seen by this listener. What
I initially imagined might be a comment on the current political situation
in the US turns out to be a much more oblique story about a stripper who
“don’t look that good but he’s got an all American smile.” There may be
an extended metaphor at work, but it’s difficult to tell. It may just be
another story of someone living their tawdry life. This song is in the
more surly style of “Ladies and Gentlemen”.
We are once more melancholy
and melodic for “Love Is”. This song takes me to a dark place asking: “Did
I make you throw away, all the lives you had?” It seems a strangely appropriate
question for the singer to ask the listener, but I don’t blame anyone else
for the choices I made. “Job To Do” starts slowly, then swells like the
sea for the chorus. It’s a raucous, slightly discordant, swell but the
dynamics serve the song well.
I don’t know whether Mark
Eitzel has been indulging in the sort of self-help therapy for which his
hometown San Francisco is known, but in “Only Love Can Set You Free” he
seems to be urging someone to leave pain behind. I rather like the idea
of focusing on what we want, rather than why we are sad, even if the title
of the song doesn’t really offer us any new insight.
Thirteen songs of this emotional
weight are almost too many to take in one sitting. After a while you realise
this album has two settings, quiet and melancholy vs loud and raucous.
“Myopic Books” is quite lovely, about the simple joys of hanging out at
a book shop that plays Dinosaur Junior. “The Horseshoe Wreath in Bloom”
is a less manic echo of the band’s earlier song “Crab Walk” from 1991 album
Everclear.
Things come to a climax with the seven-minute plus “The Devil Needs You”
which starts well, before drifting into cacophony around the four minute
mark.
It’s strange becoming reacquainted with someone that you were close to ten years ago. You can still see why you were attracted to them, you understand their many fine qualities, you wish them the best of luck, but you know that you’ve both moved on and things will never be the same. That’s the problem for me with American Music Club, they expressed so fully who I was back then that they don’t have the same relevance to who I am now. Love Songs For Patriots may be as good an album as they have ever made. But it doesn’t have the emotional attachment that United Kingdom and Mercury have for me. I only have so much room in my life for music like this. I wish them all the luck in the world though.
The tunestack:
Ladies & Gentlemen
Another Morning
Patriot’s Heart
Love Is
Job To Do
Only Love Can Set You Free
Mantovani The Mind Reader
Home
Myopic Book’s
Minstrel Show
Your Horseshoe Wreath Will
Bloom
Song Of The Rats Leaving
The Sinking Ship
The Devil Needs You
The players:
Danny Pearson: bass
Mark Eitzel: vocals
Vudi: guitars
Marc Capelle: piano
Tim Mooney: drums
The website: http://www.americanmusicclub.com/
The Azoic
Illuminate
(Nilaihah Records)
~reviewed by Mike
Ventarola
The Azoic are kicking ass and taking names! Here is a collection of songs lyrically delving into the nonsense of relational game playing and overcoming the mind screw and torment left behind.
Now take these same lyrics, run them through heavy duty electronic vocal processing and fuse them with the trademark Steve Laskarides beat driven pulsations and one has a sure fire winner in their midst.
Vocalist Kristy Venrick put her heart on her sleeve when composing these tracks in the anticipation that her learning process would help to “illuminate” others. When one thinks of illumination, often we misleading assume that it should inspire us to something that is positive. Sometimes, illumination takes the form of waking up to one’s own denial and excuses within the framework of a relationship. Sometimes it means waking up and realizing that something we have been striving for is a wasted effort. Nevertheless, whatever form illumination may take with listeners, be assured that these tracks will leave dancers breathless on the club floors and home-party people in awe with the sonic potency delivered through their home stereo speakers.
In spite of the intensity of the heartbreak of some of these lyrics, the percussive fulmination simply makes you want to move and move a LOT.
Along with these tracks, we are also given a remake of the classic New Wave song, Obsession, done expertly for the modern era. We are also given a bit of a tease with Laskarides’ hand at vocals on The One, which is hopefully something that shall continue in the future as both Venrick and Laskarides make the song come fully alive with their harmony.
If you are seeking out potent dance music with beats per minute that are pretty much off the charts, do seek out Illuminate.
Tracks
Let Me Tell You Something
Going Under
The One
Illuminate
Conflict
Ever
Truth
Obsession
Carve Into You (2003 Edit)
Eternal
Passage
Conflict (cyber DJ Medley)
Website: www.nilaihah.com
BLACK ATMOSPHERE
DESCENDING FAITH (Global
Inception)
~review by Mick
Mercer
They seem to have been away for an age, but this, recorded last year, is a precursor for a tour of Eastern Europe and the West Coast of America in early 2005, which will be followed by an album, so…..they’re back! There will also be a remix album of some of their earlier work in the middle of next year.
‘Promising Roses’ is promising indeed, starting with despair and groaning, tossed lightly on a bed of thick, well sprung bass. The vocals are sweet and clear, and grow in clarity and power as the song starts to flail with a stirring, striking Goth chorus. The song spins downwards into a spiral of madness impressively too, suggesting a whirled passion and ends by exhaling, literally. ‘Embrace; is another tight chittering thing with some strangely old fashioned rawk guitar touches, lots of gloomy, spirited space and fine singing. They create a superb mood. ‘Seeking Sanctity’ is more modern and stranger with floating, skittering sounds and a strange, light elegance. The title track is a subtle, wizened item with guitar friction, keyboard plumes and wily, bickering vocals. It feels as wonderful as it sounds too. They really suck you in on it.
Looks like the album could be something special!
http://www.blackatmosphere.net
BAUHAUS
LIVE IN THE STUDIO
1979 (Nemo)
~review by Mick
Mercer
This CD actually goes with the limited edition Bauhaus book compiled by Andrew J. Brooksbank, who also runs a Love & Rockets zine, Apollox, but there were about fifty copies more of the CD done than the book. I have exchanged a few things recently with Andrew, and he suggested that if anyone fancies getting the CD by itself he would supply them until they run out. Anyone? Everyone should want a copy of this.
It’s interesting to read in Nancy Kilpatrick’s book how so many people still don’t get Goth’s musical antecedents correct, and wrongly attribute major Goth influence to either The Banshees or The Cure, and even Joy Division, as all these bands had far more impact on the Indie scene which naturally grew out of Punk, just as Goth did. All the first Goth bands would have been flexing their musical wings at the same time as those bands, and were strong enough individuals not to be influenced by others. While everyone of the earliest Goth bands probably owned a copy of The Scream so did anyone sensible, and only UK Decay might have a slight Banshees influence, but they had a far stronger Ants one. Nobody had a strong Joy Division influence, because they would have been aware that this was a band containing members from the truly dire Warsaw. People in the early Goth bands who bought the early Cure singles or went to see them, and saw nice boys in jumpers playing lovely, nervy punky-pop songs weren’t going to be swung by that! They were more likely to have their ears turned by Gang Of 4 and think how they could use that sort of sound.
So let’s be sensible about it shall we? Yes, the Banshees, Cure and Joy Division influenced Indie bands, and some Goth bands later on, who lacked sufficient imagination to create their own path, but not the first wave of Goth, and if they didn’t influence them they simply didn’t have an actual impact on how Goth became what it was. Right?
The only band who did have a strong influence was Bauhaus. They were also the band who had four equally insistent characters whose contributions rivalled one another in excellence and that is what makes their music remain so strong. Rhythmically, Kevin Haskins was some kind of human robot, as David Jay was a seismic assassin. Daniel Ash mastered the sense of guitar frisson better than anybody else, and the way Murphy dissected words in his mouth and stretched vowels lends credence to the fact he influenced Andi Sex Gang.
And Bauhaus thought of themselves as a glam band? I hate to harp on about it, but they were a t-shirt and jeans band with the occasional minimal outlay of a feather boa in the visual stakes until they supported Gloria Mundi, and then they took that and came back looking divine! Musically they ratcheted everything the Ants had suggested on their ‘Dirk’ album up a few gears and which the Banshees had managed to instil into the Punk field. They shaped a dark musical world and did so in a filthy and scandalously exciting manner, and without them Goth wouldn’t have been so much fun at the time. It would still have existed, but their potent brew of brute force and intelligent manipulation, of juddering power and demure sarcasm hasn’t been rivalled since.
This CD finds them recording a viciously spirited rehearsal in1979, with the guitar scraping inducing expectant nostalgic atmosphere instantly as ‘In The Night’ unfurls as a lunging brat of a tune, then the quavering creepy guitar and rustling percussion is cast aside by the inspired vocals of ‘A God In An Alcove’ right down to its vinegary dregs. ‘Dark Entries’ tumbles and flashes with Murphy like Oscar Wilde on speed, while ‘Telegram Sam’ is a casual, minimalist affair. There is more prominent chiselled bass in ‘Nerves’ alongside more classic Ash energy and the snail-like vocals set us up for an ugly musical brawl which is what’s required. ‘Honeymoon Groom’ is a frothy playful number with some hearty vocal drooling, and blow me down if ‘Kamikazi Drive’ isn’t The Small Faces! No idea how that happened, but they recover swiftly, easing out with the incomplete ‘Shows’.
It is a brilliant record, of a brilliant band, and comes in an attractive card slipcase. If you want one remember there are only 50 available. Cost?
£10.00 inc p&p
UK
£11.50 inc P&P
Europe
£12.00 inc p&p
USA / Elsewhere
Contact andyb1919@hotmail.com for details and say Mick Mercer sent you.
BEGODDEN MISTS
POST MODERN PLAGUE
(Black Custard Records)
~review by Mick
Mercer
I guess a hideous hellspawn rock band who record on a label with a name like that can’t be all bad but I still doubt very much I’d even be listening to this but for the involvement of Max from History Of Guns. It’s an area of music I back away from happily every time a hairy man in a black and white t-shirt opens his mouth and the ballbearings at the back of his throat start vibrating.
Leaving aside the noises-off of ‘The Dream Of The Unattainable’ it’s ‘Fortune Fades’ which emerges as well groomed rock, with initial vocals from a parrot on steroids. Comfortable and bruised, it’s very linear music and hardly over-fussy with a good chorus, but some of the guitar is a bit rickety!!! ‘Giving Up The Ghost’ then spreads the mix with quick guitar and plinking piano, as they rush into action, and it’s certainly less unwieldy than before, until ‘If Only’ to be acoustic and soppy.
‘Dead Poets Words’ is wonderful. Far tougher, squealing ands wobbling playfully like turbines on the piss, complete with great bass and fluttering synth work. ‘Grey’ has mildewing synth work like a 70’s organ, strange soft vocals, and wheedling guitar to create an unusual and diverting tune, complete with riffs to guide it home. ‘How much? How fast?’ isn’t quite as good, as the vocals aren’t clear enough half the time here, when he has all the room he needs. More organ pumps away, drums clatters respectfully and guitars keep to the shadows, other than some masturbatory widdling
‘Short Lived’ is mouldy sensitivity and even I’m starting to want some actual noise, and it duly arrives in ‘Hide Away’ but furious guitar activity until the fingers blister. is very tedious, and the acoustic ‘Secret judgement’ deserves no further comment. ‘The God That Fell From The Skies’ is some sweet piano led dawdle, and then it’s done and I’m bemused. They claim to display various rock styles, from metal to classic, but with a strong gothic tinge. I didn’t notice any gothic at all. I’m not sure I noticed a great deal of rock either. I think they’ve gone mad.
http://www.begoddenmists.co.uk
BILL PRITCHARD
HAPPINESS AND OTHER
CRIMES (Ncompass Records)
~review by Mick
Mercer
Simon Cowell: You have talent Bill, clearly. It’s your motivation which concerns me.Old Bill: Whatever, you soppy cunt…..
Okay, so that didn’t
happen, but it could. Those of you intrepid souls who grappled with early
issues of THE MICK will have read
an interview with this man, and maybe puzzled over why he dabbled with
French songs, played erratic dates, wrote peculiar songs and was clearly
not your normal kind of artist. But you wouldn’t have missed his character,
for Bill is never short on that.
I love his work, and I was amazed to learn of this album when Richard from Silverscope contacted me and informed it existed because I simply had no idea, so it was a joy to be suddenly surrounded by potentially inoffensive songs with centres that are soft because the pus of life, or the mush of romance, rarely hardens. Bill may strum gently, he may write riffs off as a crude affliction, but the songs still make a bigger impression than panicking drag queens falling onto wet cement.
”You stole my Capitol collection, of Frank Sinatra EPs” is a great opening line for any album (“You gave me absolutely nothing, then you threw away the keys”), and he’s straight in there with uncaring relationship woes, where the detritus needs to be considered, briefly, before cleaning up and moving on. Off-putting personalities are drafted in to people the songs, and ‘You Meet Every Loser In London’ (including “animals in lycra”!) is chirpy indie par excellence, like The Lighting Seeds without the hamfistedness.
It’s quality throughout, with Bill’s vocals, always fast enough to raise themselves above drowsy, being the main constant sound. He tricks you into expecting rich stories to unfold, as with ‘Jimmy McCay’ but you only get snapshots - “his wife works undercover, as a Masonic brother” - before it ends abruptly. Short stories, maniacally edited down, abound and ‘Broadway’, tale of a scam as yet of indeterminate potential, is a delight, stirring the mind, then evaporateing. Serious intent occasionally intrudes, as with the queasy ‘For The Good Of The People’ but soon it’s into the French ‘Hippy Hoorah’ which is Sacha Distel does Oasis.
He does turn into a sentimental old tosser for ‘Atmosphere’ and it’s always unnerving to hear him relaxed and optimistic, but then the reedy, bayonet-like ‘Melody Said’ spins into action, and both ‘The Tipton Slasher’ and ‘Terry Toy’ are seamy English life spread out like Morrissey might manage if he wasn’t such a ponce. ‘Marie Claire’ offering a more naïve glimpse into some unpicked social tapestry, before he romps through the foul-tasting ‘Suddenly Last Summer which revisits former musical glories of his past; the personalities depicted his lyrical playthings, tossed around like whimsical decorations. An organ and drums get pretty frisky here, although I have no idea why.
He only seems to use names Ray Davies would approve of, and ‘Cherry Orchard’ carries itself well, as the functional ‘Le Monde Selon Jimmy’ baffles me, and the luxurious simplicity of ‘Live A Little Longer’ encapsulates how something so plain can also be so heartfelt or just plain weird,.
Bill isn’t like other people. Ask those who have worked with him. They are easily identifiable by the raw gashes on their scalp where they have torn their hair out. All will agree on one thing. He’s well nigh a musical genius, and a total maverick.
http://66.194.40.120/~silvers/index.php?p=shop/cdinfo.php&id=ncomcd004 – (Try ‘Every Loser’)
http://www.silverscopemusic.com/
Typically, Bill has no actual site, but here be info (detailed discog): http://www.theacf.com/billprit/
Biometric Structures
Ecologies
~reviewed by Goat
Harsh industrial ambient noise, engineered to maddening monotony. As whole, the album comes off as somewhat poorly planned if not also ill-executed. Inexplicable (and perhaps unintended?) fluctuations of sound volume are an annoyance, as well as bits of almost dance-oriented tracks and what is to me a grave mark of insincerity; the sounds of a woman having an orgasm. *Yawn* There is only one thing more a band can do that will make me want to throw an album across a room, and that’s sample in the sounds of their first-born children crying.
Parts of the album are enjoyable and show that horrid curse we know as “potential”. If more of the album stuck to the flash of brilliance evidenced in “gate-keeper-effect” it’d be glorious. Instead, however, the band seems to have missed the mark on this one by trying to cover too much ground with not enough attention to detail. I’ll just listen to the last three tracks over and over and forgive them the rest.
Tracklist:
1. Ecology of hanta
2. Yoni
3. Herzrhythmusstoerung
4. In between
5. Gate-keeper-effect
6. Fear
7. Death factories
Hanta Records.
Hanta Records does not at
this time have a website. To purchase the CD, type the artist name
and title into an internet search engine.
BOHÉMIEN
DANZE PAGANE (In The
Night Time)
~review by Mick
Mercer
There’s something of a mystery attached to the story of this band. Originally one of Italy’s first Post-Punk bands, their press release points out that although formed in 1985 and issuing their first demo then split up the following years “due to the crisis which involved all the Gothic scene in Italy.” What the Hell was that? Can anyone tell me? It sounds dramatic.
Three of the original members are still in this new line-up, having got back together again in 2002 for a reunion, which soon progressed to releasing a demo and then this album, dated as last year. They have resumed playing live, including with Wire and Diva Destruction, and proudly proclaim themselves a mixture of Californian Deathrock and Italia Wave, so let’s explore.
Italian Goth is very distinctive in its own way, which many people have yet to fully explore. It has the low-key intensity present in many of the original Goth bands, where the mood is used to reflect what is in the lyrics, so the vocalist must exude great control and authority. If he, as here, has quite a gently observational manner, the music falls in behind him and the band only step out into stormier passages, usually for a chorus, where again the music isn’t what creates impact but the manner in which they sing. Luckily for all, these vocals are softly shaped but compelling. I’m sure some of you have heard the wonderful Artica, and Bohémien have soft focus similarities with them.
The title track has high female vocals too, hung like tattered curtains, and fidgety Goth guitar pecking at the hems. ‘Terra Sanctae’ shows in an instant they also have a classy guitarist who stirs up almost hints of the Middle East without them resorting to the clichés so many use. The vocals remain archly demonstrative, and lead firmly into a mildly shouty chorus, then they all step back as the guitar whisks morosely. It’s a beautifully balanced sound, with sinuous echoes cleverly included here and there, rising in volume towards a fine end with clappy percussion and hollow bass.
‘Libido’ is a wonkier item, with thin but fantastically fretful guitar somewhat awry from any solid mood, and this is on the punkier side of things, with a colourful vocal display and savage end. ‘Dirsi Addio’ is restrained and quietly austere, ‘Nella Nebbia’ is an old song resurrected from a 90’s compilation appearance and jangles sweetly with insidious vocal harmony. ‘Les Jeux Sont Faits’ is different, with Stefania’s mewing vocals that have a dip to them and a little lilting rise at the end of each line. With a creepy synth line and some dry, roasted guitar this is another stunner.
‘Tra Specchi’ spreads out, emotionally wasted, as piano flops onto some hazy guitar and it creates a sweet mood. ‘Sangue e Arena’ has more of the choppy, wrangling guitar which excites just by its imaginative curls, and some woollier bass and dark piano twists coalign to bounce beneath the singer’s portly vocals. They could have rushed off through this and been explosive, but that isn’t their style. It builds to a certain level, then simpers and glowers. ‘Eclissi (dell’anima)’ is a gleaming Goth whisper with beautiful vocal glaze and stompy drums, and they close on ‘Eclissi’ the thickened, echoing version which is a lovely idea.
This is a quite superb, richly varied, big album, but rarely does anything in an outright, obvious manner, letting the quality of the songs work their own magic on you instead. I hope they follow this up with another soon so they don’t slip away again.
http://www.bohemien.net/
http://inthenighttime.it
Bleak Track
Starting to Dream
~review by Kevin
Filan
According to their promo handout, Bleak Track’s debut EP offers “a gloomy marriage of death punk and noisewave.” If this scares you off, don’t be too worried. They’ve got plenty of smooth melody, combined with enough roughness to keep things interesting. Bleak Track is the love child of Exene Cervenka and Robert Smith, with Siouxie Sioux and Lydia Lunch duking it out for a shot at the Evil Fairy Queen role. In a world of hand-stapled-to-forehead bands, Bleak Track would rather jam that staple through someone else’s hand. They’ve spiced up their angst with a good bit of aggro, creating a mix which is tuneful without being tepid.
Bleak Track pays homage to their punk roots by keeping everything short and to the point. At 4’32”, “fear to follow” is the longest track ... and it seems positively indulgent next to tightly wound tracks like “the letter” and “decomposing love.” Jason Nipple deserves much of the credit here. His percussion is fast and furious: he doesn’t play his kit so much as he attacks it. Dave Ed provides a solid and steady thump which gives the proper support for Melody Bleak’s strong and sexy voice.
They also give a nod to experimental
acts, with their closing song, “Terrible.” This brief tune consists
of various and sundry weird noises which don’t really go anywhere.
It’s an unnecessary appendage, in this reviewer’s humble opinion.
I’d rather hear another 2 minutes of adrenaline-charged power chords; why
toy with a formula which has worked so well for so many others? Starting
to Dream has a more successful use of Strange Effects; they open with
weirdness, then get right back down to the business at hand.
Three people playing in
4/4 time... and singing songs which are both hummable and pogo-able.
How can you go wrong? Don’t be a shmuck: buy this CD.
1. the letter
2. starting to dream
3. fear to follow
4. decomposing love
5. terrible
Melody Bleak: guitars, bass,
keys, vox
Dave Ed: bass, guitar,
keys
Jason Nipple: drums
Corrosion
Nyaga (Self release)
~review by Uncle
Nemsis
At last, the debut album from Corrosion. I say ‘at last’ because Corrosion formed back in 2001, as a side project of 90s-scene goth-rockers All Living Fear. The band have shoved out a few demo CDs since then, but it’s taken four years to arrive here, at first-album stage - a delay that possibly came about because All Living Fear, instead of being put on ice for the duration, just kept on going. I suspect Matthew North, who is the principal musician, songwriter, arranger and producer in both bands, found himself with too little time to devote to his second band. During those four years, however, Corrosion have managed to make the occasional foray out onto the gig circuit, where they’ve proved themselves a suitably loud and boisterous live rock outfit - no mean feat in itself for a two-men-and-a-drum-machine combo.
So, here’s the album, bizarrely named after the New York Amateur Gardening Association, and sure enough it follows on from the live experience in that it reveals Corrosion to be first and foremost a rock project, rather than anything directly related to goth. Of course, because of the presence of that pesky ol’ drum machine, it may be that Corrosion’s main audience will nevertheless turn out to be goths, who tend to tolerate programmed rhythms in a rock context far more readily than rock fans, who usually insist on a human tub-thumper being in evidence before they’ll take a band seriously.
The programmed drums are unashamedly to the fore on the opening track, ‘Temple Of Secrets’, the rhythm clattering away with drum rolls dialled in every four bars - one of Matt North’s trademark programming techniques, that. And there’s Corrosion’s essential dilemma: the song is a good old rollicking rocker, driven along by a splendidly dirty chugger of a guitar riff, while vocalist Paul Roe gives it the full-on angst ‘n’ anguish treatment in the verses. But the relentless artificiality of the drum sound does rather detract from the overall flavour of full-on rock-ness the band are obviously trying to create. Perhaps in an attempt to deal with this, the beat is stripped back and simplified for ‘Soulless City’, and while there’s never any doubt that we’re in the presence of machinery rather than humanity, at least there’s not quite so much of that frustratingly artificial ticky-tocky sound going on here. In any case, the song is more of a power ballad than a rocker, although Paul’s vocal is so far back in the mix he struggles to make headway as the layered synths gang up on him.
Then there’s a new version of ‘Resurrection Playground’, possibly Corrosion’s best-known track from those early demos, which here appears in a pulsing dance/rock crossover anthem - the beat ruthlessly chopped back to a whump-and-thump floor-filling rumble. I’m just getting into it when a rinky-dink hi-hat starts ticking away, as if someone’s set a clockwork toy in operation, and some frankly rather weedy keyboards start see-sawing up and down the scale. Argh! And it was going so well up to that point! The track works very well as a hurtling club anthem, but there really was no need to clutter the mix with those eeee-oooow keyboards and chintzy hi-hats. But that’s Corrosion for you: just when they hit on something simple and effective, they can’t stop themselves from throwing in the kitsch and sync.
‘Armageddon In A Can’ employs a menacing bassline rumble, slashed-out guitar chords, a distorted, freaked-out vocal and - say hello to another Matt North trademark effect, folks - a sampled choir to create an acid rock experience that sounds very early-seventies, in a way. A taste of Corrosion’s classic rock influences coming through here, I think. The mood is maintained for ‘Nyaga, My Brother’, which is the most fully-realised track here - a genuine tour de force upon which Corrosion move decisively away from their goth-scene connections and their drum-machine-with-everything rock ‘n’ programming approach. It’s a deceptively subtle thing, based on a restrained percussion backdrop - all maracas and hand-claps - around which other-worldly psychedelic sounds and voices swirl. A real lost-in-the-desert tune, and a hint of what Corrosion could do if they decided to move boldly away from what the goth/rock audience is assumed to want.
‘Cold Blooded Martyr’ sees Corrosion move boldly in the direction of Led Zep, with a feel that suggests ‘Kashmir’ is in the influence-pile somewhere. ‘Speak And Destroy’ is a weirdly eighties-style slice of synth-rock, complete with lush keyboard sounds, like an out-take from an Alphaville album. The rattly drum machine is back, though, and the song chops off so abruptly at the end that I can’t help wondering if the studio experienced a sudden power cut. ‘Shattered Fragments’ brings back Matt’s tame sampled choir for an encore on a track which is otherwise a good old punkish blast. Good stuff, but I recall an earlier demo version of this song which was rather more rough and raw, and which I wish had been included here. Then ‘Dead’ leads us through a brief all-purpose demonstration of the essential Corrosion soundscape, with Paul Roe cruising through the vocal in uncharacteristically restrained fashion, as if he’s just giving it a swift run-through before he has to dash off to catch his train. ‘The Elemental’ employs some Big Country-ish guitars on a psychedelic rocker - nice electronic effects in there too, dropped in to the song like Worcester sauce in soup, but, as so often with Corrosion, the drum machine is uncomfortably dominant. And finally, ‘Sinister Dexter’ gives us a slice of spook rock upon which the band make a virtue of their drum-machine-driven sound by employing a deliberately old-skool rhythm sound on a whacked-out slice of almost sixties-ish acid strangeness.
This is a curate’s egg of an album, in that parts of it are excellent. Matt and Paul certainly have a genuine feel for the classic rock stylings they deploy here and there, and when they let their influences off the leash and go for that psychedelic seventies rock feel Corrosion really do hint at potential far beyond the DIY gothic rock zone which All Living Fear have inhabited these many years. But the programmed stuff too often tends to sound cheap and stuck-on, like a lump of fibreglass filler on the bodyshell of a classic car, and that’s the factor that I think will hold Corrosion back. If the band want to make any headway in the rock zone - the direction in which they’ve obviously pointed their music - then I think they’re going to have to up the ante in the area of programming and production.
It’s a paradox: Matt North is clearly so proud of his home studio set-up that he even puts pictures of his kit on the CD inlay (where, interestingly enough, the hardware shots are given significantly more prominence than the single, indistinct, photo of the people in the band). Guitars, amps, computer, mixing desk - they’re all here, displayed with almost fetishistic devotion, as if the most important aspect of the entire Corrosion project is the opportunity it gives Matt to play with his toys. I’m surprised he didn’t stick a photo of his Scalectrix set in there while he was at it. But for all the attention paid to the technology, Corrosion’s sound often betrays Matt’s background in years of DIY goth-projects. Those clattering drum machine beats, those squeaky synths and cheesy hi-hats - that’s just Matt’s style, a sound palette he first put together when All Living Fear first emerged in the early 90s as one of many ‘bedroom goth’ outfits of the time. Corrosion hint at greater potential, the possibility of pushing on to real rock scene success. But I think it’ll take another producer to get them there.
The tunestack:
Temple Of Secrets
Soulless City
Resurrection Playground
Armageddon In A Can (Revisited)
Nyaga, My Brother
Cold Blooded Martyr
Speak And Destroy
Shattered Fragments
Dead
The Elemental
Sinister Dexter
The players:
No specific credits are
given, but it's probably fair to say that Matthew North takes care of most
of the guitar/bass/programming, while Paul Roe contributes all the vocals
plus more guitars and programming.
The website: http://www.corrosionuk.com
Reviewed by Uncle Nemesis: http://www.nemesis.to
03/26/05
CORROSION
NYAGA (PRMN)
~reviewed by Mick
Mercer
At least I know this was sent to me in the spirit of optimism, after I wandered away carefree after the last autopsy, leaving them seething, and at just under 40 minutes even I can get through it easily. In fact opening track ‘Temple Of Secrets’ is hugely engaging, with a chirpy opening, brisk guitar and a nagging, circulatory gleeful chorus. The lightweight ‘Soulless City’ started fine, only for the singing of the word ‘ain-gells’ to stand out as something hackneyed, then they bumble happily along with some sub-techno rumble-rhythm in ‘Resurrection Playground’ maintaining a fairly low-key approach, before throwing their real weight into the chorus.
‘Armageddon In A Can (revisited)’ also has a very good bass and synth opening, behind which some greasy guitar festers and the rockiest vocals are lightly treated to spill into the poisonous froth, which is kept simmering by that synth. When it lapses into rock squalls I make a coffee, pop back and they’re still gyrating! Honestly, some people. Rock fans who find plain Metal overtone s a trifle wearisome will like the perverse traits exhibited, including the soiled poppy heart of ‘Nyaga, My Brother’ which is a clever mixture of enigmatic narrative and a nagging guitar undertow which reminds me of Bauhaus, but my memory refuses to regurgitate exactly what, which is irritating me enormously. Then you get piano introducing ‘Cold Blooded Martyr’ which is cooled down rock with some refreshing touches, and is that ‘Killer In The Home’???!!! Yes it is, trapped behind some murky, passionate rock wrestling. ‘Speak And Destroy’ is mild-mannered by comparison, with too much bleepiness, and then they coast belligerently over a rock plateau with ‘Shattered Fragments’, ‘Dead’ and ‘The Elemental’ before ‘Sinister Dexter’ conjures up a nicely searing ending
There’s nothing predictable about this new record, so if you like guitar noise, it could suit you. The reason it succeeds, in its own modest way, is because they’ve livened up, become slimmer and sharper, and haven’t allowed excess into the open. They’ve also got round any production limitations that deprive them of plush sounds by keeping the songs moving, and having peaks that really work. For the most part they manage that rather well.
It’s still rock though.
(Pouts, then sidles off, sulking.)
Crack Ov Dawn
Dawn Addict (Equilibre)
~reviewed by Uncle
Nemesis
Here’s one to make the kidz feel deliciously dangerous and radical, man. Thunderous guitar riffing, rasped-out vocals, a generous sprinkling of drug references, and charmingly uninhibited use of the verb ‘to fuck’ from a band who, if their photo is any guide, have spent many hours practicing that essential smouldering hard-men pose without which you just ain’t nuthin’ in the world of modern metal.
Yep, although the publicity bumph claims that Crack Ov Dawn are a collection of glamsters, the band can’t disguise their true provenance. Crack Ov Dawn are, in fact, a thoroughly modern metal band. They come from France, but they’ve been precision-tuned to appeal to disaffected teenagers the world over. When your mom sends you up to your room for cheeking granny at the dinner table, and you’re looking for some suitably obnoxious music to play REALLY LOUD to demonstrate your seething anger to the world, look no further than this album. Alas, I have left my teenage years far behind me (and even then my obnoxious music of choice was far more likely to be Public Image Limited or Wire than any metal stuff), so I find it hard to appreciate Crack Ov Dawn’s efforts without cracking an irreverent smile..
Excursions into would-be shock ‘n’ sleaze territory, such as ‘Porn Junkie’ and ‘Fix You To Death’ leave me entirely unmoved, beyond a slight feeling of amusement that grown men can take such cheesiness so seriously. Of course, there might be an element of intentionally kitsch humour here, but if that’s so I fear it’s going right over my head. The band sound far too much like they mean it for comfort. Still, students of heavy metal cheese will be overjoyed to learn that Crack Ov Dawn cook up a veritable fondue on the song ‘Gothic Party’, in which the vocalist goes in search of ‘vampire chicks’ because (wait for it folks, this one’s sheer poetry) ‘I just want to fuck you, six six six’. Oooh, I’m sure the ladies fall like ninepins, you smooth talker, you.
Crack Ov Dawn parade their modernity by incorporating programmed beats and electronics into their otherwise traditional heavy-on-the-riffs music, but for the most part these elements seem like they’ve been stuck on as an afterthought. Typically, we get a brief burst of electronix at the start of a song (‘Red Light Clubber’ almost sounds like a full-on techno workout at first) but then it’s heavy metal business as usual as the guitars kick in. The production is coke-mirror smooth throughout. This is obviously an album intended for heavy-rotation radio play, and not just on specialist rock stations, either. The album includes a cover of U2’s ‘Pride’, faithfully rendered and entirely free of swear words - a sop to the mainstream if ever there was one.
Clearly, Crack Ov Dawn have been groomed and polished for success, and since they seem to touch all the right bases as far as the metal scene of today is concerned, they might just get there. It seems Joey Jordison of Slipknot has already snapped up the US release of this album for his own label. That may or may not amount to a recommendation - personally, I suspect that just about anything Slipknot’s drummer might like would be automatic anathema to me - but if the band are keeping such exalted rock star company they must surely be on their way to great things. I don’t think I’ll be going along with them, though - this music just doesn’t speak to me. One for the petulant teens among us, I think.
The tunestack:
Porn Junkie
God Bless You
Rise 'n' Fall
Fix You To Death
Gothic Party
Red Light Clubber
Popular Queen
Pride (In The Name Ov Love)
Womanizer
Supermarket Song
Miss Suicide
The players:
Vinnie Valentine: Vocals
Britney Beach: Vocals, guitar
Sexy Sadie: Guitar, programming
Mallaury Murder: Bass
Xander Xanax: Drums
The website: http://www.crackovdawn.com
Reviewed by Uncle Nemesis:
http://www.nemesis.to
01/15/05
CRACK OV DAWN
DAWN ADDICT (Equilibre)
~review by Mick
Mercer
If there’s one thing the French have never done successfully it is Rock. In eighty three million attempts they have never created one authentic rock band that have stunned all in their wake, and left any lasting impression. Nobody knows, or cares, why this is. It just is. There have been plenty of credible independent acts of all persuasions, with Rock proving beyond them, but this bunch may just change that. A cross between Guns n Roses (minus the twatty Axl) crossed with Placebo, they use bright, hard, jagged sounds, with shifting rhythmical technotonic plates, and whispered, gargling vocals, filling their songs with crude utterances, and make the whole thing exciting. Yes, they have included a cover of U2’s ‘Pride (In The Name Of Love)’ and all but wrung the sincerity out of it, but the rest works well.
Unlike the Der Eremit dimwits I reviewed the other day, this bunch introduce a mean riff and then let further activity splinter off of it. They don’t just plonk it down after the obligatory restful keyboards. They also change the jerking guitar action, doubling its infusive attack. They gleefully pound their pop-rock compositions until they’re a scuzzy mess, ‘Porn Junkie’ and ‘God Bless You’ fly by, arses in flames, and the hopefully ironic vocals in ‘Rise n Fall’ wriggle all over inventive, volatile guitar. There’s a funny sample to trigger ‘Fix You To Death’ into lurid life, and the slower ‘Gothic Party’ wobbles nicely, with daft lyrics. (‘I’m on the way to The Temple Of Doom, where vampire chicks come into bloom.’) ‘Red Light Clubber’ shows them introducing slippery beats in a bellicose manner, and then some historical rawk guitar is made bearable during ‘Popular Queen’ by finely dovetailed vocals. ‘Supermarket Song’ makes up for its naff title with unusual rhythmical shifts set alongside sparse guitar and this is typical of how they manage to carry enough variety throughout the record to cover up the fact they’re probably fairly daft at heart. A highly successful album, powerful and just a little bit clever, against the odds.
http://www.crackovdawn.com/
http://www.focusion.de
3/26/05
CHARLOTTE’S SHADOW
LOVE AND HATE
~review by Mick
Mercer
Some bands will always have their work cut out for them in creating an identity, eventually coming face to face with just how and why certain influences pepper their work and which will be allowed to take the upper hand. Charlotte’s Shadow are one such band, with a foot in both Rock and Goth camps, and outdated rockist touches at that, kept liberated by a fresh pop sound. Could it be any more deranged?
The website is rubbish, so that offers no real clues, but this delightful record will appeal to pretty much anyone who likes any of the above, if they can cope without great artistic statements being made. It is fairly basic, but on the other hand it’s a joy to meet. The title track doesn’t waste time in inflicting some very metal guitar, but we also have subtly bright keyboard shading and perky female vocals with dippy backing. It’s pleasant, in a lo-fi Gawf way, the vocal structure is what rolls the song along and guitar drifts back in to punch some adrenaline through, but there’s some Godawful guitar soloing in there that should never be allowed to happen again, as it automatically sounds dated, wrecking the established allure. ‘Life Is A Monster’ has really attractive keyboards and beats, with guitar curling imaginatively through it behind hollowed out, desperate vocals.
‘I’m Not Afraid’ has fantastically bouncing guitar, a song which is totally europop with twinkling keyboards and heavily accented, coy English, so we’re into lopsided St Etienne mauled by heavy guitar territory. A new place! I like it. The guitar line here and the keyboards are utterly wonderful and mesmerising as it purrs along. ‘Gimme Life’ is almost more of the same, but with low, pained guitar and frothier keyboards as the male vocals get demonstrative.
‘Movin’ Apart’ gave their rocky tendencies away before I’d even heard the record. No-one writes Movin’ anymore! Very 70’s. But it’s charming, and as the keyboards hang back and the dappled female singing moves slowly down the spiral guitar staircase it’s an guzzling pop formula done well. The guitar knows how to tweak and squeeze itself into becoming shapes. The combined vocals are just weird, her waif-like and lolling, him like a gurgling Rasputin-styled beery uncle. Then they muddy the waters like hippos with diahorrea as ‘Come To Me’ sounds like it wants a death metal pomp ending, but keeps stalling as the vocals stay sensible and raspy.
A really interesting release, and there is great potential, if they could only drop the hoary throwbacks. From Dublin in 2001 to Germany for a year and now Spain, they get around, but where they go from here is anyone’s guess.
http://www.charlottesshadow.com
03/26/05
CHARLOTTE’S SHADOW
LOVE AND HATE (Cynfeirdd)
~review by Mick
Mercer
Seems the CD I reviewed recently was mainly a promo for this album which contains those lovely tracks ‘Life Is A Monster’, and ‘I’m Not Afraid’, and it’s a relief to see that some of the Metal influences which could be glimpsed in the guitar aren’t so widely evident here, but the witty melodic uplift is countered more by a cloudy mood and exasperated vocals as the songs switch between sweet and desperately sour.
Both the shadowy ‘Gimme Life’ and ‘Movin’ Apart’ have grown on me more in this wider context, and I like the way they grey guitar seeps over the perky synth slopes. The Gothiest track is ‘Come To Me’ with big bad male vocals and odd capering rock guitar bursts amongst shivering sounds. ‘No Tears’ irritated me with the endless vocal repetition, but the strangely low and grumbling ‘See You Falling’ proves they’re so odd they are distinctively different at times. ‘Better Place’ has more ticklish guitar operating between the strangely anguished vocals, double vocals glower throughout ‘Alone’ with some stupendously grim guitar, and the same feel emanates from ‘’Far Away’ with a terser beat, Charlotte singing as if she’s holding her nose. It adopts a supine posture with wistful rhythm and acidic taste, the guitar spiralling up out of the doldrums, and ‘The Flame’ could be the same song but with a mad man allowed into the studio to sing alongside of her.
They truly are weird. Imagine Goth Metal with no posiness, clashing with deadpan indie europop tendencies. It comes in a chunky little plastic digipack box, and I like it without really being sure why.
http://www.charlottesshadow.com
CREAMVIII
PAST TO THE PAST (1992
– 2002)
BARE LIVE (Sonorium)
~review by Mick
Mercer
I wasn’t complimentary about Creamviii’s demo of Wintertime a few months back, which is also out now, as I felt they often fell into an outdated Gawf style, with a touch too much emphasis placed on generic Goth vocal styles of unnecessary, forced drama. With these two albums there is no such problem, and I recommend them unreservedly.
Past To The Past is an excellent compilation with frank sleeve notes, plus all relevant info included and it shows they were always more than merely fitting in with the times. The songs don’t scream hard-line Goth messages but evoke unsettling or resigned states of mind and mood, into which you can drift. They are very controlled, from the beautiful ‘Seven’ to muggy synth spikes of ‘Body On Chrome’, two songs still performed now. The slow and strangely charming ‘Carpenters’, the spiky synth-laden ‘Something Good There Must Be’ and the slow pairing of ‘Sister Moon’ and ‘The Hunter & The Prey’ are all highly becoming, for there is grace and splendour to be had for all the sense of bitterness.
By bitter I don’t mean rancour,
or recriminations, but a sense of unhappiness rather than a storyteller’s
unease. ‘Swansong’ is a combustible, mental closer, and ‘Cathedral’ is
Ye Old Gothic Rock bluster, but for the most part this is an imaginative,
haunting modern Goth style, clipped and clear, with a strange sense of
stillness in many of the songs. It certainly isn’t clichéd and shows
them to have created really good work through the years.
‘Bare Live’ is a very limited
edition (only 50 copies) acoustic CD, where Boris and the two Saschas take
their seats and entertain a happy crowd. I must confess that when someone
produces an acoustic guitar it’s like someone lobbing a hand grenade into
a busy room. I’m out of there in seconds! Luckily there are no folky traces
here, and it isn’t until ‘Tverde Blizo/Zunahe Am Licht’ and ‘Ready To Jump’
that I found my attention wandering. It’s harder for a band like Creamviii
to make the acoustic versions as compelling, because they don’t exactly
rely on conventional commercial structures. Employing acoustics accentuates
some of the mood, but also strips the layers down and leaves certain edges
blunted or exposed.
The songs are revealed this way as very precise but fluid, with the vocals fuller and more normal than on ‘Wintertime’, and while the guitars seem a trifle stilted initially you soon settle into the intimate sound, as the songs are put over in a confident way. True, he does do ‘Something Fast’ and Sisters’ covers often strike me as annoying, but then ‘One Level Down;’ is by Roter Sand who I must admit I’ve never heard of, and the style seems entirely natural and fits in.
It gets positively weird when they cover ‘San Francisco Nights’ by The Animals, which seems such an unusual choice, but then comes ‘White Room’ by Cream (ha!) which is seriously stormy, ‘Like A Hurricane’ which might make Neil Young sit up and swear, as it isn’t the finest version I’ve ever heard, although they close with a decent ‘Rockin’ In The Free World’, and squeeze a nicely creepy version of their own ‘Seven’; in between all of these. Strangest of the lot is ‘White Wedding’ that sounds great fun, against all the odds.
Fans of the band should move heaven and earth to get a copy, because it really is a delightful CD, and the compilation should also satisfy anyone on various levels.
http://www.creamviii.com
http://www.sonoriumn.de
Creamviii records are distributed
by SX in Germany and Resurrection in the UK.
Days And Nights In The
Skeleton Crew
Working Class Stiffs
~review by Basim
Now, Days And Nights In The Skeleton Crew, you may need to sit down for this. I know this will be hard for you, but I gotta get it off my chest. I have a love/hate relationship with your debut!
You’ve got two different types of songs on this disc. Type #1 can be summed up with: “if The Futureheads were commissioned to do a soundtrack for a Tarantino film under the careful direction of Danny Elfman.” Type #2 can be summed up with: “if The Futureheads were commissioned to do a soundtrack for a TIM BURTON film under the careful direction of Danny Elfman.” I really hope you opt for Type #1, because once you drop the haunted carnival “Making Christmas” evil-pretense and go for the quirky 4-part vocal-harmony synth-punk sound, I’ll get smitten. Some of these songs are good enough to remind me of one of my favorite bands; Oingo Boingo. Imagine really bouncy punk with its raw surface glossed over with a layer of synth. “Follow Your Heart”, “The Sun”, “Keep Moving Forward” and “Dance to the Underground”, are all in this tradition. But your other material, like “Broken Things” and “I Paid the Rent”, sound too Mike Patton/Tim Burton. They all start with a warbling verse or two, followed by loud guitars and evil choir vocals. Then it gets quiet all of a sudden, and the creepy voice starts warbling some more. Sometimes there are arpeggiated “evil” metal guitars and some woman reciting “evil” nursery rhymes. I’ve heard this kind of stuff before. I already DON’T LISTEN to albums like the Mr. Bungle self titled, Serpentine Gallery and the Nightmare Before Christmas soundtrack. I don’t need to NOT LISTEN to more CDs. Not when this one could be something I’d really love.
Now readers, if you do like Faith No More, as well as Oingo Boingo and Nightmare Before Christmas, this CD will rock your socks off. It’s got all the “whimsy” and “childlike innocence” you could ask for.
These are destined to be nine songs that creep into my little CD Booklet every few weeks, simply because of the virtues of four of them.
1. Synthesizer
2. Broken Things
3. Bleed On Me
4. I Paid the Rent
5. Follow Your Heart
6. The Sun
7. Dance To The Underground
8. Keep Moving Forward
9. Life is the Fight
Their site is down, so here’s
their label’s:
http://www.woodenmanrecords.com/wm_artists.htm#skeletoncrew
DER EREMIT
DAS (Thunderdome)
~review by Mick
Mercer
The problem with Rock meeting Electronics is that those involved tend to see themselves as making some noble sacrifice and becoming Serious Artists. Then you play their record and they all sound like each other. Der Eremit put you off with the actual record itself first, because like a lot of cyber gloop it has that pretentious and clinical feel. It’s very white, very clean, like the music, with mountain ranges added for visual balm. The band members photos are like an ad campaign for the studiously morose but stylish, apart from one guy having a bullet hole in his forehead, and I expected to be bored, but it’s actually pretty good, providing you like rock or electronics. Rock fans get to chill, electronic fans get to have some actual fun for once in their poor, wasted lives. The rest of us shrug our shoulders in that charming, benign manner of ours, wondering why they don’t go the full extra mile and truly try something daring?
You see there are tracks galore here which are comprehensively ruined by the guitar, and the vocals convey no real urgency or emotion. (Think Lacrimosa, minus any heart!) It’s all so precise, so spotless. Having rock riffs and cello is a fine idea, but mixing it means you still end up sedate and then compromised. Similarly, the need to push home lyrical ideas means there are no signs of unleashing power. There are no successful dance beats, there are no wild rock moments. It’s a halfway house where songs are scientific slides.
Sod the song titles, they’re irrelevant for the purposes of this review. A very pretty, but soulless album, if you like arty installation music, you’ll find it attractive, and it does work on that basic, antiseptic artistic level very well, because the combination of ideas is often quite unusual, but in terms of a connection? Forget it. When the riff lumbers in I have heard similar efforts hundreds of times these past few years and it’s become a dull bloated cliché. Without the guitar this record would be very interesting indeed, but they kept it, so it isn’t, and I have no more time to waste on them.
http://www.dereremit.com
http://www.thunderdome.ch
DICK DALE
CALLING UP SPIRITS
(Beggars Banquet)
~review by Mick
Mercer
It’s interesting how many famous and well respected characters the American scene has thrown up since rock and roll compared to Britain, from the early style gurus of Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis (etc) who have still managed to span the decades, as did perverse singers, like Roy Orbison and Gene Pitney. Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, Johnny Cash, Tom Waits, Brian Jones. Characters persevere there. Who do we have in England? Outside of some grizzled, wayward folk-blues veterans like Michael Chapman or John Martyn, I guess there’s only Robert Wyatt and Elvis Costello?
Aidan sent me this when I expressed an interest and I’m still interested, and grateful, but I’d not want to hear any more unless Dale sings. However, I would imagine if you’re in America you simple have to see this man, at least once. Something about America makes sense to Americans, if it’s locked into the songs, and they rely on people to give voice to concerns, or to illustrate things, to encapsulate society through sound. Dick Dale seems to span everything, from the hottest regions, and marinates it in salty r’n’r offshoots to create his mainly instrumental works, but with a difference. ‘Nitrus’ shows him as some desperado with frantic guitar and thrashing drums operating under cover of surfabilly madness. Duane Eddy meets The Cramps, no doubt about that, but there’s more. After one dash there’s a thickening of drums, coruscating guitar runs lasting a few seconds and almost post-punk solidity to the adventure. Utterly bizarre and compelling! Then a big section of tub-thumping drums before guitar falls back in and begins to unravel spitefully. This is seedily exhilarating stuff, and very strange.
‘The Wedge Paradiso’ is cowboy sing-songy with hectic drumming as though inside an old circus tent, and cranky Tijuana brass, just as ‘The Pit’ has stompier paradiddling drums, then low down mean r’n’r, and a typically unnecessary cover (when isn’t it?) of ‘Fever’, done as a creepy skeleton of a piece. He even sings in a heroic femme style. So he’s crosses generic boundaries and dragging the influences across one area and back into another, creating a spirited mush. ‘Doom Box’ is like that film, cheese royale, because he has plenty of kitsch moments, but ‘Catamount’ is cooler, with guitar exuberance over dour rhythm. ‘Window’ is quite a sad tale. Ostensibly a bleak ballad trying to inspire optimism it’s unusual: about deadness, a call to arms, a tale of pain.
‘Calling up spirits’ returns to coltish rocky chills with a nice chunky union between the guitar and clomping steady drums. ‘Temple Of Gizen’ is very desolate, as is from a sunbeaten Lee Marvin western as he saunters off to his end. Then it gets quite chirpy as they speed up, settle, speed up again and become jauntier still in an epic frolic, but what of? ‘Bandito’ doesn’t sound like the title suggests, with odd picky guitar, but somehow up the intensity goes into another curiously engaging vortex. ‘Third Stone From The Sun’ is clearly something personal for him but it struck me dull, ‘Peppermint Man’ is grotty 60’s US pop and ‘Gypsy Fire’ utilises the thin reedy guitar style and ends up a bit Russian cabaret!
The bloke’s a nutte, Gawd bless him!
http://www.dickdale.com/ - buy his new record from him and you get a personalised signed photo.
Dark Muse
Sounds from Beyond
the Silver Wheel
~reviewed by Goat
A fantastically ethereal goth-ambient album. Dark, organic sounds stretch horizontally across empty, windswept landscapes. Reverb washes in and out like tides; perfect for looking out a window and sorting the contents of one’s brain. To listen intently is like taking a long walk alone.
What I find fascinating is how the vocals here blend so absolutely perfectly with the sounds; they become pure instrument. Not that they are inhuman, but somehow so emotive as to leave behind the plane of “Someone here is singing” and enter into, “Someone here has become singing”. Amazing, inspiring, beautiful.
Anything I’d say beyond this point would be clumsy blustering. This work is tremendous. Beyond recommended.
Track Listing:
1. Queen of the World of
Spirits
2. Certain Angst
3. Calm
4. Luna Flow (the Deep)
5. Once Amid a Dream
6. Silver Wheel Flow
7. Disorder
Dark Muse is Phyll.
The Fossil Dungeon:
http://www.fossildungeon.com/fossildungeon/
Distributed in the US by
Middle Pillar:
http://www.middlepillar.com
Distributed in Europe by
Dark Vinyl:
http://www.darkvinyl.de/
See also:
http://www.eyescreamjewelry.com/
Drop The Fear
Drop The Fear (Self
release)
~reviewd by Uncle
Nemesis
From somewhere unspecified in the USA, a faceless bunch of latter-day indie types deliver this album of post-shoegaze fuzziness. Drop The Fear are a curiously identity-free outfit: their CD packaging and their website are entirely bereft of band member photos, biographical detail, or indeed any of the usual nuts and bolts info that bands are normally keen to provide. I’m not even certain what, if any, label this release is on - there is no record label info on the CD. The website incorporates a logo for Helmet Room Recordings, but I can’t say for sure if that’s a record company or the recording studio where the band make their music. All this mystery does, however, concentrate attention on the music itself, and perhaps that’s the point. So, let’s listen.
Drop The Fear have a warm, almost ambient sound; their music motors on relaxed, loping rhythms through some psychedelic-indie epics. I was going to try to tip-toe around the word ‘soundscapes’, but there’s no avoiding it: soundscapes are exactly what Drop The Fear create. Most of the vocals come courtesy of an offhand, detatched female voice that sounds uncannily like the singer of the Sundays, that winsome indie band of the late 80s, although Drop The Fear set the vocals in surrounding music that is far more lush and wide-screen than anything that was around in those far-off indie daze. ‘Murnau’ is a typical example: it’s almost an acid-tinged take on the Cocteau Twins, containing as it does multiple, layered, vocalisations in which the combined sound of the voices seems to be more important than the actual words they’re singing.
It’s all perfectly effective, although there’s a slight lack of focal points, hooks or naggingly memorable choruses. Drop The Fear seem primarily concerned with creating a sound, rather than songs. It’s sometimes said that the acid test of the songwriter’s craft is to strip away all arrangements, production, and instrumentation and simply play the song on one simple instrument such as an acoustic guitar. If it still works, it’s proof that you’ve got a good ‘un on your hands. I suspect, if you stripped away Drop The Fear’s lavish production and detailed, meticulous, arrangements in search of the essential songs lurking within, you wouldn’t actually find all that much remaining. ‘Natural Law’, for example, is a buoyant cruise through some ambient pleasantries, with an extemporisation on a ‘La, la, la’ theme for a lead vocal. It’s nice, but somehow I can’t rid myself of the feeling that there should be a song in there somewhere...and there isn’t.
So, what’s the verdict? If you’re looking for an extended excursion into ambient-ish territory, Drop The Fear make an agreeable tour guide. But if your preferred route takes you into the Land of Structured Song, you might want to hitch another ride.
The tunestack:
Never Mind [1]
Murnau
When Memory Fails
Natural Law
Long Way From Home
Edge Of The Universe
Hot Upstairs
As Lonely As They Come
Goodbye
Standing Still
Gordon
Sloan
[1] Drop The Fear render this title as 'Nevermind', which, despite what Nirvana and many others seem to think, is a word that does not exist in the English language - check this dictionary entry for proof: http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=nevermind The correct form is two words: never mind. I have taken the liberty of correcting the band's English here. There is no charge for this service.
The players:
Sarah: Vocals, keyboards,
guitar, drums
Gabriel: Drums, keyboards,
vocals
Ryan: Keyboards, vocals,
guitar, bass, drums
The website: http://www.dropthefear.com
Reviewed by Uncle Nemesis:
http://www.nemesis.to
DUST FEAR OF LOVER
DROP-OUT
~review by Mick
Mercer
You know what they say: you wait all year for one experimental electronic band to do a cover of Fad Gadget’s ‘Ricky’s Hand’, and then two come at once!
Look! It’s Death Boy again, who I reviewed when he did ‘Dust Fear Of Lover’ under the name of Psycho D-vein, so I assume there’s a logical progressing pattern to the record titles (?), and here he is making morose noises and singing wearily, while Lupa fills the air with lusher mouthy sounds, and this pair often combine well on their fetid bed of nails. ‘The Sin’ is sparse and quite sprightly. Little, winking synth, muted vocal muttering and a constant bass flow makes it easily accessible and the dual vocal phase is quixotically calming. ‘Connected’ is a little brisker on the bass flood, and the keyboard weeps happier sounds. The vocals are treated or distorted to hide deficiencies, but that’s fine, as it all blurs and smears well like discordant early 80’s electronics did originally.
The more conventional bass spleen in ‘Aching Home’ and a very basic drum machine sees Joy Division petals fall from a withered flower of a song. Their version of ‘Ricky’s Hand’ is more lo-fi even than La Mamoynia and if you didn’t already know it was a good, weird song you’d be a bit perplexed by this; jaunty, faded synth line aside.
‘Leave’ is great! Really grim, plucky guitar and floaty, groaning backing sounds makes for a dramatic and interesting start, and even though Death Boys voice starts to pull it all down they’re showing signs of life and the vocal structures are becoming more advanced and the arrangements seriously appealing, providing you accept you need to be adventurous to grapple with this.
‘Fashion Fear’ sounds like it wants to really shake itself hungrily but the same vocal delivery really does do for this one, so Death Boy needs further admonishment. If all you can do is sound weary let Lupa handle these songs alone and get her to boost the songs with life. ‘Sick Brain’ has more twinkly innards behind the problematic singing/talking, but soon runs out of promise. ‘Fear Of Gaze’ is more like it, with Lupa sounding mental and the sound choppy, but instead of letting the guitar suddenly cut it to elevate the song, as the synth remains interesting, they stay slightly muted.
‘Automatic Love’ is barely awake and thereby a waste of space, then they cover Jesus & Marychain’s ‘Head’ and it’s fairly authentic, like very early Marychain records but without the same sonic power, understandably. It’s still a potent sound but doesn’t jut out enough. ‘Crowd’ finishes with some good grumbling bass, splattering synth puffs of smoke and it’s another song full of fine, ugly sounds and ideas.
Don’t go anywhere near this is you’re the sort of person who needs things ‘tidy’ or full of pleasant curves. This is not for you. But if you like to wander the more ungainly territories out there then Death Boy is getting his act together, and there are far better glimpses here for what they might soon create.
An interesting record.
DVAR
RAKHILIM (Monopoly)
~review by Mick
Mercer
Voices chitter and laugh as elegant music waltzes around them and the percussion sounds like swordplay, but seeing as this is Russian enigmas DVAR I am not entirely surprised. A band who has no website is an unusual thing, and it’s also virtually impossible to find any photographs of them anywhere. They have been recording since the early 90’s and no-one knows bugger all about them which must be something of a record.
It has the plausible drama of a children’s story. Think Narnian wastelands and intrigues and light dementia. Think of gently insidious piping keyboards and wheezing synths and strolling, martial drums. Think of imps and old professors with round wire glasses. Think of Xmases where toys come to life, think of Santa taking a shit on the end of your bed. (It could happen.) Then look up and see the stars whirl and fizz until just one big circle of smeared crystal and you realise you don’t know what’s going on. This could be Goth (think Gobins reinterpreting Alien Sex Fiend), it could be wily Indie, it could be some Ambient daytrip.
You’ll have to search hard for any noticeable Russian ingredients, that’s for sure. There are no Cossacks dances or dour, angular vowels, no real vocals at all, come to that! Sometimes it appears voices have been recorded and the tuned into birdsong, which is a start, and the more you play it the more you will be smitten by their insane take on electronic drama. I think I almost overheard The Clangers forming a Kate Bush tribute band.
At their plainest, in ‘Yar Yar’, they’re willowy and keep a crisp electro beat same as anyone, although the twinkling and synth refuse to appear dogmatic, terse or arty. When they do the conventional thing they’re a cross between Virgin Prunes and Alice In Wonderland, which I assure you is a scarily accurate comparison, especially as DVAR is two men. Sometimes they purr like pop animals and then your toes curl with love for them. You’ll even have ‘Ya Raii Ta Hirrih’ played at the wedding.
You could be walking the tightrope across ravines to their twinkle-toed xylophone accompaniment. You could be riding ghostly carriages on skis across snow-swept fjords, or lugging secret weapons through rancid meadows. Your hair could be full of treacle, you shows alive with termites. With DVAR music playing in your head you’d be too inanely happy to be concerned. You would volunteer to cross the Andes dressed only in a nun’s habit, with a sign saying ‘Caress Me’ on your back.
It is hard to think concrete thoughts when the music plays because it intrudes on any lapse in concentration, so forget about playful background music, as this has a way of demanding your involvement, albeit politely. It is dramatic in a highly stylish manner, and also silly without ever being remotely close to comedy.
It‘s unlike anything else I have heard, that’s for sure, and I am delighted to make its acquaintance.
http://www.monopolyrecords.com/artisits.html
01/10/05
DVAR
Taii Liira (Irond)
~review by Mick
Mercer
Your psychic perception is all too accurate. This album does indeed highlight tracks from 1997 – 2001, from ‘Piirrah’ and ‘Rail’, with a few unreleased items. Naturally it starts with water, violins and clock chimes, blended together in a scary beast of a tune, like they’re stirring the sounds inside your very ears with a vast ladle. The vocals, like old crones that scared Macbeth, cavort merrily as usual but the synth or strings have more weight that on earlier records. There is a sense of depth here and an inscrutable countenance. So ‘al hilaji’ sets you up for a new adventure, which ‘iina tamiira’ continues with vocals from someone gnarled who sounds highly agitated, and musically it is conventional electronic indie! Streuth!
Luckily ‘taai liira’ (they’re all lower case) is quicker, trying to get away from the voices. It sounds like a funeral march with a propensity for bpm and this time the voices match the music, going with the rhythm rather then being engaging human litter. They’re getting organised, and become positively listener-friendly with concerted chirruping through ‘vo rah arrah iill’ which is deceptively pretty and builds to an ecstatic end. Along comes the spry and deeply simple ‘hissen raii’, proving the music is slipping into more recognisable shapes even if the vocal still come from the underworld. The synths and piano here work together like with a conventional ethereal band. Every so slowly they are going to take people over by seducing slowly. It’s a grim and frightening thought. That said, this songs also sounds like it’s ripping your throat out.
They have hardly softened up, they’re just managed to merge the two realities and make it more attractive to people who wouldn’t find the most obscure style tantalising. They're still demented. 'iih rah' is like a Bedlam souvenir, 'abisser' must be the assassination of a piano and ‘itiir’ is like hearing Prince turning slowly in someone else’s maggot-strewn grave, crossed with a Bond movie soundtrack with music when you’re leading up to the big fight sequence. ‘vaii han’? Yes, that’s included, and quite cute it is too, with a mad rhythm on drums, as though a real band was pissing all over Slipknot. Ha! They’d snap them in half and toss them over their shoulders. It is stomping mayhem that anyone would love, like what Alien Sex Fiend will evolve into in a few centuries, when man and creature are at one. ‘schraii’ is another plainly compelling tune, and ‘ud rah’ seems pert, putrid punk with keyboard sparkle, and the previously unreleased content is thicker, fully charged thrusting electro with demented demonic singing, bordering on techno-thrash but with occasional hypnotic violin and African rhythms!
You genuinely need a bit of Dvar in your world, so this would be the easiest way to begin.
DVAR
MADEGIRAH (Monopoly)
~review by Mick
Mercer
I was debating the mania at work in their RAKHILIM album earlier this month, and I hope I was able to convince you that here are a duo creating music that is genuinely unique. Well this album shows less of the musical quality and more of their unusual approach. I played it to Lynda and she was in fits, but still agreed that yes, there was music here. And magic, simple as that.
It doesn’t matter if you can recognise that they are the musical equivalent of the Goons, and equally brilliant, or see the childlike glee involved in much of their work, or that here are a band equally capable at electro noodling, or seriously catchy moments from various genres as other greats. The main fact is that they make albums you cannot accurately compare to anything else and the impact of each short track is instant. They shock you with their audacity and calm you with their evocative charms.
On the childlike front I have mentioned the Clangers and Teletubbies, and Lynda mentioned Michael Bentine and the Diddymen. There is in this strange world any number of warped and surreal antecedents you care to invoke. There is also the astounding fact that this doesn’t matter. The music stands up on its own, and after a few tracks the fact that the vocal input is otherworldy doesn’t matter either. You stop believing humans are in control fairly quickly.
Giving a whistle-stop tour of this set of early 90’s recordings, we find ‘hwhy’ is like Middle-eastern wailing, only ten years before everyone else started doing it, but with for more imaginative ‘vocals’, and ‘laali’ is very persuasive electropop, ‘hiri noai’is actually vocal-led, and guides us through a sleazy waltz, whereas ‘taranah’ is watery electronic madness conducted by the Clangers again. ‘iill’ is simply fast swirls, ‘ya kah tya kah’ has brilliant keyboards circles almost moving in a medieval style, ‘arraheem’ has music box sweetness and seriously delightful giggling, because the vocals genuinely fit the moods of these pieces.
When I say vocals, let me try this on you. Imagine a studio where tapes lay unguarded. Remember the Gremlins films? Imagine if some of those characters have broken in and started doing vocal mixes of their own over the music that falls into their little mitts. That is what it is like. It has a totally sensible vocal structure, as with any other kind of music, but it simply isn’t recognisable. Natural songs, unnatural end result. And it is fantastic.
‘khela baash’ brings up fairground creepiness and ends on an ominous drum roll instead of the other way round, ‘madegirah’ is a piping synth instrumental which is odd, ‘teremiah k’ruun’ is a reflective, dawdling tune, and ‘iakhuut !’ is synthesised woodwind, close in feel to those programmes they make for kids which try and interest you in classical music by having the instruments ape birdsong and the like.
‘kaah’ is friendly parakeet-esque chatter over decorous synth, and then the keys whirl through ‘arvakh’ like some mushed up morse code. ‘lilk’ is my favourite, because the music is utterly hypnotic and the vocal utterances make me laugh out loud they are so wonderfully woven into the texture, then it’s witchy incantations throughout ‘ud rah’, Kurt Weill is trapped in the goblin underworld for ‘kiam kaah’, ‘linah’ and ‘ya nar’ just pop by fast, ‘ airim’ actually has a grand, silky feel and ‘herrah kiyar’ is like Chas & Dave in an alien dimension.
Honestly, you have to hear it to believe it, and once you’ve heard it you want more, more, more.
Go discover.
http://www.monopolyrecords.com/artisits.html
OLD MP3s http://dark.gothic.ru/dvar/englishmusic.htm
DWELLING
MOMENTS (Equilibrium)
~review by Mick
Mercer
We all need some outright loveliness in our lives from time to time and given that this is an EP of five exquisite numbers, so what better way to do it than Portugal’s Dwelling? Three of the songs are in English, so be not afeared of this divinely smooth digipiack crammed with modest brilliance. It’s a few years old now, but serves as a wonderful pre-‘Humana’ introduction.
As with many observing traditional aesthetics the music is of the lightest quality, as ‘A Gaze Of Innocence’ demonstrates immediately with ravishingly attractive classical acoustic that has a light, seamless touch and although the song is beautifully slow it has robust vocals offering a touching snapshot of innocence, albeit somewhat oblique. It isn’t often you get strangely contented acoustic music, with a sweet violin involved which finally thickens behind a more swift end. It isn’t folky either, so don’t fret on that score!
‘ Dear Blossom’ has more gently quavering vocals and lightly tumbling bass, which gives them added shape as the two guitars and violin sway and interweave constantly. I have no idea what they’re on about, but it’s delicate as it unfolds, and then they just up things slightly with ‘Trivial Yet Profound.’ The violin saws niftily behind a strong central vocal and the acoustic runs like a spirited stream in quite a playful little burst.
‘A Danca (Tecendo o Feitico)’ is much deeper, with stunning guitar flow and sorrowful violin accompanying vocals drenched in reflective emotion. This is stunning, and then it closes on ‘Rain’, a mellow instrumental where darker violin shading and slower, lower guitar allows introspection without descending to deep melancholia.
They’re closest in spirit to Collection D’arnell-Andrea, which should make your ears tingle. What’s unusual is they’re always able to maintain their gentility without being ethereal in the manner you might expect, as they have their own stance and style.
http://www.dwelling.equilibriummusic.com/
Earth Loop Recall
Compulsion
~reviewed by Goat
I wanted very much to like this CD because it’s so well executed, but the problem is, it covers territory that has been so nauseatingly overdone in past years, I just can’t. Nine Inch Nails. V.A.S.T. Those two bands were the high point of this sound. Everything else begins to sound derivative.
Being that this CD is so very well executed, I do hope this band will stick it out until they’re able to find a sound that is more completely their own. The last four or so songs on this disc hint at what that sound might be like.
Track List:
1.) Reconnect
2.) Mesh
3.) Petra Lena
4.) Please Stop Hurting
Me
5.) Slowly Going Under
6.) Let Yourself
7.) Wake Up Shaking
8.) Optimism Creeping
In
9.) Like Machines
10.) Remember Me
Band site:
http://www.earthlooprecall.com
Wasp Factory Recordings:
http://www.wasp-factory.com
Elan
The Deluge of Soundtracks
and Other Voices From the World's Silent Majority
~reviewed by Goat
Not a bad outing for experimental noise ambience. The overall atmosphere is appropriately haunting, yet at times dallying and serendipitous. This playing of dark ominous sounds and bright, bouncy sounds against each other is curiously refreshing. There are moments when the recordings seem to lose focus and the listening sensation is akin to watching a windup toy stuck in a corner. Some of the songs seem not to be completed, and end agonizingly short. It seems to me the work would have been more wholly enjoyable if they’d gone with less songs and developed a few of them more painstakingly.
Overall though, it’s a sati