Artists - S

S

Rachael Sage - Painting Of A Painting
Label: Mpress Format: CD

I think Rachael Sage is on the verge of becoming something great. I don't think that she's necessarily reached that "great" point with this album, but you can already tell that she's growing into something here. There's just not enough confidence or strength in her voice at this point, though, and for the subject matter and the quiet type of sparse Jazz-Pop accompaniment (guitar, percussion, piano, etc.) she's singing along with, her voice is the centerpiece of these songs and needs to be strong enough to take that position. However, at this point, her voice quavers and trips just enough to detract from what is good there to hear, leaving the listener wondering if perhaps turning up the volume is all that's needed to make these really listenable, only to find out that the problem's not with the stereo at all.

-Holly Day-

Ryuichi Sakamoto - Love Is The Devil Film Soundtrack
Label: Asphodel Format: CD

Love Is The Devil is a reasonably arty film about the traumatic love-life of painter Francis Bacon in the early Sixties, whihc despite may flaws is an engaging and occasionally powerful depiction of an alcoholic artist and his relationship with a young stranger who appears from the roof of his studio one night. Sakamoto's soundtrack, heard in the context of the film, is a key ingredient in depicting mood and time in both a claustraphobic affair and era, within the limitations of a constrained budget. As such, in its specificly intended setting, the soundtrack is one of the best parts of the film, never too intrusive, reflecting the slowly degenerating lives of the characters.

Out of the cinematic frame, Love Is The Devil builds in a slow arc of synthesised abstractions and tinkling piano notes, rising to a brief gurgling mechanical rush for the brief violence of the Hogarthian scene accompanied by "Boxing." As with the (unfortunately unsused) soundtrack Coil produced for Hellraiser, the moments of stillness such as "Bed-Museum" or "Walk" prepare the audience for moments of psychological tension as found in the unsettling processed croaks of "Switch" or "Sex (2)'s" banshee wails. The following section, "Redman" is a grotesque fragment of liquid, glutinous apprehension, and by the time it segues into "George In Rain," "Redman 2" and "Redman 3" the on-screen drama is counterpointed by electronic underscores of an appropriately disturbing nature, descending into a vertiginous pitch-bent slide in the latter.

-Freq1C-

Salaryman - Karoshi
Label: City Slang Format: CD,LP

There's a thing with prefixes and the word "Rock" (or "ROCK!" if you prefer) - Post-Rock, Art-Rock, sometimes (dare I say it) Prog-Rock. Salaryman seem content to slide about in this general area, not quite difficult enough to be Post-Rock, too much fun to be Art-Rock ("Thomas Jefferson Airplane" as a track title for example. Cool!) and never going quite that little bit too far and plunging into Prog territory. However, as the soaring Hawkwind guitar on opener "Strong Holder" and the keyboard stabs on the aforementioned "Thomas Jefferson Airplane" indicate, they are not too scared to miss out Prog entirely and go off into that other much-maligned direction, Space Rock; but a bit more Jazz. And less Metal. Oh, fuck it, maybe this prefixes thing isn't going to work out after all...

Karoshi is a Japanese-identified syndrome of hypertension from overwork, and with drumming this frenetic (think Can in an echo chamber) the word becomes highly evocative. But (and it's a big butt, as they say when they're talking about yer mum) they mellow out a lot (man) by slow squirts of twinkly keyboards, theremin, even the occasional bit of harp. And just when you think it's all settled into some kind of mantric groove thang, something like "My Hands Are Always In Water" chucks a downright demented (though restrained - Nurse! The screens!) bridge that you just didn't see coming. Oh, and there's lots of flange, and some truly evil basslines as well - Oh yeah, and what you really wouldn't expect to find in the world of poncey prefixes - TUNES! Basic, old-fashioned, get in your head and have harmonies and stuff TUNES. That's like, cool.

Have I emntioned the Dubby aspects? Check out "Dull Normal" to find the quickest route between King Tubby, LTJ Bukem and David Holmes. With weird squiggly noises on. If Robert de Niro can say in Angel Heart that "there's enough religion inthe world to make men hate, but not enough to make them love" then sure as shit I can say that there's enough Jazz in Salaryman to make them fluid, unpredictable and just a touch hip, but not enough to make them crap. Or something. Whatever it may be, Karoshi is an album of carefully controlled influences and styles, in a weird kind of balance that keeps you thinking is bound to go horribly wrong sooner or later, but somehow doesn't. Unlike most Post- or Art-Rock, it just doesn't work in theory. It's only in practice that Salaryman's Space-Funk-Jazz-Dub-Acid-Whatever the Fuck-Rock really comes into it's own. And it's really quite wonderful.

As if all this wasn't enough, there's a bonus selection of multimedia fun on the Enhanced CD version - screen savers, Salaryman games, that sort of thing, and a Quicktime movie of the video (in fuzzy, jerky monochrome, natch) for the rather splendid, or indeed, splendid "Rather" track from their debut album - so even more reason to get this record.

-Deuteronemu 90210, Defender Of The Universe-

Salvatore - Fresh
Label: Racing Junior Format: CD

Salvatore popped down to Marrakesh from their Nowegian home to record Fresh, and from the opening twang of "Get The Kids On The Street, It's A Party" things take on an electronic groove dimension which can only have been aided by the atmosphere of Morocco. "Get The Kids..." holds all the Motorik cards, dealing out chord chugs and twirling synths on a rhythmic base held in precise tension through the crisp sound of the brushing drums and the clanking sound of brand new bass strings. The title is just about right too, as it's a perfect number for getting things going in a bouncy style.

It's no real surprise that Salvatore are going to work on their next album with John McEntire either, as there is much to Fresh which relates to the expansive sound of early Tortoise, but without the descent into Jazziness and consequent flaccidity either. The band were obviously having a high time in old Marrakesh, as their is a feeling of bright warmth to "Chant Of The No No's" with its sampled voice musing unitelligibly but quite happily to itself on the cruising groove. "Medina Drive" shimmers with hazy chiming guitar and cloudy electronics, scraping the air with all the fulsome intensity it can manage while the bass keeps treble-Dub time. "Stork" holds calmer stretches, backing up the pocket trumpet melody with cycles of fuzz and bringing the mood to a gentler, but still well out there, pass, while "100 Camels In The Courtyard" drifts in ambient Kosmische directions on a big bass carpet before revving into a twangy melody.

"The Seven Colours Of Gnaff" chugs along merrily to the drone and chime of guitars and that rising Germanic rhythm which Salvatore have perfected, choppy chords bringing the headlong motion into full-focus clarity; "Disco Farah" positively rollicks on warm low end and the sussurus of an analogue sea. The knowledge that Fresh was recorded in what were obviously very pleasant surroundings ooozes out into the album's atmospherics, making for a release which is entirely good-natured and enveloping, as the liquid bass, snazzy drums and twinkling semi-melodies of "First Red Then Nothing", and "Vogel" with its so-relaxed beatless approach demonstrate. The twitter of birdsong on "Alte K�n" accompany further Motorik meanders which segue into the the concusion when it comes in the shape of "Dune". A wash of mildly scorching fuzz rising over into the electronic hums, lazy echoing strums and delayed feedback soon brings about a suitably psychedelic come down to what has turned out to be a very assured slice of escapist instrumental pleasantry.

-Tango-Mango-

Sanasol - Cosy
Label: 66 Degrees/Thule Format: 12"

More Deep House from Iceland, but no sign of Orlando Careca or Chilean football players in general. This record does what House needs to do very well. Sanasol provide us with uplifting dance floor moments, and then they provide us with bass. They take around the breakbeat outskirts of Housiness and take a peek across the road at Ambience - and then they provide us with bass. Last but not least, Sanasol have made some seriously minimal House music on "Cosy" - and yes, they are still providing the bass.

If you need to ask why Deep House is called Deep House you're obviously suffering from some form of ear damage. Must be all that bass.

-Mephist-

Sand - Beautiful People Are Evil
Label: Satellite Format: CD

Hmmm - I found myself reciting a mantra over and over as I loaded up the pretty blue-backed disc... "Please don't let this be like Marilyn Manson, please don't let this be like Marilyn Manson, please don't..." It isn't. At all. Psycho patience may as well get in the car and volume up, rev up, run over some beautiful people along the way.

Like gas masks are ever-present and dark mourning tones go so well with bastard offspring of Jazz, Sand are as smooth as a glass-surfaced lake of woe and purpose. Urgent rising soundtrack for deliberate deconstruction of psychosis. Horns and bass stalk slowly across a landscape of elektronix-like urbania. Tiny tolls keep it all nervous, anxious; I want to see this movie, no, I want to live this movie. "`Hello Mrs Apple', we are here to blow your pretty face off."

There is even a seduction scene, laced with irritation and rapid pulsed annoyance; beauty lurks in the background, faithful horns call it out to exposure. For all the junk noise, even bass, twang and guinea pig like crying, Sand keep continuity and slip in and out of the consistent spell casting, one track into another, relentless. Sometimes this goes so quiet I forget I am listening and being charmed all the while. No worries, though, the noise keeps coming back to remind. This music is manic; fast, slow, aggressive, enchanting, soothing, nerve wracking... multi-purposed beyond ordinary. O yes, even nostalgic, in an Argento sort of way.

Sand played Islington recently, the 1977 all-night put on by Sounds Of The Universe. No one said anything bad about them. I didn't go, had the 'flu. Probably should have loaded on cold medicine and endured. Somehow I'm just as happy to be indoors with the CD, slipping me all the way through nine tracks of grainy clarity. Beautiful People Are Evil? Sometimes; and beautiful music has edges.

-Agent 99-

Sand - Dis Plane
Label: Satellite Format: 12"

Sand gives another quick come on with their immediate ear assault tactics. Roving drums and bass lay under spiralled horns and here is a group doing their best to re-invent everything. I am sure this song has been used in a car advertisement but I cannot remember which one. No matter, if I am wrong, no doubt it will be used soon, as it is practically a sountrack style ode to the rhythms of driving. Any ad exec worth his storyboards will recognize the potential in this lot of power, energy and freedom of movement. Or we can hope for the best and pray no such executives ever hear it.

The flip side version offers "Dis Plane Down". Same again but in a more enjoyable way. More attention is given here to individual sounds, slower separations for horn solos, and even more bass. This AA side is not as instantly gratifying, but is wholly more satisfying overall. Sand are still showing off their power mixes, and this single is a nice tiding over until their next full length album comes out.

-LillyNovak-

Sandoz - Digital Lifeforms Redux
Label: The Grey Area of Mute Format: 2CD

Digital Lifeforms Redux is a reissue of work originally available on Touch from Richard H Kirk, the electronic half of Cabaret Voltaire. Unlike the Early/Later compilation simultaneously released by The Grey Area, this album represents a specific moment in time: the years 92-93. It is less representative of his work in Cabaret Voltaire, not that an Richard H Kirk album should be obliged to be representative. Kirk says that "the inspiration for much of this music came from a trip to Haiti in 1991". It is "an attempt to fuse African sounds with machine music, or European electronics". The tracks on Digital Lifeforms also take inspiration from Detroit Techno godfathers Juan Atkins and Derrick May, and the Redux edition includes an extra CD of mostly unreleased tracks.

The result is a relaxed fusion of Ambient Trance beats with ethnic samples, not the spiky Industrial electronics which may be expected given Kirk's connection to Cabaret Voltaire. Although there are moments, such as the hard and spiky "Tribal Warfare" that are reminiscent of Cabaret Voltaire, Digital Lifeforms Redux has a mellow sound. Tracks like "Limbo" have that early Nineties Tribal sound: energetic, but relaxed with it. The music has a lot in common with The Orb or Logic Trance releases of the day. However, I don't want to label Digital Lifeforms Redux merely as Trance; let's not look at the early Nineties with rosy tinted specs. There was plenty of Trance Techno that was insipid or plain repetitive. Kirk's music is well constructed. He explores the format and sees what directions it can be pushed in. "Zombie Astral" fuses Rrance with a Latin/Miami sound. Kirk plays with big symphonic soundscapes and build ups on "White Tab/Steel Darkness" in the way that would itself become an integral part of Trance in the late nineties.

When the tracks on Digital Lifeforms Redux were originally released the division between trance and ambient music was blurred. These days it is easy to think of electronic ambience coming in a straight line from the beatless static sounds and drones of Brian Eno with nothing in between. Digital Lifeforms Redux is a reminder of how busy and beaty early ambience was.

-ap-

Satisfact - The Third Meeting At The Third Counter
Label: K Format: CD, LP

You`re really not gonna like what I`m about to ask you to do, but there you go... Cast your mind back to the Eighties (see, toldya) - no, you twat, not mullets`n`poodles`n`blokes with headbands holding their keyboards like guitars, but something a bit, well... I guess louder is as good a word as any. That sort of not-quite-Goth-but- still-aimed-at-students kind of thing. Echo And The Bunnymen. Killing Joke. That sort of thing. And I know those two bands never really sounded at all similar, but then the Teardrop Explodes didn`t sound like either of them. Didn`t sound like Joy Division either as I recall. Bits of this album bring to mind all the above- too poppy to be post-Punk period Joke, too dark to be the Teardrops, too brutal to be the Bunnymen, too - surreal, maybe? - to be Joy Division.

I like this album. I like it a lot. I like the way the angular, Wire-ey guitar lines play off against the mad psychedelic synth washes. I like the way the guy shouts in that clipped, youthful way they did back then, before everyone got into that whole serious thing and everyone had to sing like they lived on a farm in Texas and slept with their sister after too much moonshine. I like the way "Triple Deck" has a stuttery bit kind of like on the Bunnymen`s "Thorn of Crowns" (and, quite frankly, if you dodn`t think Ocean Rain is one of the most gorgeous albums EVER- I`ll say that last word again, EVER- recorded, then you can sod off! (Well, not having heard it.... Ed.)) before chilling out and going a bit dubby and post-Rock (only a bit, mind, but with these mad synth bit going off in the background).

Satisfact have been criticised for harking back to the Eighties, but detractors miss the point- this album COULD NOT have been made back then; it's just... too aware of its heritage, too eclectic in its influences, to have been made back then, having never heard the music that was to follow. Are you getting any of this or am I just rambling? "Vortex", for example, has the drums of a Ska track backing up a whole bunch of electric/electronic discordance, while "I'm In A Bad Way", the album's opener, has that Gothy-guitar with washes of synth and shouting that sounds to my ears not dissimilar to the sound Jaz Coleman thought he was making when Killing Joke ill-advisedly entered the pop arena. "Love Like Blood" but faster, "America" but not shit; am I making sense here?

Perhaps even a touch of the Cure or The Bolshoi in the vocals, although don't let that put you off- Third Meeting... is not nostalgia for an age that was actually a bit crap; it is a truly modernist album- or maybe that just sounds dumb, maybe I need to dress it up a little so...Neo-pre-postModernism - it's the new rock and roll, apparently.

-Deuteronomy 90210 The Vampire Slayer-

Savage Aural Hotbed - The Strain And Force Handbook
Label: Microblister Format: CD

Another great Twin Cities-based band, Savage Aural Hotbed is more an experience than a band. Creating their music almost entirely out of found and hand-made instruments, they've created this amazing class of music that makes its niche somewhere between ancient tribal percussion-intensive music and something that might have been recorded in an auto shop. Not only does the band play music made out of instruments with self-descriptive names like "Propanophone" - and, of course, circular saws, police scanners and hollow metal and plastic pipes - they make music inside the instruments themselves. Some of these songs were actually recorded inside a huge steel grainhopper, with the band beating percussion against the walls of the hopper. Like the atempo shaman percussionists of the Inuit, the mismatched pounding of this record will send you off on the closest thing to an out-of-body experience you may ever experience in your own living room.

-Holly Day-

Scala- To You In Alpha
Label: Too Pure Format: CD,LP

Managing the quite difficult feat of blending the Electronica moves of their SeeFeel days with a more song-oriented apporach, Daren Seymour and Sarah Peacock deploy some pretty rollicking beats alongside some quite nifty fuzz guitar, courtesy of Simon McLean. Seymour's time with Locust has got Mark van Hoen on board too, and add in the production assistance of Mads Bjerke for good measure and what results is something of a mixed bag.

The uneasy collision of ethereally-delivered, subtly barbed vocals by Peacock come to the fore on the energised "Remember How To Breathe," which keeps just the right side of listlessness through the confidence of the production and performances. Likewise, the Spacemen 3 guitars of "Colt, Wires" narrowly redeem a Electro-Rock piece which is disturbingly close to the despicable spirit of Republica; but somehow, there's often an undercurrent of disturbance which slips out through the often lugubrious beats and down-tempo arrangements. For what it's worth, To You In Alpha shows moments of dark engagement, let down overall by its emphasis on somewhat affectless emotion, though the closing "17765744J" tumbles refreshingly out of the speakers as a cleansing coda to the whole affair.

-Freq1C-

Janek Schaefer - Above Buildings
Label: Fat Cat Format: CD

Janek Schaefer is more interested it seems in texture than specific sounds, though each of the eight pieces on Above Buildings has distinct source material as its basis, sometimes the preferred mode of listening is switching off and stepping inside the soundscape. Derived from fizzing lamp fittings to old organs, needles and grooves, Niagra Falls to grand pianos via the 1999 Solar Eclipse, malfunctioning tone-arms and the internal noises of digital sampling disappearing up its own fundament, the shifting sonic landscape reaches an attenuated blissout at times, sucking in the outside world and engaging through the identifiable and the refracted sounds alike.

Ideal for headphone listening, Above Buildings shifts angles and sweeps in and out of close-up on any particular, particulate, sound; and the cinematic similie is appropriate, as this is highly visual music. It is very difficult not to build storyboards to accompany the placement of sounds across the stereo spectrum, and the results are diffuse, sometimes tensely dramatic, frequently obscured by layers of fractured mini-rhythms, swarms and swathes of processed, invasive noise, and highlighted by silence.

-Freq1C-

Janek Schaefer - Cold Storage
Label: DSP Format: CD

Originally commissioned for the Sonicity Festival in Rome last year, this new piece by electroacoustic sound sculptor and inventor Janek Schaefer grew out of a site-specific installation and performance in a disused underground cold-store on the banks of the Tiber. Split into five segments - although the split points do not always correlate with the textural and emotional changes that lead the listener to suspect that a new phase has started - the CD release has been re-improvised and re-edited from the original field recordings, all of which were gathered by the artist on his travels around Europe and allegedly relate to themes of 'cold' and 'storage'.

Considerations of process aside, the resulting work is a textbook example of classic Musique Concrète fused with 20th-century Industrial abrasiveness. Sheets of sound shimmer and vibrate over dissonant rumbles and percussive impacts, rhythmic stretches emerge from the chance meeting in a mixing desk of unrelated sonic events, manipulated voice-like samples hint occasionally (VERY occasionally) at tonality, and vast, sepulchral spaces resonate with the sound of reverb pedals set to eleven. The sound is somewhat low-fidelity at times, reflecting its rather retro mode of acqusition and arrangement, with only the replacement of tape loops with Minidisc anchoring it in the present day, and then only by virtue of the liner notes.

Hugely enjoyable though this all is, especially when played loud as recommended by Schaefer, it falls short of perfection on two fronts. For a start, it is nothing particularly new. Throbbing Gristle at their least band-like, Merzbow at his least musical, or an obscure Cold Spring release of a decade ago called Thee Angels Ov Light Meet Thee Angry Love Orchestra - another re-edited documentary of an older improvised performance - all these are obvious comparisons, and this is ignoring two or three decades of related music in the noise genre. I am not familiar enough with Schaefer's oeuvre to say whether this is breaking new ground for him, but it's certainly not pushing any boundaries in terms of technique or results, and in fact it sounds surprisingly conventional and warmly familiar to my ears.

Secondly, one gets the feeling that the artist is trying too hard to establish a link between the finished work and its conceptual roots. There is very little here to particularly signify 'cold' or 'storage' besides the packaging and liner notes - semiotic finesse is difficult in this kind of music though, to be fair - and stripped of its context, the purely aural component of this work seems much more generic. Or to put it another way: he could have called it something like Boiling Point, and told us that all the souce samples related to heat or fire and that it was performed in a disused foundry, and no-one would have been any the wiser. In fact that would have been much more satisfying, if only for Schaefer himself.

Don't get me wrong, I loved this CD, but then I have a soft spot for stark, antisocial noise. But it comes with caveats, and don't expect the music to live up to the high concept - there is definitely something missing. Maybe I'll feel better if I play it to people and tell them it was recorded in a furnace.

-Andrew Clegg-

Janek Shaefer - Pulled Under
Label: AudiOh! Recordings Format: CD

Pulled Under is great album. Ambience, Musique Concrete, experimental Electronica ... call it what you will I still like Pulled Under lots. Using a contact microphone and turntables Janek Shaefer creates abstract textures and drones that wash in and out. There is always the old question: are turntables really musical instruments? In Janek Shaefer's case the answer is an unequivocal yes. His Tri-Phonic Turntable is actually entered in the Guinness Book of Records as the world's most versatile record player. The range of sounds that come out of his vinyl manipulations are huge.

All of this is by and large irrelevant. It wasn't even until I read the press release that I even knew turntables were used. Pulled Under is the fantastic kind of Electronica that doesn't really sound like anything but itself - the kind that I always assume is produced using some method known only to the composer. Ultimately, though, it's the music that succeeds or fails - not the production techniques behind them. That's what I really like about the album - the music itself - above and beyond any technique. I could sit and listen to the washing drones and textures for hours.

- Stage 0 -

Janek Schaefer et al - Wow
Label: Diskono Format: 7"

In which Janek Schaefer and Diskono send copies of Wow (physically-remixed in the cutting of the 7" itself) to several people with instructions to further physically remix.

My copy, by Caz McIntee, was pierced by drill and needled thread, transposing a 14th century shunga print onto the vinyl. See website for further physical remixesp[7].p[0] p[7] p[0]

In this case, is the original recording remarkable more for what it inspires later; the initial sound being somewhat immaterial? I'm thinking now that I should've ground mine into a fine powder and mixed into a festive gingerbread. Ho ho ho and hardee-fuckin'-har.

-David Cotner-

David Schafer - x10R.1/x10R.2
Label: Transparency Format: 2CD

Wherein ten Easy Listening records played at the same time (either in two-second gaps or variable gaps ) that take you right up above the Muzak^TM aether . The design and execution of this particular curiosity are green and impeccable. It's a bit like changing channels on the radio, this - however, the only stations available are the Easy Listening ones. This is not necessarily a bad thing - and this would make a phantastic installation piece. At times, the waves of nostalghia buffet gently against one's craft, depending on whatever pharmaceuticals one has at hand - at other times, it s as if the drug spiral drags one down through the nightmare psycho-logical sequences from a 1960s film where the ending is anything but certain.

In the face of considerable - yet identifiable cacophony - the mind picks out recognisable and comforting snippets (usually rhythmic) with which to console itself. Alessandro Alessandroni is the person behind the unique whistling on the Sergio Leone Western soundtracks is one. That's the most vivid thing I could find. This is a simultaneously comforting and cacophonic series of recordings - a rare duality indeed.

-David Cotner-

Scanner - Lost Without Light
Label: Underscan Format: 10"

This three track EP is first in a series of ten put out by Underscan and will be available on 10 inch vinyl. It features Robin Rimbaud mixing the chattering beats, shards of desiccated voice and buried pulse of "Canton Lathe" along side the more spaced metals and rustlings of the brief "Forget Me". There is a spacious quality to both of these tracks, the beats never become too cluttered and the sounds are sparse but somehow warm. The last track, "Backwood" is slightly more beat filled but also has a ghost of mournful melody threading in and out of the precise percussion. Voices briefly shift to the front of the mix, muffled and unidentifiable, then fade back and forth again as the track continues on its original course.

Lost Without Light is a short but tantalising slice of Electronica that isn't going to break into any new territory but it made me wish there were some more of it.

-Paul Donnelly-

Frederik Schikowski - Tja, Nein
Label: Betrug Format: LP

A decided oddity, Tja, Nein combines backing tracks recorded on what sounds like preset keyboards and drum machine settings run at high speed through a devious Pop sensibility of an indeterminate era. Frederik Schikowski sings in German, with such titles as "Vergessen" ("Forget"), "Der Traurige Junge" (The Sad Boy") and "Ich Kannte Dich Erst Kurz, Aber Fand Dich Ziemlich Gut" (" I Had Not Known You For Long, But Liked You A lot") resonating with melancholiy and gloom, but delivered to such upbeat, brightly minor key music that signals soon become crossed. Some of the instrumentals are enough to make one wonder at the mind which could compose such squalls of overblown electronic faux bombast; the use of detuning in particular is enough to invoke queasiness on more than one occasion.

It's hard to know how to describe this record: it's funny, thanks to the cheesy tunes and instrumentals, but the singing evokes such sadness even in someone who doesn't understand more than the odd word, that it takes on an aspect of doleful sadness and longing almost enough to bring sobbing fits on at the pity of it all. The plangently pitch-bent synth sounds tug heartily at the emotions, rising into swooningly cod-Electro chops and occasionally frenetic rhyhms of such leftfield chirpiness that when the voice sounds so resigned, it's difficult not to feel sorry for Schikowski. Somehow, the not of this world longings and disappoinments sketched by Edward Ka-Spel and the Legendary Pink Dots in the early Eighties spring to mind, as "Ich Kannte Dich Erst Kurz, Aber Fand Dich Ziemlich Gut" makes its way through Waltz-time and spoken passages into a not-necessarily love song of considerable apparent weltschmertz and wavery keyboards. The final straw comes with "Ich meine Neine" ("I Mean No"), a deadpan vocal flatly deconstructing love song structures in about 60 seconds flat - as with most of this album, it's hard to know whether to weep or chuckle in the end.

-Linus Tossio-

Irmin Schmidt & Kumo - Masters Of Confusion
Label: Spoon/Mute Format: CD

Subtitled A Can Solo Project, this is a collaboration between the founder member of Krautrock legends Can and drum programmer/electronics maestro Jono Podmore. Schmidt's acoustic piano pitted against the electronic rhythms created by Kumo can make for exhilarating noises, as on "Las Plumas del Buho". The sound is somewhere between a Flamenco and a Raga as keyboards and percussion engage furiously in a dialogue which demonstrates how the different approaches of these two musicians and their instruments can be mutually compatible. And sound good too.

More abstract sounds open "Burning Straw In Sky", creating a vortex out of which a relaxed duet emerges; the beats are less frenetic and Schmidt leaves more spaces between his explorations of the darker end of the piano's colours. But the tensions build and fade. There is a passage of glittery accelerating keyboard over spare rhythms which gradually become more dense. It is a music of contrasts. "Those Fuzzy Things" employs a simple motif from piano but is occasionally invaded by Riley-esque loops and small showers of metallic noises which may come from either player. Space is created and the rhythms are broken down and re-built. This is taken further on "Fledermenschen", which is composed almost entirely of percussive acrobatics and electronics. The broad romantic swathes of keyboard which open "Beauty Duty" gradually mutate into a relaxed Reggae groove before becoming more dissonant and spacey. Another interesting aural mixture.

One of the most satisfying combinations of acoustic and electric instruments comes on "Gentle into that Night" where Schmidt's acoustic explorations, both intensely melodic and brooding, are supported by the shifting, understated electronics. Each complements the other. They have taken two musical vocabularies and shown that they are mutually comprehensible and compatible. Between them Schmidt and Kumo construct a variety of musical textures, sometimes harsh, sometimes melodic, never dull. They seem to challenge and inspire each other. The setting of grand piano with all its cultural associations alongside the newer culture of Kumo's world works perfectly. A truly creative meeting.

-Paul Donnelly-

Irmin Schmidt & Kumo - Masters Of Confusion (A Second Opinion)

The tap and thud of the modern bass drum, proceeding apace quick as a bunny. "Goatfooted Balloonman" - and the springheeled jack can be seen racing after balloons that edge higher toward away. A nimble thread across the piano, all the while. Up floats the balloons, free at last, mired in the ether of radio static and contemplative clouds of piano watching. A more aggressive beat hones in and crows across the backdrop of the piece, accelerating and speeding the proceedings. "Burning Straw in Sky" descends with drips and whispers, filigree of organ drone and the promise of more to come. Piano and beats, piano and beats, piano and beats and a certain innate sense of interplay and improvisation. And then the dancing spider of notes, suspended and tense. Back come the beats, and the unusual odd ambient odes.

I can see the reflection of a seagull through the window behind this computer screen, and that's how the sounds move - a bird in flight, reassuring but not entirely predictable. Interesting that three tracks on the record are from European live actions of the reasonably near past tense. Breaking glass. In the underpass? A touch of the Dub pervades - still the best music to listen to whilst driving through paranoid London, Rhythmic snatches of breathing and bells and piano is the underpinning, "gentle into that night" indeed.

Speed, much breaking of glass, a race weighing heavily, and conclusion. Who could ask for anything more?

-David Cotner-

Schneider TM - Masters
Label: City Slang Format: CDS,12"

Lifted from the generally-excellent Moist album, "Masters" gets the remix treatment from Sean O'Hagan (returning the favour for Dirk Dresselhaus' bouncy contribution to the High Llamas' Lollo Rosso earlier this year), Dresselhaus himself and Thurston Moore - who's obviously got the mixing bug too from the mega-reconstructions of his Root project) .

O'Hagan conjours an Easy variation from his lounge-lite repertoirs, partway between his own work with Stereolab and as High Llamas on the "I Dream Of Chomsky" mix. Seemingly innocent enough at first, with elongation of the core rhythms and the addition of strings, things soon take surprising twists into noise and attenuated beats, matching the Schneider TM template of lateral oddness quite nicely. The "Master's Stripteaser Dub" is just that, Dresselhaus stripping down to essentials and building it all back up again in a different order, but it's Moore who takes most liberties with "Star(t) Fuck(ing)". Essentially a new track based on the bones of "Star Fuck," Moore treats this as an opportunity to scatter some highly arrhythmic Free Jazz Electronica shenanigans over a bare pulse tone, ensuring along the way that anyone dancing to this is going to be a) weird and b)double-jointed.

-Freq1C-

Schizoid - All Things Are Connected
Label: D-Trash Format: CD

Schizoid are here to fuck you up with reality of circumstances, apparently. And Christ, what a noisy reality it is. If "Digital Hardcore" can be used as a genre rather than a trademark, then this boy's got it in spades. Quite possibly the Ace Spades, too, as the fucked-up breakbeats and Gabba kickdrums keep getting overridden by Death Metal guitar assaults. And it's bangin'. I'm not sure exactly what it is that All Things Are Connected to, but I'd hazard a guess that whatever it is, it generates electricity and Schizoid's just switched it on and turned it up to at least 11.

Reference points begin, obviously, with Alec Empire, but stretch to include Napalm Death, if they went out clubbing and got in a fight. With various punk bands of the Crass/Conflict stable. And possibly the Dead Kennedys, if the intro to "Food for Thought" is anything to go by. (Of course, the "Tonight, Matthew, I will be California �eralles" tendency of the first few seconds is quickly drowned in a full-on carpet-bombing campaign of nasty electronics, but you get the impression that if it isn't in fact deliberate, Schizoid would be flattered by the comparison.) This is a man in a spiky metal box, or trapped in a Cube- style maze of death (you know, with, like, rooms that fill with water, and bits where you can't tread on certain coloured tiles, and shit like that) and really pissed off about conditions both inside the box/Maze of Death and outside in the corporate, branded fuck-up of a world the rest of us get to inhabit. And with access to Daleks samples and a couple of Norwegian Black Metal bands. It's fucking smart, really.

Imagine Atari Teenage Riot without the Glam-Pop aspects, and just the angry shouting and noises, and you're nearly there. The similarity betweent the blackest of Metal and the hardest of DHR has never been more apparent, although he does find time to bung in some sinister, spooky bits, too - "Indulgence/Compulsion" starts off sounding like Witchman, before the noise is brung, as it were. Light relief ought to be provided by some of the sillier samples, but such is the vitriol pouring (rather painfully, by the sounds of things) from Scizoid's throat (not to mention his guitar and electronic boxes "o" tricks) that even these become warped and nasty by association. (No sooner can you go "cool, that was a Dalek" than the music kicks in and reminds you just what a fucking nasty word "Exterminate" actually is. Likewise Bill Bixby off The Incredible Hulk telling you politely not to make him angry on "Elitist Musings", which also carries off the not unremarkable trick of making the line "Each to his own is more or less my way of thinking" sound like a threat to drop rabid ferrets down your trousers).

The only worry, as with Bomb 20, Shizuo and a million Punk bands, is how long can he keep up being this angry? I mean, I guess I'm probably not in a position to judge, but one thing's for fucking sure, Schizoid being angry sounds fucking good. Enjoy it while you can, and pray (rather selfishly, admittedly) the day never comes when he cheers up.

-The Commander-In-Chief, Deuteronemu 90210-

Schizoidal - Second
Label: Secret Level Format: CD

France's Schizoidal are purveyors of a particularly digital brand of HipHop breaks, bleep tones and arpeggiating basslines. First track, "A Piece Of Earth", is possibly the strongest on Second, based as it is around those specific elements. Sparse, effective beats, almost lazy in their effect though not in construction, make rolling baseline for the gurgling synths to chug along quite smoothly over, while Schizoid sets the pace off into breaks, drops and rewinds. There are recapitulations galore, building into a groovy number of pleasingly minimal accretions which could also work well with some kind of vocal element to pad out the nine minutes of drum machine calisthenics.

Other pieces are equally long or longer ("Halo Master" clocks in just over sixteen minutes) and follow a similar path at first; make a trundling beat jump though some less obvious hoops, bring in the digital keyboards to make a melody of sorts, then dissolve in the mix. This is all well and good, but sometimes becomes a bit of a take-it-or-leave-it proposition. Background-listening funky drum patterns are fair enough, and that's what there are a lot of on Second. Still, they work well enough, and when the breaks and beat constructions are set to a looser level, they're satisfyingly rounded, if perhaps lacking in an element of real resonance. "Sunset Light" in particular blends a more urgent tempo on the beats with some dissonances from the keys which makes for a mostly successful bash at the Jazz-Noise-Funk sound without any real descent into noodling wankiness at all.

No, Second works fine at ploughing the minimalist HipHop beat, and when the tearing sound of synths rolling over themselves under the faders, sliders and pitchbend controls kicks in around the cycling rhythms, all is well, justifying the lengthy track times for the most part. The closing piece, "Spot And Touch", takes matters further to the edges of the equipment selection's parameters, with circuitous trills of synth riding through the stepping, building groove to make wobbly good use of the restricted and reedy sounds most digital electronic tone generators put out. Compositionally effective, there is a feeling that some warmer-sounding instruments could make Schizoidal really shudder the speakers. Until then, Second is a rather more than good enough example of what they offer, and that's not bad at all.

-Freq1C-

Schlammpeitziger - Augenwischwaldmoppgefl�e
Label: A-Musik Format: CD

Jo Zimmermann likes his tunes as bouncy and enjoyable as he likes his titles loooong. Each track name is an absurdist construction of wordextensions - maybe nonGermanspeakers might not understand the nuances, but they can certainly appreciate the humour of a title like "Klapperhoforkester" - or even funnier no doubt, try to pronounce them, especially after a few beers.

Naturally, Augenwischwaldmoppgefl�e has all the hallmarks of bleepy, chirpy post-New Wave Synth Pop straightouttaK�n, and an irrepressible humour and sense of good cheer and joy that it's very hard to be glum while giving it a wirl on the compactdiscplayer. Oh, all this runningwordstogetherintooneanother is quite infectious - a bit like the music.

So when the tinny keyboards have been assimilated, it's worth mentioning the clockwork precision of the beat constructions (sorry, beatconstructions!), running over each other in that finely-meshed way the Nineties brought the world, along with a rediscovery of the the monosynth's ability to sweep the corners of the mouth upwards in a cheesy grin. That and a very groovy undertow of bass and the swirl-by Autobahnarpeggiations and reverbs to. It's not a particularly derivative sound though; just familiar. An album for bouncing up and down to then, and one for falling over afterwards with a feeling that time has gone out of joint. Happyhappyjoyjoy.

-Freq1C-

Günter Schroth - Barcode Music
Label: Archegon Format: CD

"Barcodes are condemned to be dumb contemporaries of our world ruled by computers. Only by bleeping at the scanner of the supermarket checkout they bashfully refer to their musical qualities."

Gnter Schroth composes and performs music that is 100% barcode controlled. This ranges from prepared sheets of barcodes to the contents of a weekly excursion to the shops. The result is similar to Stockhausen's electronic pieces like Kontakte. This gives you some idea of the sound, but this is as much down to Gnter Schroth's understandable liking of concrete noise, shortwave tweaks, and oscillator squeals as it is to the barcodes.

The barcodes themselves have their own peculiar cycles and repetitions. They are closer to the structure of computer data than conventional music cycles. Well, they are computer data. Barcodes are such simple little chunks of data that the sound moves in blocks that resemble ZX81 computer cassettes or the signals from the antique satellite Pioneer 10.

-s5000-

Schwermut Forest - Sort Of
Label: Kitty-Yo Int/Kollaps Format: CD/LP

The German labels Kitty-Yo and Kollaps seem to have been instrumental in defining a certain nineties German post-rock sound in the same way that On-U Sound defined the eighties digital Dub sound. Similarly most bands arising from these houses seem to swap musicians as some sort of interchangeable super-group which shifts and turns to fulfill one or another purpose.

Schwermut Forest's purpose would seem to be to produce lyrical, melodic, German-language Pop-Rock-Ska-fusion. The sweet catchy swing of their sound is moulded into carefully (almost anally so!) constructed song structures that charm the ear and set the foot tapping. I'd personally like them to explode into showers of vitriol more often although their only attempt at that direction "Die Zukunft Der Was" is slightly embarrassing and perhaps suggests why they don't. Nonetheless there is still much to enjoy: The apres-college-Rock anthem "Guten Tag" and the twin glories of "Gastecouch" and "Sunshine" swing extremely hot, but the avant-Ska of "Das Captivity Thema" left this reviewer baffled. The image of hip German kids getting down to Madness and Bad Manners will haunt me until my dying day.

Enjoyable.

-Iotar-

Robert Scott - The Creeping Unknown
Label: Thirsty Ear Format: CD

For over 20 years, Robert Scott has been a shining example of how beautiful Pop songs should be put together (but rarely are), first in The Clean and later in The Bats. It's hard to tell whether he's actually a hard-driven perfectionist, or if these songs just come pouring out of his head this way - the melodies are so tight and beautiful and perfect, soaring into joyful guitar crescendos just at the right places, and moody, spooky, painfully sad at others, cleverly modern-to-futuristic, utilizing feedback and voice loops as unexpected song leads, and samples that sound like plugged-in sitars and airplanes. These songs just feel so free, falling together as naturally as waterfalls tinkling, it's hard to think of them as being actually constructed and not just occurring.

-Holly Day-

Scott 4- Catastophe
Label: Format: CDS,12"

Naming your band after That Album is a good start; as, indeed, is that DJ Shadow Trip-Hop break. And then you bung in some slide guitar and all of a sudden we're in Electro-New Country territory. Only we're not Gomez...

This is quite a strange blend, bringing to mind Beck while remaining resolutely Lo-Fi - as with a great deal of this kind of thing, the most pleasant parts are where the electrickery (as Catweazle would say) is allowed to give way to melody and good old-fashioned singing and stuff. Having said that, the real star of the title title track is this great squelchy analogue synth sound which keeps poppoing up and being way cool at you.

The second track "Avis Railhome," is a tad more banging - there's still good squelch, and distorted vocals in an almost Buttholes vein; and slide guitar too, but more "Grease Nipples" by Wiseblood than Ry Cooder. "Famished," on the other hand, is much more restrained, cry-in-yer-beer music done by the Mary Chain circa Darklands, with some nice understated strings before the loud (though not too loud) Mogwai bit comes on. Never in yer face, this is inoffensively lovable-comedown music for those comedowns when you can handle vocals and lyrics and shit like that. I like it. Don't get where the boy Walker comes in though...

-Deuteronemu 90210 II Electric-Boogaloo-

Scott 4 - Lefturno
Label: Folk Archive/V2 Format: CDS

It's that harmonica, really. That's the hook. It sounds like Johnny Marr should be playing it (no, I have no idea why I think that either; although a slower version of the "Dogs Of Lust" riff would probably sound fairly similar). There's shades of the mighty Julian Cope in the vocals, especially when they start harmonising in that kind of stoned-Pop-Rock way that Cope specialises in. The Wiseguts remix has a really cool bomb falling whistle sort of noise from an old video game and more scratching and stuff, but the song is essentialy the same (and none of your fucking Led Zepplin jokes...)

"Sony" comes on like a TripHop Tindersticks but with slide guitar on and some nice fuzz towards the end, plus some Peel Sessions-era Copey organ. Stuff about "motherships" and how "the new Sony beat is taking us all" really don't explain much to me, but sounds cool. Which is of course, much more important.

-Deuteronemu 90210, Duke Of Hazzard-

Scratch Pet Land - Solo Soli Iiiiii
Label: Sonig Format: CD

The sound of children at play, or more specifically of adults who have chosen to ignore (or who maybe never learned) how you're supposed to use musical technology. Instead, they just wade in, irrespective of melody, composition or keys, and instead let rip with whatever sounds fun at the time. Buzzes, plinks, pops, tweaks, chirrups, blown-over tubes, wibbles, snorts, close-mic'd scrapes; tinkly lo-fi keyboard or blipping sample loops made to roll on because they sound interesting for the moment; attention-defecit concr� is upon the world of Electronica once again, and why not?

This approach can be wearing, even painful, if taken too far for too long, but Scratch Pet Land seem to be quite determined in their na�ity. Laurent and Nicholas Badoux inviting the listener to forget their musical upbringing in "proper" melody and "acceptable" harmony and get mucky - to laugh with pleasure derived from funny sounds extratced from their usual context; chuckle even at the nature of music and how seriously it can be taken by adults. Even among the passages of badly-played bum notes or prmitive drum machines let rip at 50,000 bpm for the hell of it, it's possible to perk up when the going actually gets tuneful at several points and a great big hook comes along for a few bars and sweeps up the sound of a buzzy toy into emotive joy before frazzling itself to giggly bits again.

Solo Soli Iiiii makes a comfortably silly sound, happy on the stereo entertaining itself in its own virtual world of musical innocence and exploration; not a bad achievement really. Perhaps to be taken in small doses by those not prepared to relax their definition of music to allow for stumbling, fumbling improvisation among the cunningly-warped electronic manipulations.

-Linus Tossio-

2nd Gen - Live, March 1999.

2nd Gen - Against Nature
Label: Novamute Format: 12",CDS

Imagine if grindcore metal went breakbeat; not limited to the Godflesh/Techno Animal axis of crushing HipHop, nor using the Ultraviolence method of post-Gabba rock, but full-on, speed thrash meets drill & bass. 2nd Gen's Wajid Yaseen welds the shuddering bass twists of No U- Turn to Industrial noise with a jagged touch, aurally stripping away the veneer of jazz and melody into which too much drum & bass has deteriorated.

Titles such as 'Malady Made Simple' and 'Rushing at Thresholds' say it all, with the latter's dentist-drill intensity setting teeth on edge and paranoia levels to 11. Play this out, clear the dancefloor, and take darkness to an extreme.

-Freq1C-

2nd Gen - And/Or
Label: Novamute Format: CDS

Riding low and fruity on a distorted HipHop breakbeat, "And/Or" snaps angrily like Wajid Yaseen really wants you to know how crap the world really is. Through the application of noise and processing of the rumbling, spluttering kind, the track edges from a loping prowl into shards of noise then back down to nil. Things have got clearer acoustically than found on the full-tilt assault of Against Nature, but the sense of dread is still well apparent here.

Techno Animal couldn't have been a better choice for remixers, and they bring the clanking Dub noise along with D�ek rapping about, well, how crap the world is. They do "And/Or" over again in instrumental form too, with even more bass fartalong to underpin the minor-key threat implicit in almost verything they touch. Grindcore and Horrorcore were made for each other in these hands, as the wet slap of fuck-over bass kicks shudders under blasts of Tech-stepping synth stabs and rising draughts from the sampler

For Cold Kid's mix, it's all nagging one-note piano riffs, tearing analogue buzzes and spine-freezing arpeggiations on the basic structure, while Si Begg (in Buckfunk 3000 guise) goes downbeat and funky, rolling the breaks up into phased areas of quite trebly timestretched gloop which eventually dissolve into dynamic gear shifts and mid-range coasting of almost dancebable (rather than moshable as is the case with the original) form.

-Freq1C-

2nd Gen - Irony Is
Label: Novamute Format: CD

Yup, it's the 2nd Gen album. So don't get too comfortable - it's gonna be one hell of a glorious racket. And, fuck me, it is! From the worryingly laid-back, Ice-esque HipHop of opener "And/Or" to the closing title track, Irony Is is a full-on metallic package of angry political "belching, farting, vomiting and diarrhoea", as Che Guevara once said. (Okay, so he was referring to having a dicky tummy in Bolivia due to malnutrition, and it wasn't supposed to be any kind of recommendation, but in keeping with the revolutionary spirit of this album, I thought I'd quote the bugger anyway. Alright?)

Imagine Witchman getting seriously pissed off, or Techno Animal if someone surreptitiously nicked their Ketamine and replaced it with PCP before making them watch the news for ages. And that's 2nd Gen, AKA Wajid Yaseen, ex of angry Islamic HipHop guerrillas Fun-Da-Mental, now name-checking Kevin Martin on album sleeves and hanging out with Gallon Drunk's James Johnston, a man who could well have been born during a Birthday Party gig were it not for the fact that he's too old. Johnston guests on "Black Spring", an unexpectedly pleasant (although that's "pleasant" in the sense of four broken ribs and a gammy leg rather than five broken ribs and permanent brain damage) slice of Drunk-esque slide guitar and breathy vocals (this, remember, is the guy who taught- well, everyone, really, how to say "Hey!" as if they were from Tennessee rather than Camden - and how to do it wearing a Hawaiian shirt) underpinned by some banging electronic percussion, and with some real fucked-up harmonica jammed in at the end. "Vurt" (great title, great fucking book) has some particularly vicious high-frequency squirts and squelches and ends up coming on like DJ Krush (yes, the chilled-out Japanese fella) being mugged by a gang of killer robots (yes, I know, quite why supposedly "killer" robots would settle for just mugging him is beyond me, too, but what can I say? I don't know how their fucking algorithms work. I can barely operate a microwave.)

Drum'n'Bass rantathon "Slowburn" has a very stoned-sounding Mau intoning "I want a beautiful girl to catch my brain/Take it home, preserve it in a fish bowl and feed it fish food" before cutting into the bleeding-eardrum Funk of "Buried", which sees a gang of midgets setting about your skull with tiny little drills and hammers and shit. It's pretty fucking noisetastic, really, and shows a guy not content to stay within the traditional bounds of hard Electronica (I mean, can you imagine many others of the big boots, fucked beats fraternity doing the James Johnston thing?) but instead wilfully leaping over genre boundaries into someone else's backyard and frightening their cat. And that, I think you'll agree (if you have even the faintest idea of what I'm on about at this point, 'cos quite frankly even I'm not sure anymore) is A Good Thing.

-Deuteronemu 90210 in a white wine sauce-

2nd Gen - Musicians Are Morons
Label: Novamute Format: 12",CDS

Wajid Yaseen's never been one to mince his words, and this EP provides yet further opportunity for him to do the same to the music. "Black Spring" and "Musicians Are Morons" itself are here in album versions, the former with James Johnston of Gallon Drunk providing suitably incendiary guitar and vocals to the swampy breakbeat and feedback Blues grind. The original title track is a cruncher of the by-now traditional 2nd Gen format - HipHop beat distened under an assault of broad-spectrum noise until it bleeds as much as the listener's ears are intended to as the frequencys are squeezed and filtered into thankfully-dynamic submission.

Each track gets a versioning - former Nitzer Ebb Industrial Dancer Bon Harris takes "Musicians Are Morons" in a slippery Techno direction as Maven, pumping up the rhythm to the acocmpaniment of crunchy fragments of the original on top and ominously-wheezing Trance sideswipes, and seemingly surrounded by a swarm of crows. NYC label Wordsound's own Sensational joins in the fun for a rejig of "Black Spring" into even darker dimensions, rapping through distortions and sheets of noise with ill intent. The CD edition comes with a couple of bonuses - "Slowburn", thoroughly warped into a twisty feast of scarred digital scum by Patric C, and the sinister video for "And/Or, both of which will quite likely set the pulses racing along.

-Freq1C-

Sedayne - The Proximal Indo-European No-Age Sounds Of Sedayne
Label: Sedayne Format: CD

A whistle, rattle and something else besides.

That "something else" is what gave rise to the spate of ritualistic experimental groups in the 1980s (:zoviet*france:, Psychick TV, Korpses Katatonik, Sleep Chamber, Alien Brains, Metgumbnerbone, Masstishaddhu). The folkloric tradition blows through the thighbones of murdered men and the crop circles in the fields of Northern England, and Sedayne is from those last two aforementioned groups. The vague atmosphere of the exotic, hanging like rough incense, pervades these songs (not "tracks", or "pieces" per se) - devotional and charming and exceedingly good fuck music. It's only fair - at low volumes your plants will grow stronger because of it. Not because of your rutting, I mean. Oh, will you turn that music down!

Are the images of a fading past preserved in the blood of some? Stuck squarely in the recesses of a person's mind, refusing to let go? Is nostalghia a living thing? And yet for all the sombre mood and mystery, sometimes the frown turns upside down, travelling elseways through a furrowed brow and emerging as a smile. Musically speaking, that is. A slight twitter of birds now - or is it rats? Such was the sense of humour that suffused these groups in the 1980s. Sedayne sez:

"...and very different to (Masstishaddhu's) Shekinah too, although both are possessed of a similar droning darkness largely thanks to the crwth, a mediaeval bowed-lyre which I like to think of my main instrument - it's there on "Shekinah" but here it finds its true home - especially with the foxes in (the track) "Now / Here"..."

"Hometime (for Cherry & Mbizo)" saunters down a pav� path, voice matching the call of the horn and entering into a hall of bells. Resonance flows into the atmosphere, mixing with it, atomising and inhaled as a cat smells a mouse or you hold a lover, revelling in the overarching sensation of the exotic. It crystallises the feeling of looking over a high cliff and realising with all your heart and soul that you never, ever have to fall over the edge.

-David Cotner-

Senssurround Orchestra - Mort Aux Vaches; Meltdown Of Control
Label: Staalplaat Format: CD

O what those Japanese get up to with the Germans when no one is looking... A reconstructed recording (by a Pole and a Dutchman as it happens) of live music from three performances during 1997-98 Meltdown Of Control is somewhat like an hour's worth of noise one should make up their own mind about. For the first seven minutes or so, I felt like I was standing for about a month on tarmac, behind the turbines of some massive futuristic passenger jet with nothing to protect my ears nor even any of my other senses. Usually the little people moving about on airport runways are equipped with those big soft-looking earphones, but I tell you, if I got any, they were only to amplify the engine roar directly into my brain. Seven minutes feels more like seven years with a noise so intense that my hearing eventually mutes itself, making only a buffer and giving loose sort of apoplexy to the rest of the time left on the CD. I am not sure what it sounded like after all that, though I did keep listening and do recall some other trips to the tarmac. I'm not sure what else can be said, really. Give it a listen for your own self - ear protection recommended.

-Lilly Novak-

The Serpents - You Have Just Been Poisoned
Label: Ochre Format: CD

The first album from this psychedelic collective proves to be a cosmic affair of considerable depth and originality. Taking their cues from the Space Rock of Brainticket and Amon Düül II and the lo-fi acid folk of The Incredible String Band, this group kick out some truly noxious grooves with time for multiplex neo-pagan storytelling trips and obscure Electroacoustic klang worthy of a lost Can EFS number. But all this is mere trainspotting. What Serpents have put together is unique. While most contemporary psychedelia has opted for the safety of Trance or the wilful obscurity of post-Rock we get the feeling that someone is completely off their tits on psilocybin here.

On the downside, occasionally the female womb voice gets a tad too earth-motherish for this reviewer but who gives a shit when it's all rockin' on so many levels. The band haven't entirely ejected the dangers of lead guitar but fortunately there's no Steve Hillage clone It's more a mutated slide descended from the Good Captain's Magic Band. On the folksy side, there is a half a nod of the rainbow coloured cap to the night-clad Current 93, and the Musique Concrète mix and merge found-sound links between coherent songs keeps the audience right out there for the whole ride.

Sadly, this album will probably be largely overlooked, which is a shame because it has much to recommend it. But hey! I've got my copy, which is nice.

-Iotar-

Set Fire To Flames - Signs Reign Rebuilder
Label: 130701(UK, Europe)/Alien8(North America)/P-Vine(Japan) Format: CD,2LP

This recording contains the result of collaborative jamming from musicians including members of Godspeed You Black Emperor, Fly Pan Am and Exhaust. They set up in a house in Montreal, 'an old falling down monstrosity', and recorded solidly for five days more concerned with the actual experience of collective playing/recording than the end results. But it's the end results that we have here.

It is like being taken on a tour of the creaky old apartment where the recording took place and hearing different musics from the 13 players at different times. Drums echo, sparse guitars picks at fragile melody, a violin weaves in and fades away. There is some remarkably delicate music here and not just flat-out improvisation. Cello and electronic scratchings rise and fall over hypnotic drumbeats, drones are set up then dissolve while less identifiable noises come from other sources, presumably the house itself . On one track there is an inspired duet between bass clarinet and French horn. Elsewhere voice and other samples are taken from 'audio-fishing', that is, the compulsive need to record whatever sounds occur in specific locations. So the sounds of the neighbourhood, police sirens, fragments of conversation, traffic and the creaking and settling of the house are a part of the overall structure of this oddly beautiful and haunting album.

Moods shift and new atmospheres are developed within individual tracks but the whole recording fits seamlessly together, mixing composed and improvised music in such a way that you cannot tell them apart. And why should you anyway. I think this reflects the painstaking care with which the five days of material have been edited and assembled. Or 'hacked apart and then reassembled into a 73 minute monstrosity' as the promo sheet would have it. Whatever the collective and individual experiences of those involved might have been the final results are subtle and intriguing. Listening to it as darkness falls in the murk of a November afternoon may help but whatever the listener's surroundings this is a compelling documentation of a time and place. Something special to be given careful attention.

-Paul Donnelly-

Set Fire To Flames - Telegraphs In Negative/Mouths Trapped In Static
Label: 130701 Format: 2CD

Some bands and their sound are inextricably linked to their chosen recording environments. Can and Faust immediately come to mind with place and process being inextricably linked. So it is with this thirteen-piece Canadian collective. Their last CD Signs Reign Rebuilder derived much of its atmosphere from the location in Montreal where they recorded it . They called the place "an old falling down monstrosity" and "something that couldn't be erased from the tape" and undeniably, "the recordings were as much about the house as they were about the sounds made inside it". Now they have produced something similar.

This time the band shifted their collective selves to a place which would become an essential part of what they played. Isolation and singular focus are key words. Holed up on an abandoned farm in rural Ontario they recorded in an "huge cathedral-like barn" producing an album that is as fascinating to listen to as the record of the process is to read. It isn't often that promo leaflets are worth reading or offer any insights into the music they crow about. This one does.

But what about the music? Some of it is the result of group improvisation while other parts are composed. The whole lot was gathered from 12 hours of recording and has been "hacked apart" and reconstructed by the band. Whatever the process, it is, thankfully, difficult to categorise, blending as it does a wide range of instruments, from bass clarinet to glockenspiel as well as those assorted location noises. The place creaks, strains and filters itself into the overall sound. It is eerie and comforting, grainy and clear as sunlight through trees. A compelling combination.

On CD 1, guitars chime together and various combinations of violin, cello and keyboard drone, scramble and disperse in the air like throngs of tiny wings. Yes, it is pretty hard to describe but wonderful to listen to. For example on "Tehran In Seizure/Telegraphs In Negative" something like rotating helicopter blades hang over the opening before evolving into a shimmering wave of insect wings or calls. The music just seems to spread out effortlessly, tracks merging into each other. There are some harsher moments, like some of "Fukt Perkusiv/Something About Bad Drugs, Schizophrenics And Grain Silos-" on CD 2 But "Something About Eva Mattes In The Halo Of Exploding Street Lamps" is a gently repetitive marimba feature.

This is mostly music that uses space, sprawls and sometimes lulls you into disconnected dreamscapes. It ought to be listened to in one sitting in order to experience the way the music grows and mutates. The sense of place may be specific but there is a real timelessness about it, as though listening suspends time. What better effect could music have ?

-Paul Donnelly-

S.E.T.I. - Pod
Label: Ash International [R.I.P.] Format: CD

This is the third in Andrew Lagowski's excusions into the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence, and perhaps the most disengaged from the planet of sound. The theme is escape from Earth and oneself - hence the title. Much more Solaris than Apollo 13 in other words, and with nods to both the end sequence of 2001 and thirty years of NASA research and/or cover up along the way too.

The hum of a spaceship interior; squarking astronauts and Houston; the interrupted radio signals; solar flares brushing into audible bandwidths; winds dusting the surface of Mars; imaginary landscapes; real conspiracies; mains ignition; coded transmissions form Earth to the alien motherships; a rapidly jacked-out comms port; post-Ambient signifiers of giant spaceships and otherness; wow and flutter; saucers full of black secret technology; skiffy signifiers, spheres in disharmony; voices from beyond the wub; Discovery making a (hidden) discovery... Pod offers a trip into low orbit, to the reconditioned and privatised Mir, to the space stations of the mind. An impressionistic selection of extra-vehicular activities, spacewalkman-style, with vertigo included and alienation just a skip away.

-Freq1C-

S.E.T.I. - Pod (A Second Opinion)

The sounds come from various sources in the universe.

"Source" versus "Pod."

The avowed purpose is to "leave ourselves behind and become new beings". Will another recording create the necessary atmosphere for this? Yes and no. Lagowski's vow not to execute live actions in England may have something to do with this view. But define "new"? It could be said that every new draught of information caught by the mind - is a change, another step towards the "new". Your reading this review is, as the notes say, "a metaphor for escape." These sounds create this review - pod after pod - and the disc is still silver, circular and completely evidential.

Yet another series of deeper sounds from which ideas flow, about which impressions are made and through which panties are lost.

-David Cotner-

Brian Setzer '68 Comeback Special - Ignition!
Label: Surfdog Format: CD

No one could ever accuse former Stray Cats frontman Brian Setzer of being stuck in a rut. From his Rockabilly/Punk roots to his Swing-revival stint in the Brian Setzer Orchestra to this, his newest band, Setzer has made an obvious effort to strive to do new things with each new project. With ....'68 Comeback Special, Setzer seems to be focusing his attention on writing songs about his childhood, fast cars, and girls that like cars, set to a '60s Hard Rock beat with a bit of the Rockabilly edge that made him famous to start with. His band, of course, is excellent, with a strong upright bass-sound pushing most of the songs along, tight percussion, and Setzer's own spectacular guitar work.

-Holly Day-

7-Hurtz - Audiophiliac
Label: Output Format: CD,LP

Big beats and buzzing effects units, Funky functionalism and down'n'dirty grooves - that's what 7-Hurtz are all about. A good pointer too is the name - it's the (appropriately mispelled) bass frequency at which the listener's bowels are supposed to open spontaneously, so their choice gives some indication where Lascelles Gordon and Ben Cowen are coming from. Their debut single "Beatbox" (which is included here) was a bit of a banging bruiser for the dancefloor, so it's pleasant to report that Audiophiliac strays into less upfront territory too.

At a guess this record is meant to be listened to really very loud indeed - it does a good job of shaking the walls on those broken beat moments, and the avant-soundtrack into to the punishing beats and bastard buzzing bassline of, say, "Brains Diagram" benefits from the calm before the stormy atmospherics it generates. Still, it's far from all noisy bluster, and their sense of flowing, and dare it be said, Jazzy noisescape construction is proficient - and this is Jazz of the darkling honk and funky keyboard kind, taking a riff and turning it nasty or groovy as the moment demands. Still, the smoking sax which permeates "Babe" goes maybe a little too far in the "sexy noir" stakes for it's own good. Probably the best track after "Beatbox" would be "Krystal", which oozes electronic menace through oversampled chimes and some phased rhythms - if only it didn't just fade out of ideas into the more urgent "Zero Zero Five Ten", which verges into squelchy Ambient Techno, early Aphex Twin style.

Dips and swoons into breakbeat or abstract noodling abound like the ghost of Jazz Rock haunting the dancehall; as it does quite a lot these days. "Optimus" is a prime example of this tendency, taking a long hike around the shimmering reaches of faint beats and piercing echo wafts to no great demanding effect, but some distracting noise. Likewise, the underwater church chorus sampled for the beginning of "Aurora Borealis" are shaken up before no doubt getting a good stirring at the hands of its wheezing, sinuous beat. "Stoker's Motor" is as Electro-Funk as can be, with a fringe of Synth Pop on top; like Kraftwerk's "Robots" gone Nineties. Again.

So Audiophiliac does the business of bludgeoning its beats foursquare and hard, but largely all to the good. The edges of the sound are where the action really is though, and what makes it worth a listen outside the club environment; where some of its more frenetic tracks no doubt kick up an arse-quaking storm nevertheless.

-Freq1C-

7-Hurtz - Beatbox
Label: Output Format: 12",CDS

7-Hurtz combines the DJing and keyboard skills of Lascelles Gordon (ex-Brand New Heavies and Heliocentric World, currently of Campag Velocet and the Helter Stupid club) and Ben Cowen (of Lowilliams and Pushkin) into a John Carpenter-inspired melange of rhythmic Electro pulses and steaming breakbeats, heavy on the bass and quite fond of the odd vocoder moment. This is demonstrated ably by "Beatbox" with its Eighties intro streaming off into glitchy feedback and looming booms and electrically-charged sinewaves. All good dirty Funky fun.

"808 Trippin'" does like it says, gloopily but briefly, while the "7-Hurtz Theme" drops an old favourite stereo test record sample for the start of a signature tune which has all the hallmarks of cross-decades Electronica: snappy breaks winding around some shambing digital keyboard sounds and a warmly mellow groove of the sinuously evasive kind. Add in some lingering analogue squelches and drum machine polyphonics, and it's all quite pleasantly Acidic, in a laid-back kind of manner. This is a taster for an upcoming album on Output, which could turn out rather interesting on the basis of their Beatbox introduction.

-Linus Tossio-

Shackleton/Appleblim - I Am Animal/Mystikal Warrior
Label: Skull Disco Format: 12"

The debut release from the Skull Disco label, this double A side 12" shows there's lots of promise lurking between the drumming and dancing skeletons which are sure to become a sought after signature design characteristic of the label. Neither track references Dub as a chilled out dope-nodding groove, instead distancing the bass and drum sounds, such as they are, from the body and drilling themselves into the darker parts of the brain instead with the subtle insistence of a paranoid delusion.

Shackleton's "I Am Animal" ripples with plenty of Dubstep thrills and heavyweight bass explosions, set to an asthmatic sample which only heightens the sense of claustrophobia. The verge of panic is heightened by a gathering clutch of alarm sounds which sputter their emergency signals at run down battery speed while the rhythmic undertow cycles by, booming deeply and striking sparse percussive hits for a squirming track which is best appreciated with the low end turned to maximum volume for optimum chest-bursting effect. Over on the flipside, Appleblim is in more ponderous yet equally sinister mood with "Mystikal Warrior", constructing a build up to the main rhythms which flickers with ominously detached Rasta samples. Once it gets going, the lurching bass stabs heave uncertainly while the percussive hits creep up the intensity scale, prefacing a somewhat early fade out.

-Richard Fontenoy-

Label: Skin Graft Format: CD

In which Zeek Sheck meets the Cloud People to relate the tale of the Beeper; an everyday story of collective madness which sits somehwere in the same mindfield as such prominent eccentrics as Ween, Caroliner and even The Residents. Not that there's the parodic element some of those groups rely on for too much of their output - what is on offer is often far more strange, veering into areas Sun Ra or Captain Beefheart might have passed though, before slipping away into uncharted territories of their own making.

From the collaged photos of the cover to the unhelpfully elliptical sleeve notes, the packaging reflects the music it encases, each requiring decoding (and sometimes causing confused double-takes). Even the title of the album is uncertain; it might actually be The Sweet Young Beeper by Cloud People after all. Somewhere between thirteen and fifteen people are credited at various points with playing a variety of instruments in a veritable orchestra of electronics and acoustic devices. If this seems a bit chaotic - it is, as (apparently) are the sounds produced by this somewhat sprawling ensemble. However, there is an underlying structure to the record - it just takes some time to become apparent.

By the time a couple of listens have been undertaken, the strange world becomes gradually familiar, even normal. Often wholly absorbing, the sense of otherness present in squeaked lyrics such as "AC/DC - I'm electric" convey a demented world of the chemically insane, the childishly inventive and the weirdly experimental, all rolled into one shuffling whole. Quite often gloriously destabilising any normal relationship between the music and reality, this is a record which amuses, confuses and excites as frequently as it is wilfully obscure. Perhaps an acquired taste, with much to infuriate those of linear disposition, Zeek and co. have produced a reminder that there is still much of interest on the fringes of the US underground.

-Antron S. Meister-

Colin Andrew Sheffield - Side One /Side Two
Label: Elevator Bath Format: 7"

Side one - Waves of hum introduce a clattering scatter of tones - videogame reminiscent. The skips and pops of the record cuddle alongside. Is the overt action of the skittering tones meant as a hymn - a paean to the nuances of the vinyl record experience? Then - slight tones (a bow to musicality) edge their way into the sight, followed by the lift of the tone arm.

Side two - More forceful bass boosts almost scuttle the speakers (at least, it nearly did on my Hello, Dummy! radio broadcast). It's accompanied by higher tones like a little brother following its elder sounds around. High tones come to the fore, and there seems to be a far-reaching impetus to the sounds. It's like these sounds ARE going somewhere, that they have a goal in mind... It's included in a gatefold 7" sleeve, on clear vinyl and designed with very clean lines, reminiscent of the old UK Virgin singles from the 1970s. One of the best-presented releases so far, flat out.

-David Cotner-

Bim Sherman
- Love Forever
- Rub-A-Dub
Label: Century Format: CD

Collecting together a bunch of rare 7" vinyl tracks (and their dub versions on Rub-A-Dub), Love Forever showcases Bim Sherman's output from the last half of the Seventies. Subtitled The Classic Jamaican Recordings, the vocal albums reflect a previous pair of rare collections, one with the same title, put out by UK producer and legendary sound system owner Lloyd Coxsone to show off Sherman's unique lyrical style. Thanks to these re-issues - and more are to follow, including On-U Sound rarities - many ultra-rare songs have resurfaced at last for re-appraisal and for those (in the majority of Reggae fans no doubt) who missed them the first time round.

Bim Sherman is unfortunately in the position of being widely underappreciated, not by those in the know, but by a wider public who only really had the chance to revel in in his 1995 album Miracle on any great scale. Some of that album's tracks appear in their original editions here, most notably the sonorous "Golden Locks" and the trombone-led "It Must Be A Dream". Stylistically, the vocal tracks range from the sweetly-euphonic "Love Forever" to the more Rootsy grandeur of "Mighty Ruler" with its reedy organ intro, and the heavier Sufferers-style tune "Tribulation". There's also a bonus in the shape of his debut recording "100 Years", a sprightly little number which is all the more evocative thanks to it's recording straight of an old dub plate, crackles and mid-range drop and all.

With the crooning charms of Sherman's voice stripped down or evn out entirely, Rub-A-Dub doesn't match exactly the versions to the originals, sprinkling in some extra tracks from other singles among the Love Forever songs, but this is largely academic save for the attentions of Reggae cataloguers out there. What shines through from these mainly uptempo mixes, largely produced by Sherman himself, is his ear for melody amongst the production overlays and echoes. These are among the mellowest of dubs, for the simple reason that the tricks and fades are kept to a bare minimum compared to some of the more outr�Seventies experimentalists, instead building warm dubs on the fradework of solid instrumental foundations from players such as the Roots Radics, Revolutionary Warriors and The Soul Syndicate.

It would be difficult to exaggerate the sensuously pleasant vibe given off by these two releases, whether due to Sherman's silky voice of a master singer or the forthright arrangements of brass, leyboard, drums and bass, in both dub and vocal formats. The exception here is "Beyond The Hill Dub", which stretches out into electro-dubber energy with the Tackhead crew and Dave Harrow on board in the On-U days, interjecting a drum machine blaster before the Dub Reggae returns in all its stately, bass-bosted glory.

-Antron S. Meister-

Shining Vril/KnifeLadder - (Split CD)
Label: Capp Format: CD

Shining Vril (John Murphy and Deborah Petrovich)'s four tracks on this disc feature a miasmic threnody of drones, clatter and feedback, swarming with menace and shifting uneasily from brooding presences to filtered effects turning unsettling sounds into even creepier ones. "Tortured Willow" weeps under a scatter of echo and delay, with metallic-sounding sharp tones providing a nesting place for hissing and scratching scurries and a fade out into horrified vocal fragments. "Carcass Black" holds similar crepitations and close-up moans and scrapes. There is a hellish, Dantean air of souls and sounds in toment being subjected to the bows which use their victims' tongues as strings to this piece, as a muttering legion of darkling figures build percussive rhythms to keep the process to a slowly-wavering time noted by chiming metal.

"Dislocation" makes a sound collage of looped voices and ominous whispers take the threat level to Paranoid Black; this is one not to listen to with the speakers behind the ears, or on headphones if a quiet night (or day) is required. Occult hints at sacrificial ceremonies, B&D and magickal practices are described to the slap-back of echoes and a dissolve into moans and glossolalia; whether this is disturbing or Hammer-like probably depends on the conditions it's listened to under. As for "All My Sins Remembered", these are perhaps of the kind for which absolution is sought in the slicing them into little pieces and whirling through a soft blender, sonically speaking at least. Is confession being givemn and taken by the stretchy, lateral voice? The redemptive qualities of further whistlings, vocal utterances and excoriated lysergic gropings around rhythm and texture seem entirely uncertain - but who said this was going to offer any answers?

KnifeLadder (Murphy, Andrew Trail and Hunter Barr) take much more interest in the construction of vaguely martial beats which propel the surrounding gurgle and chill of electronics into emergent states of rhythmic trance. Follow the accretions of percussion and bass in "Last Gasp" as melodies appear, dissolve and scream over the rapidly-increasing tempo; the results are almost purgative. Live track "Dervish" opens with a wordless chorus of layered vocalisation before the rolling beat kicks into violent spasms of Murphy's cymbal crash and powerhouse drumming and a veritable vortex of sundry electronic noise and grinding samples, soon reaching a room-filling density which is slightly offset by the concluding "Thank you, g'night".

The energy continues into "Maelstrom I+II+III", whose bleached groove staggers forward among the electro-acoustic rain with apparent intent to cause damge to someone or something. In fact, this piece nearly turns out to be an almost mellow trundle through the interface of improvised instrumental Rock and powered Electronica; at the switch of a rhtyhm, things take a reverse turn on the beat, sidestepping the established groove and abandoning it in favour of more liquid approach of near-vertiginous aspect. It probably does ride the same sample loops for a little too long for comfort, but with the whistling arrival of sonic bombshells, the gear steps down into a mostly satisfactory second section of stuttery hisses and revisited kettle drums. The conclusion takes the chaos into a fairly hurried, psyched-out expanse, of drums and electronics once again, but with the bass coasting on a frying-pan distortion before the obligatory feedback fade.

-Antron S. Meister-

Shinto - Ai To Kakumei
Label: Seperator/Disko B Format: 12"

A collaboration between Hans Platzgummer and singer CaMi Tokujiro, "Ai To Kakumei" allows the former to wreak some digital damage on the voice of the latter while making a darkly dramatic breakbeat assault as a backing. The A-Side title track has a curiously trebly sound, and it would be useful to know what Tokujiro is saying, but whatever it is, it sounds arty and works well with the music as it get progressively more claustrophobic. Japanese is also a good language for an MC, and while Platzgummer's Drum & Bass is nowhere in the darkcore league of the No U-Turn posse for example, it has a certain warped Pop quality thanks to its digital bassline.

Shinto reflect the spiritual ancestry of their name better on "Hangyonin", which is a ghostly enough companion to the spectral atmospheres of Witchman, all echoed vocal snippets and recursivley accreting breakbeats which switch from furious Junglist release to tense, reversed restraint. "Hora, Goran" has a funkier edge to the gloomy dynamics, though there's a foghorn wheeze which disrupts the warbling bassline and makes Tokujiro's crooning seem even more estranged. When the half-cheery, near-Housey melody comes in, it's all change into a curious warped Pop dimension. Oh, and the Seperator series of releases are almost worth buying for Georg Gaigl's monochrome photo-collage sleeve designs alone.

-Freq2D-

Shitmat - The Lesser Spotted Burberry EP
Label: Planet-Mu Format: 12"

The Lesser Spotted Burberry EP could as easily be a paean as a pisstake, but there's no doubting the fervour of Henry Collins' approach to beat-mangling. "Ellesse Warrior" swoons from driving mashup to celebratory Breakcore with a dizzying sense of humour in the application of a hint of Ragga and a good dose of manic intensity. Peppered with progressively more and more dissolute snippets of a drugged-up Chavvy anecdote which merge with the bulbous beats, the evil synth swarms and some hardcore Gabba pounding are interspersed with the occasional Trance drop to underpin the storyteller's tale of living it large.

"My Crew, My Pills, My Chain, More Gain" continues the story, flaying the samples and beats alike with a generous hand, meting out the licks with alacrity and a twisted grin - or is it a sneer? "Popper Warrior" ups the beats and lowers the distortion quantity in favour of smearing the rhythms all over the speakers and down the mixing board for good measure. The spoken parts become yet more fragmentary and the music wriggles further and further away from linearity into the realms of Squarepusher-style acrobatics, only far more sick and twisted. "Argos" is where matters get yet more sinister, scattering the Gabba liberally across minor chord trills and putrifying echo trails. The dynamics are frighteningly impressive to behold, as Hardcore rhythms are dissected and laid out across the spectrum, rounding off a highly distressed EP with some particularly fine bowel-trembling bass eruptions.

-Freq1C-

Si-cut.db - Enthusiast
Label: Bip-Hop Format: CD

Enthusiast is the 4th Si-cut.db album following on from Tennis, Douglas Benford's collaboration with Ben Edwards. To my mind Enthusiast isn't as stark sounding or minimal as Europe On Horseback. Actually, if anything Enthusiast is much more of a carpentered album, a major source of the sounds coming from wood work. This is very similar to Matmos technique. The comparison goes beyond technique, actually. Like a Matmos album, you can listen to Enthusiast and say yes, that's a piece of wood being planed. Then you forget about that and get back to saying this is bloody good music. Digital glitches and acoustic sounds merge together agreeably making an album of very good and very listenable electronic Dub.

To say that Douglas Benford has been prolific is an understatement. Apart from Si-cut.db and Tennis, he has worked on various projects - Radical Blend, Media Form, Phoenix Jig, Pantunes Music, as well as founding the Suburbs Of Hell and Sprawl Imprint labels. And we can expect further releases from Si-cut.db and Tennis this year. With Enthusiast it looks like he, along with Bip Hop, have come up trumps again.

-ap-

Si-cut.db - Enthusiast (A Second Opinion)

A snaking crackle and hiss and subtle beat pervades the opening sounds and in the digital realm, how enthusiastic can one be about zeroes and ones? Well, of course, they're rarely seen or experienced as such, but still...they're there, all-encompassing and insidious. Faintly Dubby echoes lie prostrate beneath the static cling. It galumphs along with a sense of journeying, of travelling, to it. It's a bit like the small, repetitive video game anthems in arcade games from the early-mid 1980s. Much head-nodding. Well, the keeping-beat kind, not the sleeping-beat kind! Zowie with the echo now, and it seems that smaller sounds, even when gathered together in this way or that, still retain their identity and innocuity. It's a very patient album, moving alongside fuck music as the equally-important situation of drive music (i.e. for very late nights when the house won't suffice and the hunger isn't quite there yet and the wet humidity of fresh air is needed in the form of a drive down a very long road).

And yet, with the advent and popularity of the laptop in modern composing, are we growing closer to people, to process, or to zeroes and ones? Perhaps, even in embracing the digital, such a divide can be addressed in a way that's more poignant and true and playful than was previously thought. So it is with enthusiasts like these...

-David Cotner-

Si-{cut}.db - Rate Of Living
Label: Sprawl Imprint Format: CD

Bass, and lots of it, characterise the undertow of this latest Si-{cut}.db release from Douglas Benford. This bass may be of a generally digital sort, but certainly thuds and reverberates with the best of them from the speakers, making a solid, if wayward, framework for the layers of breakbeats, synth shimmers and samples Benford weaves around the album. As with much of the current waves of Electronica albums, there's an extensive relationship with Jazz motifs going on in Rate Of Living - skewed arpeggiations, slantwise faux-vibraphonics, tinkly electronic pianos, that sort of thing, plus the still-effective assimilation of Drum & Bass' more fun elements of skittering snares, tortuously-developed rhythms and outrageously treated sound sources.

Such endeavours can quite easily lead to an ambient wash, an almost imperceptibly shifting music which hovers rather than confronts or energises, and sometimes that's the case here - however, even then, its presence is shadowy rather than background, instigating mood shifts with sometimes imperceptible adroitness. Taken as an accompaniment to everyday or extraordinary events or tasks, occasionally the music becomes a flowing half-engagement with listening, and quite likely to energise or ennervate with little conscious effort on the part of the listener, before popping out into moments of eccentric foregrounding. Mood music for a distracted culture, hypermodern stylism and/or technological loungecore for those neo-hepcat moments - Rate Of Living manages to encompass all those and a few more besides as it trickles, warms and amuses, an apparently surface-skimming concoction which thankfully also takes its body-grooving basslines along for the ride too - and even remains some kind of Dance music after all, packed with moments which can raise a big cheesy grin, a wry smile or even the odd raised eyebrow.

-Freq1C-

S.I. Futures - The Mission Statement
Label: Novamute Format: CD/LP

After the obligatory and insincere corporate introduction, The Mission Statement begins an eclectic romp through electronica. Si Begg, a.k.a. S.I.Futures, resurrects a Frankenstein form of Acid House with "This Is The Way", cut up and stitched together with glitches and old style guitar blasts. "Freestyle Disco" is hard Funk that brings to mind a thousand and one fitness records, while the collaboration with T Power "I Like That (Brand New)" is an abstract slab of Drum and Bass. The album also contains a collaboration with Aspects on the Rap number "All Terrain Aspects".

It's hard not to draw comparisons with this album. It's hard not to compare the packaging to The Second Annual Report of Throbbing Gristle. It's slicker and friendlier - coming straight from the insipid Modernism of corporate mission statements - but it's an Industrial product all the same. The mandatory monorail curves behind a pastel couple laden with shopping as they enjoy a walk in their pleasant concrete environment. And then of course there's "Eurostar", fuelled with vocoder harmonies and the na�e belief in trains, and it's impossible not to compare it to Kraftwerk's "Trans Europe Express". Only it isn't na�e, and that's the point. Part of the charm and brilliance of The Mission Statement is the way it ridicules corporate culture as Si Begg moves from style to style.

-ms2000-

S.I. Futures - We Are Not A Rock Band
Label: Novamute Format: CDS,12"

The artist formerly known as Si Begg (and Cabbage Boy, Buckfunk 3000 etc. etc.) sets out a mission statement for the forthcoming album of the same name on this single. "We are not a rock band" says the vocoded vocal, "But we rock the house". Indeed. They mayn't throw TVs out of windows or play guitars, but they (well, he, 'cos it's not a band either, is it?) set the floors a-pumping well enough. as for "getting high on drugs": well, that's probaly the prerogative of the target club audience, isn't it? The packaging itself is all done in rather neatly-realised corporate style; the latest fashion it seems, as Icebreaker International have shown to be as effective a commentary as Kraftwerk did with high-tech scientific garb before.

As for the remixes, they're all by S.I. Futures himself. Queasy Drum & Bass from Buckfunk, stripped-back high-kicking Housey Funk for the Dub Mix and the Acapella version does just what it says, the solo vocoder rippling with echo treatments. Things go all over the place on what would be a B-side if it wasn't only on the CD for "Everybody Just Git Funky", and as the video-style voice-over of "Outro" declares with all the cod-dynamic thrust of a business presentation, this EP is "another quality S.I. Futures product".

-Freq1C-

Sigur Rós - Ægætis Byrjun
Label: Fat Cat/Smekkleysa Ehf Format: CD,2LP

I will have such a difficult time telling anyone what this recording sounds like. Striking out with a beautiful weapon of melancholia and heart-swelling lightness, Sigur R� have created here one of the most moving creations I have ever heard in modern music. A fast and early connection straight through to the central nervous system, Ægætis Byrjun is relentless in its wind tunnel evocation of all my feelings. This recording honestly doesn't sound like anything I have ever heard. Well, it does a tiny bit remind me of Spiritualized, and I can conjure up emotions from it not unlike listening to "Moonlight Sonata". It is definitely as beautiful as my favourite song ever, which is "Song To The Siren" done by This Mortal Coil.

Still, all comparisons are really very lost in the face of this disturbing and strange piece of work. I will credit its alienation to the fact that I can't understand a word of it as it is all sung in Icelandic, but where to credit the familiarity? Surely these people are not mere humans. Or could they be anything but human to understand so well how to pull a violin bow right across my spine until I feel like my heart could blow apart with the loveliness of it all?

Technically, there is a lot of noise, samples, sources, synths, electronics; real instrumentations, horns strings, voices. Ultra high gloss production work, crystal clear depth and layering, pretty much every trick in the book. This is a gorgeous recording of the utmost quality. And still I am sure it is preternaturally charged to be able to sound so good, to sound so far inside the soul. Anymore really and I will start to gush, so buy this, and make what you will of it.

-Lilly Novak-

Sigur Rós - Ægætis Byrjun
(A Second Opinion)

The spoken word.

A backward mask and through the eyes can be seen the strains of an organ labouring but only just so. Much use of piano and swoonish guitar to create a mood of twilit time, and since apparently the words are "made up" (sometimes difficult to tell with the Icelandic language in popular music) they won't get too deeply in the way of coital affirmation and so forth. The orchestra flushes lushly from the hi-fi and the semper thereof - there is no small amount of sincerity in the recording of these songs.

It's all very groo-v material - but in America, it's being beaten into irrelevance by the "Bjök effect" (which I've often wanted a scientist to say, i.e., "Gentlemen, here we have a terrifying example of what is known as the 'Bjök effect'.") Oh, those kooky Icelanders! You Icelanders (kooky or non-) know what I'm talking about. It's essentially very mellow, reflectively banal fuck music (not casting aspersions, mind) that repeated listens could possibly uncover unseen stones. One never knows.

-David Cotner-

Sigur Rós - ( )
Label: Fat Cat Format: CD,LP

As you can see this third album has no title, unless you think a pair of brackets is a title. The absence of any information extends to the CD, the cover and the tracing paper booklet. All pale grey and black with "close-up photographs taken by the band, which have been manipulated using natural materials". If you want any more information you'll have to go to their website where you can also post your interpretations of the wordless vocals.

Musically, this set veers between beauty and monotony. They create swathes of expansive sound, using their own string section and a variety of keyboards alongside the "Hopelandish" vocals of Jonsi Thor Birgisson. This is, for me, partly the source of the monotony. It begins intriguingly as he intones these phrases like other-worldly hymns but, after a while the "syllables", or whatever they are, sound very much alike. The floating, hypnotic quality of the music sometimes suffers from these vocal affectations. There are, however, some moments of extreme beauty as the strings, guitars and keyboards create softly undulating waves of sound.

Imagine being able to live under ice upon which the sun drops only to coldly illuminating the near silence. This music resembles some kind of submerged landscape where Birgisson's voice is the lament of an almost extinct creature. Though sometimes it also recalls Tim Buckley, which I suppose is pretty much the same thing.

-Paul Donnelly-

Silo - Instar
Label: Swim Format: CD

Like Trans Am, this Danish trio have a grounding in the heavier end of Rock, now put through a digtal filter and emerging as a metronomic companion to the more sequenced sampler delights of the likes of Tortoise or To Rococo Rot (without wishing to draw too many comparisons). "Asset's" somewhat portentious lyrical delivery shows the vestigal remains of a four-to-the-floor riff-oriented approach, but allows space for developments into groove and texture too. These elements are given much more space to work in the following "Beat 41," and as is usually the case (though not always as Jessamine show) with such post-Rock blends, most tracks here are much better off without vocals - though they do occasionally add something, as with the measured melancholy of "Templates".

If there's a downside to the apparently effortless unwinding of Rock's fabric, it's in the contradictory sublimation of the hook into the cruise and plateau of the instrumental workout. This can have the effect of deadening the results into an interchangeable gloop, where one meeting of analogue and electronic instruments sound pretty much the same as another - exactly the same problem which afflicts the forms which post-Rock has drawn on (e.g. Techno or HipHop) - and nuance and inflection become the key indicators of a band's style and musical identity. This may not actually be a problem in the end, and what this means in relation to Silo is that there's a little of everything in their sound, and what there is is well executed, engaging and competent - but the key ingredient of uniqueness is somewhat lacking. For all that, "Cream Puff's" arpeggiating synthesizer line, the spacious twang of "You Play With Guns" or the driving phased chug of "In Constant Use" are highlights of what manages to be both a very good and slightly too average album at the same time.

-Antron S. Meister-

The Silverman - Silvermandalas
Label: Soleilmoon Format: CD

When not making up a sizeable chunk of the musical bedrock of The Legendary Pink Dots, and surprisingly unprolific in his solo work by the standards of that group, Phil Knight has been known to settle down to produce some stunningly hypnotic recordings in his time. Following on from the hypnagogic Dreamcell of the early Nineties, Silvermandalas opens with an untitled track which shows a fascination for the watery sound of an electric organ in the midst of a rising and fading wash of distended drums and restrained electronic noise. As is to be expected, there's a cyclical feel to the album, as loops are rearranged, entwined and revolved into complex patterns which frequently end at a strangely distant, but connected, point from their origins.

Sharing the same headspace as both Rolf Dammers and Holger Czukay's Canaxis and the more reflective work of Coil (particularly "Is Suicide A Solution"), the second track is a concoction of drifting, half-human voice loops and snatched telephone conversation, making a particularly disorienting piece of atmospheric ellipsis. The album is replete with the hypnotic possibilities of varied repetition, taking minimal structures and turning them into elongated variations on themselves - the simple tones of mysteriously-derived samples and synthesizer sounds assume a crystalline avian quality as a subtle bass presence makes itself known; an attenuated tribal rhythm coalesces into the virtual sounds of impossible electronic near-wildlife; a drone meets another as a reeded instrument sings to itself before arrival of a phasing pulse-beat - there's an underlying feeling of the ritually paranormal about Silvermandalas, though never so gauche as to be New Age, and too unsettling to be entirely Ambient.

By composing deeply mediatative music which draws inward before exploring outwards into the realms of minimal psychedelic trance Electronica, Knight has made a record which justifies its title - when the end finally comes in a whirl of violins, rolling bleeps and gentle propulsive rhythm, it's the culmination of a transfixing listen, like watching ripples from a skimmed pebble which has disturbed the distended reflections of a smooth sheet of water. Zen-like in its semi-transparency, Silvermandalas is the ideal accompaniment to the half-sleeping state which, in some theories of parapsychology, is when the incubi and succubi of the subconscious can manifest themselves in modern minds as extraterrestrials. With the help of this record, they can have a far better soundtrack than the usual spooky-orchestral clichés they've suffered from over the years...

-Antron S. Meister-

The Skatalites Meet King Tubby - The Legendary Skatalites In Dub
Label: Motion Format: CD

Much of the material collected here as The Legendary Skatalites In Dub was orignally put out as an alternate Dub album to their 1975 self-titled return to form the following year. Motion Records re-released this as the vinyl LP Herb Dub-Collie Dub in 1998, and this CD release also includes some cuts from the Heroes Of Reggae In Dub set too. Recorded at Black Ark and Aquarius Studios by engineers including both King Tubby and Lee Perry and with guests such as Augustus Pablo on board, the results shimmer with a host of reverb and echoes which let the basic Skatalites good times shine through.

While the flood of flutes, somewhat smokey sax lines and the ever-funky brass section place the recordings firmly in the mid-Seventies with a little bit of an easy and decidedly groovy (if equally infectious) swing, the