Artists - T

T

The Tape-beatles - Synthety No. 5: Good Times
Label: Staalplaat Format: CD

Stepping to an appropriately martial, mechano-deconstructed beat, The Tape-beatles' Good Times weaves a mix of political speech snippets, training-film educational banalities deleivered with the wooden certitude of a rigid economic concentration on accumulation of capital and the promotion of that greatest lie of all, free-market competition, into a sometimes thumping orchestral soundscape. Delay is the key, as fragments of a cultural canon splinters in the guts of the very technology Capitalism worships above all else. Electronics turned back on the blind idiot money men who fund their developers - it has a nice ring of just desserts to it.

How much of this is going to affect anyone not already disenechanted (to say the least) with the way things work in the allegedly developed economic systems of globalisation is debatable. However, The Tape-beatles have thought of this already, and the dialectic of innovation/absorbtion/commercialisation of the music industry on whose peripheries they operate for that matter too. There is a wholly spurious essay on the group in the CD booklet which announces their cover feature in Time magazine following the chagrin to the finanacial world caused by the album's release, and further muddies the waters through allusions to their future collaboration with the Coca-Cola Corporation. Needless to say, this is an artful prank which few readers will believe, but some might prefer to collude in the bizarre fantasy and imagine a world where the high and mighty can be upset by the contents of Good Times. Given developments from Seattle to Prague to the recent announcement of interest rate reductions signalling a "downturn" in the US mega-economy since the work was completed in 1999 though, there's a salutary set of observations contained within this album, and perhaps one day...

There is more to The Tape-beatles than simple anti-capitalist irony; there's a semi-mysterious play of the same title included in the accompanying texts too, apparently discovered in the walls of the group's studio following a fire. It's another game, and makes for several possible readings on the related subject of resistance to low-level economic activities which ultimately benefit multinationals, such as pyramid selling, through a symbolic dialogue of distinct opacity. There is something of The Residents dangerous humor to the Tape-beatles, with (slightly) less tongue in cheek - one of their mottoes is "We take ourselves seriously so you don't have to", after all. Another is Plagiarism.

Perhaps there is more to be absorbed of this recording than mere politics alone - mere being relative of course, and the parameters of what constitutes American socio-economic life permeates the recordings. There is a hallcinatory aspect to the constant shift and recapitulation of orchestral and folk-song themes, flowing from the timestretched soundbites to the juxtaposition of word and sound, which makes for a stimulating listen in its own right. Clouds of recursive echo build on "The Keystone", symbolising both disorder and decay and making for a rousing piece of discordia along the way. There's even brash Funk sampling on "The Urge Of The Idea", contrasting the work ethic with pleasure, and at the end it's like having taken a trip under the guidance of a deconstrucionist prankster through the miasma of emotions attached to the driving demons of Western so-called civilization. It can be no mistake that "The Body Of His Desire" reconfigures "Fanfare For The Common Man" into a halting dirge, mocking the pomposity of surface political and artistic benevolence which caps what has become cultural industry in the media landscape. The album then concludes with a track called "All's Right With The World".

Read into this CD whatever seems appropriate, or less, but it stands as an exemplary work of Plunderphonics in its own right too.

-Antron S. Meister-

The Tape-Beatles - The Grand Delusion
Label: Staalplaat Format: CD

Originally released in 1993, The Grand Delusion takes as its themes the very idea of the American nation as a construct of media and cultural signifiers, especially as contextualised by the collapse of the Soviet Union and the subsequent events of the Gulf War. As a work of what The Tape-Beatles mockingly trademark as Plagiarism^®, the record also served as the soundtrack to their triple-screen 16mm film presentation of the same name, and brims with energetic venom directed at the powers that be in what was establishing itself as the dominant world military and economic force at the time of its recording.

As the title indicates, every opportunity to shred the braggadoccio and self-aggrandising statements of Americas politicians and their partners in cultural control is taken with multi-media assault and battery in mind. Sometimes the sample choices are a tad surreal - "Frog Story", which plays with an apparently scientific voiceover which is describing the inability to drop a frog in boiling water for example. "Home Problems" makes a stinging noise assault on the blathering pontifications on family life from some TV evangelist or politician (the difference is quite often hard to discern), layering echoed shouts and statements over a roiling base of tabla samples and hyperspeed percussion. "Flowers For Dead Horses" uses an Arabic singer and news story descriptions of the devastation iflicted on Iraq to undercut the speechifying declarations of America's peace-loving nature and the evils of Saddam Hussein before dissolving into tape-wrenched murk and a dismal sense of ire.

Musically, tracks can get pretty frenetic in their looping, verging into the realms of breakbeat and sub-bass from time to time but without being especially Junglist or HipHop along the way, with excursions into sampladelic Romanticism, lounging loops and symphonic cut & paste. Stop-start disorientation is generally the method, and the whirl of soundbites from a century of broadcasting take the war from the screen and back to the likes of Bush, Reagan and that old warmonger and prominent Americanophile Winston Churchill. Still, calling a loping virtual Jazz smoocher which thrusts semiotic theory into the demands for conflict "Chilling", while relating to one of the samples therein also shows a fine sense of irony, and when "Candidate" quotes from a psychiatric dialogue seemingly asking the listener to undertake treatment for amnesia and unheeding somnabulism, The Tape-Beatles are really pushing the point home, and then finishing the album with a flurry of sampled "Also Spräch Zarathustra," a piece which has almost become an anthem to (American) technological prowess thanks to 2001.

As a bonus, the CD is repackaged with twenty minutes of material from the same sessions, oddly entitled "15' Minutes In Search Of Peace", as a coda to and recapitulation of the original album - appropriate given its subtitle Synthety No.3. These pieces are perhaps even more disorienting in their collages of rhythm and spatchcocked samba symphonics, and verge from the mockingly stirring to the stutteringly down-home and regurgitively noisy. The Grand Delusion is really quite a heavy listen sometimes, as befits its subject, but stands up substantially in its own right as a landmark of plunderphonics too.

(A Quicktime version of The Grand Delusion film is available to download here.)

-Antron S. Meister-

Tarentel - Mort Aux Vaches
Label: Staalplaat Format: CD

This is a 'live' recording of a U.S. guitar based outfit and consists of four fairly long workouts. "Adonai" covers some of the territory of Fripp and Eno and is a somewhat somnolent affair with rippling guitars creating a lazy ambience. "Steede Bonnet" has the kick of drums mingling with the still quite restrained guitar which, at times, sounds like it could have been used in a Spaghetti Western. Lots of twang and reverb. The music drifts along without too many waves though it alters direction a bit as they make use of processed voices, shredded and indistinct, along with dark electronic drones and hums. The CD has no liner notes so I've no idea what other instruments are at work here. The sleeve is, in fact, a limited edition plastic design which is short on information generally.

On the third track, "When No One's Listening" the guitar whines over a repeated bass figure to create a further drifting ambience before the drums step in to raise the music a gear. It has a ponderous quality without being dull and relies on the creation of a rather low-key series of moods for its effect. The final track again refers to Fripp/Eno territory as well as some slowly unfolding Floyd-ish passages. Come to think of it, parts of other tracks have an echo of Gilmour and co. I've just realised ! There are two other Tarantel CDs out already which cite influences from Slint, Radiohead and Arvo P�t among others, so I'd be curious to hear their studio material to see how far these have absorbed.

-Paul Donnelly-

Tarwater - Animals, Suns & Atoms
Label: Kitty-Yo (Europe)/Mute (USA)   Format: CD,LP

There's something extraordinarily contradictory about Tarwater's music. At least, that's what their promo material says. And who am I to argue? Animals, Suns & Atoms opens with a mish-mash of spacey electronics blending seamlessly into the surreal and sinister "All Of The Ants Left Paris" on which Ronald Lippok's sanguine vocals sound strangely like an absinthe-soaked Lou Reed left to mutter ominously on a Paris side-street (and yes, that's Ronald Lippok of To Rococo Rot). There's something almost Brechtian about the atmosphere of this album, and yet at the same time it's difficult to deny the Dub-pop sound of the music which lilts breezily along in a frenzy of "catchiness". See what I mean...? Contradictory as hell.

The music here is rich and dense, but is prevented from being in any way dark by just how melodic it is. So you're left with something that's perfect to listen to in a candle-lit room, on your back on the floor, but is also a perfect accompaniment to a summer's day in the park.

More bloody contradictions.

Animals, Suns & Atoms is a deeply unusual album. It's also very, very good. The lyrics are wonderfully bizarre, particluarly on "Early Rises", a track that both musically and lyrically dwells somewhere between Talking Heads and Yossarian. No mean feat. And surprisingly listenable. Lippok's vocals manage to be highly distinctive, and yet reminiscent of so many classic 'voices'. From those early wanderings into Lou Reed territory, Lippok then treats us to flirtations with Bowieness and even Bob-Smithness whilst always retaining his own uniqueness.     (Or something)

There's a huge diversity to the tracks on Animals, Suns & Atoms which is why it's so difficult to pin-point exactly what makes it so remarkably good. "Babyuniverse", with its beautifully haunting piano line is so very different to "Song Of The Moth", which appears to have the melody of "The Girl From Ipanema" picked out in birdsong (... General MIDI instrument 123 for muso bastards like me) faintly playing in the background. And yet neither sound out of place next to one another, and nor do the other 9 - equally diverse - tracks.

I can't recommend this album highly enough. It's one of the most unusual records I've heard in a long time; it's light and it's humourous but still has substance by the shed-load. It's rich and warm with strings and pianos galore, but is nonetheless as fine a slice of Electronica as you're likely to hear this summer. It's weird and surreal and there's no 'but' to this sentence. Get hold of Animals, Suns & Atoms. Music this good deserves to be heard.

-Grufty Jim-

Tarwater - Dwellers On The Threshold
Label: Kitty-Yo (Europe) Mute (North America) Format: CD/LP

Tarwater return, enigmatic and phlegmatic as ever with Dwellers On The Threshold, charting journeys across an imaginary landscape of shifting borderlands and elusive edges. Opening with the hypnotic and immediately engaging "70 Rupies To Paradise Road", with words spoken on this occasion by Tone Avenstroup, it is apparent that there is something special about this record.

Partly thanks to a commitment to keeping the intruments and samples clean and crisply redolent of themselves when necessary, as opposed to a set of electronic processes, and mostly to a finely-judged sense of dramatic tension and restrain, Tarwater unfurl a series of looped enigmas set within puzzlingly fetching production values. Lush without being overdone, their sound is curiously distant and engaging at the same time, like being asleep in a throng of intrigue and storytelling, lulled away from reality while being immersed in the further reaches of its subconscious expression.

Each cyclical, droning strum or reedy keyboard insertion, phased and flanged mouth harp, tabla surprise e-piano chord and clicking rhythmic tic propels the sense of heightened perception through swells of almost painfully emotive states of unfulfilled revelation, musical or lyrical - Dwellers On The Threshold is a record which defies analysis on the level of understanding just what is meant by elliptical lyrics like "Earth, Moon - 1985". Instead, the sweeping surges of electronic strings around Roland Lippok's matter-of-fact yet otherworldly voice complement the refined Tarwater musical style in a now broadly electronic-acoustic format. The organic constructions of synthesizer and audibly-slid guitar or a blinking, trebly UFO keyboard forming the marvellously jagged heart of pieces like "Tesla" and "Now" fizz with alien charm, and only it heightens the sense of weirdness when Lippok starts deadpan rap about "Space Brothers and Space Sisters" and how "It's not easy being a God" as a snaking analogue warble trips the ultraviolet fanstastic. Perhaps Tarwater are a band who have fallen to Earth?

Toylike and shot through with a certain amount of wistful, knowing na�ete, Dwellers On The Threshold is a record to savour, to slide into its lateral worldview and share some strange tales of half-glimpsed lives; to partake of some of the better musical quirkiness on offer from Tarwater in a world which mostly offers nothing but recycled pap is not only often a palpable joy, but probably an actual necessity.

-Linus Tossio-

Tarwater - Silur
Label: Kitty-Yo Format: CD

Still led on a wayward course by the softly-spoken vocals of Roland Lippok, Tarwater continue their elegantly wastrel progress deeper into the realm of something which draws variously from Trip Hop, Electronica and Metaphysical poetry. The beats may be a mix of the live and sampled; the sundry noises, blips and snatches of conversation much in line with the times; what keeps it all together is the precise construction of Lippok and Bernd Jestram's compositions.

Technical merit aside, the atmosphere which builds from the opening virtual dropping of needle to scratchy groove is a mixture of wonder at the entropic nature of reality, and the infinite possibilities offered by the restriction this implies. Flowing across a soundscape of carefully-selected, downtempo samples, keyboards and simple guitar lines is the voice which could by some standards be considered dull, flat, affectless - but isn't. It's not especially Gothic, it's not gloomy or depressing. Tarwater may dress in black and exude contemplative, considered, even studied poise and seriousness, but Silur also reveals is a vital connection to that part of the sublime less well regarded in the hedonistic, pre-millenial ooze - the Uncanny, ever nagging at the edge of perception.

There's a twilit ambience of the resignation which comes with the end of not merely a century but a millenium, and Silur distills this mood into the twelve songs of time(s) passed through imagery which allows momentary glimpses across the collective unconscious, reaching an occasional peak of low-energy discharge in the Mellotron-like arrangements, atemporal sub-Dub bass and regretful vocal strains (with Danielle Malkoff) of "No More Extra Time". Likewise "Ford" eerily multitracks platitudes applicable to the Ecstasy generation ("I am you, and you are I" - the words, as with most on the record, are not entirely Lippok's - in this case they come from Aldous Huxley) through a sinuous filter of processed sound and a sparse, warming bass to observe critically on the easy comfort to be drawn from the tyranny of beat and beating. Even the closing instrumental "V-at" has a pinch of regret inherent in its optimistic sub-bass pulses and upbeat electronic reverberations which engender a sense of only semi-closure. Arty, slow and serious - what better antidote could there be to the brash commercialism of a triumphalist world order which seems to have forgotten how to express anything other than an (alleged) fundamental right to instant fulfillment of each and every desire?

-Antron S. Meister-

Tassilli Players - An Atlas Of World Dub
Label: Universal Egg Format: CD

Zion Train affiliates The Tassilli Players have always offered up intriguing themed Dub CDs, from their debut Great Sporting Moments in Dub via their guide to Outer Space to the interactively-designed Wonderful World Of Weed In Dub (this latter wasn't a CD-ROM in that interactive sense - each track was designed with different varieties of weed in mind for the listener to consume in association with the album, should they desire). Now An Atlas Of World Dub pays tribute to and makes a journey through the globalised Dub diaspora, starting in the UK and spreading tentacularly to New Zealand via hitherto unsuspected havens of the bass vibration such as Russia, Finland and Poland.

Naturally there are stops off in the weed capital of Europe, Amsterdam - in fact, this is can be a very difficult dcity to summon the energy to rise up and depart for a quick tour of other contnental hotspots. The travels are smooth, riding on a gentle sussurus of echo, swimming in languid bass, floating on hovering keyboard trills, stepping to the rimshots and keeping the feet beating to the slow interrupt of percussion. Deep down in the background are the sounds of the cities and countrysides where the walls and trees reverberate to the low end. Stangely, Jamaica is not one of the stop-offs, but perhaps there have been enough guided tours of the studios and yard sounclashes of Dub's homeland to make a contribution on this CD superflous. There is plenty of bass outside Kingston, after all.

At journey's end, the new promised land of Wales, Llanidloes, home to the Zion Train collective after their flight from the dubious delights of riverside South Tottenham. Here the effected shimmer of joy at a welcome back to bass makes a celebratory instrumental chant to the green valleys, watching the jet aircraft fly away over the hilltops (thankfully not the RAF practising their sheep-bombing skills for Northern Iraq as is their frequent and noisy wont at treetop height over Wales in this case). There's nothing like travel to broaden the mind and ears, and globalisation has its occasional pleasures after all - but there's no place like Dub for a home.

-Linus Tossio-

The Tear Garden - Crystal Mass
Label: Nettwerk Format: CD

While we're all waiting for the Legendary Pink Dots to come back, and for Skinny Puppy to repeat last year's German reunion with a local gig for local people, cEvin Key, Edward Ka-Spel and associated LPD and Download crews have crafted another Tear Garden album, and it's a blinder. You know the score - a gothier Dots, maybe, or a more psychedelic Download, or a way more fucked up New Order, or Jean-Michel Jarre on really bad drugs, or... OK, maybe you don't know the score, 'cos maybe there isn't one, unless it's the scoring of some of the afore-mentioned really bad drugs. And really good really bad drugs they are too.

It all kicks off with "Lament", a nice poppy number with Ka-Spel adding some frailty and desperation to the bouncy synths and echoey guitar, before turning into a reworking of the lyrics from old Dots classic "I Am The Way, The Truth And The Light" that somehow manages to reverse all that song's lyrical polarities while still remaining just as bitter and twisted as ever. By track two, "The Double Spades Effect", however, it becomes clear we're in the realms of some top eclecticism - looped acoustic guitar, hoe-down fiddle that recalls David Byrne's wondrous "Daddy Go Down" and Ka-Spel's chant of "Less is more" combining to make something much less atonal than, but just as hypnotic as, the Dots' very own "Catch a Match...", before some wonderfully distorted guitar kicks in on the back of some odd noises and vocal fragments. You could dance to it, but it'd be more fun to just sit there and get wankered.

As a whole, this is the most acoustic Tear Garden yet, but if you thought that'd rein in the ensemble's, and especially of cEvin Key's, talent for disturbance, you'd be so fucking wrong. "Her Majesty's Trusted Food Taster" could be Download to start with, that kind of looped "fill up every gap you can with a weird noise" percussion dissolving into a weird, shifting backdrop for one of Ka-Spel's hallucinatory declamations, including a rather staggering part where he repeatedly whispers "I'm shouting... I'm screaming...", which works, despite the fact he's blatantly doing nothing of the sort. And despite a strange tendency to over-pronounce "R's" on the end of words, Ka-�el's still the same lisping prophet of old, one minute spooky, the next pitiable, the next just really fucked-up.

"Feathered Friends", with its "Switch it off now/Let me sleep" refrain comes complete with some great Space Rock whooshes and electronic tinkling, even as Key does his mad percussion thing in the background. Overall, though surprisingly acoustic, this is yet another top-quality collaboration from two musical genii and their equally venerated band members, warped and pleasant in equal measure. It's like doing really nice drugs and watching scary movies. And that's without even mentioning The Clangers...

-Deuteronemu 90210, lover of the Russian Queen-

The Tear Garden - Crystal Mass (A Second Opinion)

Let me just start by saying that I feel Crystal Mass should be a resounding success in absolutely every catagory, in any context, the world over and for all time. Near perfection, in fact, I would add that, yes, near perfection. Very. As a whole, this album is infinitely all things listenable, sing-along-able, memorable, danceable, remarkable. It is silly, it is sad, it is atmospheric and light-hearted, it is heavy. It sounds a tiny bit Eighties, the good parts of that time of music. It is noisy like now and lyrical like a further past. There is just about every genre of music gathered together in the most tasteful ways, arranged and produced and edited wtih all the best of timing and extraordianary engineering.

Nothing is overdone, nothing is so slick as to be sickly. cEvin Key, Edward Ka-spel, Ryan Moore, The Silver Man, Martijn de Kleer, Niels van Hoorn, Russell Nash, Bill van Rooy -a cast of genius players really, so perhaps it is not a wonder... How so many masters could come together and co-operate long enough to make such a wonderful offering is perhaps a mystery or a salutation to the infintie wisdom of the group. Really, I don't mean to gush but for a whole CD to play out so flawlessly and be enjoyable at the same time, words fail me.

There isn't a song I don't like so I will just mention my favourites. " Lament", moody, Pink Dotsy, love-lorn. "To Mourn The Death Of Colour" - space Blues maybe, gorgeous transitions and all. "Feathered Friends" and "Her Majesty's Trusted Food Taster" hold rough edges, weird songs with a bit of that old-school Industrial sound I was getting at before. "The Double Spades Effect" is bitter, traditional, folky, mean-spririted and really makes you want to dance. "Six Of One" makes a tinkly psychodelic magic fantasy with a beat. And I really love "Desert Island Disc", "Hopeful" and "Castaway" because you can sing right on with all of them. O, hold on, that's all the songs... I suppose my point is obvious. If not, just get the disc and see for yourself. The Tear Garden rules, today, anyway.

-Lilly Novak-

Techno Animal - Brotherhood Of The Bomb
Label: Force Inc. Format: 12"

The title track is something of a typical Techno Animal bass monster, with their characteristic funky breakbeats assuming the usual clattery position in relation to a rather pleasingly warbly bassline, shot through with some relatively restrained splatters of synthy knob-twiddling. As its Kevin Martin and Justin Broadrick at the controls, naturally everything tends to get taken into the extremes of Dub delay and high-frequency filtering; never ones for letting an opportunity for excessive noise and repetitive loops slip past quickly, "Brotherhood Of The Bomb" is one of their better piledrivers of late, taking dynamic pleasure in warping re-folded layers of echo into, out of and under the ultimately persistent HipHop chug.

Further headache-inducing and patience-testing comes in the guise of "Monolith," which takes a monster Funk loop, a shuddering bass presence and some skull-scraping oscillations around the houses for some excercises in bloody-minded disruption of all available frequencies. It's noisy, squeaky and prone to bursts of diahorretic synth sprays - and is also evidence that TA are finally even taking pity on the shortening attention spans of the listening public.

-Freq1C-

Tekonivel - Gulab Jamoon
Label: Tension Format: 12"

Who better than to make minimal Techno than Pan(a)Sonic's very own Mika Vainio? Where his usual outfit make great music from a restricted palette of oscillators only (well, almost), in Teoknivel garb Vainio gets to add in high hats, synth washes and all manner of the usual instruments of Techno. "Disko Pepe" still throbs with that Pan Sonic pulse, but the added elements make for a different sound; smoother in some ways and perhaps less open to interpretation due to the more obvious nature of the sound sourses.

"Sinkki" is even more familiar at first, with that wonderful banging oscillator sound to propel the beat, but the glooping sounds he interweaves make it something of an altogether more groovy experience. The title track takes some beating for the Techno variation on the warmly wobbling sound which has made Vainio's name, and "Termiiti" does even more with the sub-bass, letting it bleed and taking the distortion itself as a counterpointed rhythm with all the fun that engenders. By rights, this EP should be thundering out from decks at parties and raves everywhere (as, of course, should Pan Sonic vinyl of all descriptions), taking any available walls with it, along with the speaker cones.

-Freq1C-

10 Ft. Ganja Plant - Hillside Airstrip
Label: ROIR Format: CD

Alternate identity for members of John Brown's Body and Tribulation, this CD from upstate New Yorkers 10 Ft. Ganja Plant does the whole Seventies Reggae stchick to good effect, making for a very Rootsy album with a few Dub inflections thrown into the mix as is both customary and welcome. Of particular note is the cover, a kind of Fab. Furry Freek Bros. meets Ariwa-style cartoon depiction of the latest consignment of the herb distracting the band from their practice.

The opener "Long Time Ago" shows the expected, even obligatory, respect for Bob Marley in construction, harmonies and general vibe of positive conscious lyrics working over a skanking groove. In this area 10 Ft Ganja plant occupy similar territory to festival favourites The Rhythm-ites (and to a lesser extent Dry & Heavy), making the continuity of Jah-praising and drum and bass pressure through three decades work in entirely agreeable ways. This song is certainly an instant grabber of attention, and it's a bit of a shame to report that the same level of effectiveness isn't maintained throughout.

Not that Hillside Airstrip becomes in any way tedious or unpleasant to listen to. Far from it, but it's not until the low-level buzzing of light aircraft infects the title track, and "New Day's" instrumental and echoed vocal completes the set, that a deeper sense of Dubbed-up light-headedness and the key ingredient of stoned imagination the group's title would indicate emerges. Overall, the general mood is of upright, solid Reggae in varied styles, with "Born Free" occupying another particularly smooth example of life-affirming Rasta harmonies and sentiments that on the whole are pretty hard to disagree with. Soulful is the word, and this 10 Ft. Ganja Plant do to the n^th degree.

-Linus Tossio-

Tennis - Duck Shelf/Interview
Label: Expanding Format: 7"

Pressed up on nicely weighty green vinyl, this limited edition from Tennis complements their BiP-Hop album Europe On Horseback quite neatly. "Duck" slithers a deep pulsing rhythm from the haze of echo and computer-generated reverberation, swizzling samples into the clicking dubspace with aplomb. "Interview", despite conjuring images of Baktabak picture discs of the duo of Douglas Benford and Ben "Benge" Edwards being grilled earnestly about their methodology, is in fact purely instrumental. Well, pure isn't really the word, as the duo shuffle relaxed vocal fragments (of what turns out to be sampled from an interview about their music) as instruments around a chunkily stepping post-Dub loop which wavers off into the land where bleeps don't do it standing in an orderly queue.

-Freq1C-

Tennis - Europe On Horseback
Label: Bip Hop Format: CD

Tennis is part of an ongoing London-based collaboration between Benge (a.k.a. Ben Edwards) and SI-{CUT}.DB (a.k.a. Douglas Benford). Imagine Pan Sonic or some of Richie Hawtin's recent minimalist numbers with a bit more spike and a tad more Electro clutter. Their influences are dub and Germanic and the sound isn't quite so sparse and singularly oscillator generated. Acoustic and digital sounds combine together to form nicely disfunctional rhythms, counter-rhythms and textures.

This is the duo's second album, and BiP-HOp's first full length release. Tennis seem to be on the move, and look like they have been since the mid Nineties - with a collective discography as long as yr arm on as many labels. Douglas is one of the forces behind Sprawl label/club that has a monthly spot at The Global Caf�in Soho - a fine place to pickle your liver with absinthe. Also on the current agenda are dates in London and Europe, as well as the entirely appropriate possibility of tracks appearing on Pole's ~Scape label.

An album of glitter for all occasions, Europe On Horseback is yet another reason to keep an eye out for the sound assemblers of Tennis in their various guises.

-a.p-

Tennis - Furlines
Label: BiP-HOp Format: 2CD

Pursuing their quest for the ultimate in soothingly textural electronic Dub abstraction yet further, Douglas Benford and Ben Edwards bring forth eight small mammal-themed tracks on Furlines. As a bonus to celbrate BiP-HOp's 20th release in two years, a second CD of remixes of material from the Tennis album Europe On Horseback makes up the package to a double-disc set.

There is a rustling country air to the album, with the skittering cheeps of rodents and other little furry woodland creatures permeating atmospheric traipses into the trees. There is an opportunity for a bad pun to which doesn't go unmissed in the form of "Bad Hare Day" with its loping back legs leaving deep and crisp indentations in the half-glimpsed rhythms of digital snuffles and Dubwise shivers. The mood is pastoral, serene, ambient is the sense of suggesting a sense of rural place in an entirely electronic fashion. Assured and indubitably pleasant to the last crackling twich of its bright button nose, Furlines soothes and warms in equal measure; but as the urgent scurrying patter of sharp claws of "Badger Tracks" demonstrates, never to be dismissed as soft or toothless.

The second disc, The "Horseback" Mixes, opens with a glittery "Self-seal Mishap" deconstruction by Taylor Dupree as the "12000m Above Halifax" mix, flickering and slow-burning in a languid flow of delay effects and melodic hints at stepping motion. Cray reconfigures the same source into "Hard Drive Mishap56", employing a gurgling virtual frog chorus as clean-up crew to munch their way through the crepitating aftermath of the creaking rewound accident, while Tim Hecker puffs gentle echo chamber breezes into a gathering rumbling storm for his "Undertaker" mix. The "No More Self Harm" mix by Bovine Life's Chris Dooks is altogether spookier, with cut-up fragments of a child's little voice accompanying both male and female supernatural choirs from the aether in counterpoint to a hissing undertow flecked with watery mechanical trickles.

Similar diverse interpretations of "Contube Anatomy" come from ElectroniCat, who blips and chugs into an urgently groovy 4/4 buzz with both knobs and bells on; from CK Dexter Haven as a series of radio interference patterns pushed through a whining digital blender stuttering under the strain; and Pimmon's "[J-jay Jeans Mix]" in extreme close-up dissection mode, splayed out and expanded to fully discern the traces of its anatomy. "Civic Halo" becomes a suitably enveloping if distracted melange of bass and click, steamed hiss and bleep in the "Slow Motion Halo" version from Warmdesk while Iris Garrelfs, AKA BitTonic, turns the same into a crow-infested clash of pitched-down hesitating Dub and glitch at a few Industrial removes for her "Permafrost" mix.

Elsewhere, Mikael Stav�trand turns "Loose Knit Pierrot" up quite a few Housier notches, sparking the deracinated samples into an uptempo fusion of pulsing bass and glistening faux-piano stabs, the whole still sprinkled with enough twinkly detritus to keep the thematic digital grime from quite disappearing down the disco for a syncopated night of arm-waving fun. The Jerker does something appropriate to their name to "Port Helix", throttling down and twisting up matters until the ears pop under the stress of a well-wrung out procession into splattercore digital grimacing, with no rhythm left unsprung or peak level exceeded and hardly an opportunity for timestretching into oblivion avoided.

All these and a typically mellow swirl of FM synthesis and busy glitchadelic sample-layering from Scanner's "Dvojit�Chyba" take on "Weakness Together", the low-end wall-shaking and dripping of "Viral Spectra" from Kim Cascone or Frank Bretschneider's short-form turning of the same basic "Safelle" track to harsher Digi-dub funk directions complete what is above all a well-rounded set of remixes.

-Richard Fontenoy-

Jimi Tenor - Organism
Label: Warp Format: CD,LP

How do I start talking about Jimi Tenor? He`s mates with Pan(a)sonic and certainly one of the most curious individuals I`ve come across of late - rumour has it that our Jimi likes to appear on stage on top of a white horse. A lot of Organism has a cocktail lounge Jazz Funk feel, rendered through Electro of course. This doesn`t go anywhere near summing our Jimi up. As I was sitting in front of my computer, cruddy Walkman earphones plugged into the CD-ROM drive (where the so-called 'experts' had forgeotten to fit the cable to the sound card - Grrr) ... Anyway, picture me in this absurd situation with countless styles and artists popping up in my mind.

OOrganism threatens to become conventional Pop Easy Listening at many points, but Jimi`s inherent wierdness never lets it go the whole distance. Either noise interrupts the smooth Funk, or what he's muttering about is just too off the wall to be regular Pop. "The Ring" by Fad Gadget seems to be an obvious comparison: Frank Tovey sings what can only be described as an overly sentimental ballad about marriage, yet by the end of the song Tovey is singing about watching his loved one die before him - without changing tone at all. This is the feeling I get from Jimi.

"Year of Apocalypse" just shouldn`t be so damn happy and Funky - I`m sure Frank Zappa enters the picture somewhere. Maybe not deliberately, but Jimi seems to share the same taste(lessness) for cheesy Jazz tunes. Laibach also popped up in my mind, believe it or not. It's not immediately obvious, but the choir and quasi-Wagnerian feel to "Serious Love" are responsible for this. Then lots of anonymous styles came along: Starsky & Hutch and every Seventies cop show; Lounge Jazz Funk; House; and a horde of Eighties bands. Take all of this stuff, mix it together and cook it until it reduces to about 50 minutes ... Oh, and add a generous measure of Jimi Tenor ... and the result is: pretty bizarre. Jimi Tenor could so easily be Easy Listening, only there's nothing easy about Jimi. And then of course there's "Muchmo", the track you never wanted to hear on a bad trip. I don`t know if I can recomend Jimi: I`m not sure what to make of him. If you want something ordinary, steer clear. If you like intriguingly bizarre anthems for love and the end of the world Jimi, might well be your man.

-Alaric Pether-

Jimi Tenor - Year Of The A pocalypse
Label: Warp Format: 12",CDS

One of the scarier tracks from his Organism album, "Year Of The Apocalypse" finds Jimi Tenor deploying the kind of sub-Funky sounds and sequences which give Swingbeaty-House such a bad name and such a loose-limbed grotesqueness. That the subject is making love and partying hard in the face of Millennial doom is only to be expected, and engenders a certain amount of choral interludes and pitch-bent oscillators at the climax which, along with the incrementing sub-bass swoops, takes the track into a bizarre half-world which manages to maintain it's own internal coherence and hence produce an entirely willing suspension of disbelief that anything essentially this tacky can be so goddamned righteously groovy.

Maurice Fullon mixes the song into more dancefloor-friendly form, choosing to emphasise the hihats and Funk element, bring up the bass and dropping some of the sinister atmosphere of decadent ennui along the way. Still, he does add a nice selection of analogue synth swarms and a middle break of twist-freezing proportions. "Love and Work" completes the EP with a throwaway leer on the subject of the energy Tenor puts into his luurve machine persona. One day, Jimi, all your dreams may come true, and your status as Finland's premier sexy pop star will be assured.

-Antron S. Meister-

Terre Thaemlitz and Jane Dowe - Institutuional Collaborative
Label: Mille Plateaux Format: CD

Accompanied by a somewhat over-theorized (if interesting) essay on its origins, structure and production, the Institutional Collaborative project sets out to reclaim Ambient music from the mire of New Age wallpaper while also attempting to blur further the distinction between digital and analogue processes. Jane Dowe and Terre Thaemlitz, their roles as academics and journalistic theoreticians reflected in their chosen project title, have assembled, processed and edited their source material purely via email and DAT/CD, never meeting in person. For all the earnest examination of their own role on the production of the audio data on the CD, the (entirely valid) questioning of the socio-economic forces which affected its composition and even structure, what emerges from the resulting combination of sampled and glitched-up sound is an ever-changing landscape of half-recognizable fragments, tones and digital residue.

Obvious similarities to fellow Mille Plateaux deconstrucionists Oval's assault on the underlying ones and zeros of the compact disc make for both a reference point and point of departure; where Oval obscure and deface their sources into complete abstraction, Dowe and Thiemlitz are keen to foreground theirs on occasion, grounding the audio in a social context as part of the experimental process. Each track is stripped of apparently meaningful title, instead imparting only information on source-modifier-remodifier and length as a suitably stark and affectless statement of the necessarily factual, though the actuality of the sounds they represent (while often denatured or attenuated) frequently belies the semi-scientific, even artificial, nomenclature through both the interjection of the prosaic and the foregrounding of process as found in the audible pause-button slips and fast-forward chatter of "13/DTD/05:33", concluding the recording in a rising accretion of sound snippets which evolve into a sinous digital finale of gently surprising harmony.

For all the apparently po-faced application of the tenets of post-Modern uncertainty and self-analysis, (which the essay only serves to highlight), it's worth remembering that the author is well and truly dead in Barthes' terms, and this seems to be one point on offer here too. However the electroacoustic music contained in the project was arrived at, it is its worth as an engaging piece of largely amelodic, abstracted ambience which remains the CD's most meaningful aspect in the final analysis. With their subtle application of the digital cut-and-paste aesthetic, Dowe and Thaemlitz have produced a largely effective work of exploratory acoustics which may not answer many vital theoretical questions, but has provided a (mostly) stimulating contibution to the ongoing process of the development of the boundaries of recorded sound .

-Antron S. Meister-

Teriyakis - Haunted Hungarian Sauna
Label: Priapus Format: CD

Like pretty much anyone out there that got this band's debut EP, I was ecstatic to find there was finally a full-length LP from Teriyakis. This is what I would like to picture music in the future being like - creative samples mixed in with intelligent instrumentation, cool shifting time signatures, new and old instruments (inc. multiple keyboards and near-acoustic guitars) mixed in together to create amazing soundscapes disguised as songs with lyrics like "tell my daughter that killers love children", "I can't breathe around here without breathing in some dead Indians" or something like that. I don't know what the hell type of genre you'd put this band under, but whatever they are, they are cool.

-Holly Day-

Tim Tetlow - Beauty Walks A Razor's Edge
Label: Planet Mu Format: CD

Beauty Walks a Razor's Edge is an album of really rather wonderful Electro. At turns the music is complex, delicate, sensual, melodic, noisy, edgy, or all these things at once. For Tim Tetlow the album is a collection of "feeling montages" - songs to girlfriends. Further proof, if proof be needed, that electronic music isn't just unfeeling mechanical rumblings.

There isn't much point in making comparisons. At times there are hints of all sorts of artists, but the list would be too long, and after all they are only hints. I could say that at one point I heard the same kind of lovely analogue rhythms that are found on Oxygene, but then the next track comes along and makes the comparison meaningless. This is very much Tim Tetlow's sound and album. In fact it's his debut, and quite some debut.

Tetlow himself is a bit of a mystery by all accounts. He is London-based but born in Bermuda, he admits that he finds maths "quite good fun", but he can often be found at yoga class, and apparently he should be playing live in London soon.

-ap-

Thighpaulsandra - I, Thighpaulsandra
Label: Eskaton Format: 2CD,2LP

Presentation is important. This is an element that Thighpaulsandra understands very well indeed. This double album is packaged in a lavish sleeve which folds out to reveal a epic photograph of the man himself standing by the seaside dressed in really groovy Druid gown, throwing a spell with his magic wand. On the inside sleeve there is a picture of Thighpaulsandra floating a few inches above the ground, and this whole package would Roger Dean very proud and that is a very good thing, you know.

Thighpaulsandra started his career of collaborating with Julian Cope on his records, and he later also got involved with Spiritualized and Coil. All these figures contribute to this work: Thighpaulsandra has got the whole British psychonaut elite on his side... But what about the music? Well its verily goodly. Most of the compositions work, though others don't, for me at least. But considering that this is Thighpaulsandra's full-length debut (he did the Some Head EP last year), we can be assured that the future looks very bright indeed.

Due to the extremely non-linear nature of this recording I will proceed to go for a divide and conquer strategy in trying to describe the album, and do it track by track:

Disc I

* Lycraland

This is a 15 minute piece that starts off Beefheartian guitar noodlin' and mixed with spooky operatic singing courtesy of Thighpaulsandra's mum. It then goes into space, led by guitars, treated and not treated and it ends with a peaceful electronic soundscape.
- Lycralicious

* The Angelica Declaration

Horn led rocker with Thighpaulsandra ranting on about being worshipped by rural-folk. Ends in a Free Jazz freakout; yes!
- Rocks a Komodo dragon's ass

* Optical Black

Very electronic collaboration with Coil. Trippy computers etc... Brilliant hyper-speed spoken word performance by John Balance. - Groovy Coily

* Abuse Foundation IV

Twiddly piece with the Maureen Wilson Quartet. Lotsa annoying acoustic strings and horns. The name suits the song.
- A fly buzzing in my ear

* Michel Publicity Window

Almost 27 minutes long... fuck! Essentially a pretty straight forward Kraut-rocker of a song with a 10 min ambient intro and a 12 min outro which is also Ambient spacey kinda goo with a really cool sample of a scream that sometimes hits the listener, a bit more intense than the intro.
- Whoopin' Nice

Disc II

* Terrible

Starts out with Thighpaulsandra playing a harpsichord, and after a few minutes he starts crooning. This is all wrapped up in a weird sonic blanket, naturally. It all ends up in a brilliant improv led by Thighpaulsandra on the Fender Rhodes. Reminds me of when Herbie Hancock would tear it up with Miles Davis.
- The opposite of terrible

* We,The Descending

Weak attempt at writing a catchy tune. Reminds me of Happy Mondays. Rubbish!
- Synonymous with terrible

* Limping Across The Sky

Very quiet Ambient track. Doesn't really go anywhere, just sort of sits there.
- Sedative

* Home Butt Club

A wake up call! Bass-heavy instrumental scorcher with loads of razor sharp noises. Nice and loud, could do with some vocals though. Ends in a total noise blow out of mammoth proportions.
- Decent abuse

* Celine and Julie Go Boating

Short free-Jazzy instrumental. Nice and abstract.
- Kinda there

* Beneath The Frozen Lake of Stars

Epic, epic, epic....did I say epic? A bonafide mind melt, I mean just look at the title and the running length (32 minutes). This is where it's at.
- Speechless

So here we go, I have tamed the beast we call I,Thighpaulsandra, phew... At the end of the day this is a disc I will keep coming back to time and time again, to seek and explore.

-Dag Luterek-

Thilges 3 - Mak
Label: Thilges Format: 3" CDS

Latest in Thilges 3's documentations of their surround-sound live shows, Mak comes straight outta the Museum Fr Angewandte Kunst (Museum For Applied Arts) in Vienna, where they performed as a part of a soundclash between an Autrian military orchestra and the Goldberg string quartet. By putting the sounds of the strings and soldiers though their synths, Thilges 3 attempted to make some kind of provocative statment about their appearance as part of a military-funded cultural event in a country whose far-Right dominated government has not been exactly one of the most liberal when it comes to the arts. So they pipe the brash brass and humming chatter of Vienna's finest though the patch bays of the leyboards, and what emerges is like highbrow radio's worst nightmare of interference and fluttering cross-talk. The stately state-sponsored melodies become deracinated thoroughly by the simple expedient of giving them a good analogue synth going over, spitting out the results as a pointillist sputter of distended blips and re-wound martial pomp.

As for the strings, they start off with the sweeping melancholic rawness left intact, and when the whooshes of the electronics begin to intrde, it's actually quite subtle in comparison to the earlier assault on the Gardemusik Vien. The sound of the Doepfer synth integrates reasonably well with the quartet's performance of Ali Schindoffsky's "Logos", and receives a warm reception from the audience. The final track brings the pulsed loops on the synth to the fore, rumbling and echoing the by-now sampled sounds into a semi-Tribal groove where drifts and swatches of strings extrude from the resulting morass in a reurn to the dial-turning metaphor of the first track. As the military klang struggles for wheezing space among the crackles and electronic spasms, the hypertrophied fusion of Waltz-time brass into semi-randomised loops soon fritters off into conclusive abstraction. What a head-scratcher of a show it must have been.

-Freq1C-

Thilges 3 - Polka
Label: Staalplaat Format: CDS

A lot of analogues synthesis (specifically on a Doepfer and a Moog Prodigy, fow what it's worth) went into the making of this recording, and then reworked into the resulting Polka disc. This is another of Staalplaat's intriguing Material series, and here the audio part of the CD is white, the remainder clear, with the engraved jewel case wrapping up expanded polystyrene inserts.

The one track sweeps from the obvious oscillations via snicks and pulses of VCO and filter settings into fairly well-travelled routes, at least as far as analogues go - the stuttering proto-Techno beats wobble gradually into a dynamic space where there are dubbed-up echoes to bounce around. It's a shame that Thilges 3 can't reproduce their live quadrophonic sound on CD - perhaps that's what DVD will offer them? Before long, "Polka" becomes more than the sum of its curlicues and liquid murmurs, and the bass begins to boom, slowly but surely.

Tranquility reaches back, yawns, then groans a little - Ambient? Perhaps, but that of course depends on the volume - run it up a little and the density of the sound is soon apparent. Then when the rhythms rewind and turn into something more akin to the sounds and asymetric beats customarily drifting out of laptops these days but filled with the rich tones of a monosynth, the disruption comes in the form of avant-tinkling noodles, post-Dub bass shivers and snip-snap-snorum clucking. Spacious? Yes, but then space is also a vacuum; somehow the music should be listened to on the outside of the airlock; preferably with an airtight suit on though.

-Antron S. Meister-

Thilges 3 - Vekks
Label: Thilges Format: 3" CDS

Vekks is the fourth in a series of subscription CDs put out by Thilges 3; this one being recorded live in a wine celler at a performance/installation of their first recording. Generated on analogue synths in the extreme high and low ends (apparently to allow the mid-range to be experienced in the listeners' hair), Vekks was recorded from the triangular arrangement of speakers around the audience - so no doubt the hair transmission and surround-sound effects have been somewhat lost in the transistion to mere stereo.

The piece itself takes a slowly-turned trip from tinkling patterns into the heavier reaches of quite sinister sub-bass. Portentious or atmospheric could do easily as adjectives to describe the sounds emanating from the speakers, and the lack of mid-range makes the contrasts quite merked. Twenty minutes of build up lead to a dissolution without overly specific resolution beyond the fade-out into pure tone; but the sense seems to lie more in volume and the space-filling properties of the sounds than in melodic concerns.

-Antron S. Meister-

The Third Eye Foundation - Collected Works
Label: Domino Format: 3CD

Remember when it was all the rage for everyone to do an Eno and describe their music as being soundtracks for movies that didn't exist? (Barry Adamson, In The Nursery - I'm looking at YOU). Not sure if The Third Eye Foundation (aka Matt Elliott) ever made the same claim for his music, but if he didn't, then I will, and will go further and say I really need to see those movies. I don't care if they don't exist. SHOW ME THEM NOW. On this showing, they'll be some kind of 70s Catholic horror movies chucked in a blender with Lynchian cyberpunk stuff (imagine Tsukamoto remaking The Exorcist, maybe), mostly shot through CCTV. Doesn't that sound ace?

And sounding ace is what TEF is all about. It's too easy to say “dark drum'n'bass like what the wonderful Witchman used to do”, and for a large part it'd be accurate, though overall I think we're looking at a cross between D'n'B, Dub and Isolationism. Remember before Trip-hop got all dinner party? (For which I hold Portishead responsible, but for which I don't blame them. It wasn't their fault). Like that. But with the trip in question being a particularly fucking WEIRD one. You know the type of thing. You think someone's dying; possibly you. You're scared the cops will come round. Occasionally, in a moment of Phildickian nuttiness, you may even believe you are the dying cops coming round to bust YOU. Only imagine a version of that which would be appropriate as a soundtrack to The Omen.

It's not all gloom, though. Well, it is, but it's fiendishly gleeful doom. The track “In Bristol With A Pistol” is, as you would hope, a nice, dubby Trip-hop tune interrupted by wonderfully atonal atonal wonderfulness. Damn, the guy's got a sense of humour. Even the track dedicated to his much-loved, deceased cat is called “I've Lost That Loving Feline”. “Donald Crowhurst”, on the other hand, is as bleak and lost as you'd imagine a track about the delusional yachtsman to be. On tracks like this, TEF edge into Nurse With Wound territory.

Actually, it's just struck me now. Remember the movie Constantine, which was a really bad bastardisation of the Hellblazer comics? I reckon, had they done a proper Hellblazer movie, some of these soundtracks for movies that have never been made could have found a decent home. Me? I'm happy just to read the comics and listen to this, and imagine what could have been. Anyway, even if you're not into comics, listen to this and imagine the greatest horror movie ever. With wicked jokes in it.

-Deuteronemu 90210, in ur base killin ur d00dz-

The Third Eye Foundation - Fear Of A Wack Planet
Label: Domino Format: CDS,12"

Exhibiting a kind of Bristolian faux-gangsterism with sampler firmly in cheek, Matt Elliot is definitely getting more proficient with the Drum & Bass these days. Still spooky and atmospheric, the use of choral samples on the title track recalls the early unsettling soundscapes of Current 93 but with a beat - which is a pretty damn good idea too. Religious art is probably best viewed through a filter of cynicism, and a few wheezing basslines, backwards cries and timestretched door squeaks add nicely to the mood of irreverent approaches to the sublime conjoured by the cat-faced Jesus on the cover. The version of "Galaxy Of Scars" on the flip side is a stripped down wander through the album version, taking the sound back down into the depths of dark Ambience. As a dub mix it's pretty good too, with trills of elongated hi-hats and the faintest of references to the queasy melody of "Semtex."

-Freq1C -

The Third Eye Foundation - Little Lost Soul
Label: Domino Format: CD,LP

The Third Eye Foundation are now so far away from the guitar-feedback and bare electronic percussion days of their first recordings in method if not sound that they've become everything which the fusion of post-Rock and/or Isolationism with Drum & Bass promised. Deep swirls and scrawls of filtered and boosted samples settle across the familiar base of breakbeat tricknology, turning it into something other than dance music (again) along the way.

Little Lost Soul shows that TEF is on a mission into more ambitious places than most D&B producers, even if Matt Elliot hasn't completely dropped the punning titles such as "I've Lost That Loving Feline". Having said that, those jokes do give a bizarre twist to the atmosphere created by this record, simultaneously enhancing and deflating the sinisterly effective post-Gothic electronic bricolage. Something of the chorally-based soundtracks of Graham Revell is revealed in some pieces, while others take the rinses and rewinds of Drum & Bass and put them through a decidedly crunchy mill. Disturbing shimmers skim around the edges, undermining the relatively upbeat feel Little Lost Soul has compared to, say the Semtex album.

There's something quite operatic about this record, particularly on the single "What Is It With You" shows, intense mini-dramas played out against a background of noise. Sampled strings and erratic percussion loops skip playfully over the bloated, never mind phat, bass, before getting processed off into the far distance as fragmented memories of rhythm and HipHop illness. Dread like Mephistopheles with a sly smile, Little Lost Soul drifts off appropriately enough into an entirely Lovecraftian dimension of meeping and clawing trails of echo.

-Antron S. Meister-

The Third Eye Foundation - What Is It With You?
Label: Domino Format: CDS,12"

"What Is It With You?" clicks into life with a flurry of timestretched rimshots, snare trills and attenuated vocal samples which really could have been disastrous in their religio-ethnodelic wavering, but aren't in the least bit. In fact, this is such a shockingly sonorous trip into the Drum & Bass vault that it's scarey. Strings rise and fall, distended voices weave in and out of each other and the bass booms for all it's worth, and when the gear shifts into storming snare attck mode, it's almost too much to bear.

Third Eye Foundation's sound has previously tended towards the harsh and noisy, and while there's the residue of this here, there's also a highly-developed sense of sound design which has passed through the playful experimentation phase and progressed into something really stunning. The repeated sample of someone muttering "Jesus..." which highlights "Are You Still A Cliché (With Troubled Mind)" simultaneously gets the point across through the ritual dismemberment of sundry wailing divas and Churchy choirs while working the old but hard-to-pull off trick of getting a vocal to work as percussion. Add in the "Remote Viewer" version of the title track, and everything's gone Ambient in an early Coilish manner (see "S Is For Sleep"), with all the Electro Isolationist implications that raises. Spectral without being Gothic, and all the better for it.

-Freq1C-

The Third Eye Foundation - You Guys Kill Me
Label: Domino Format: CD,LP

There's been a slow evolution of the Third Eye sound going on for quite a while, as the feedback sculptures and harsh breakbeats of previous releases give way to a more accomplished digital sound. No less committed to the darker, eerie drones and clattery loops than before, You Guys Kill Me retains the edgy feel of releases like the unsettling Ghost album, but with added depth and a refined feel for the possibilities of mixer and sampler. The backwards breaks and intensly unnerving cries of "For All the Brothers And Sisters" are a case in point, scattering hyperspeed snare rolls around a cluster of feral yawls, it's like a batch of very combative cats have gathered to scratch some serious ass, and there are further (though note quite as disturbing) examples spread throughout the album.

Where the darker Drum & Bass artists work exceedingly well in their high-energy, dancefloor-oriented way, Matt Elliot combines the thunderous bass and ominous timestretched abstractions with a spooky ambience which militates against motion, more often oppressing than ennervating. Even the tinny shuffle of Funkier numbers such as "An Even Harder Shade Of Dark" is gradually cut to ribbons by swooping beats and smeared production, twitching in response to some kind of possession as minor key strings add a suitably funereal edge. This is digital voodoo stripped of its sexual charge, found in the mechanistic death rattle of "No Dove No Covenant," fractured into an icy, attenuated parade of spectral disturbance, a poltergeist in the machine.

Despite the downbeat mood, grimly ironic titles such as "There's A Fight At the End Of The Tunnel" or "That Would Be Exhibiting The Same Weak Traits" hint at a perfectionist's cynicism at the futility of existence in the same way that Godflesh or Scorn have done. The healthy mocking of religiosity they're fond of is implicit in You Guys too, taking both the soaring and melancholic aspects of the best church music and twisting it to more existential ends. Cold as the grave and as dire as the dread imprecations of a blind idiot god, this album chills in the non-Ambient sense, the percussive maelstrom more often a reflection of psychological turmoil than any hyperkinetic rush of ecstasy. But after the hallucinatory jumble, the album closes with an almost jaunty "In Bristol With A Pistol," ending on a chord of rising ire which cuts out to a discordant drone, a startling jerk back from the reflective mood to an almost abusive closure.

-Freq1C -

David Thomas And Two Pale Boys - Surf's Up!
Label: Thirsty Ear Format: CD

Fronted by Pere Ubu's David Thomas, with Keith Molin�on guitar and Andy Diagram on trumpet, Surf's Up is a collection of Free Jazz Folk music, or dance Electronica spoken word, or something, with a sound that could have come from both the early '70s or all the way into next year. Harsh guitar drubbing is coupled with accordions and/or banjos, while Thomas lectures on, like a self-help guru on a subliminal sleep tape, about driving along lonely country roads, his soothing voice punctuated by train whistles and changing time signatures, or crooning quietly out-of-key like a drunk English nanny. Definitely one of the more accessible side projects Thomas has been involved in lately, and also one of the best.

-Holly Day-

Peter Thomas Soundorchester - Warp Back To Earth '66/'99
Label: Bungalow Format: 2CD,2LP

A strange combination of Sixties electronic Easy Listening and a revisit from the Nineties Electronica types who drew inspiration from Peter Thomas' space age soundtracks, Warp Back To Earth brings together not only a selection of twenty-nine odds and ends from the 73-year old producer's archive, but seventeen new pieces. The latter are constructed from his extensive collection of sounds, recorded from the Sixties and Seventies, and here used as raw material for sampling by a variety of the world's favourite remixers - but with the twist that it's not really a remix project in the established sense of the term, more an opportunity for access to nearly three thousand of the German TV composer's raw material for the cooking up of a new kind of tribute album.

So what results is one disc of Thomas' flute and synth-heavy Easy Space Rock compositions which verge from the pastoral whiffling of "Flirtation" via an almost Amon Düül-style folksy, bongo-Kosmische expansion of "Neutron", "Love 71" or "Dark Nature" and on into the outer oscillator reaches of "Galaxy Fall Out" or the Concrét snips and pulses of ""Nuclear Chemistry" and the twangy blips of "Communication In Hyperspace". Being from the period where Morricone ruled supreme as the soundtracker de jour, there's enough similarities to make the connection of a time, style and place - only much more wigged out. Thomas never really goes for the full orchestral sound however, preferring to ride on a Rock rhythm section of furious drums and mellow electric bass, draped witht the joyous exploration of a new synthetic toy, eventually segueing into (and possibly influencing?) the same territory as John Carpenter's awesome Dark Star soundtrack. Perhaps the flutes are the most dated aspect of his sound palette - but can be forgiven as no better was known at the time, though even the brushed drums and barmy trills of "Espionage Under Water" can't hide the exuberent lunacy which must have been a bit of a mind-bender first time round - assuming it ever appeared in the first place: perhaps in some kind of sub-Bondage aquatic moment of cinematic tension?

The Nineties disc was preceded by Pulp's use of Soundorchester samples on This Is Hardcore; this project includes such well-known electronic construcivists as Stock, Hausen & Walkman, Coldcut and The Sons Of Silence in various Lo-Fi bleep and rewind chug guises (all excellent), and less obvious contributors as Saint Etienne and Momus, who adopt epic soundtrack (with the flutes, naturally) and unusually fuzzy Motorik with breakbeat formats respectively. Lesser known (at least in Britain) artists Dauerfisch (groovy switchback beats) and Mina (fairly faithful exuberent Electro-Folk stomp) leaven the mix with some contemporary German interpretations, while Schneider TM provides an extensive remoulding of the material into fine neo-Dub chaos. Stereolab continue their (still individual) journey into Electronica with "Blaue Milch"; John McEntire likewise takes a similar route out of his hard-disc, turning "Neutron" into a Tortoise-style mix which is possible the most conventional (in that it initially strongly resembles the original) on the album. The finale comes from Peter Thomas himself, who joins forces with The Maxwell Implosion to create an original title piece which slips Vocoders over brassy samples and some funky beats - though however upbeat and quirkily enjoyable it might be, never quite matches the stark beauty of some of his own compositions from two decades earlier.

-Antron S. Meister-

Thrall - Hung Like God
Label: Reptilian Format: CD

I have great fear that someday, these guys will wake up and be a serious band. Luckily, it hasn't happened yet, not before releasing yet another awesome Thrall record. Lead signer Mike Hard's frightening/hilarious lyrics about the Devil, semen, murder, and the dead people buried in his back yard are enough to make an awful lot of people wonder if maybe he shouldn't be in the nuthouse he claims to have escaped from, but really, it's all in fun. It has to be. As a band, Thrall can be catalogued somewhere in between Garage Rock and vampy Blues, in that area where people stick bands like the Cramps and the Lazy Cowgirls.

-Holly Day-

310 - The Dirty Rope
Label: Leaf Format: CD,LP

Violin strains to see the source of the shuffling steps and calling from somewhere near. Another in a long string of small moments - written down for which moments? A melody filters through the depths, watery in consistency. Much vibration, and now that of a faint stringed strumming does its thing, amidst the bongos and and brass and mumbling across a playground slide. The hummingbird wings of the beat weave their ways under and beneath - and are we yet at "beats per second" instead of "per minute"?

A crowd and Dixieland administer their greetings as their sounds are interwoven with the other shreds of a city's life. "Yeah yeah yeah O yeah" and so on. In rhythm, I mean - not to cast aspersions! And is "yes" truly the essence of popular music? Wow. "Trailing by three points..." and the rest of the piece winnows its way below the quotation marks. There is a palpable sense of expectation in this music - not that of an eternal "now" but that of an eternal "next." Intercepted commentary edges quietly behind the melody lingering like the changing of a radio dial, and leaves just as quietly. And up pops drumming from its nap - awakened by a dripping tap. Can I get a "Hey now!"? There is a timidity in the sounds - dipping of toes in a pool and acclimation by repetition - that does not suggest a lack of force but instead a lack of forcefulness.

A half-heard welter of words escapes to perhaps form a freeflowing stream of watery reverberations and crackling. There is further another sense - that of pulling something from unquiet spaces. Sculpting with the sweat of the clay instead of the clay itself, as it were. The beats come in again, and quite rightly, so does a heavy breathing. Labouring? It is unclear. The aural Rohrschach test of echoed words plays behind the tapestry - as is "meaning" such an underrated commodity still? "Queens, Brooklyn, Manhattan..." And then - silence, as though there is something left to work with from a quiet space.

-David Cotner-

310 - Prague Rock EP
Label: Leaf Format: 12"

Yes, it's one of those "hey, wouldn't it be a great idea if?" projects. "Prague Rock" - aside from the cool title - is a pair of Americans remixing that quintessentially English phenomenon of pompous Progressive Rock. They do Floyd, they do Tull, they do Genesis, they do Yes - they even do King Crimson. It's all far less interesting than it sounds. They use plummy interview samples of anthemic superstars for that Spinal Tap twist and it's all just too clever for its own good. It seems a bit of a shame that it sounds shit dull. Makes you wonder if plunderphonic mixology will be the great dinosaur of the Nineties.

Oh well, it's very limited edition but it should be coming to a bargain basement near you soon!

-Iotar-

386DX - The Best Of 386DX
Label: Staalplaat Format: CD

386DX is proclaimed as the world's first Cyberpunk Rock Band; what it really is is an ancient Wintel box playing MIDI files complete with song-synth software vocals. Programmed by Alexei Shulgin, the PC has stood alone as a busker, and played live across Europe and America, which seems like a fun conceptual idea, as most of these files (or similar enough MIDI versions) can be downloaded off the internet (without the key ingredient of the vocals though) and played on pretty much any soundcard available. Oh, and the cover is a nice ASCII art version of the Rolling Stones' Sticky Fingers cover. Anyhow, hearing it play through a big PA would be quite entertaining, especially to an audience not knowing quite what to expect. Conveniently, the CD includes an MPEG video of the machine playing "California Dreaming" live (complete with lightshow), on the street and with Shulgin leaping around, keyboard strapped like a guitar to show the effect 386DX has on passing crowds.

And it sounds like cheesy Muzak^TM, with warbly preset sounds doing their best to emulate Hendrix's guitar screams on "Purple Haze" for example. Likewise, the system's attempts at vocalising "Imagine" or "Anarchy In The UK" or any of the twelve other Rock standards like "Light My Fire" or "Smells Like Teens Spirit") is very, very amusing; for a while. Before long, it grates, but then the disc demands playing again to buttonhole any unsuspecting visitor, soon becoming one of the most played CDs as a result - until the novelty wears off. DJs could get a lot of mileage of of dropping the odd track into a set here and there to watch the crowds' collective draws drop and grins appear too, no doubt.

On one level, this is really a work about the technology of reproducing art in the age of digital reproduction, or circa 1990 given the age of the machine involved. It acts too as a pointer to the future, when computers will compose and sing their own songs (though Eno's fractal generative music software has already had a good stab at this), though the subtext seems to be that they might only be half-good at making the effort sound good, and probably still terrible at communicating human warmth and emotion. The Best Of 386DX is funny, it is entertaining, and the 386DX website is worth checking out too. All this and the CD contains the software required for further experimentation - provided there's a Winbox and Creative Labs soundcard handy to run it on of course. This could provide some kind of use for all those ancient PCs cluttering up office back cupboards, charity shops and skips everywhere - now imagine them all playing at once...

-Freq1C-

Throbbing Gristle - Mutant TG
Label: Novamute Format: CD,2LP

Another inevitable remix album, though previewed in some respects by Chris Carter's own Dub versions of Throbbing Gristle tracks as Electronic Ambient Remixes Three, Mutant TG presents a more conventional selection of the form. Naturally, Carter Tutti are in on the act, taking on "Hamburger Lady" and both "Hot On The Heels Of Love" and "United" at the same time. The former has an edgy feel to its minimal FX-wrenched House-based rhythm, while the distinctive prowling synth snarl which makes up so much of the original's air of imminent disruption plots a sinister course throughout the mix alongside Genesis P-Orridge's already echoed-up vocal commentary. "HotHeelsUnited" melds the melodies and lyrical samples from the two tracks over a deep phased Techno rhythm which harks back to the Chris And Cosey sound, but harder and harsher. Once the initial amusement at the hands in the air nature of the track fades, it has to be said that this would most likely be a seriously good dancefloor track, pulling all the dropout tricks while working the chiming melody from "Hot On The Heels Of Love" aginst increasingly echoed snippets of Gen chanting "United".

"United" gets the full Two Lone Swordsmen treatment too, rolling on a bloated bass and high-kicking beat. The vocals have been stuffed through a flanger in this case, and are largely intact: though they also provide the main link to the original track, as the music itself drifts off into TLS grooving pleasantry without either reinforcing or overstaying its welcome. Back to "Hot On The Heels Of Love", and it seems that this is always going to be the base track of choice, given its position as a proto-Electro classic. Carl Craig's "Re-version" starts off with the basic wobbly trundle, re-arranges the electrifying smacks and keeps the post-Moroder feel wriggling on in generally fine style, producing what is much more of a cut and paste job. That is until extra kick drums start to appear and matters drift off into much more generic Techno/House territory on an emergent (and possibly uneccessary) cyclical bassline, producing what is still an acceptable job of reworking. Simon Ratcliffe of Basement Jaxx pulls the track through an electronic grinder, though the results are recognisable as being derived from Throbbing Gristle, the results are slathered with layers of frizzly hiss like so much aural cotton wool. It's a creditable mix, if somewhat peculiar with its shovelling in of rainforest noises and thunderclaps, and some of the writhing undertow presents a counterpoint to the glistening surface: by the conclusion, the delay effects have seized control and a sensation of "what the fuck happened there?" remains.

Carl Craig turns in some equally distended remixing tricks on "Still Walking", making a disorienting churn out of the source and letting the rhythms clash with the FX until something gives way - once again, the urge to provide new melodic pleasantries intrudes after a while, but without upsetting the enjoyment of the excess slapback too much. "What A Day" is transformed by Hedonastik into an almost unrecognisable morass of bass and clattery beats, GPO's original delay-wracked screams now provided with a suitable digital Dub-based backing, running throughout chunks of the sample-peppered tune until the words turn into another instrument in their own right. Motor make "Persuasion" shiver with electrical discharges and hinted voices, and once more the way P-Orridge left the words to struggle through his multifarious organic treatments two-plus decades ago sits firmly at the centre of the resulting morass. This is probably the remix on Mutant TG which sits most firmly in the Industrial tradition of Throbbing Gristle, sounding as if it is coming straight from the mains socket into the ears.

As a footnote, Si Begg has further squeezed the whole of Mutant TG into a one and a quarter minute MP3 micro-mix (which doesn't appear on the album), but is available here, for what it's worth.

-Freq1C-

Tied + Tickled Trio - Electric Avenue Tapes
Label: Clearspot Format: CD,LP

This 'trio' are in fact a sextet, including the brothers Marcus and Micha Acher who enjoy playing with the conventions of Jazz and introducing Dub and electronics alongside improvisation. The first track, "United World Elevator", is a good example, starting in a fairly minimalist style with sparse keyboard and drums, human, electronic or both. It suddenly takes on another dimension as the tenor saxophonist, Ulrich Wangenheim, asserts himself. His improvisations are impassioned and contribute a human voice as the electronic interference of Andreas Gerth infiltrates the mix.

The rest of the music seems closely focussed on the strong drum and bass with washes of sound spread over this foundation, as in "Tusovska Dub Version". Here a simple but powerful bass riff drives through the scattering of electronics while the percussion is placed high in the mix. No sax on that one but Wangenheim features again on "Van Brunt/Van Ness". His playing is controlled but passionate and on this track the mixing of the electronics and the power of human breath combine best with the storm of bass and drums. It is perhaps the most effective demonstration of the forces at work in this group and if at times it seems like a power struggle is going on the sides are equally matched. The result, for this listener, is exhilarating and involving.

It is on the first section of the final track, "Konstantinopel", that they sound most 'natural' in the trio form as Wangenheim powers with the authority of a Coltrane over the drums and supple bass. Then the electronics and delays of Gerth kick in for a while before the tenor man re-asserts himself. This was actually one 'live' track salvaged from a gig that went wrong and perhaps that's why it has a slightly different feel to it. Whatever, it is an intriguing statement from a well-integrated group that has forged an identifiable sound from disparate elements. I look forward to hearing more.

-Paul Donnelly-

Asmus Tietchens And Vidna Obmana - The Shifts Recyclings
Label: Soleilmoon Format: 2CD

Shifts is a solo project by Frans de Waard, ostensibly to produce ambient music using interwoven guitar patterns with various added effects and special recording techniques. In this collaboration the Shifts recordings have been taken and reprocessed by Asmus Tietchens and Vidna Obmana . Each artist was given the same sound material and then left to their own devices to come up with a `recycling'. The result is two CDs, one by each artist, and both are very different. Disc 1 is a very minimal set of reworkings, combining the understated and skeletal drippings of small metals, whispering and muffled beats. It is the more abstract of the two discs in some ways and the least recognisable musically, though I have to admit I have no idea what the original Shifts material sounds like.

The second disc is, to my ears, the more interesting of the two. Vidna Obmana creates disturbing walls of sound that can fill the room one minute then recede to a whisper the next. He constructs landscapes like bleak shifting sand where ponderous orchestras take their places to entertain with music that is both spectral and vast at the same time. It isn't comforting, in fact it is mainly the opposite and at times feels like fine webs of steel being woven around you. The visions it encourages are sometimes alien but they are never arid or sterile. Again, I have no idea what source material they have manipulated in order to arrive at these chill odysseys which are, at times, slightly redolent of the darker side of Robert Fripp's solo guitar outings. Whatever, the results are intriguing and disturbing.

-Paul Donnelly-

Tight Bro's From Way Back When - Lend You A Hand
Label: Kill Rock Stars Format: CD,LP

One thing you have to remember about this band-it's pronounced "broze" and not "brothers." The rest of the act is just as cool and campy as the name-howling guitars, high pitched screaming vocals and loud bass lines that place this band somewhere between being an authentic '80s hard core Metal band of the Judas Priest and Iron Maiden caliber and a well-executed parody of everything that made those bands fair game in movies like Spinal Tap. This, their second album, is punctuated by enough anthemic chorus and rapid-fire guitar solo scale-playing to make the dormant headbanger in you whimper for release.

-Holly Day-

Time's Up - Obsolete
Label: Staalplaat Format: CDS

Think about those two titles, the producers' (AKA B.Z. and Marc 9) and the record's, which, incidentally and perhaps relevantly, is available on 76mm CD only. Time's Up not only splice together environmental and found vinyl sounds into postmodern collages (even if this does include the execrable Mr Jeremy Clarkson for maximum wince effect, it also uses the ever-popular, suavely hammy sonorities of Vincent Price too), they bring into the equation the classic sounds of allegedly dead media. Such greats and fondly remembered tape-fed games machines such as the Commodore 64 and the (still clinging to life) Amiga speech synth whizz by the spoken words of TV links and Skiffy samples, bringing back fond memories of the days when 512kb of RAM seemed like a high-budget, seriously nerdcore dream beyond the average Amstrad CPC owner.

Arranged and introduced by the machine voice as "Levels 1-5", tracks rejoice in titles like "Pac The Ball" and "Final Time Extension" and are barrages of arcade chaos and low-Techno bleeps and trills, complete with Lemmings chirruping "Oh No!" on "Keep Going", or the jump-cut end of level monster screen feel of the fast and furiously tinkling blasts of "Final Time Extension". Sometimes emerging into a curiously Synth-Pop-sounding shuffle, Obsolete is both a laugh and a nostalgia trip in one, just as capable of tripping off into disjointed 21^st Century hyperspeed breakbeats made from Nineteen-Eighties sources. Cartoony, shrill, and resolutely 8-bit at heart, it's one of those delights of living in a rapidly changing media landscape, where yesterday's toys and tools are never forgotten, but cherished and recyled into gems of timelessness.

-Freq1C-

Timet
- Colazione Con La Pietra
- La Via Negativa
Label: I Dischi Forma Format: CD

Colazione con la Pietra (Conversation With The Stone) was recorded in 1997 from a vast array of samples from diverse sources, from (to give a only few examples) Sch�berg to Zorn, via Heiner Goebbels, Miles Davis and John Coltrane, to Ninj & Laswell and cinematic points between. Each track credits its sources in some detail, which not only makes for a refreshing change, but points to the theory behind the project. Under the direction of B<>Lorenzo Brusci, the ensemble making up the personnel of Timet for this recording improvise and interact with the ProTools sample edits from Brusci and the live mix to produce what terms a Metacomposition - a recording and compositional technique which explores and develops the basic sequenced framework through an evolutionary lens. The aim is apparently for the musical elements to interact on several levels; to have relationships which have less to do with established interactions - rhythms, melodies - and more to do with the possibilities raised through spontaneous or stochastic events at the time of recording.

Theory aside, the results could be considered in several registers; as a fractal whorl of sounds, with snips of a cross-cultural melange thrown together into hallucinogenic miasma; perhaps as nightmare cacophony; in the right frame, as an academic development of Musique Concr�e for the Drum & Bass era. Is it Jazz by another name, Improv, Sampladelic recursion; the continuing march of bricolage into digital chaos? Perhaps, and more again. Like the lysergic soundscapes of Nurse With Wound but less humorous. The whole becomes a continuum of intrusion, with disembodied voices stretching into saxophonic squalls, electronic hazes, instrumental flurries ("real" and sampled) all bound most expressively around by the vocal extemporisations of Monica Demuru and others.

In all its pluderphonic glory Colazione con la Pietra sometimes resembles the results of a bucketful of sound sources emulsified into amorphous sonic gloop which flings out identifiable musical droplets as it is mixed and stirred and occasionally splashed into an aural Pollock-scape. This rather convoluted metaphor perhaps doesn't do the album justice; sometimes coldly calculated, but not often enough to be tedious, thanks to its propulsive, nearly random-access, accretion of sound on sound in waves and eddies of mood, Colazione startles the fringes of the Avant-Jazz-Breakbeat interface on more than one occasion, with excursions into a deracinated Funk surprise party too from time to time.

La Via Negativa develops the Metacompositional idea further into abstraction, with Brusci moulding the sampled sounds of a Century, High and Pop art alike, into a virtual sound sculpture. By contrast with Colazione, this recording moves exponentially in several directions; the paradigms of drama and opera are applied to millions of edits, cuts, and pastes, emerging as a highly disturbing collage of sonic elements removed by several degrees from their original sources to take up microcosmic positions in the newly-unified whole. Here the resemblances become broadband indeed taking in the feel of digital channel-hopping across multiple screens, speakers, lives.

The breadth of material present is quite breathtaking on occasion, but even beyond the listed sample sources, apart from the theoritical base, aside from the layered sleeve images, what Timet establish is a zone of musical reference which slides from perspective to alternate perspective with each listen. The results of the laborious edits, the intervention of the musicians and the redistributions of the producers are eventually visceral, not just intellectual. La Via Negativa is perhaps the more stimulating and vibrantly peripatetic of the two recordings, the more concentrated in its deconstructive ablation of the process of composition, hopping with something approaching gleeful semi-seriousness from mimetic node to syncretic agglomeration in satiating rhizomatic exposition. When the disc finally clicks to a halt, it is as if a connection has been pulled from the cultural networks of these ever-regurgitative times.

-Antron S. Meister-

Timet - Shadows
Label: I Dischi Forma Format: CD

Shadows has a beautiful cover. And I do mean the cover the CD comes in. The twenty-five short tracks inside have some beautiful moments. Mostly it is a collection of samples run forwards and backwards, too slow, too fast; all distorted and geared up to be used as, well, samples. Reminiscent of the "Smells of Children" remix of Marilyn Manson or a cassette one would buy to have samples of Halloween noises with which to aurally decorate a haunted house, it seems to have little point, even if it does have innumerable uses. I think sometimes music is for muscians. This CD is like samples for samplers.

A great collection for an audio tech with pro loops and artistic groupings of electronics, string arrangements and industrial noises. Perhaps this is a version of functional music. You might not want to sit and listen to it, but it could come in handy. In fact, with over 120 credits given to the sourcing of all this sampling, one could make a game out of trying to find the Henry Cow spot, the Mozart piece, the Tricky mixture. And if you don't like the way Timet's Andrea De Luca and Lorenzo Brusci have decided to put it all together, you could, without doubt, go on and make your own version of it all. Ultimate modernity - function, versatility, all wrapped up in an artful package.

-Lilly Novak-

Amon Tobin - Supermodified
Label: Ninja Tune Format: CD,2LP

Organ grinds down the groove and for this a drive may be called on - professionally or automotively, either is fine. The drum solo is announced. But what has been modified, in a super way? The beat? The rhythm? Lycra? Much applause and crackling of records sampled. Apparently this record is "all clean", oddly enough. So says the promotional sticker. The pantshaking bass makes a gradual reappearance, and these sounds shimmer like hot pavement; a pall in the pile. Yet no matter how "strange" the sounds - there is always the beat, present, as backup, as safety.

Is the point to "keep it real"? Is it utterly important to blur the line between the sample and the original instrument? The point of origin - and the super-modified? Oddly enough, now comes the human beatbox. And, of course, these days there are maschines that re-create the human beatbox. And do the influences on the music come from deeper sources than referentialism and popular culture? What one wants to be, to see, to be like? As a person? How underrated is that? The rhino jockey comes into play, building and expanding its charge...and then the rhythmic steel, bass and horns. Is the idea to present sounds logically, or sequentially? Not just in this album - but in any series of recordings?

-David Cotner-

Tomorrowland - Sequence Of The Negative Space Changes
Label: Kranky Format: CD,LP

Tomorrowland are another of those interesting Kranky duos huddled round the mixer, spreading loops, delays and extended wafts of processed feedback like so much electric cotton wool. In this case, Steve Baker and Nick Brackney hitch the by-now standard Isolationist instruments - guitar, synths, organs - to their eight-track to produce ten pieces of bleeping, circling, warbling and meeping.

Fonder of the glitch and tape hiss as sound source than some, listening to Sequence of Negative Space Changes easily becomes a background task at times - sounds slip over the synapses like filtered waterfalls of notes and noise, collaged into tone-patterns of subtly-shifting stasis. But this is what Ambient music should be like; meditative and expansive. Each individual track blurs into another, combining to make for an occasionally overall picture with a slightly dark edge creeping in around the deep bass swathes of "Saturn". As with a guitar left to feed back through its amp and effects, a technique used and augmented here, the sounds generated often become so densely concentrated and otherworldly that they're almost unbearably intense (particularly the tumbling analogue burbles in "Dustbot"), and eerily present in the foreground.

By the time the album closes with the relaxing soma bath of "Mantric", everyday noise seems to echo and trill with audible dust - as a brief trip into another state of (not necessarily chemically altered) consciousness, Sequence provides a pretty relaxing holiday from reality, space and time.

-Antron S. Meister-

Tone Language - Patience Is The Key
Label: Korm Platics Format: CD

Apparently Korm Plastics are going off Pop, in as much as this first CD from collaborators Lee Norris (AKA Metamatics and Norken) and Ichiro and Kenji Taniguchi (who record Drum & Bass together as Reflection) follows the dreamy glitch ambience template established by Oval and long since incorporated into corporate advertising. However, it's to be hoped Tone Language don't succumb to the same fate. Since the track titles are quite descriptive, it's instructive to list a few to give an idea of the flavour of this variety of studio recycling: "The Robot Sparrows"; "Ocean"; "A Plant's Day In Stages" - and some less obvious like "Record #1".

So what makes this different from any other glitch recording? Perhaps less actual glitches are used here than at the hands and mice of others, with tones and drones moving in layers as distinct elements with fragmented sample sequences making intrusions or extrusions as applicable. It's all quite abstract though, with a predeliction for simplicity and the definition of space evident as themes. Stillness, shifts from sparse stasis to lateral movement. Motion towards energy dissipated before too much momentum is acheived. Pointed calm. Bass which exists around the level of breathing. Chirruping expressions of electronic alertness, elevated up to aspirant plateaux, becoming an ultrasonic whole in and of themselves. Moving without immediately obvious travelling, but awakening somewhere else other.

Patience Is The Key deepens out as it progesses from the initial plain; by track 5, "Winter's Thrill", complexity makes for some subtle shifts of time and related dimensions. The combination of pure tones with clipped phone-dialer detritus makes for a pleasingly even balance, and the clipped relationship between this form of Ambient and Drum & Bass becomes clearer, the way Main's drones stretched the format of Psychedelic Rock into the abstract stratoshphere. A well-titled CD from a suitably-named group.

-Linus Tossio-

Tool - Lateralus
Label: BMG/Volcano Format: CD, limited CD,MC

Tool. Hmm. Can we forgive them? I mean, like, ever? After all, as the instigators of Nu-Metal, they are largely responsible for Limp Bizkit and Slipknot, all that big-shorted, high testosterone sports Metal malarkey. Only there's nothing remotely "sports" about Tool- no, they're resolutely "Old Metal" imagewise - you know, namechecking Crowley, decorating their sleeves with mystical paraphernalia, and generally getting all apocalyptic on yo` ass.

And indeed, they've got doomier. Last album, Aenima, a patchy though often brilliant Industrial Metal nightmare, had a sleeve decked with poo jokes and, commendably, a lovely painting of Bill Hicks. This time, jokes are to a minimum, and there's none of the petulance that sometimes dragged Aenima down to a level of just being something that rocked. In fact, now Tool are Prog as fuck. Nine-minute tracks, swooshy space noises, tracks with more movements than an incontinent horse - yup, as Maynmard himself said recently, sometimes you have to be careful you don't end up playing "Stonehenge".

But it works, incredibly. I guess the album's just so dense, so solid, that it manages not to break under the weight of its own pomposity. Once you've got through what is quite possibly the most impressive packaging a CD has ever known, you launch straight into "The Grudge", along with "Ticks and Leeches" the most conventional Tool track on here. And boy, is it brutal, 'cept it keeps dipping into these slow, tuneful bits, (like happened more occasionally on Aenima) and you get the impression that the singing practice Maynard got with Billy Howerdel's awesome A Perfect Circle has stuck. When he wants, he can still sound majorly angry, but now he sounds more like he knows what he's angry about. Eastern melodies, tablas, lots of effects and, of course, big fuck off chunky guitar riffs propel him onwards through "Eon Blue Apocalypse" (strangely reminiscent of the intro to Fields Of The Nephilim's "Preacher Man") into stand-out track "The Patient", which does the whole shebang - the nice bits, the shouty bits, the just plain fucking massive bits - and goes on for, like, a year. The aforementioned "Ticks and Leeches" comes on like a bastard child of Marilyn Manson's "Lunchbox" only without the cartoon humour.

Basically, if you can forgive them Limp Bizkit (I know, I know, but they didn't do it on purpose, yeah?), then check it out. And make sure you stick around for surprise end track "Faaip De Oiad", where an angry electronic cacophony and a drum kit falling off a mountain back up a really quite disturbing sample from Art Bell's "hey! paranoid fuckers, phone me up NOW!" radio show, which is almost worth the price of admission on its own. Oh yeah, and it Rocks as well. (DAMN! I was trying not to say that. Fuck, where'd I put those big shorts...?)

-Deuteronemu 90210, Horseman of the Apocalypse-

Rafael Toral - Violence Of Discovery And Calm Of Acceptance
Label: Touch(UK,America)/Staubgold (Europe) Format: CD

Rafel Toral is one of a newer generation of experimental guitarists who strive to wrestle the last drops of possibility from an instrument from which so much diverse noise (never mind melody) has been extracted already that it's no wonder that the only really drastic step left to take is to deconstruct the whole thing digitally. So following in the string bends and preparations of the likes of Robert Hampson, Lee Renaldo, Jim O'Rourke, Derek Bailey and so on, Toral opts for the deceptively simple approach of making the guitar sing the body and neck electric.

Through ten tracks of uncurling analogue electronics and string-driven sounds, Violence Of Discovery and Calm Of Acceptance is crafted into an album of ambience which even manages to include the sound of amplified silence on a Space Shuttle mission launch webcast, a trick of which Eno would no doubt be proud. Tones and drones luxuriate without lounging or wafting into the realms of pomposity or self-indulgence - the feeling generated is more that Rafael Toral is actively listening to the sounds he's making as both an outsider and creator. Regardless of the truth or not of this impression, the end result is a disc which roams from the rising effects trails into the tightly-controlled diversion of feedback into rhythms and half-framed melodies and chords, plateauing in areas where the sounds become scratchily electrical rather than merely plain and simply electronic. Tracks like "Mixed States Uncoded" bring to mind the better days of Flying Saucer Attack, conjouring an evocatively meditative quality from the guitars (and bass in this case) which inspires a gentle relaxation into the flow of the by-now uplifting music.

-Freq1C-

To Rococo Rot - The Amateur View
Label: City Slang Format: CD, LP

From their beginnings as the musical department of an art exhibition, To Rococo Rot have shown themselves to be something special - it's not the methodology alone, not the combination of sequencer, sampler, drums and the sometimes floor-threatening bass they favour live, but is to be found in the precise combination of all the above with that special spark of warm humanity among the machinery. Driven by a supremely mellow appreciation for the interplay of bass and drums, topped off with some almost indescribably lovely sampler melodies, The Amateur View grows outwards from an ever-shifting core, with compelling grooves emerging from a wash of keyboards and melodic texture which pulls off the difficult trick of sounding both marvellous and unforced, as if it had grown of its own accord.

The ticking soundscapes which TRR create segue from the pleasant wanderings of "Prado," whose Dub inflections are minimal curlicues on a somnolent, hesitant bassline, into the intricate scratchy loops, glitch-melodies and liquid squitters of "A Little Asphalt Here And There," undercut and finally overtaken by the rising noise interjections of guest turntablist I-Sound. The group's collaboration with the Soul Static Sound label's D, "This Sandy Piece," reappears from its first outing on the mini-album TRRD, its sinuous use of chirpily subtle distortion making a mid-point bridge in an album capable of providing new pleasures with each listening. When the classic machine beat of "Cars" becomes partner to a near-awkward cycling bass riff and a simple keyboard melody before strangely quacked-out handclaps fall under the spell of a murmuring, squirming synth, or the half-awake, hypnotic minimalism of "Die Dinge Des Lebens" fades out into nothing, the feeling is that a moment of more than passing (but elusive) significance has just occurred.

What is striking about both The Amateur view and To Rococo Rot as a band is the variety of unworldly sounds which they have successfully isolated, and then redeployed into utterly unique formats. Listening to them is quite an alienating experience on occasions - which is good, because that seems like it should be the ideal function of music, to enfold in a sense of wonder and unfamilar textures. It's particularly gratifying to revel in the otherworldly, reconstituted plinks of "Green," for example, only to have them suddenly augmented by lo-fi Spaghetti Western gunshots, cheap drum machines and fragmentary bursts of digital rain. To cap it all, when the final echo drips from the end of "Das Blau Und Der Morgen," it's like a slow awakening back to flat reality.

-Antron S. Meister-

To Rococo Rot - K�ner Brett
Label: Staubgold Format: CD

What better subject for a To Rococo Rot concept album than a highly Modernist building in Cologne? With twelve modular rooms to work represent both the structure and purpose of, the logical method the band took was to compose a three minute track for each section. What emerges is a stripped-down album which works within the structural constraints to deliciously minimal effect, whether on the cyclical guitar figures of Track 3 or in pulsing barebones Electro rhythms elsewhere.

K�ner Brett is a gem of an album, where warm flows of deft Funk click and cut over to a meandering groove of post-post-Rock with all the smooth musical engineering processes which have come to characterise the melodic side of German Electronica, and more specifically To Rococo Rot. Their Dub influences infect everything with a subtle hypnotic swell, as found swimming around Track 4 and 5's gently-warbling liquid and glass samples: it's difficult not to imagine this as being music for parties where black polonecks are de rigeuer. Equally, the architectural motifs infect every moment, gliding in an acoustic walkthrough of the project on gimbals as gyroscope-steady as virtual reality can provide. Elsewhere, smooth and/or chunky Techno propels itself into the mix with a tick and a skip, effortlessly bringing back those Autobahn comparisons as the music sweeps majestically along the fine driveway which links technical precision with warm human-level immersion. If this is what living or working at K�ner Brett sounds and feels like, it's time to get a lease reservation in.

-Antron S. Meister-

To Rococo Rot - She Understands the Dynamics
Label: Fat Cat Format: 12"

Supremely mellow, fascinatingly layered micro-dubs from a country (Germany) teeming with super-proficient Electronica. Ripples, pulses, flows and then grows. Crackles, lo-fi sound sources and bass bleeps celeverly arranged to produce an all-suffusing glow of satisfying serenity, without descent into Ambient earwash. Why don't record players have repeat buttons?

-Freq2B-

To Rococo Rot + I-Sound - Pantone EP Label: City Slang Format: CDS,12"

The Pantone EP brings together a selection of tracks originally aired on To Rococo Rot and I-Sound's Music Is A Hungry Ghost album, here revised in light of live performance. "Pantone (Red)" whirrs out from an opening skim across the glitchscape into a tinkly melody, all trailed echoes of brightly-sparking electronics and the characteristic TRR bass glide. The synthetic strings swell, the melody hums beatiful thoughts to itself, and the chirrup of cyclical hiss and spinning tops makes drowsy clouds waft by into delicate decay. The Trance Of Travel (Gets)" brings the Funk on in, as hesitant synthetic notes make their statement of intent to the beat of steam-propelled drum machinery and the sound of layered delay-looped percussion samples. It's on this track that I-Sound's electronic trickery first starts to make itself heard in depth on the EP, counterpointing the smooth bass ride with shimeers of digital offcuts and smartly-clipped glitch snippets and squelches.

"Brett Zwei" is a reworking of Track 2 of the K�ner Brett album, bringing up the bass into a Dub chillout as it walks across the crisp drum sounds while I-Sound's electronics infect the acoustic guitar melody with digital birdsong. The next surprise is "I Wanted To meet Him", which rollicks around a Dancehall rhythm paired with the characteristic To Rococo Rot liquidity, creating a whole new ambient Ragga sound on an emergent bassline of generous warmth. "Fishermen Dressed Like Joseph Beuys" combines meandering sample fragments with equally distracted guitar strums and insectoid glimmers for a pastoral fade to minimalist calm concluding a finely diverse EP with a touch of quietly clever niceness

-Antron S. Meister-

Tortoise vs. Derrick Carter - D's Winter
Label: City Slang Format: 12"

As Tortoise seem determined to be remixed in as many styles and genres as possible, it's not to great a surprise that their latest deconstruction comes courtesy of Chicago producer Derrick Carter's take on "In Sarah, Mencken, Christ and Beethoven There Were Women and Men" from TNT. Divided between the slow-stomping "D's Winter Crazy Dub" and the more relaxed "D's Winter Outtake," Carter re-jigs the basskicks, Acid squelches and piano frills into a more linear House version of one of the album's Jazzier moments, stripping down the complexity to allow some more subtle nuances through.

Slow by dance music standards, both tracks are still going to find more appreciation in a chill-out zone (at home or in a club) than on the dancefloor, though "Winter Dub" picks up the beat as a Techno counterpoint to the Motorik Doppler effect of the astounding "Gamera" single. Follo