#5 (mai 05 - september 05)

..nocalypse:: axiac infinity Apparently the first release of nokalypse, which is one guy from greece. as the cover indicates, what we have here is mostly noisescapes. deep bass sounds spring up and stay there while heavily granulated sounds come and go. I was a bit disapointed to find no actual connection between most of the sounds - too abstarct to create a certain space. that’s a pity cause the sounds themselves (or most of them) were nice. sure makes you wanna listen the next release - so far this might come as a treat for everyone interested in listening new trends in electronic music, but not much more
|--cdr | echomusic@mailbox.gr

..mecha/orga:: a man behind the door Another artist from greece (usually the man behind the laptop, not the door). those familiar with previous mecha/orga works will be surprised with this one - but not too much. instead of his usual experimental and heavily electronic noisescapes, mecha/orga here uses only a piano and at some points some computer manipulation of the sounds. notes and piano sounds enter the sound space discreetly, never dominating, leaving always the room presence to accomplish their not quite finished stories. at some point a heavy reverbation of some piano sound creates some tension but then again it subsides. the tension builts up with more opening piano themes but at the end nothning seems to happen - except thoughts and untold stories in a strangers room. but maybe that was the point. in any case, something nice to listen to
|--cdr | echomusic@mailbox.gr

..bill wood/frendrik ness sevendal:: song of degreesThese two guys (from new zealand and norway respectively) draw a moody, coherent, slighlty psychedelic, landscape. analog synth sounds merge with guitars and analog drones and you can smell the wood from cottage houses in the forest and you can even see the light of dusk as it disapears in northern skies. but even if you are more straight than this: a nice warm old-industrial like feeling will emerge. watch out. thumbs up, please
|--lp | humbug, tchartan@yahoo.com

..herpes deluxe:: havarie Starts with a voice loop, some analog synth sounds come and then some rhythmic structures and by this point you are already lost - for the next 25 or so minutes of the track one the music swirls yopu around, rhythms and drony sounds move you, tension bulids and music smoothly melts into new paths. a strange (redneck music?) sample brings you down to earth, but 3 more songs are yet to come and you are lost again to the industrial psychelic soundscape. one of the finest releases to come4 across lately
|--cd | tollerort

..sunday noise "peace":: fucking hospital Another one-man project. that's the thing with new technology - everybody can have her own solo project. on the other hand music making tends to become a so lonely procedure. anyway, to stay close to point here: 4 long tracks, starts with a repeating low noise and slowly clicks enter the soundscape creating a nice rhythmic structure. loops and "clean" sine frequencies fill sthe space and a very nice repeating structure emerges. then a sound (probably a noise from a cable when you disconnet it from the amplifier) passes through verious delay stages to end up with an attack form frequencies and low noises. i am no good in describing things let alone music. let's try another approach: nice rhythmic ambient strucutres, computer music which not just stays around you but manages to move and transport feelings. yeah, a nice one
|--cdr | mourgoskull@yahoo.com

..lecanoscope hinged/geosync Starts with some space sounds and a beat, which somehow sounded too normal to me - and a bit old fashioned, like f.s.o.l. but with the initiation of a voice sample things start to become more and more interesting: the normal beat stays there, but sounds come and go and the song becomes spacy and travelling and you can easily drift. second track keeps the easy feeling for a while until it starts a slighlty dark journey - a drifting, trance inducing repeating rhythm and guitar sounds swirl around you. makes you wish it would last for more. a nice surprise!
|--mini cd | metabolic music

..massaccessi:l’hotel / every kid on speed:jj:: split Both projects in this split release come (I think) from skopje/macedonia. both use experimental electronics, glitches and noises from errors or fucked up digitalia with lots of low bit rate stuff. every kid on speed’s stuff is slightly more interesting playing between the abstarct and digital drone while massaccessi’s track somehow failed to get my attention. not excactly uninteretsing but all in all too pointless for me. comes in a nice cd sleeve but with almost no information at all
|--split cdr | released by acid fake rec. acidfake@freemail.com.mk

..snow machine:: in a ligh A seemingly irish project. could we call this post-folk? or neo-psychedelic? some details to help you answering: acoustic guitar and mellow singing, drifting male/female voices, noises in the background either field recordings acoustic instruments or (it seems) synth-made sounds, a “post-rock” structure based in the guitar + singing classic. leaving the analysis aside what is really important is this: music that creates emotional landscapes (could we call them emoscapes?), like painting behind a screen and you are tempted to try to recognise the painting but in the end what you get is imagination mixed with reality. do you get the idea? in a few words, quite nice stuff
|--cdr | deserted village

..k&a:: pockets of resistance Leaving the catchy packaging (small bag with a k&a logo similar to c&a) aside, what you face is 4 short songs (total running time of around 11 minutes) where two seemingly old drum machines collaborate in the (de)construction of rhythms and noises. don’t get any weird ideas: this is not techno-like stuff, nor dance-oriented. there are rhythms alright, but at the end of each piece they are almost out of breath, the beats mix together and then they decide that probably they don’t like each other and they go their own way. in other words: noise music made with beats? or as they proudly claim, dance music for people with two left feet? whatever the case: worthy stuff
|--mini cdr | released by phonoerotic rec.

..marek mahn Two self released cdrs by marek mahn whose previous project, orion, left me very good impressions. both have similar, simple covers made with stamps which look very nice indeed, but their contents are quite different.
the one probably called orchha is a collection of dark moody ballads, acoustic guitar, some flute (played quite nice) and of course vocals. now, I am not a guy for ballads, maybe I have deep psychological wounds from all the acoustic guitars in the summertime in greek islands played by miserable hippy like bearded people around the fire which makes you wanna find metals and rocks and bang them together to make them stop and if this doesn’t work maybe bang their heads with the rocks. ok you get the idea. BUT leaving my prejudices aside, the voice is deep and quite steady (unfortunately not always) the flute is nice and some pieces remind current 93 or swans. melancholy is ofcourse omnipresent here but always leaving enough space for the listener and this is quite nice. I’d say it is quite alright stuff for your room in the winter (although I can not imagine it in an island in summertime – but obviously marek mahn is not to blame since he comes from cloudy and cold leipzig).
cdr no2 is, as I mentioned before, quite different. a deep ohm-like voice sound creates slowly a rich drone which plays for almost half an hour. strange, hypnotic and even meditating stuff, deep and dark. had very nice effects on me each time I listened to it – relaxing and travelling. I’ll be looking forward for this guy’s next releasse that’s for sure
|--2cdrs

..zoat-aon:: star autopsy With titles like possessed constellation or theriomorphic heralds, what else you might expect than dark ambient? (ehmm, apart from black metal that is). so dark ambient is more or less the case here, the ambient part created by long, rich drones, synth sounds and (probably) some field recordings like, deep rhythms which somehow stay in the background never dominating the scene. and the dark part? well this is obviously created by the whole atmosphere and character of sounds, which create a rich and evolving soundscape. stuff for mind travelling : nice, nice, nice
|--cd | aural hypnox

..pol mod pol:: embrace the boogie blast master A finnish guy (ex- soviet subliminal seduction) who uses a computer kinda like a toy to explore noise and music boundaries. low bitrate noises changing and moving fast, rhythms that break and change before they can be classified as danceable and then the song is over and a new one starts. I guess it is a pleasure to compose and play these kind of sounds and what you get as a listener is quite easy and kicking sounds but not really anything more
|--cdr | polmodpol

..music to listen to music by v/a A compilation from private electro, a german label. it starts with a great piece of deep and crystal clean frequency electronics, like alva notto or ikeda, from parachute and continues more or less in the same spirit in contemporary electronic avant-gardism. granular experimental electronics by triPhaze, scorn-like rhythms and weird structures by mr sakori, experimental electronica by alias, echtzeit and data archiv. all tracks seem to be constructed only with computer but mostly what you get is a warm, moving sound (something not always the case with modern experimental computer music). something you should definitely check
|--cd | privat electro

..aeoga:: coav another release from aural hypnox again with a project name like from some obscene religion. again, great artwork and music that flirts with mysticism and the apocryphal, tibetan bowls and synth drones, deep and dark, music that creates strange geometries and alien semi-dark landscapes. as in zoat-aon case the rhythms tend to punctuate the the flow of sounds rather than dominate it: thus the listener hangs in a timeless situation. I guess it can be too heavy and maybe also too dark – but so far all three times I listened to it I had a great timeless-like experience
|--cd | aural hypnox

..the cosmic nanou:: st.warna’s arrival Another release by the irish label deserted village and as in the case of snow machines (see above) the acoustic guitar + vocals are the main music vehicle. a vehicle which travels in psychedelic, or mystic areas. sounds come and go accompanying a smooth and sometimes mellow guitar creating s strange, dreamy soundscape. failed to really hook me though. still I feel I will listen to it more times in the future
|--cdr | deserted village

..tetsuo furudate:: for the mother and the father Two tracks: one for the mother and one for the father. mother’s track is a long droning soundscape which makes wanna close your eyes when listening to it. field recording sounds interfere with low deep sounds in a thick (and maybe too full) soundscape. father’s track is more dark and threatening as synth and organ sounds are swirling around in aggressive rhythms. I am not sure I really liked it but it for sure caught my interest and attention. the cover notes refer to haendel for the first track and to back for the second
|--cdr | released by simple logic rec.

..margrave ruediger vs trombone:: two broken teeth and a cracked rib Two guys with various synths and groove boxes and a glockenspiel who put their gear together to create a somewhat funny, happy, easy going experimental sound. the use of glockenspiel adds lots of character to their sound which moves in loose and easy tempos and moods. unfortunatey or not i listened to it between moody, melancholical post rock albums and it somehow failed to get me into its atmosphere. released by the nice and very creative burning emptiness inc. label
|--cdr | burning emptiness inc.

..je + [.]:: schizoid anomique Although the title implies there would be at least two people involved in this, as the cover informs us there is only one, yann_f. so is it a split release with yourself? hmmm… I quite enjoyed this one, reminded me a lot to the old 4-track demos where all the instruments were played by one person and the result was always weird. the sound of the guitar dominates here, ususally played in a sonic youth way and elctronics are added and subtracted, digital error noises and cuttted up drums are blending quite nice with guitar + effect sounds. the whole sonic field is quite abstract but never boring (as is usually the case with many electroacoustic modern experimental music releases) and it left me wanting to listen more stuff from this guy
|--cdr | je4, released by burning emptiness inc.

..noise to meet you asia - v/a Now a compilation with the word noise in its title has some implications, implications which become even more powerful when the word asia is also on the cover. japan is there isn’t it? and here you are, expecting a wall of japanese noise which may frighten you, pain you but, as is more and more the case, probably just bore the living shit out of you. as I found with relief this was not the case at all. first I was really glad to listen to sounds from taiwan and south corea (apart from japan and china of course) and second (and most important) sounds here are quite diverse. from the strange noisy arrangements of kiyoshi mizutani and yasushi miura to the harsh noise and frequency attack of justin zhong (a nice track!) and from there to the deep, pulsating rhythmic track of akihiko taginuchi (my personal favourite from this compilation, in the ikeda/noto tradition). and then again the harsh noises of wang changun and masayuki akamatsu to keep our ears throbbing and our expectations not entirely wrong. what’s more, great artwork (as usual)
|--cdr | released through simple logic rec.

..gintas k. vs ddn:: the pulse and click of your cyberheart is melody to my analogue to digital converter Yeah like “let me see your usb and I will show you my firewire”. unsusrprisingly enough what we have here is two people using mainly computers - some theremin or guitar sounds are crossing the digital soundscape once in a while - in a deconstructive experimental way. click and cut rhythms blending with guitar and synth sounds and then deformed audiomulch-ed like sounds travelling on digital pulses. the result was very pleasant to my ear although it left me a bit unsatisfied as if this was mainly a demo or an experiment and not something more concrete. but maybe that was exactly the case. anyway, if you’re into modern experimental digital music in the realms of goem, alva notto etc you should try to find some listening space for this.
|--cdr | released by burning emptiness inc.

..aleph:: spiew stonceOne track of dark, noise ambient. analogue synth-like sounds which slowly build towards a hypnotic drone. but as this is rather too short (less than 15 minutes) it leaves you somehow untouched – by the time you are getting into its slow evolving sounds the cdr is over. very nice aesthetics on the cover
|--cdr | released by simple logic rec.