I like gritty ambience. When ambience is too smooth and produced like a pop record, in many cases the mood is destroyed. I would not consider Atrabilis Sunrise (continuation of dark-industrial act Catharsis) to be ambient. It definitely has ambient and dark-industrial influences, but it’s more varied, harsh and complex in structure…
Aoki Takamasa + Tujiko Noriko – 28
September 3, 2005 by
Friendly and gentle clicks, cuts, shimmers, glitches and the very warm, feminine voice of Tujiki Noriko. In no way this sums up the accomplishment of the two artists, both of Japanese origin, but these are just some of the ingredients: the whole is much, much more than the sum of the parts The mood Noriko evokes with her dreamy singing, reminds me of a Sigur Ros-alike atmosphere…
Oophoi & Louisa John-Krol – I hear the water dreaming
August 29, 2005 by
I Hear The Water Dreaming is a very psychedelic title. The music is equally psychedelic, even shamanistic. The electronic textures of the songs are accompanied with subtle sounds effects, nature sounds and samples. This album thus creates a dreamlike setting through the intimate sound of the songs…
As All Die / FDH – North American Underground Alliance
August 23, 2005 by
Both bands are present with three tracks on this ‘North American Underground Alliance’. As All Die kicks of with a martial-industrial track of pretty poor sound quality, not really originally called ‘Power through will.’ It’s very reminiscent of Archon Satani and the likes: low pitched drumming, dark noises and spoken word passages on death and destruction…
Retail Sectors, The – Untitled
August 23, 2005 by
When I first saw the promo CDR of this Japanese band I didn’t even bother to put it in my record player. A band with so little concern for the outlook of their release couldn’t be worth listening. A simple paper cover with an ugly print and some contact information…
Terminal 11 – Illegal nervous habits
August 14, 2005 by
Imagine listening to Aphex Twin’s IDM (‘Intelligent’ Dance Music). Remember that funny clip ‘Windowlicker’ in which Richard D. James does this little umbrella-dance to erotically arouse two ghetto-whores, that, enchanted by his lunacy, get his deformed head on their marvellous bodies? Well, take that song, that clip and image it playing on high speed…
V/A – Comrades in lost
August 14, 2005 by
‘Comrades in lost’ is a multimedia (!) compilation aiming to introduce people to the Latvian industrial community. A community I’d never heard from before, but definitely worth checking out more thoroughly after this splendid introduction…
Compest – Kryptozoologie
August 11, 2005 by
Cryptozoology was a new term to me, and a few Google-hits later, I found out that it is the study of unknown animals that are not (yet) accepted by science, such as Big Foot, Yeti and The Loch-Ness monster…
Aidan Baker & Matt Borghi – Undercurrents
August 11, 2005 by
In the liner notes of Brian Eno’s ‘Music for airports’, Eno comes to a description of ambient music. He states: ‘Ambient Music must be able to accommodate many levels of listening attention without enforcing one in particular. (…) Ambient Music is intended to induce calm and a space to think…
Aalfang mit Pferdekopf – Ich habe nur noch 12 Seepferdchen in meinem Tempel
August 10, 2005 by
When I heard the first tones of this release and saw the track titles, I was quite sceptical: could a band/ project naming itself ‘Aalfang mit pferdekopf’ be interesting? Wasn’t this just a ‘fun-project’? (It means something as ‘fishing on eels with a horsehead.’) Listening to the first track (the titletrack) didn’t make anything better…
Tore Honoré Bøe – Suave siesta
July 14, 2005 by
‘(…) so I started letting the minidisk [and the dat] roll (…). I left them recording when going for a coffee, when finding a good soundspot outdoors or stumbling across those low and gentle electrical hums and hisses. None of the sounds were played.’ ‘Suave Siesta’ is a release with environmental recordings from Agadir (Morocco) and Arguineguin and San Fernando (Spain)…
Horologium – A Handful of dust
July 12, 2005 by
‘A handful of dust’ is the last part of Cynfeirdds E4E series. The closure of the label’s limited (all releases on E4E are limited to 141 copies) series is the Polish act Horologium…
Ionosphere & Land:Fire – Of mind and of abyss
July 11, 2005 by
A rather obvious theme for dark cinematic music would be the void above us, the cosmic, the deep, the unknown. Music fitting the journey of stars travelling in a liveless darkness thousands light-years from here. Tangerine Dream did this for instance, also Lustmord. I recall ‘The place where the black stars hang’ or ‘Strange attractor’…
Zeljko McMullen – Disorder
June 30, 2005 by
‘Disorder’ is a mixture of manipulated piano, string instruments and percussion. The beauty of atmospheric soundscapes that consist of conventional instruments exclusively, is that the music sounds more natural and a little more raw than when there are synthetic soundeffects and other electronic noises involved…
Orchestramaxfieldparrish – Tears
June 26, 2005 by
Well, here we have quite an oldie, since it was already released in 2002, but ‘Tears’ by the formation Orchestramaxfieldparrish is a record one mustn’t skip. ‘Tears’ is an evocative and dynamic blend of all sorts of instruments (listed separately beneath each track in the cd-booklet) as electric guitars, drums, piano, synthesizers and acoustic guitars…
Pernice, Laurent – Humus – Musiques immobiles 5-15
June 26, 2005 by
Mister L. Pernice has a long history as an innovative musician, according to his bio. Since the eighties he has been involved in music making from industrial rock to electronic jazz. The release we have here is a practise in ‘immobile music’. A lot of tracks on ‘Humus(…)’ consist of single-layers of rough sound-manipulations…
Punck – Nowhere campfire tapes
June 19, 2005 by
‘Nowhere campfire tapes’ is a title that immediately struck me with its promise of obscureness. I never heard from the project Punck before, but that might well be because this is their full- length debut. They’ve only released some cdr’s before…
Freiband – Martin
June 15, 2005 by
Although the music is totally different, this release has got everything to do with the cult lp ‘Unknown Pleasures’ by the great Joy Division. So what’s the case? The artist behind Freiband noticed seven tracks with ‘errors’ on the lp produced by the notorious and late Martin Hannett. These were errors such as clicks and strummed guitars…
Tattoed Boy from Birkenhead – Gliss EP
June 9, 2005 by
Seconds after I started the ‘Gliss Ep’ from the Belgian formation Tattoed boy from Birkenhead, my room began to change. At first I was sitting on an ugly leather couch, watching empty white walls in a small student dorm, wide awake with a nasty shiver down my spine…
Figure – When the Alphabet Hides In Your Mouth
June 7, 2005 by
The music of Figure (which is Brannon Hungness) sounds like coming from an abandoned stage in an old theatre. (‘An opera with closed eyes open.’) On this stage there are a lot of figures that are moving slowly in an out of the shadows surrounding them. Figure appears on the stage then, and opens the zippers on their bodies to release some blood…
