Reviews

Aurum Nostrum – Whip of Mind

This LP was the first release by Ring-Tor, who also brought us Blut & Feuer. That means that we are in the German folkloristic corner here. The album, that is pressed on coloured vinyl (somewhere between brown and red), was, to my surprise, already recorded in 1996. The band consists of six members here, with […]

Backworld – A vagrant thought/ The tide

Joseph Budenholzer again proves his craftmanship with this new Backworld single. On this vinyl picture disc, in a series released by World Serpent, we find a nice illustration with a graveyard sculpture on Side A, the other side is filled with psychedelic blue flowers. The song ‘A vagrant thought’ is rather solemn, mainly acoustic guitars, […]

V/A – Bringing Light and Darkness

This compilation LP (limited to 300 copies) was released as a souvenir to the Trio Noir/Of the Wand and the Moon concert in Copenhagen, February 2001, organised by Bragagild…

Silent Watcher of Dark Matter – Deep Space & Deep Space II

As the bandname promises, this is dark ambient music. On these two cd’s, distributed through mp3.com as so-called d.a.m. cd’s, we find 3 tracks on each disk, with an average playing time of 20 minutes per track. That means that these two cd’s offer us 2 hours of minimal, very dark ambient. The songs evolve […]

Silent Watcher of Dark Matter – Installation

This is the debut release of this dark ambient project from Sweden, released in June 2000. Some info about this project, taken from the mp3.com page: “The experimental ambient entity Silent Watcher of Dark Matter was formed in 1999 by multi-instrumentalist/sound-sculptor myt; inspired by the atmospheric works of Karl-Heinz Stockhausen, Pauline Oliveros and Gyorgy Ligeti; […]

Acid Ice Flows – Dol Gurdur

Recently I received a promo cd from this new act. This is a rough version of an album that Acid Ice Flows hopes to release ‘officially’ in the future. According to the website, ‘Acid Ice Flows is the (for now) solo project of Gollum. Gollum listens to and is inspired by the likes of Depeche Mode, The Cure, Coil, Ministry, Front Line Assembly, Godflesh, and a host of other bands…

Yrrwe Zsuzyrrwe – Xytrobuzyrrwe

Yrrwe Zsuzyrwwe is a new Dutch industrial/noise project. This 8 track cd-r is released by The Noise Department, an Industrial Noise Promotion Agency. Mainman behind both Yrrwe Zsuzyrrwe and The Noise Department is Marco V. Before YZ started he has been involved in other industrial projects like Legal Injury and Hydlide (now known under the name Ex IQ)…

Allied Vision – MMBO

Back in 1995 I listened to a lot of EBM, so naturally I bought “Elektrauma vol. 2”. On that compilation many new bands were present that later would become very popular, like Covenant, VNV Nation, Terminal Choice and In Strict Confidence, but also of course some acts that would never make it to a succesful career. For some time I thought Allied Vision to be one of the later category…

Allerseelen – Neuschwabenland

Some years ago Allerseelen was known for a raw, industrial sound, but things have changed in the camp of Kadmon. His style now can be described as ‘ fin de siècle military pop’. Neuschwabenland is a perfectly produced album, which could not always be said of its predecessors…

Death in June – All pigs must die

A remarkable album consisting of two very different parts. And also the cover and subject matter of the album attract attention: Douglas P. is again on a crusade against the World Serpent (his former label) crew, who he prefers to call the ‘three little piggies’…

I, Parasite – Turin

NYC’s I, Parasite was formed in 1994. Dark, moody electronics with elements of early industrial, powernoise, ambient, goth-punk and neoclassical were some of the ingredients of the music they began to create. After a while experimenting the duo became part of the multimedia project ‘Dark Vision Media’. Nurv (voice, programming) and J…

I, Parasite – Horseslayer

“Horseslayer” is the second release from I, Parasite. It presents a mixture of new material and remixes of ‘Turin’ tracks by Android Lust, Cydonia, Alien Faktor and the band themselves. The opener ‘Brutality’ is a very aggressive dance track with hard pounding beats and deep bass tones…

Mara`s Torment – Across for show/The barrier of skin

Rick MacLean is a solo-composer from Toronto, Canada. He creates beautiful electronic/ambient music and releases it under his own control. Via the Internet Mara’s Torment gained quite some attention. Since a while his CD’s became available through the Projekt mailorder. Mara’s Torment is all about atmosphere and emotion…

Ame Immortelle, L’ – Wenn der letzte Schatten fallt

“Wenn der letzte Schatten fällt” is their third album. The strenght of the band comes most likely from the mixture of light and dark: classical ballads followed by dark electronic tracks, a beautiful female voice (Sonja) and heavily distorted male vocals (Thomas)…