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Alhough it does little to follow through on its genre-addressing title, cheeky or otherwise, The D&B Album still emerges as one of Bowindo's more accessible releases to date. From the playful motorik pulsings of the opening "Cascocity" it's clear that the musicians choose not the weighted expressionism or colorful electroacoustics that characterized the label's previous output and will opt instead for "electro" alone, forging a new brand of body music for new kinds of bodies.Bowindo
Domenico Sciajno and Gert-Jan Prins (or "Do shine O." and "Prinsjan" as their adopted b-boy names read) improvise with small electronics, computer, and radio manipulations pulling together arrhythmic roller coasters of clipped, squelching highs and dizzy, rumbling lows, not dance music by any means, but a lot of fun regardless. The one reference point I can imagine would be Nerve Net Noise's music, for as synthetic and aloof as The D&B Album sounds, it can never be called faceless, always bursting with enough cartoon-ish energy to push for the next nauseating, limb-shaking, speaker-busting plateau. The scattered references to "acceptable" electronic musicianship, a few straight-ahead breaks, down-beat bass patterns, and antique modal synth lines, exist submerged within a surface scurry of digital scraps that never feels too indulgent for justification in the disc's humorous undertone or simple, rump-shaking oddity. For their part, Prins' static-coated radio captures help to emphasize the music's reclamation of the friendly or commonplace within otherwise alienating circumstances. And if one thing must be taken away from The D&B Album it might be this idea, that through their chiding title, invented alter-egos, and schizophrenic presentation, the artists compile a subtle statement about the tendency towards depersonalization in current majority of experimental or improvised electronic music. It is more tempting, however, to forget the commentary altogether and just nod along with this wackiness, probably the more progressive attitude anyway. 
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DNA played angular freak noise for spastic punks; fiercely intellectual, bordering on the psychotic. The Brazilian-born Arto Lindsay played guitar in the most anti-musical, reptilian brand of non-funk that had ever been heard outside of music hour at the local laughing academy, barking and shrieking like a constipated Artaud in clipped fragments of opaque poeticism. Ikue Mori played a drum set with big taiko sticks in a manner that suggested neo-tribalism but delivered cold, muscular propulsion. Robin Crutchfield's synths unsympathetically reveled in circular insanity, and later, Tim Wright's bass danced around flittingly like a dying mosquito, never finding a foothold, falling over itself in a mad rush to the end of the song.
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Sure, it's noise, but noise as precise and deadly as DNA's deserves your attention. DNA were the longest-lived of the brief No Wave scene in late-70's New York City. Highlighted on the famous Eno-produced No New York compilation, DNA always seemed like the most vital of this grouping of high-energy avant-punks. Their four tracks from that compilation, as well as 28 other studio and live tracks, many rare and previously unreleased, comprise DNA on DNA, this definitive new collection from No More Records. Critics often lazily attempt to place DNA squarely in line with the previous generation of boundary-pushing jazz-improv mavericks like Albert Ayler and Sonny Sharrock (and the liner notes to this collection are no exception), but I've always felt that DNA have much more in common with Damo Suzuki-era Can freakouts, their influence continuing in a straight line to Japanese freak-metal noise outfits like the Boredoms and Ruins. DNA sit more comfortably on the margins, unabsorbed into an easy critical assessment of their music as some kind of punk-improv. Believe me, this stuff is much more entertaining when you back off from neatly-considered definitions and surrender to its oddness and angularity. For anyone who has collected other reissues of the band over the years, all the familiar stuff is here: the superlative debut "You and You" single, the vaguely teutonic keyboard-driven NNY stuff, and the jagged, chaotic intensity of A Taste of DNA. But where this collection shines is in the inclusion of the live material and never-released studio outtakes like "Grapefruit," a five-minute nervous breakdown on record, all non-verbal chanting and instinctively structured rock abstraction. Surprising, since previously, the world had never heard a DNA song that exceeded the three-minute mark. There are five tracks of alarmingly evocative instrumentals meant to accompany a theater piece. "Egomaniac's Kiss" should be, but is never mentioned in the same breath with the classics of the punk era, a miniature epic of raw, aggressive emotion and minimal rock construction. Put simply, DNA were a great band, and this indispensable document proves it. 
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This release ties up some loose ends, collecting the studio material from a few elusive Current 93 releases: Looney Runes, Lucifer Over London, Tamlin and Misery Farm. It's a welcome release for those who didn't spring for these limited-edition EPs back when they were released, or for people who are just now getting up to speed with Current 93. What immediately sets SixSixSix: SickSickSick apart from other Current 93 compilations of previously existing material is the superior quality of the music.Durtro
Specifically, the songs from 1994's Lucifer Over London and Tamlin EPs, are among the best that Current 93 has produced. The epic song "Hitler as Kalki (SDM)" from Thunder Perfect Mind was the first time Tibet collaborated with Nick Salomon of The Bevis Frond, an oft-overlooked cult British brand responsible for psych-rock masterpieces like Triptych and New River Head. Nick Salomon's mindbending electric guitar soloing lent a heaviness and majesty to Tibet's crepuscular musings that is without equal in the Current 93 catalog. David Tibet's oft-expressed affection for 70's progressive and heavy metal acts like Uriah Heep and Judas Priest was finally given an outlet, to startlingly powerful effect.
On the title track of Lucifer Over London, Salomon again contributes psych guitar, this time aping the famous riff from Black Sabbath's "Paranoid," spinning it out into a hypnotic, cyclical refrain, as Tibet unfolds one of his more chilling visions of Apocalypse. The material on Lucifer and Tamlin, (along with the Of Ruine or Some Blazing Starre LP, which was recorded during these same sessions), seems to represent a pinnacle for Tibet's lyrics, effortlessly weaving deliriously rendered Gnostic symbolism with precise poetic imagery: "All tiny blue pain/As the Mother Blood emerges/Then the Mother Grief/And the Blue Gates of Death/Open armwide/Open teethwide." "Sad Go-Round" is a Groundhogs song from the album Solid, Tibet and Solomon using the achingly beautiful minor-chord guitar loop to accentuate the circular motion of the lyrics.
Tamlin's B-side "How the Great Satanic Glory Faded," also features a stunning performance by Salomon on guitar. Recorded over the phone line, Tiny Tim introduces the track by relating his vision of the devil as "a beautiful angel...telling the world's biggest lie," Tibet launches into a densely lyrical paean to the double-gendered form of Lucifer. "Tamlin" is a long-form traditional ballad from the British Isles, relating the story of a noblewoman impregnated by a wood sprite. The music is another gorgeous medieval setting by Michael Cashmore, and Tibet's menacing whisper is flanged and multiplied to chilling effect.
The material from 1990's Looney Runes has not held up terribly well, a collaboration with Steven Stapleton that results in a raucous industrial tune filled with perversely mutated nursery rhymes and wacky cartoon sound effects. "The Seven Bows Are Revealed At the End of Time..." is Tibet in prophet mode again, unveiling a hallucinogenic William Blake-style endtime scenario that wears thin after the first few listens. Finally, "Misery Farm" is pure novelty: a music hall sing-along with barnyard animal noises. It's quite amusing, but it feels strange coming at the end of so much deeply wrought poetry. 
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- Sex With Sun Ra (Part 1 - Saturnalia)
- All The Pretty Little Horses
- Black Antlers (Where's Your Child?)
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