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"OR MD COMP."

OR
Go download audiomulch from www.audiomulch.com. Fuck about with it forhalf an hour or so and you could almost certainly come up withsomething more interesting than all but two of the tracks on thismediocre compilation. When Merbox II has taken total noise to the topof the hip hops courtesy of the Gay Area of EMI, then there is only oneplace to hide for the diminishing returns of the audio sadist. Thatplace is sheer monotony. Mr Bow (don't call him Merz he hasn't the bassto deserve it since he started conveniance laptopping) drizzles guzzlyover the eager upturned noise gob of Mr Karkowski until Mr Karkowskiwalks out with his dustbin lid in eternal boredom at a completelyun-shocking display of mouldy old dough. That's nothing compared to thestudy in repeat loop tedium provided by Francisco Lopez. There is helpat hand in the form of Gescom who are out of place by actually seemingto give a fuck. How their fellow mentalist experimenters in noise andrepetition must have laughed when they played their electroacoustichomage that actually had some shape and form and did more than merelyexist! A whole album of such nice whooshing would be welcome, even ifthey pale next to the best composers on the Empreintes Digitales label,who I will be writing about very soon. Hecker recorded some austerealmost annoying tones in a few seconds, like crap watch alarms, but doyou really want to hear them more than once? If so you are probably thekind who'll lap up the boring high pitched drivel of Shirt Trax.Incapacitants hold a routine full on screaming grinding onslaught fortough loving pigs everywhere. This seems to be a compilation of themost throw away tracks almost all of the contributing artists have everrecorded. Originally it was going to be released on mini-disc,presumably because most of the tracks seem like mere building blocks.Farmersmanual pull some context from the mess, on two counts. Firsttheir opening track is a minor beauty. Later they play some fairlybland laptop improvisation that I suspect they'd probably like to thinkis more abstract than it is, whilst some ravers fail to get angry andjust request nicely that they drop a bass line so they can dance theirtits off. Farmersmanual don't oblige and just keep chunkling inSheffield. It seems the days when noise could incite riots are gone, orat least lost in the summer lovin' ecstacy of the mundane offcutfreakshow that OR, the Damien Hirst of record labels, has compiledhere. Even Russell Haswell's mum loves a bit of OR very now and again."Lovely, lovely dear, sounds just like me fridge!" 

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