Good luck still finding this one, as if you didn't get it while they were on tour, your only chance is off their website, where they may still have a few copies left. Available at the merchandise counter on their European tour, this EP is a collection of studio tracks the band has released as bonus tracks on import releases of the album or on other tour releases, as well as a couple of live recordings.
We made it to 700 episodes. While it's not a special episode per se—commemorating this milestone—you can pretty much assume that every episode is special. This one features Mark Spybey & Graham Lewis, Brian Gibson, Sote, Scanner and Neil Leonard, Susumu Yokota, Eleven Pond, Frédéric D. Oberland / Grégory Dargent / Tony Elieh / Wassim Halal, Yellow Swans, Dental waste in Saigon photo by Krisztian. Get involved: subscribe, review, rate, share with your friends, send images!
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Kicking off with the previously unreleased track "Good Man", Christian Fennesz treats us to a taste of what's to come: warm, earthy textures in the digital whirrs and purrs, handled with his usual careful composition. This is followed by the four pieces from the out-of-print "Instrument" 12", released by MEGO in 1995.
The stuttering jagged rhythms of the buzzing guitars set up a hypnotic rhythm and then suddenly, the first screams of a totally abstracted rage come from the new Isis disc's opening track, "The Beginning and the End". Straight off, an impressive start. One of the recent spate of signings to Ipecac Records, Isis have been around for a while, though not in as high-profile a setting. Instead they've been building a fanbase slowly.
It is no surprise that Halon is receiving props and comparisons to Trans Am. Their sound is very much a combination of electronic beeps/synthesizer glory and rock aggression. Slowing it down here and there, Halon let the groove settle in, and even throw in the odd field vocal for good measure or sing a bit. Their sense of humor is also firmly in check, like on the aptly titled "Conan Main Title".
Who needs Japanese editions when bonus tracks end up surfacing on singles anyhow, right? In an interview this year, Alan Sparhawk described one of their more cheery, poppier sounding tunes, "Canada," as being all about death, materialism and Heaven. "You can't take that stuff to Canada" is the repeated line in the song, and Canada is up north for most people in the USA,...
The hilarious packaging for this release would have us believe they're a clean-cut, fun-loving rock'n'roll band getting into scrapes and solving mysteries Scooby Doo-style. They're actually experimental improvisers who've made a successful crack at differentiating their record from the hundreds of others which opt for a dour, minimalist presentation.
Peaches has a little secret. She doesn't want you to know that deep, down inside, she's not a filthy slut, but a respectable Canadian-born music teacher living in Berlin. However, in the three years and three incarnations of this release, she has gone from what seemed, at first, to be a campy underground joke to an internationally-renowned dirty post-disco diva.
The Catheters craft hard, agressive, and at times completely merciless rock in the strongest traditions of the genre. Their sound is menacing and fast-paced, while vocalist, Brian Standeford sounds like he either wants his vocal cords to bleed, or your head to explode starting with your ears first.
I haven't listened to His Name Is Alive for about six or seven years, so I wasn't sure I had the right disc in my stereo when I pressed play and expected to hear the new album, 'Last Night.' The recent blitz of 4AD releases which all look thoroughly similar (computer-blurred images on a dark background digipak) didn't help my confusion, either. Instead of the dreamy His Name Is Alive indie pop I expected, what I got was a soulful, jazzy hybrid of funk and R&B with female vocals I did not recognize.
