If you're Icelandic, you're probably already aware of OlafurJosephsson's project, as his career got a large boost by opening forgodspeed you black emperor! last month in Reykjavik. His "band" nametranslates as Digital Hakon (Hakon the Good was the king of Norway inthe 10th century and has a long legacy of being name checked innumerous songs) and the music is probably the most amazingly producedCD-Rs I have ever received.
Two new shows just for you. We have squeezed out two extended release episodes for this weekend to get you through this week. They contain mostly new songs but there's also new issues from the vaults. The first show features music from Rider/Horse, Mint Field, Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe, Anastasia Coope, ISAN, Stone Music, La Securite, Bark Psychosis, Jon Rose, Master Wilburn Burchette, Umberto, Wand, Tim Koh, Sun An, and Memory Drawings. The second episode has music by Laibach, Melt-Banana, Chuck Johnson, X, K. Yoshimatsu, Dorothy Carter, Pavel Milyakov, Violence Gratuite, Mark Templeton, Dummy, Endon, body / negative, Midwife, Alberto Boccardi, Divine. Cow in Maui from Veronika in Vienna. Get involved: subscribe, review, rate, share with your friends, send images!
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David Edwards deserves an "A" for effort on his debut full-lengthrelease as Minotaur Shock. The interplay of organic piano and guitarwith electronic instruments and sampled beats blends nicely in thisshimmery recordng of tinkling melodies and sharp rhythms. When I sawthe names Fridge and Four Tet dropped in writeups on this album,naturally my interest was piqued, but seeing those names made me expectsomething somewhat derivative of the two. 
The scene is Brooklyn, NY. The time is present day (okay, 2001. This release came out last year, but I just found it for review). And the music is by... Hey! Who the heck are these guys? From Arena Rock Recording Co. comes this compilation of both unknown and well-known Brooklyn bands. And what better cause could there be but donating all the proceeds to the Brooklyn Animal Resource Coalition? Arena Rock has introduced us to some superior rock bands in the past, and Brooklyn has a history of being the birthplace for impressive rock. And the results are astonishing. This is, quite simply, the best 2-CD multiple band compilation I have ever heard.
In the grand tradition of celebrities venturing forth from their meagerbeginnings to great acclaim and stardom, comes Claudia. Claudia, thelatest one name celebrity, the airline hostess, the actress (SaturdayNight Live, Sex and the City, and more), and now, the entertainer. Onher debut release, this CD single on Sourmash USA, Claudia introducesthe world to her voice, and opens her heart to us all. 
For this five track EP on Germany's Crippled Dick Hot Wax, omnipresent artiste Lydia Lunch teams up with Los Angeleno instrumental duo Tommy Grenas and Len Del Rio, aka The Anubian Nights. Strange bedfellows? Hardly. The Nights' solid grooves are both live and looped, drawing on smoky bar jazz, Martin Denny exotica and electronica. 
Music should never be purely judged by how it sounds. It should also bejudged by how it makes the listener feel upon listening. Whatexperiences it inspires. What textures and emotions it invokes. Onthese qualities alone, Pilote takes the taco.
Department is an experimental industrial duo from Australia, who go bythe cryptic personas of Gatz and Spacious. Not much is known abouttheir past except that one of them (Spacious, I think) was in an early'90s Aussie prog-metal band called Vauxdvihl (pronounced: vaudeville)that apparently achieved minor cult status. 
The biggest problem with Richie Hawtin's 2001 mix CD 'DE9: Closer ToThe Edit' was the hype and attention devoted to the techniques andsoftware used to create it. As gearheads and laptop geeks oohed andaahed over the new innovations and opportunities for experimental DJs,many people including myself found the result kind of dull. 
This mysterious CD with an oversized package, which may or may not be aSub Rosa-related project, is a live recording of a 1999 collaborationin Belgium between electronic music giants Mika Vainio of Pan Sonic andChristian Fennesz. There are two 30-minute tracks: the first is acollaborative set between the two artists, the second is a solo set byVainio. As much as I like and respect both of these artists—Pan Sonicand Fennesz each released one of the best albums of last year—this CDleaves a lot to be desired. Vainio's work with Pan Sonic and his solowork as Ø often revolve around cold analog rhythms and stark soniclandscapes. Fennesz's trademark sound is his laptop processing ofguitar and other sounds, striking a unique balance between beauty andnoise. None of this is very evident on this collaboration. Onlyoccasionally is rhythm a factor, and much of Fennesz's textures areoverpowered by Vainio's blasts of feedback and distortion. Though therecording quality seems decent enough, Vainio is mixed a little louderthan Fennesz, and when Mika lets it get loud, Christian becomes barelyaudible. In theory, a collaboration between these two seems like agreat idea, but the members of Pan Sonic have a less-than-stellar trackrecord when it comes to releases with other musicians (i.e. the'Endless' CD with Suicide's Alan Vega; the 'IBM' LP with BruceGilbert). The only notable exception is last year's 'Wohltemperiert',Ø's disc with Noto. Fennesz, on the other hand, is usually quite goodwhen working with other artists—Peter Rehberg, Biosphere, etc. Here,however, it seems like the two artists are in their own worlds and notfocusing on the music as a whole. At one point, while Vainio iscreating loud swishes and swoops, you can hear what eventually became"Year In a Minute" on Fennesz's 'Endless Summer' disc very quietly inthe background—almost as if Fennesz was trying out new material in themiddle of the set instead of improvising. The Mika Vainio solo set isstandard Vainio. Five-minute stretches of silence interspersed withrandom bits of static compete with long stretches of analog ton.Nothing new, but may be interesting enough to the Pan Sonic junkie.There is almost no information about who released this disc; it seemsto be on a label called Audiosphere but it also says "conceived byAudioview/Lowlands ¥ Sub Rosa ¥ (Audio) Incident" on the package. Itseems to me like this disc and its unnecessary, DVD-like packaging is apretty blatant attempt to cash in on the Fennesz and Pan Sonic names.It's another example, too, of why it isn't necessary to release everylive recording of an electronic artist that exists. A collaborationbetween Mika Vainio and Christian Fennesz could result in an amazingdisc, but this is apparently just a chance encounter, not a wellthought out endeavor. Releasing it only detracts from the body ofimpressive work that both artists have under their belts. - 
The Caretaker presumably took about three years to warp a sequel to his'Selected Memories From The Haunted Ballroom' because he was so busysweeping up all the offal, trotters and cabbage leaves left in the wakeof other V/Vm shenanigans. Now he's back with more slow strangedisembodied waltzes from the far side of some limbo lounge in adeserted wintertime seaside resort. Those old 78s get the dusty sloweerie treatment to prove each today doesn't lead to a tomorrow. TheCaretaker is stuck in time lock, a ghost spinning his decaying plattersto skeletal slow-dancers in a shadow world where the 1930s loopeternal. In other words this is more of the same, but if you ate a goodcurry last week you might want another one this week, and this week'smight just be spicier. The Caretaker cannot escape the past but hasshifted it into other hyper-spatial dimensions by dint of sonictrickery. You've heard about tech house and happy house and all that -this is haunted house. The first half summons some nightmarishapparitions, whilst the second half is populated by more friendlyphantoms which lurk in the netherwrold between wking and sleeping.Crooning downhearted, the Caretaker can't go on this way, and floatsslowly downwards through murky vistas of emptiness, each movementsending huge echoes through the cavernous dusty ballroom, until heunwittingly summons forth malign forces of the occult to do hisrumbling ambient bidding. These malign forces make a big nasty seasideorgan blare, whilst distant rainfall splashes relentlessly on, pushingThe Caretaker to the edge of a breakdown, but he wakes up from thenightmare singing gayly of robins and roses. Thus through cloudinessthe Caretaker ascends a stairway to the stars for a date with an angel.He hasn't noticed that the crowds are long gone and the ballroom isempty except for two men in pig masks sneakily setting up laptops atthe back. In space, no one can smell your tripe. - 
