As multi-instrumentalist improvisational rock-based music becomes more popular with the emergence of groups like Volcano the Bear, Jackie-O Motherfucker, Pele, and others, Rollerball's music pursues a more structured, orchestrated environment on their current release from Roadcone. "Trail" sees this Portland, Oregon-based quintet adding more blocky beats, electronic processing and effective use of not playing to the mix. In addition, there's more focus instruments as various members often take the lead with horns, clarinet, vocals or stringed instruments.
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"One Amazing Day" is the result of field recording trips to Greenwich's gargantuan (physically and financially) Millennium Dome structure, the official celebratory site of the new millennium. Prior to its closing a few hours before 1/1/00, visitors could come and trudge through 14 interactive zones of futuristic themed exhibits and view a sort of three dimensional, mid-air ballet live show.
In less than a year's time, the highly ambitious French-based Bip-Hop collective has launched a webzine and fairly hip label with 4 releases readily available and more on the way. Unafraid to flood the market, the first two releases, "Bip-Hop Generation" volumes 1 and 2 gather various tracks from some of their favorite electronic acts from all over the world. Luckily these folks have good taste and great connections. Marumari from the USA, Massimo from Italy, Phonem from the UK, Goem from Holland and Ultra Milkmaids from France and Schneider TM from Germany only contributes tunes for Volume 1. Here, the spectrum ranges from beat-organized cuts from Marumari to shrill sonic substructures and medical sounds from Massimo and Goem.
The sophomore release by Anja Garbarek, daughter of Norwegiansaxophonist Jan Garbarek, will be poorly compared by many anunimaginative writer to Björk. But, I guess it's easy to make that sortof leap when dealing with female artists who record outside themainstream - just like writers who compare every trumpeter to MilesDavis. Garbarek seems to have inherited the "less-is-more" aestheticher father used in helping to define the "ECM sound" by infusing sparsechamber-jazz with false electronic ambience, creating a personal warmthrarely captured in the studio. Of course, with help from such legendsas Robert Wyatt (providing incindental vocalisations on "The Diver"),ex-Japan-sters Steve Jansen and Richard Barbieri, and Talk Talk's MarkHollis (who, along with collaborator Martin Ditcham, contributes bassand melodica, as well as some arrangements, like on the, uh, Björkishur-jungle fuzz of "Big Mouth"), capturing genius isn't hard. Garbarek'svoice floats gently over swelling strings and staticky glitch eruptionson "Her Room", like a lucid Beth Gibbons of Portishead, pouring sweetlullaby melodies in your ear. Garbarek's "Smiling & Waving"approaches the sublime beauty of the recent electro-acoustic jazz of"Bodily Functions" by Matthew Herbert, as well as latter day Talk Talkor the mellower aspects of Lamb, but still stakes a claim to a lushmusical landscape that is all her own.
Kurt Ralske is a NYC-based artist, composer, producer and engineer akaCathars and former head of late '80s/early '90s indy popsters UltraVivid Scene. These days Ralske composes entirely upon a g3 Powerbookwith the Max/MSP language. "//amor. 0+01" is the debut under his ownname and it is very similar in sound to the Cathars album "", both ofwhich are from 1999. The title track, as the title seems to suggest,briefly expresses love with digital bits: a melodic loop, a tidal cloudof sound, intermittent glitches and bass swells. "new kyrie" does muchthe same for nearly 14 minutes, minus the glitches and loop and plus aconstant thump that sounds much like a steadily dribbled basketball.The final track "forgiven" takes up the better half of the disc at justunder 30 minutes and proves to be the most minimal and rewarding. Herethe only sound is long swathes of deep drone and drifting ambiance.Whereas the first two tracks leave me somewhat indifferent this one ispurely captivating, either as foreground or background soundtrack.There is also a ROM video for the title track, but unfortunately noneof the 4 computers I've tried were able to read the disc - audio ordata - so perhaps there's an error with the discs. I'll be e-mailingSub Rosa soon to find out.
One of the most memorable nights in my adult life now has a soundtrackcompanion. The night on that summery evening at the Union Chapel in1997 is still fresh in my mind. I got to spend time with one of my bestfriends Andrew, as we met Coil for the first time in person on the wayin, and sat in a crowd pointing at various WSD-celebs like StevenStapleton and other supporting cast members like Mika from Panasonic,Ivan Pavlov of COH and John Everall of Sentrax. The concert opened withreadings from John Balance and a couple others (one of them lives in NYI think) and subsequently continued with the current cast of Current93: Rose McDowell and Michael Cashmore on guitar, Karl Blake on bass,Joolie Wood on violin and James Mannox on drums. Special other guestson hand that evening included Bill Breeze, Martin Stone and Big BucksBurnett, all joining in the big "Christ and the Pale Queens" closer.The unobtrusive audience gives me the impression it was recordedstraight from the sound board, but unlike many similiarly recordedshows, I don't feel there's any loss of depth here. Put the music on inyour livingroom and it feels like you're actually there. "Cats Drunk onCopper" was initially made available to the audience at the recentreturn to the Union Chapel, and now it's available through WorldSerpent. For a track listning, some photos and other specifics, checkout the Current 93 page special page on this particular show 
The downfall of the modern age is that any 19 year old with rich parents and an arsenal of computer software can record an album in their house. But what do these vicious young upstarts really know about melody, composition and structure yet?
First of all I want to say how much of a thrill it was to see thatsomebody else from Slowdive is finally releasing music again. Slowdivewas possibly one of the best components of the shoegazing movement thattrickled out of the United Kingdom in the early 1990s, before the groupsplit, they released a departure from the blurry guitars and buriedvocals, 'Pygmalion', which despite being a fucking incredible release,was nowhere close to the charm and happiness experienced with 1993's'Souvlaki'. So the group called it quits and the singer went on topursue Mojave 3, which was decent in my opinion, but never something Iwould pull from the racks and listen to on a regular basis. Now thisshows up at my doorstep - a five-track EP from former Slowdiver SeanHewson with somebody I'm unfamiliar with, Christian Savill. From thefirst blurry guitar chords, it's refreshing to hear notes from a soulbehind a three of my favorite albums of the last decade. When thevocals start, however, it becomes painfully apparent that these chapsare neither good singers nor lyricists. To its defense, the EP hasgrown on me very very very slightly over the time that it's been in mypossession. Plus, these songs will probably be able to muster up somegood press and a decent amount of attention from college radio. At theend of the 20 minutes, however, I'm left unsatisfied, but all the whilewaiting to see if they can get their shit together for a decent debutalbum.
Over the past few years bass maven Jah Wobble has collaborated with anumber of varied artists including his own Deep Space ensemble, MolamLao members, a brief stint in post-rock outfit the Damage Manual andhere virtuoso saxophonist Evan Parker. "Passage to Hades" consists offour 9 to 14 minute tracks combining trademark Wobble band hypnoticworld-dub groove with Parker's circular breathing, free jazz abstractsoundscaping. The title track settles into a smooth, lumbering bassline and sticks with it as Parker gently drones in tenor and Deep Spacemembers Clive Bell and Jean-Pierre Rasle add flirtations of Thai pi sawflute, harmonica and bagpipes. "Giving Up the Ghost" varies the tempomore by fading Wobble and drummer Mark Sanders out a few times and backin at a different pace. Parker flutters and squawks in soprano, takingon a shimmering quality as notes are swallowed up and fed back throughthe mix. "Full On" features the most aggressive bass workout but Bell'sstereo goathorns are a bit too overbearing thus, unfortunately,dominating the track. And on "Finally Cracked It", Sanders lays down amildly funky rock rhythm for Wobble's rigorous bass line to lock into.Parker is in exceptional form here layering tenor drones and darting inand out with pretty reverberated riffs. Altogether, "Passage to Hades"is another successful collaboration for Wobble with predictable butbeautiful results. It seems that most anything and everything workswell with Wobble's low end led liaisons. Jah Wobble and Deep Space willtour major U.S. cities in May
Come on baby, let's rock baby. With all the different mega-buzzworthyamusing modern electronic artists collected on this one CD, all I canthink of after hearing 17 remixes of and tributes to "Come on baby,lets rock baby" is exactly that. The disc starts out with aninstrument-free spoken word track from Chicks on Speed and continueswith contributions from American, European and Japanese electronicistslike GD Luxxe, Console, Adult, Pita, Sylvester Boy and DMX Krew. It'sthe eighth release from Angelika Koehlermann, an Austrian label formedby people from the Cheap and Mego labels. I suppose it would make moresense to me if I actually owned the 1999 release from the fragile andfeministic Osakan singer Michiko Kusaki, whose album released by AKallegedly had 8 top ten singles from, of which the hit "Let's RockBaby" was born. Since everybody apparently missed all these hits fromMichiko Kusaki, Angelika Koehlermann felt it their duty to compile atribute to the record. Whether it's the blippy Adult, cute Japanesestyles of Shinto, the horn-stem-funk friendly Mixmup, noise onslaughtof Obscurum, children's tv show theme-esque Bodenständig 2000,Casiotone tunage of Yoko Tsuno or the New Order-worshipping GD Luxxe,these tracks never get tired or worn, old or uncool. Summer is on itsway and this disc provides a great soundtrack for a trip to the beach.I'm now itching to hear what the hell the hoopla is all about from theoriginal release from 1999.
