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. -
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If Clinic can be touted as "innovators of modern music" then the beingthat claims to be Cologne based guitarist Joseph Suchy must be sometrans-dimensional hyper-entity who beamed back here from the future toshow us the true path to giddy innovative heights. Herr Suchy seemsintent on pushing the six strings through as much laptop grop as hecan, and he can play the ass off the plank to boot. His busy soloing isstill just about recognisable as such much of the time despitepersistant machine deconstruction and particle accelerator bombardment.The main chunk of 'Entskidoo' is comprised of two suites of vertiginousimprovised computer mangled guitar meltdown. It's a soundscape inconstant flux - canvasses splattered red, quickly speckled yellow andpink and then filled in with pulsating green triangles, or at leastthat's how the synaesthetic analysis was testing last time I sniffedit. It'll probably appeal to fans of the rightly lauded Fennesz andlaptop / concrete side of Jim 'Chicagonogood' O'Rourke, and could giveboth of them a powerbook diddling to remember! This ought to get anyonewho drooled over 'Endless Summer' equally hot and bothered. It alsomarks the first Entenpfuhl release on CD, but the vinyl version has amuch nicer sleeve.
The alpha section of the first side opens with a cute little twang thatfires slight recall of J Mascis' contribution to the 'Guitarrorists'compilation, but is somewhat more meandering and freeform. This soontakes a darker turn as it duets with ominous digital rumble and rapidclick. For a fleeting partial clue, imagine Merzbow doing Hawaiianmusic for a few seconds. The guitar playing speeds up and cuts looseand the hard drive effects get denser and dronier as the trackprogresses through crisp vistas of happy noise. At the end of the firstsuite (vinyl side one) Suchy spews xylophone patters over churninggroans. There is always some kind of abstracted melodic pull no matterhow many distorted effects Suchy layers on. Some new idea springs forthevery few inches and there always seem to be new sounds lurking in eachlisten. The second suite (side 2 of the record) builds up densecrescendos until dropping back to multi tracked clean guitar pickingout a coda, as if to show the bare bones that "Entskidoo" hung it'sdissonant diginoise flesh on. The last couple of tracks are selfcontained and appear on a 7" single in the limited vinyl edition."Gump" sets a simple chiming riff that recalls Colin Newman's 'SingingFish' amidst a sea of swirling off kilter digi-flotsam, and seems to bea more compact and eloquent statement of the same intent that fired thebulk of the preceding long player. "Tijovo" takes a very different tackwith some unadorned sparse (presumably) improvised guitar pluckingaccompanied by (double?) bass and soft singing from Yvonne Cornelius.Overall I give this record an X and a Q although I'm not sure if therecord can make good use of such rare letters. In case you'rewondering, that's a good thing. If his three previous albums onTonschacht, Grob and Whatness are even half this inventive then they'llbe well worth investigating. - 
The 17-minute "The Ends Against the Middle" EP just wasn't enough, butit did whet the appetite. Antipop work best in long player mode and"Arrhythmia" is a full course, 43-minute meal. One noticeabledifference with this album, their Warp Records debut, is that therapid-fire rhyme flow has generally been slowed down some. But don'tfret - Beans, Priest and Sayid's lyrics are as complex, intelligent,funny and just plain bizarre as ever. And they've thankfully no needfor excessive braggadocio and lame, misogynist bullshit. Unpredictableis always the state of mind for APC, lyrically and musically. Theproduction, presumably by Earl Blaize, is all killer no filler, chockfull of intentionally arrhythmic beats, electronics and inventive oddsand ends. This is old school hip hop from some other planet, one moretechno-logic-ally advanced than ours. 'Bubblz' rocks tasty hand drumpitter patters, 'Conspiracy of Myth' contemplates piano and stringsatmospheres and 'Human Shield' pulses relentlessly except for minorpitch shift and stagger step breaks. 'Mega' and 'Silver Heat' naturallyveer off into feminine operatics and impromptu scat, respectively,while 'Z St.' cleverly paints a drug bust short story. 'We Kill SoapScum' humourously recites the title for the chorus and the 'Iron ManSpeaks' skit knocks playas and illegal samples. 'Place the Face'concludes the proceedings with orchestral stabs and the MCs proudlychanting "A, P, C!" Rightfully so. Antipop are touring small NorthAmerican venues now through May. - 
In the tradition of untitled releases from Francisco Lopez, #123 onceagain comes without artwork and consists of one long track with silenceboth at the beginning and end of the disc. Lopez went through greatlengths to record this disc, spending a year with other electronicartists (Aube, Carsten Nicolai, Martin Tetreault, [the user], JaapBlonk and many others) making recordings inside a silo in Montreal andthen finishing up the in Paris at the Iannis Xenakis Musical CreationCenter. The result? More impressive than your typical chin-scratchingreaction from groups of people who have always had designer bathroomsand certainly less insulting than Lopez' tribute to death metal. Afterabout one minute of dead silence, low pitched quiet sounds appear,resonate and slowly, slightly creep their way up the frequencyspectrum. After about ten minutes of this quietness, the somewhatrecognizably digitally edited sounds of grains and metal rhythmicallypulse and play with an interspresed silence. Before long, more soundsamples appear and sustain, replacing the silence with the hiss ofrunning grains, and a resonating gong-like hum and shimmer. Theintensity grows louder, louder, and louder until a frightening, violentcut. For the next thirteen minutes or so, all's quiet, or is it? Thedisplay levels register something but the frequency is so low, it'salmost completeley inaudible to the human ear. A thunderous rumblingfollows and crescendos for the remaining 24 minutes of the audibleportion of the track. The grand finale by which all sounds appear to beplaying at once. Every second gets more and more torturous andnightmarish until the cut. Relax your ears as the track ends with 16minutes of silence. In the end, while it was a charming audioadventure, I'm honestly only left with one question: where do all these"artists" get the money for these projects? - 
After the super-brilliant album last year (easily in my top five fromlast year... I like it more with each listen) 'Electro Pop' AnthonyRother returns with a boatload of remixers to interpret the LittleComputer People song "Little Computer People." And that's the onlydownside to this album, really: only one track is remixed. I would haveloved to hear other versions of "Follow the Leader" or "I Am" or"Eyes"... but no. Alas, that really doesn't make this a poor album,because the remixers vary so much in sound and style that the wholething never gets repetitive. The first (and probably best) remix onthis disc is Anthony Rother's own - my God, what a remix it is. Takingthe rhythms and feel of the original song, switching, adding, andremoving a few beats here and there, and adding his *own voice* (that'sright! no vocoder!) he transforms the song from a C64 period piece intoan epic reconstruction. I had no idea he sounded so good without avocoder. Psylocity's "punk remix" is, well, just that: a dirty funkyreinterpretation of the original with slightly different vocals.Wonderful. Karl Bartos's (yes, THE Karl Bartos) remix is a wonderfulstring-drenched piece, while Heiko Laux's "Flow" remix is perfect for adancefloor. The "1979 Original" is a, uh, band-version of the track(guitars, drums, and all), and the disc ends with a fantastic new trackcalled "Little Computer Men." Tack on the brilliant Quicktime videosand PSI49NET discography and Commodore 64 emulator with PSI49NET demothat come packed on the disc, and this is a fantastic deal at a cheapprice. - 
The second in a series of seven mail order only releases from Subconscious Communications, this presents an evolutionary missing link in Skinny Puppy history. The 40 minute improvisational jam, aka "brap", was recorded in Southern California in November of 1993, one of many sessions fashioning material for the final Puppy studio album The Process.
A few months ago I reviewed the Superdrag tour EP "Greetings FromTennessee", and I commented on how little I liked the release becauseit seemed like the songwriting had slipped. It seemed only die-hardfans could appreciate the EP, as the mixes were not great, and thesongs weren't the hard-hitting strength one would expect fromSuperdrag. Well, Superdrag released this split tour EP with TheAnniversary shortly after "Greetings", and two of their tracks werealso on that release, so I held off. Until I heard recently that theband had rerecorded those tracks and mixed them themselves specificallyfor this release. In fact, all tracks were recorded just for thisrelease, and although I'd never heard The Anniversary, I took a chance.I'm glad I did. Not only are the Superdrag tracks much better here, TheAnniversary are happily a band I am pleased to recommend. They are abit complex, The Anniversary. Shuffling styles and identities on thefly, the only constant being the powerful vocal harmonies, TheAnniversary have the sound of a band that's never happy with onedirection, and that's just fine. Hastily written and recorded, as theliner notes announce, these tracks are psychedelic power pop, speakingof redemption and strength in numbers. There's even a humorous momenton the second track, 'Anais', where an aborted start is ridiculed byall involved. Funny stuff. As for the Superdrag tracks, they definitelyredeem themselves and reclaim the tracks, as they are much morepowerful and, for lack of a better term, crunchy here. You can tellthat they wanted to get the power of these songs across better, andthat John Davis wail is back, I'm pleased to announce. And you can hearall of the instruments well, which is always a plus. The double-trackedvocals on 'Take Your Spectre Away', originally a track the band wasworking on for their sophomore album, are a nice touch, as they justdrive the band to a complete frenzy towards the end of the track.There's one new one here, 'I Guess It's American,' and it's classicSuperdrag: poppy, angry guitar, and Davis singing about what's wrongwith this system. "If you ever pull that shit again/Never see you thesame way again," says Davis, right before proclaiming "I guess it'sAmerican/it's embarrassin'." Indeed. Here, though, The Anniversary andSuperdrag prove that real American rock is still anything but, and it'sworth it to give these tracks a listen. - 
This seven-track, sophomore disc from the politically minded NYC purveyors of Afrobeat finds their sound being a lot fuller than last years remarkable Ninja Tune debut. This would be due to the crisper studio production, a few more horns this time around, and the plain fact that these guys can write and perform some heavy lead arrangements that gel nicely with a tightly-knit rhythm section.
Another group hell bent on proving that the best electronic music is acombination of programmed beats and sampled live instruments, FilaBrazillia first gained notice as remixers of popular acts. Remixes ofRadiohead tracks by the two, David McSherry and Steve Cobby, were themost notable, but their most recent project was the CD by The TwilightSingers, Greg Dulli's darker side project away from the Afghan Whigs.Brazillia were brought in after the first mix of the album to add somespice, which they did, but Dulli was so impressed with their writing,as well, that he composed a few tracks with them specifically for therelease. The duo show off that skill more here, but the results are alittle uneven, though an entertaining listen. It must be said that theuse of live instrumentation is impressive, especially the Stevie WOnderharmonica on a few tracks, and that the album is a much more upbeataffair. It's all pretty well produced, and the fact that McSherry andCobby played most of the instruments with only a few guests is alsoworthy of praise. There are a few too many missteps, however, for it tobe a truly great release. Sampled vocals on 'Spill the Beans' byWashington Phillips come off sounding like Moby Lite, and most tracksuse up their fresh tones and originality in the first minute, thenrepeat the same elements until they're almost monotonous. Standouttracks feature the duo sampling organ and guitar with funky andstuttering breakbeats behind them, and just funking out to rock yourbooty. There's even an ingenious use of sampling on 'DNA': Dead CanDance (bet you never thought they'd be used to shake your rump)! All ina greater effort to bring the funk, which they do well. Overall,though, I give the record a C, as it seems Fila Brazillia are nothingmore than England's answer to Daft Punk on most of these tracks. - 
