Jester
Norway's Virus want to create a sort of free-form heaviness thatchanges your perception of what to expect from the hardcore metal genrein an effort to promote versatility and variation. What they ended upwith is a lite version of adrenaline-fueled pound and screech with across between Mike Patton and Serj Tankian on vocals. Which ultimatelymeans sometimes the vocals are on key, sometimes nowhere near, and itsounds like that may or may not have been a conscious choice; but themusic is stable, engaging even, with sadly very little change from onetrack to the next. Virus try hard to make the songs blend together intoa congruous whole, with tracks fading into each other and combiningelements, but the music is so derivative and the vocal performancesoften so horrendous that it's hard to find anything really to latch onto. Incidentally, where other import artists have stayed with theirnative tongue or tried at some deeper meaning in the translation, Virusemote through lyrics that are almost incomprehensible, with talk ofscreaming insects and "I went smilingly like a classic obsession"topping the list of sub par nonsense. This, unfortunately, also meansthat they are not all that different from any other Norwegian hardcoreband that tries its cards on this side of the pond. Carheartis a valiant effort, though, and Virus are pouring their hearts allover this record. It just doesn't amount to much that hasn't been triedhere before.
Norway's Virus want to create a sort of free-form heaviness thatchanges your perception of what to expect from the hardcore metal genrein an effort to promote versatility and variation. What they ended upwith is a lite version of adrenaline-fueled pound and screech with across between Mike Patton and Serj Tankian on vocals. Which ultimatelymeans sometimes the vocals are on key, sometimes nowhere near, and itsounds like that may or may not have been a conscious choice; but themusic is stable, engaging even, with sadly very little change from onetrack to the next. Virus try hard to make the songs blend together intoa congruous whole, with tracks fading into each other and combiningelements, but the music is so derivative and the vocal performancesoften so horrendous that it's hard to find anything really to latch onto. Incidentally, where other import artists have stayed with theirnative tongue or tried at some deeper meaning in the translation, Virusemote through lyrics that are almost incomprehensible, with talk ofscreaming insects and "I went smilingly like a classic obsession"topping the list of sub par nonsense. This, unfortunately, also meansthat they are not all that different from any other Norwegian hardcoreband that tries its cards on this side of the pond. Carheartis a valiant effort, though, and Virus are pouring their hearts allover this record. It just doesn't amount to much that hasn't been triedhere before.samples:
After a couple interesting mini-albums, including the excellent (thoughminimal) "Beat Tape Personalities" on Soul Jazz, AmmonContact had mepreparing for a full-length that would focus their efforts and showthem giving a bit more substance to a sound that, while far from stale,suffered instead from a kind of over-refinement. It seemed as though,in their efforts to cook each song down to its essential parts, the duoinstead guided their records straight to the 'DJ-fodder' bin,comfortable with the fact that they would never be more than a piece insomeone else's more elaborate puzzle. The ambitious title of Sounds Like Everything,though, threatened the masterwork of ostentatious stylistic shifts,overblown thematics, and guest-MC hoards that would prove me wrong. Nosuch luck. The disc's title most likely refers to the simpleeclecticism the group achieves through the scattered use of tribaldrums, woodwinds, and thumb piano, and while these sounds are welcomeadditions to the bare-bones, electo-funk of the duo's beats, they arenever enough to make things truly extraordinary. Many of the disc'stwenty tracks are under three minutes, sounding more like studioleftovers; the few moments of brilliance, like the syncopated,flute-blown jazz of "Zato Ichi," come and go with little or nodevelopment. I get the feeling that the inclusion of an MC wouldprovide the element of daring that is so lacking in these tracks andwould no doubt create a foil to make the beats sound more impressive.As it stands, one of the most enjoyable tracks probably required theleast amount of studio trickery. The cut-up "Top Tape 1," sounds likebits and pieces of a dozen trashed beats, spliced together almost atrandom to produce a few minutes of blissful unpredicatability.Conversly, the anthemic closer, "Our Cry For Peace," with its chorus oftribal drums, piano and flute is the busiest and longest track here,but the song comes off sounding like a weak variation on what wouldhardly be an eight-bar interlude on any jazz record worth its salt.That said, if AmmonContact set out to make an hour-long DJ tool, theyhave succeeded admirably, but anything else will require some morerisk-taking.
Dean Roberts begins his new three song album on Kranky with a steadydrone which, on first listen, seems to promise (or at least implies)that the entire 35-minutes of the CD will feature this drone. I havelistened to enough experimental rock albums to know that an initialdrone offering will often persist and become a final drone coda, withonly subtle key alterations and modulations to lend it some"experimentalism." But about two minutes into "All Pidgins Sent to War,Palace of Adrenaline V. & E.E." a softly-struck piano emergesthrough the monotone, signaling a nice diversion from my expectations.Instead, Roberts delivers something lighter, something more palatable,more spare, even something more lyrical. At this point, the songblossoms instrumentally, with guitar, brushed cymbals, lightpercussion, upright bass, and plodding piano all tentatively joiningtogether with Roberts's voice. It all sounds rather improvisational,with the guitars mulling over the same measured progressions while theother instruments meander over the guitars. All this is done at arather slow pace. Roberts seems to justify his deliberateness withimprovisation. At the end of the first track, the spareness gathersitself and makes one last valiant attempt at density. It feels as ifthe players are almost strangling the last bit of life out the theirinstruments. Witnessing this instrumental asphyxiation, I felt someslightly perverted pleasure when I thought about this act done solelyon my behalf, or on the behalf of the listener. It's like seeing aboyfriend pummel another boy for talking to you, just to show you hecan. It's sick, but it's also impressive to demand such brutality.Speaking of brutality, Roberts's voice on the first song wavers notunlike the white winged moth he uses as another moniker for hisrecordings. It is not a pleasant or soothing voice and it has thenagging after-effect of an untrained instrument, like a third gradeoboe. But it gets better. In the more compact (5 minutes, versus 19minutes and 11 minutes on the two other songs) "Disappearance on theGrandest of Streets," Roberts finds a definitive melody and tune forhis voice and the song is bolstered by it. This song is the mostconfident offering of the three, whereas the other two range a littletoo far this way and that way, with too much space and time betweenthem. Likewise, the most compelling part of "All Pidgins..." is thelast two minutes (though the second half of this 19-minute compositionis genuinely excellent and, perhaps, a song distinct from the firsthalf in and of itself). It seems that both Roberts's voice and songsflourish within boundaries, a moth which does its best fluttering in ajar. - 
With his third solo record after the dissolution of Royal Trux, NeilMichael Hagerty finally feels like he's hit his stride and is firmlyresiding in his comfort zone. There is an ease and confidence to thesongs and his voice on The Howling Hexthat suggests the sometimes novelist and multi-instrumentalist iscomfortable in letting his often juxtaposing styles just exist andletting the tape roll. The album is essentially three separaterecording sessions with three live tracks interspersed that seem to begrouped thematically after that to form four sections of the album. Alot of the songs don't even hit the three-minute mark, and sometimesthat's a shame but mostly it's just perfect. The aura of these songs isall over the map, with sometimes sexy horns and raunch driving theproceedings, sometimes standard bass-drums-guitar fueling the randomramblings. Over it all, the driving force is the volatile vocals ofHagerty, calling for your first-born child or the end of it all, andchanging, chameleon-like, for whatever comes next. The most impressiveaspects are the brevity and bare-bones approach to most tracks. Thereare no unnecessary ingredients, no noodling or canoodling, just what ittakes to finish the song off. And it all feels right. In fact, thelongest tracks are the live tracks, which are especially revealing,letting a hint of the raw power turn on in what almost seems likemostly improvised and extended versions of two previously releasedsongs from his first two records and a new long jam. There seems to bea warts-and-all approach at play, and maybe that's another reason it'sso refreshing, like it doesn't always have to be dense and calculated.Certainly it's not easy listening, but it sounds easier on the man whodishes it out, at least.
Coldcut's 70 Minutes of Madness, DJ Shadow's Diminishing Returns, DJ/rupture's Gold Teeth Thief and now K.I.M.'s Miyagetogether present a convincing argument for the mix CD as a viable artform. With the sheer volume of recorded music available to the averagecrate digger — through record stores, internet auctions, GEMM, andfile-sharing — there is a larger palette than ever before for acreative individual to select and sequence a group of songs to delivera powerful aesthetic message, to alter perceptions of music and genre,and to entertain. K.I.M.'s Miyage, recently released onTigersushi, manages all three. Tigersushi is an online music communitythat specializes in leftfield dance and avant-groove. Their uniquemusical aesthetic cuts across avant-disco, krautrock, early industrial,leftfield house and modern IDM. Tigersushi Recordings, though barely ayear old, has already released a clutch of fantastic 12" singles, andtheir No G.D.M. compilation featured an impressively eclecticselection of forgotten vintage sides from the likes of Gina XPerformance, Material and Cluster. Miyage goes ten stepsfurther, kicking out a flawless set that had me scrutinizing thetracklist in wonderment. The mix is equal parts groovy and exotic,moody and surreal, fragile and extreme. There is a focused exotica viberunning through the tracks chosen, apparent from the first track, afield recording of wind blowing through an Aeolian organ on the SolomonIslands. It's the perfect lead-in for Arthur Lyman's Polynesian jazzexcursion "Ringo Oiwake." John Zorn plagiarized this track (withoutgiving credit) on his exotica album The Gift. It blendsseamlessly into a whimsical overture by French film composer Francoisde Roubaix. K.I.M. also contribute several transitional tracks to themix, using their considerable gifts to create the perfect rhythmicbridges between disparate musical ideas. Wevie Stonder's "Gypsy Chimp"is one of the most hilarious cut n' splice tracks I've ever heard, abizarrely infectious song that matches Gypsy fiddles with kazoos,jungle sounds and hicupping vocals. Cut to uber-diva Edith Piaf'sincomparable "Jezebel," and a slow dissolve to street performer andself-taught outsider Moondog's "Viking I," a beautifully primitivepiece for hand drums and xylophone. A quick journey through pipe organimprovs, Javanese tribal chanting, and Japan's wonderful Asa Chang& Junray, and we somehow end up in the middle of a rooftop-liftinggospel-disco meltdown mixed by legend Larry Levan. I'm not sure itmakes any sense, but I'm happy to be swept along in this idiosyncraticjourney. Jack-in-the-box melodies from Pierre Bastien and a treefalling in the woods segue into the overblown rock-disco of PsychicTV's "Ov Power," a welcome bit of nostalgia from the glory days ofGenesis P. After a terrific cut by cult rockers The Gun Club, the discends with K.I.M.'s rendition of The Smiths' paean to vegetarianism"Meat is Murder." It's given the laptop and vocoder treatment familiarfrom Schneider TM's cover of The Smiths' "There Is a Light That NeverGoes Out." Okay, so it's not an original idea, but it still worksperfectly, ending the disc on a note of politicism and melancholy.Simply put, this is a brilliant set, the one to beat for futurecompilers of eclectic mix discs.
Past volumes of !K7's DJ Kicks series have featured the estimable talents of Tiga, Playgroup's Trevor Jackson and Carl Craig, each taking their turn at the mixing table producing extended DJ mixes that combined newer underground club hits with classic dancefloor material and the odd crate-digging gem. They each had their moments, but for the most part, they were entirely predictable. I mean, who couldn't have guessed that Playgroup's mix would lean heavily on leftfield disco, or that Tiga would fill his set with uber-sassy electro? For me, the gratification of a great DJ mix lies in hearing unexpected juxtapositions of the alien and familiar, or unearthed vintage rarities recontextualized to sound modern. The new entry in the DJ Kicks series, mixed by Chicken Lips, delivers on this promise.
The first volume of Serie Noire on Belgium's Eskimo Recordings was subtitled Dark Pop and New Beat.That mix was one of my favorites, with an impressive clarity of visionthat imagined a postmodern combination of great, forgotten 80's newwave (Vicious Pink and Executive Slacks), post-punk disco (Section 25),hilariously unexpected selections from seemingly off-topic artists (TheAlan Parsons Project and John Carpenter) and newer material thatslotted in perfectly (Metro Area). Serie Noire 2 is a sequel inname only, sharing none of the impeccable taste in track selection andseamless mixing that characterized the first mix. The tracks on Serie Noire 2are mostly uninspired, many of them wearing out their welcome after aminute or two, suggesting that The Glimmer Twins need to become morecomfortable with The Fader Button. Many of the tracks chosen for Serie Noire 2are of questionable worthiness, which tends to happen if you've beencrate-digging a little too long: eventually, you reach the bottom ofthe crate. Boytronic's "Bryllyant" opens the set, a mildly divertinggloomy electro track straight out of Miami Vice. It's the soundtrack toCrockett and Tubbs coked up, exploring each other's bodies. This seguesinto a couple of best-forgotten 80's acts - Savage Process andBlancmage - the former a crappy industrial-pop group trying to soundsexy, the latter a hopelessly cheesy new romantic band. Die Warzau is apoor man's Nitzer Ebb, and Nitzer Ebb were already a poor man's SkinnyPuppy, so their track "Strike To The Body" is about as awful as itgets. Congratulations to The Glimmer Twins for being the millionthrecent dance mix to include Liaisons Dangereuses' "Peut etre...Pas."Liaisons' self-titled LP was released in 1981, but its recent reissuehas made it far more popular now than it ever was in its own day.Giorgio Moroder's "Evolution" is one of the more boring rock-discotracks I've heard from the usually talented producer. Sandy Steel'scover of Delta V's "Mind Your Own Business" has some of the samefeminist energy as the original, but I still prefer the Chicks on Speedversion. P.I.L.'s "Death Disco" is one of the rawest punk-funk tracksfrom back in the day, but the "Megga Mix" included here renders it allbut unrecognizable. Some rather pathetic German new-wave bands end themix; nothing remarkable. Deejay Gigolos' recent New Deutschcompilation was uneven, but for my money, it was much more successfulat unearthing obscure German funk and industrial than these guys.Recent personal-choice compilations and mixes such as Ladytron's Softcore Jukebox and Felix Da Housecat's Bugged In have done a much better job of remaining interesting for their entire length. Serie Noire 2 is a waste of my time.
I have a weak spot for good Detroit electro. I'm endlessly turned on bythose repetitive beats, that dystopian future groove, those analogpeaks and valleys. Because of this fetish, my collection contains farmore of this stuff than is probably healthy, but certainly favoriteshave emerged: Juan Atkins, Drexciya, Dopplereffekt and Cybotron, toname a few. I have also tuned in to the current of newer techno actspiggybacking themselves on the Detroit sound, and for the most part, Ihave been quite disappointed. Imitation may be the sincerest form offlattery, but it's also the sincerest form of boredom. Dr. Lektroluv'snew continuous mix of neo-electro acts highlights some of theseproblems. The first two tracks are perfectly realized classic Detroitsides, but then the mix takes a turn for the worse by lingering alittle too long on purposely weird, self-consciously retro stuff. Theproblem with "electroclash" is that much of the artists have forgonemusical inventiveness and production acumen in favor of veryheavy-handed, simplistic techniques that become dull after thirtyseconds. For all of their cleverness, a lot of these bands would have areal problem creating a track as good as Model 500's "Night Drive,"made twenty years ago without the benefit of a laptop. Some of theartists here are quite good: Octagon Man, Silicon Sally and thenow-ubiquitous Liaisons Dangereuses. Did all the DJs in the world meetover the summer and make a pact to spin "Peut Etre...Pas" untileveryone was completely sick of it? Radioactive Man's "Do TheRadioactive" is an interestingly textured track, not surprising sincehis volume of the Fabricseries was one of my favorites of the year. Ersatz Audio' Kitbuilderspipe in with an unbelievably overblown epic disco-house track withpretentious lyrics. The last part of the mix really loses steam, withweak tracks from the omnipresent Adult. and the overrated Crossover. T.Raumschmiere's glam-punk stomper "The Game Is Not Over" is probably myfavorite single of the year, but it feels strange sandwiched between aretarded retro track and the lightweight Oriental disco of Yellow MagicOrchestra's "Behind the Mask." In the final analysis, there isabsolutely no reason to buy or listen to this mix. Get one of thoseCD-burning programs that have a cross-fading feature and make your ownmix: it's bound to sound better than this.
The idea of hip hop beats or samples mixed with other live instrumentscan go like crunchy or smooth peanut butter: it goes down easy or itneeds some chewing but either way it sticks to you. I like my peanutbutter smooth, and Loopian Zu lay it down with an even coat so that Idon't even need the second slice of bread. Then they throw on some oddand crazy improvisation that takes it to a higher plane that is stillsmooth, but can cause some confusion if you don't know where to pointyour ears or your mind. Not to worry, as it all plays out in the end asa very coagulated whole, where every move is not necessarily planned,but the members are firing on the same cylinders so it all feeds thebeast within. "Regents Park" is full-on mad drum glory with scratchesand squelches of fancy, mixed with killswitch classical vocals thrownin for good measure. Then, the fantastic two-part track fades in withsmooth horns and guitars before dissolving into cacaphonic noise andhorn and drum rambling that do Miles Davis proud. They blend theirinfluences with almost equal airing and time, not in some bouillabaissethat sounds indistinguishable. The horn section is the focal point ofmany tracks, and they nail it down tight. Loopian Zu are clever andsneaky, not blunt and unimaginative, and the main difference isartistry. "Nuso" is the flagship, with awesome solo voice question andchorus answer vocals, all anchored with the same dub or jazz basecoat.Some awkward moments exist within the same formula, like "Foot Prince& the Emergent Sea," which annoys with its "Love in an Elevator"beginning and muddled progression vocally and instrumentally. What itbuilds to is anti-climactic and meandering. No matter: they've alreadymade their point, and it's a small pothole on the highway. I still feltmoved by it, and didn't need anything to help wash it down. 
The music of Jan St. Werner and Markus Popp has always been, for me, aheartening, if predictable listen. While their separate activities likeOval and Mouse on Mars have seen considerable evolution over the years,St. Werner and Popp's collaborative project Microstoria has remained asomewhat static affair. Unfortunately, while previous installments inthe Invisible Architecture series joined several idiosyncratic artistsin collaboration or improvisation, this fifth volume features onlyMicrostoria, with no foreign body to alter their established sound.What's more, the music is a 2000 live performance containing only songsfrom the group's two latest albums, that year's Model 3, Step 2, and 1996's _snd.True, the seven songs here are some of Microstoria's best, and severalare extended far longer than their album versions, most notably adouble-length, eight-minute "Soso Sound." The lack, however, of any newmaterial, and the music's relatively strict adherence to albumprecedents, make this a mediocre release and unessential listening forprevious fans. New listeners, however, should find this disc a perfectintroduction to the work of two consistently fascinating music-makers.The live environment contributes to a looser sound with more roughedges showing, and highlights the aspect of Microstoria's music thathas always been the most appealing to my ears, the childlike abandonseen waning in the recent solo efforts of both St. Werner and Popp(excepting Popp's excellent So record). The latter's distortedrumblings and swift jump cuts have never been so wistfully assembled,coupling beautifully with St. Werner's meandering melodics, gathered aseffortlessly and organically from a guitar as from a PowerBook. Thelow-end has not been much a part of the duo's bag of tricks, but heredroning bass is surprisingly effective and often jarring, no doubtmeant to enliven the live experience but translating nicely to disc.That said, there is nothing too striking or really "new" about thisrecording, though it is anything but boring and certainly as beautifulas anything Microstoria has produced to date. Those hungry forsomething new might wait for the new full-length to be released soon.
