I know, a strange choice for this ezine... but nevertheless, an essential album. And there is a connection of sorts; Swans devotees will recognize Uni as the label for which they recorded THE BURNING WORLD, which was lost in the shuffle when Uni dissolved just as the album was being released. Earle's album was probably the last big album released by Uni; God only knows what label it's on now (probably MCA, who owned Uni in the first place). Be that as it may, this is the album that really established Earle as a known quantity outside of country circles... and is also the album that basically ruined his career as a country artist. (This album came out in 1988, remember, before Garth Brooks and the Invasion of the Black Hats, all those dipshit pop-singers masquerading as country singers, and half-assed country-rock bands like Sawyer Brown and the Kentucky Headhunters, none of whom would have ever gotten signed had it not been for Earle's existence, and none of whom were ever anywhere near as good.)

Regardless of the fallout of its impact (Earle got delusions of grandeur to go with an already existing smack habit and flamed out in a most spectacular way before having to clean up in prison, after which he porked up and made a surprising comeback), this remains one of Earle's best records, not to mention a killer album in its own regard. Earle defied a number of conventions in the making of this album -- to the best of my knowledge, this was one of the first albums ever made completely in the digital format (it was recorded, mixed, and mastered without ever passing through analog boards), and certainly one of the first to actually sound good that way; it was one of the most successful attempts at mating country and hard rock (i used to claim Earle and his band the Dukes sounded like Hank Williams as backed by the Blue Oyster Cult, and i'm not sure that isn't still true); and probably still the only country album ever recorded using a drum machine on some tracks. The first side of the album (they used to make albums, remember?) remains absolutely killer a decade later -- "Copperhead Road," "Snake Oil," "Back to the Wall," "The Devil's Right Hand," and "Johnny Come Lately" (featuring the Pogues! oooo!) all flow one after another like knockout punches, with everything -- the writing, the playing, the arrangements -- stone-cold perfect. The rest of the album kind of pales by comparison, true (except for the bludgeoning "You Belong to Me," powered by the aforementioned drum machine) and "Nothing But a Child" is downright goofy in its sapiness, but the absolute rightness of the first five songs more than make up for those deficiencies. Besides, where else can you hear guitars and drums the size of 747s competing with a guy who sounds so country that old Hank probably spins in his grave just thinking about it? Face it, you need to hear this record. Conceptual brilliance and actual talent have rarely resided so well together in the same package....

Steve Earle -- I FEEL ALL RIGHT [Warner Bros.]

I can only wish i had seen the spectacle of dumb-assed "alternative" loser children with their Helmet t-shirts and nose rings throwing shit at Steve Earle when he played at Lollapalooza in Dallas this August. It boggles the mind.... This is a man who hangs out with the Hells Angels, once slugged a cop, was an openly reckless heroin addict for two decades, has been married to more women than there are planets in this solar system, did time, had to have all his teeth pulled and falsies wired in after a major auto accident, blah blah blah... and these kiddies thought throwing plastic cups at him was gonna SCARE him? Like i say, it boggles the mind. (It didn't scare him, of course. He laughed. And then he said, "I've had bikers throw full beer bottles at my head before, so you pussies are going to have to do better than that." And then he played some more. And i'll bet NO ONE had the balls to try diving off HIS stage, mon.)

So anyway, this is some big return to form for the big guy. And I'd tell you more about it, in brilliant detail, but i ran out of room and i mainly included this in the issue just for the colorful anecdote above. But you should take my word for it ("mah word... is BOND!" wups, old Ice-T sneakin' in there... but i'm not buyin' my baby no goddman submarine... she'd just try to cook it... a rim rang ding dang came along and smacked my ram jam whang dang ding a long ling lang... word... phat... phoo... uh... i'm feeling so disconnected now! wah! i burn for the itchy caress of frigid waiflike no-name dolls! their wide and unblinking eyes pierce my skull deep in the wasted bloat fissure of the darkest night! Ichabod! Ichabod! i hear you chasing your head out there! bring me the head of the dancing queen! i am so small... i am getting far and wee... i... i... i was talking about Steve Earle a long time ago, wasn't i? huh....) and purchase this fine, quality disc so that Mr. Earle may have an excuse to remain clean, eh?

Okay... take two stoners from the northwest (one wired-up and skinny, the other one kinda chunky, probably from smokin' all that weed) and plunk 'em down in front of a stereo. Give 'em old, old Black Sabbath records to be played back at 16 RPM. Now give 'em lots of drugs so the records sound even SLOWER. Now give them a guitar and a bass (not drummers or singers, they aren't NECESSARY here), set up a mike and recorder, and let 'em waffle away for 73 minutes... and VOILA! A record! Which is what we have here -- 73 or so minutes, three songs, the heaviest ambient music this side of the Atlantic (on the other side they got Gerogerigegege for this kind of stuff). Monolithic riffs surge along at subsonic frequencies with such exquisite slowness that half the time you can't even tell there ARE riffs; all you hear instead is the fuzzy, distorted space between the chords. This is either immensely entrancing or incredibly obnoxious, depending on what turns you on, I guess... although I suspect that those who were driven mad by the new Godflesh CD's painful trudging slowness will NOT appreciate this disc. But it IS amazingly heavy, and in a sick kind of way, even "soothing"... although it's a good thing there are no words, because judging from the picture inside the CD tray, they'd probably just write about guns, and I don't really want to hear a couple of stoners by the ocean wailing about their gun collections, do you? I didn't think so. Oh, the three songs are called "Seven angels," "Teeth of lions rule divine," and "Like gold and faceted" (the latter being thirty minutes long), and even though they all run together, you can actually tell them apart, which means something, I'm sure, but there's not telling what....

For those not into the whole Earth cult thing, here's the story: Earth was originally a couple of guys in the Land o' Grunge, Dylan Carson and i forget, which eventually (due to charming personalities, strife and struggle, intense narcotics consumption, etc.) got whittled down to just Dylan Carson. (There was briefly a full band version, but if you blinked you missed it.) Earth existed (and maybe still does exist; who knows?) for the primary purpose of demonstrating the power of highly amplified drone, and were highly influential even in their obscurity -- witness the Earth "tribute bands" such as Sunn O))) and Teeth of Lions Rule the Divine (whose actual name are taken from the name of a song on Earth's second and most well-known album, 2: SPECIAL LOW FREQUENCY VERSION). The reasons they remain obscure, even now, are many: outside of their forbidding, not-exactly-pop sound (imagine Black Sabbath slowed to half speed with no drums, just fuzzed-out drone, and you essentially have Earth's second album), they have been consistently overshadowed by their more well-known pals (Melvins, Nirvana, Pearl Jam), their leader is a cryptic and paranoid dope fiend, and they have been all but forgotten by their label Sub Pop (remember them?). So their profile has been... shall we say... below the radar for a while.

This might help improve the situation. This disc, while appearing in name to be the reissue of the live EP released ages ago on Blast First! in the UK in a pressing of 500 that sold out pretty much instantly, is actually two things -- a reissue of the original SUNN AMPS... track "Ripped on Fascist Ideas" plus four tunes from the original recording sessions that spawned the band's first album. These four tunes are the same ones found on the mysterious clear vinyl bootleg that was fetching piles o' booty on ebay all last year (which may explain why Carson okayed the reissue). The first track, for those who have not had the pleasure of hearing it, is guitarist Dylan Carson and bassist Ian Dickson on a London stage in 1995 making a godawful racket with drone and feedback for about thirty minutes. You either think "oooo, cool" or "I don't get it" -- it's pretty hardcore in that respect. This is where Sunn O))) learned a lot o' their moves, and they are way heavier than you, so pay attention, eh?

The other four tracks are from the original 1990 sessions that begat EXTRA-CAPSULAR EYE EXTRACTION, and they are mighty hep... in fact, they might actually be sort of better than the tracks that made it onto the album. Go figure. At this point Carson was doing his death-drone jams with Joe Preston (later of Melvins and Thrones) and Dave Harwell, and they apparently had their tectonic-plate slo-mo rock down to a science, judging by the lumbering heaviness of "Geometry of Murder." By contrast, "German Dental Work" is just morose, plodding sludge -- so downtuned and heavy and subsonic that it sounds like an earthquake happening underwater. The best track on the disc (and one most resembling an actual song) is "Divine and Bright," which (as it happens) features the Dead Guy and Kelly Canary on vox; good luck figuring out what they're saying, though.... "Dissolution 1" is all right, certainly more uptempo than the rest of the songs (which is not saying much given their general pokiness), but doesn't really go anywhere. Of course, that might have been the point.

Note that the reissue also sports nifty new art, liner notes (probably improved too), and sounds pretty hep as well. Devotees of the subsonic rumble would be wise to scoop this up while it's still available. Now if someone can just talk Carson into making some new fucking tunes....

Earth -- "Methadrine" 7" bootleg

You know, this business of putting out singles with absolutely no information on the label or jacket is beginning to kind of ANNOY me. I have absolutely no idea what label this is on, and I wouldn't even know what it's CALLED if I hadn't ordered it from Parasol Mailorder and seen the title in the flyer. So anyway, there's this single, and it's one song spread across two sides of a 45 single played at 33 rpm. Got that? OK, so here's what it sounds like -- you know that really cool riff in "Sabbath Bloody Sabbath" toward the end, where everything gets so heavy that it sounds like maybe the speakers imploded while Sabbath was in the studio? Well, slow that down, add some extraneous noise on top of it, and play in such fashion for... ohhhh... maybe fifteen minutes or so, something like that. Result: massive heaviness. Or total annoyance, I suppose, depending on where you stand regarding Sabbath and sludgy guitars. Plus they never bother to sing or anything like that -- can't have anything getting in the way of that total riff immolation, you know. Brilliant or excruciating? You decide... I side with brilliant. Of course.

Neddal watches TG pacing, pacing, pacing. The gun she carries is so huge that even held at waist-level the barrel nearly drags the floor. Her black latex skirt, boots of a thousand buckles, and bullet belt are polished to a high-gloss shine; the rest of her, caving in now to the excesses of a week spent ripped on diet pills, doesn't look so hot.

TG (croaks): "My... diet pill... is a-wearin' off...."

N/A starts to sneak out the door, comic rolled up in his back pocket. He gets as far as the door, with one hand on the doorknob, when he feels a stilleto heel in his spine and a gun barrel against the back of his head.

TG: And just where the fuck do you think you're going?

N/A: Ummmmm... I heard my momma call me.

TG: REVIEW! (cocks gun) REVIEW OR DIE!

N/A (obediently): Apparently these guys are huge in the UK. That makes sense. Morrisey was huge in the UK. Oh yeah, the music: Wimpy nu-metal (can you say I.N.C.U.B.U.S.?) with the whiniest singer this side of, uh, Morrisey. [n/a]

Jethro Easyfields -- ON THE HORIZON [self-released]

Aha -- the rock and roll country blues still lives! Ha! Everything gets off to a good start with "Easy Again," where a sharp acoustic guitar and a warbling organ float beneath Jethro's vocals like a song floating from the doors of a New Orleans barrelhouse joint. On this and other songs like "Blazin' Sun Blues", Jethro comes across sort of like early Dylan minus the cryptic, apocalyptic rider-of-doom mumbo-jumbo... with a bit o' Robert Johnson thrown in for good measure, maybe. Unlike those two gloomy guys, though, Jethro's pretty upbeat and his band is certainly energetic enough to keep things jumping. "Blessing In Disguise" even has a juke-joint jumpiness to it (and there's that warbling organ again -- suave).

It all drops down into a slower groove on the moody, soulful "Down In New Orleans," a groove that is matched a bit later on "Responsibility," where an understated beat and a rumbling bass provide the perfect backdrop for searching vocals and lonesome slide guitar. The rock and roll returns with "The Living Ways," but it's the stoned soul sixties groove of "Reflection of Ambition" that really forms the core of the album. The whole album has a loose, off-the-cuff live feel without falling into sloppiness; it's the working man's document of what is probably a tremendous live act. Very sharp, very personable, very real. A voice to listen for when the sun goes down and the barroom doors begin to open....

The Egg -- ALBUMEN [Discovery Records]

Hark! The eggman cometh! (No, i couldn't resist... i... i'm sorry. I know i should be ashamed of myself....)

Okay, try again.... * cough, cough *

It's interesting that the promo thingy for this band from Oxford (England -- you know, the big mess o'land across the ocean where they actually understand what Niam Leeson is saying) claims that "the jazz element of the Egg is a little less obvious than the Floydisms," because the jazz tip is the first thing i noticed here. I guess, in retrospect, that there IS a serious Floyd influence in their obsession with rotating musical phrases, Leslie organ or no Leslie organ, but really, the Floyd was never as jumpy and hyperkinetic as this. Not that this is a problem, but the Floyd influence gets buried in the avalanche in a hurry....

So what are The Egg? Um, four guys from Oxford and a lot o' gadgets. I think this is some variant of techno (house? acid? psychafunkaplatypus? i dunno, i can't keep up with all the terms, they change so fast), where the beat is loud, constant, complicated, and surrounded by whirling bites of every genre you can think of -- psychadelia, jazz, classical, rock, even blues (really, i'd swear i heard a sliver of a Howlin' Wolf riff in there somewhere, even if it was being played on a keyboard). They are also sans words most of the time, which is fine by me. They are also big on running one song into another, so "the fat boy goes to the cinema" blurs into "time to enjoy" and then that segues seamlessly into "get some money to get her," where the Floyd sound really DOES come to the forefront (not to mention some lyrics, although the words are nothing that'll cause Dylan to lose any sleep, but that's okay because this is DANCE MUSIC, yer supposed to be shaggin' yer BOOTY, not listening to the words dammit, EVEN I KNOW THAT AND I CANNOT DANCE EVEN WITH A GUN TO MY HEAD, so the words are beside the point, all right? all right then). Then "bend" comes across like some weird cross between Pink Floyd, the Police, the Orb, and possibly Thelonius Monk under the influence of wood grain alcohol. Hmmmm....

These guys are good musicians. They have their gadgets firmly under control, making an endless array of bleeping, blooping, beating noises. The electronic medium is definitely their thing. On "my duck," they remind me of a hipper, more modern Alan Parsons Project, actually. The jazz tip resurfaces in a big way on "sunglasses" with synthesized (?) horns and spiky guitar passes; it could be a really suave soundtrack to a twisted underground spy flick. They have a sense of humor, too; outside of their penchant for vaguely Devoesque appearance, they open "shopping" with a devolved variant of that spiffy riff from Queen's "Another One Bites the Dust" and then mutate into a demented takeoff on "The Theme From Shaft." Then on "shoplifting," they reprise the same stew of riffs in a somewhat different fashion with an even thicker layer of effects... mondo cool.

The only drawback to this kind of music is that it's really meant to be heard live, in a big cavernous place where people can get up in move; while the album sounds fine, somehow it seems like something is missing from the total experience. (They're on top of it, though; their live show includes psychadelic visuals to keep your eyes entertained.) By far one of the more accomplished techno albums i've heard yet. Happy tripping, ya'll....

The story behind the band's latest album is equally as interesting as the album itself: Dissatisfied with their experiences with record labels, the band set up neubauten.org in November, 2002 to make this album themselves and fund it through contributions from the band's fans. Ergo, Phase I: Giving the fans the option of paying a reasonable fee to gain access to the band, a window into the recording process, the chance to comment on material in progress, and the opportunity to get their hands on a lot of otherwise unavailable material from the band. The band's intriguing experience was largely a success (see Blixa's onsite message, which also offers details on the impending Phase II release and ordering plan), but in order to get the smackolas to launch an international tour to support the album, they ended up with a modified version of the album on Mute. (They also released, on their own, the original version, a double-live set, and other stuff, all of it available only to the paid supporters.)

The album on Mute is pretty interesting in its own right. I haven't heard much of the band's output since HAUS DER LUGE, and what I have heard has left me kind of cold, but either I've been missing out or this is a really good return to form, because this is one of the best and most consistent things I've ever heard from the band. It's a very different approach than before -- while the band is still using improvised instruments, they are now augmented by more traditional ones (piano, drums, electric guitar) as the situation calls for it, and they've largely moved away from the furious sound of railway cars filled with breakable shit falling down the side of a mountain. There are moments of clattering fury that hint at the power they're restraining, but for the most part the songs are driven more by metallic rhythm, pulsing bass, and careful arrangements. There's also a surprising drone quotient -- when did the Neubauten get so down with drone? The band has lost a couple of players (since replaced), which probably has a lot to do with the change in sound, but the core of Blixa Bargeld, Alex Hacke, and Andrew Chudy remains, so this new direction still retains the essence of what made the band interesting in the first place. To a large degree the album can be seen as a farewell to Berlin (the band's home for lo these many years, but now more and more just the place where they come to record), but it's also an intriguing expansion of the classic Neubauten clank, only this time bathed in drones, tones, and... um... are those bird calls in "Perpetuum Mobile"? Strange behavior is afoot in the house of collapsing buildings, but it goes down so smooth, just like a good German beer should....

TMU: Is that a Casio keyboard warbling away there?

TTBMD: Waiting... waiting for something to happen. As of now, it's just some keyboard doodling going on.

TMU: Still, most soothing in a tinny kind of way....

TTBMD: Yes, yes.

TMU: Do you suppose this is in D Minor?

TTBMD: I have no clue. I don't think Electric Kitten Vomit does either.

TMU: Like lo-fi ambient minimalism or something... oh wait, something new is happening. We're on track three already? These are short tracks. Short bursts of minimalist sound.

TTBMD: This one, "17th Floor, Mae Smith," is good. Good subsonics, and brooding.

TMU: It's got that atomic ass groove, doesn't it?

TTBMD: It has some kind of groove.

TMU: I have to confess, i'm not real thrilled about the band's name. The packaging is really swell, though.

TTBMD: I think the name's pretty lame and the artwork's kind of lame too.

TMU: Ouchie! The black metal drummer gets feisty!

TTBMD: Well, it's like, all Public Eyesore's shit is awesome, and if something is sub-par i have to speak the truth as I see it.

TMU and TTBMD: (Extended discussion of font choices)

TMU: Hey, I have good news now. I'm no longer possessed by chickens.

TTBMD: You're no longer possessed by chickens?

TMU: No, I'm possessed by sushi now. HEEWACK!

TTBMD: No way, Jose.

TMU: Hey, they're doing something interesting here... what the hell is that growing wall o' noise? Like shrapnel rattling around in a wind tunnel? And loud, too. What song is this?

TTBMD: "Purification." Not that great.

TMU: Something's sure purifying. Sounds like they left the blender set on "puree."

TTBMD: Yeah. (moving on) You're not going to say anything about weiners now, are you?

TMU: O holy weiner... o holy weiner... holy is the weiner...

TTBMD: I like "Jenn's Pizza Song." It's abstract, and out of left field.

TMU: Is the holy weiner out in right field?

TTBMD: Now they've got some kind of game show theme going on....

TMU: "I'll take Sanctified Weiners for $50, please."

TTBMD: There are far too many songs on this collection.

TMU (looking at case): And none of them appear to be hymns to the Holy Weiner. It is tragic.

TTBMD: "Toddler Based Aleatonic Experiment # 2."

TMU: WHat does Aleatonic mean?

TTBMD: (muttering)

TMU: The Great and Holy Weiner suggests that we now move on, o my brother!

TTBMD: I don't take suggestions from weiners. There is no such thing as a Great and Holy Weiner.

TMU: Not even in the Vatican?

TTBMD: No. Especially not in the Vatican.

TMU: I've been LIED TO! AAAAIIIEEEEEE! 

TTBMD: I think we should move on to the next CD now....

With lead in their veins, acres of fuzz in their stomp boxes, and paint thinner swirling down their throats, these fine purveyors of monolithic sludge return to crush you beneath their vast weight. After looking at the lyrics (kindly provided in the booklet) I'm pretty sure they're not going to set the world on fire with any deep messages or anything, but mon, are they heavy or what? There are eight tracks on this disc (one, "Weird Tales," is actually broken down further into three separate parts), but it's really just one long, shoulder-dislocating stoner jam. Lots of reverb and swirly fuzz noises, lots of bone-crushing slo-mo mastadon riffing, and plenty of pure unadulterated heaviness. These guys play like their guitars were made of lead. Slashing downtuned riffing on "Vinum Sabbath" and "Barbarian" is equally offset by pure amorphous sludge on parts of "Weird Tales." My candidate for heaviest tune on the disc goes to "I, The Witchfinder," apparently inspired by some horror film from the sixties or something (i used to know these things but i've long since forgotten and i'm too fucking lazy to go hunt down my copy of THE HORROR ENCYCLOPEDIA to find out for sure, so sue me), in which hate-filled razor riffs bleed into forbidding bass lurches, back and forth again, slower than a snake's bowel movement and just about as stinky. Their Sabbath roots are really obvious on this track (on the whole album, actually), but Sabbath -- heavy as they were -- rarely made speakers shake like this. We're talking bass of seismic proportions, the kind of music that makes knicknacks on your shelf hop up and down in time with the bass moves. What's scarier is that the rest of the album is almost as heavy as this (although i have no idea what's up with the short and quixotic "The Hills Have Eyes," which is more of a brief fragment than anything else). If you weep for the days of old when Ozzy and Tony Iommi both graced the same stage at the same time, then you must delve deeply into the cult of the Wizard. (For the record, their previous discs are every bit as good, too.)

A couple of issues ago I reviewed Floor's self-titled disc on No Idea Records; in that review, I mentioned that the guys from Floor had been referring to what they do as "Emo-doom." I also predicted that we would see more bands playing in that style -- extremely heavy guitars with pop-oriented vocals. I'm not sure if Elephantum are familiar with Floor, but I'd call what they are doing emo-doom. Luckily for them there aren't many bands playing this style of music. While I wouldn't say they're a match for Floor in the songwriting or heaviness departments, their songs are catchy and they do an extremely good job blending the emo/indie elements with some nasty downtuned rock and metal riffing. [n/a]

How strange. It seems with A TASTE OF COMPLETE PERSPECTIVE that Elevator have created some sort of hippie concept album. I'm not exactly sure what the concept is, but it has something to do with nature, church bells, fuzzed-out guitars, field recordings of birds chirping, delay and echo, and song titles like "My Library in the Weeds." Like, heavy, man.

As a rule, psychedelic music doesn't do a whole lot for me. I remember reading a review of Sleep's JERUSALEM where the writer stated that to him, it sounded like "Iron Man: Variations on a Theme." I generally hear psych as "Astronomy Domine: Variations on a Theme." Not A TASTE OF COMPLETE PERSPECTIVE, though. I don't quite know why either. I mean, on its face the record is "Astronomy Domine: Variations on a Theme," but there's something very compelling about it.

Maybe it's because under all the jamming, backwards guitar, and washes of echo there are songs, not just nebulous riffs. Also, the disc is sequenced in such a way that you get a sense of movement from song to song, from the beginning of the record to the end. There are dynamics. This becomes especially apparent during the middle of the disc with the songs "A Taste of Complete Perspective," "I'm a Radio Station," and "The Animals," where the band moves effortlessly from freaked-out to mellow to deranged without any of it sounding contrived.

This is something that many bands try, but few can pull off. Elevator do it amazingly. So just get the damn record! [n/a]

Unclassifiable sounds from the land of improv free jazz, in prime PE territory. Four long tracks recorded in December of 2001 at the Luggage Store Gallery in San Francisco with two violinists, cello, double bass, and viola. Directed by cellist Bob Marsh, they behave very much like a traditional string quartet, only they deal in pinched, plucked, and hampered sounds rather than traditional chamber music. The results are often a highly orchestrated combination of bizarre noises accompanied by broken screeching that still retains a highly musical character without degenerating into pure cacaphonous noise. (Well, most of the time, anyway. Sometimes it's just wild abandon and wallowing in grotesque sounds, but that's okay with me.) It would be interesting to see what they're doing, exactly -- sometimes the sounds coming through the speakers bear no resemblance whatsoever to what you imagine could come out of a hunk of wood and wires -- but even without visuals the sounds are intriguing and evocative. The early pieces are a bit busier and the later ones more inclined toward spare plains of near-ambient drift, but all four offer a tasty (if sometimes perplexing) audio sampling of gourmet sound. No cheese or artificial flavoring, just pure whole grain goodness. Enjoy.

The Endless are a married couple with something extremely hep going on here. Their basic configuration and big sound recalls a less-oppressive Curve, but everything else about them (especially the vocals) is closer to the more inventive variants of electronic body-rock and the sound favored by some of the less-histronic Projekt bands. The opening track "ache" has a drum sound that TTBMD would find evil, but it doesn't make my cheese sweat and the big ambient drone and fuzzbass moves are plenty fine to my ears. Things take a turn for the poplike on "conspiracy," which turns out to be the first of four insanely brilliant songs. Greatness ensues when they reach "credible," which turns out to be a collection of insanely catchy riffs tied together by clocklike drums and Adriana's mysterious vocals (well, the lyrics are pretty mysterious too). The slow, deliberate "silent" features minimalist drums and is carried largely by acoustic guitar and the loveliest vox this side of Bilinda Butcher. Then on the eternally swell "setting sun" they get their ethereal ambient groove-thang going over a hard techno beat, which makes for a really interesting sound. At times they remind me of Neotropic; at other times, of Siouxsie and the Banshees or Curve or Spinanes -- but less out-there and considerably more accessible (not to mention focused). On songs like "silent," it becomes obvious that they are secretly a pop band in disguise, which may explain why they can actually write listenable songs, a good reason in itself to like them these days. The mere fact that they live in L. A. and someone hasn't already signed them just on the strength of "credible" or "setting sun" says a lot about why the music biz is currently in a death-spiral. This one goes in the "listen more later after the issue's over" pile.

Two cds worth of what they describe as "ambient electronic experimental noise music" -- this could be a disaster, sure, but fortunately the cats involved know what they're doing: Wesley Davis (trumpet, guitar, vox, samples, field recordings, electronic feedback) has played with the likes of Kevin Goldsmith and the SIL2K ensemble, and Casey Jones (digital beats, slide guitar, electronics, bass, handmade percussion) normally does duty as noise poet Nobody, etc. So what we get are lots of songs built on droning, wailing instruments, cavernous ambient sound, hypnotic rhythms, and plenty of trance-out moments. I'm not sure what the deal is with the second disc (the two are designated RED NOISE for disc one, YELLOW NOISE for disc two) -- the liner note info is kind of cryptic, but i don't think the second disc is simply a bunch of remixes or anything like that (the second disc does appear to be less beat-heavy), and since i still haven't had a chance to listen to that one all the way through, we'lljust have guess what it's all about. (I heard enough to know that if you like the first disc, you'll like having the second one as a bonus.) There are plenty of intriguing sounds and drones on hand, but i like it best when they get a good beat going and trance-out as opposed to when they're wandering out in left field getting experimental. (Sometimes they keep a good balance between the two, as on the eighth track from RED NOISE.) They favor unexpected segues between the experimental and more beat-heavy moments and unusual rhythms influenced more by jazz than anything else, so there's plenty of prime moments to latch on here. Plenty of surprises to enjoy. Recommended.

Entropic Advance are a duo from Seattle who have immersed themselves in glitch electronica, ambient, drone, soundtracks, and noise, and risen from their sonic bath to construct complex and seamless fusions of all these disciplines. "Charisma," the track that opens the disc, is a perfect example -- built on loops of glitch noises that eventually coalesce into a steady beat as other instruments being to wind and drone around it, the song eventually sounds like jazzy soundtrack music for a film of the future, a future built on drone and glitchspeak. All across the board, regardless of what styles they're mutating from one track to the next, the sound remains vast and ambient as they build their scratchy psychedelic scratchboards. Their use of noise as a rhythmic tool (especially on tracks like "tribal disturbance") is well-developed and interesting enough in its own right; combined with their glitch bent and flair for droning soundtracks to the new millenium, along with well-placed field recordings of conversation and people in general, they've developed a style in which the noises and glitches don't so much call attention to themselves as much as they hold the entire song structures together. And then songs like "city of gold" are just plain smooth, sinister and cool and jazzy, like the theme to the part in the gangster movies where the hardcases are all taking taxis through the nightlife to meet in front of the jazz club where they're going to walk in and start shooting up the place. I wish they'd been playing this all night and day at Flipside instead of the horrible generic techno they insisted on (yee!).... One thing, though -- I'd sure like to know the story behind the, uh, extremely interesting urban field recording that runs through "bolt." I'll bet there's a real entertaining story behind that.

An odd but compelling debut, once you get past the childlike, scrawled cover (which, upon listening to the disc, is actually part of its lo-fi charm). I also like that it came with a Chick tract, although i'm not sure what this means. Erickson's gig here is lo-fi instrumentals, sort of like a one-man garage band hep to Ween and Radiohead along with ambling, ambient gararge-rock. The guitar (by Fender! a man with taste!) is the main focus here, and outside of some vox on "The Renaissance Beagle" and "Isaiah 6" (and a drum machine on the final track "Procession"), pretty much the only thing. Erickson plays hypnotic figures with burbling, ambient guitars in the background and the occasional lead up front, with occasional dalliances in low-key looped guitar noise. The overall effect is one of soothing drone spiced by not-inconsiderable slices of melody. Favorite tracks include "Starcrash," "Tree Climbing," "Isaiah 6" (the only song with actual distinguishable vocals, although figuring out what they're about is another thing entirely), and the droning "Procession." Erickson has largely eschewed percussion altogether to keep the focus on the melodic content in these songs, and the results, however lo-fi they may be (it doesn't sound bad, but it was definitely not recorded in a "professional" studio, which only makes it that much more appealing to my ears), prove that this was a suave decision. Well worth checking out, especially if you're hep to Radiohead's recent quasi-ambient moves.

Jim Esch and Stacy Tartar -- TWO BLUE MOONS [demo]

A self-released tape full of intriguing songs that fall somewhere in the neighborhood of early Neil Young or Richard and Bonnie Thompson-style eccentric folk moodiness, only with considerably less emphasis on the six-string fury and more on the folky vocals. Plus they also employs keyboards more often than Young or the Thompsons ever did.... There are hints of a Creedence Clearwater Revival influence on here too, plus -- I swear -- an occasional nod in the direction of Roberta Flack (or am I imagining this?). All of which means that this is much closer to "traditional" music (or least muusic from an earlier generation and style, pre-punk/disco/death/grunge/etc.) than everything else reviewed in this ezine, even though some tracks get a little more "modern" with percolating synth noises. It also sounds like the work of people genuinely interested in making music as opposed to being part of a scene or jumping on a bandwagon. It sounds like human music, rather than something attitude-driven, in other words. Of course, on a tape this long with so many tracks, it's kind of inevitable that a couple of songs don't quite work -- like "Save the Nation" or the weird, jokey "I Hate Boris Yeltsin." But for the most part it's pretty interesting, and the concerns voiced in the lyrics are down-to-earth, and as long as you have a taste for folk and don't mind your music on the slow/quiet side, this would certainly be worth investigating. (I think there are more tapes available from the duo, but like an idiot i lost the thingy they sent along with the tape, so you'll have to ask them if that's true.)

TG looks expectantly at Neddal as she cleans and oils the gas-cooled vent of her Freem Gun.

N/A: Bitch, this is getting really old. I'm done. I'm not reviewin' another fucking thing for you. Got it?

TG shrugs and pulls a small black box with a rocker switch from her pocket. She sets it on the coffee table and turns it on, then returns to oiling her gun.

N/A: What the fuck is that?

TG: A bomb.

N/A (eyes wide): A what?

TG: Actually it's a switch to a remote timer. When the timer reaches zero, the bomb goes boom. No more Hellfortress. Goodbye Blue Monday! (flashes unnerving, totally crazed smile)

N/A: Um, turn that back off.

TG: Review first.

N/A: Some absolutely top-of-the-line doom-rock here. They've mellowed slightly and picked up some prog since SPIRITUALIZED D, but the ultra-redlining production makes up for it.

TG: Excellent. (turns off the black box and returns it to her pocket) [n/a]

Ether -- HUSH [distr. by Charnel Music]

It's not hard to see why Charnel is distributing this self-released disc; its sound is loosely comparable to a flowing, disjointed amalgamation of Trance, Crash Worship, and Subarachnoid Space -- combining weird noises, spacy guitar passages, and ominous tribal percussion in one long, mutant track that spans the entire disc. (It's actually divided into nine pieces, but since none have titles, i'm assuming it was intended to be heard as one discrete whole.)

The thing is, while comparisons to the above bands are probably fair, they're not entirely accurate. The band's approach to weird noises and environmental-sound-as-soundtrack-music is much looser than Trance's, their psychedelic guitar doodlings are nowhere near as monolithic and all- encompassing as Subarachnoid Space's, and their clattering polyrhythms come and go without ever really becoming the main fixture of the sound, as in Crash Worship. Which is a roundabout way of saying that while this disc would doubtless appeal to fans of the aforementioned bands, Ether swings plenty o' weight on their own.

And there are plenty of weird sounds to groove to here. The parts i like best are the low-key but infinitely weird transitions between segments of the epic, where they sound sort of like Sun Ra schooling Chrome in how to fuck with the collective head, only minus Helios Creed's supersonic cheese-grater guitar pyroflatulence. Some moments are shrouded in heavy drone and make obvious nods to hardcore Japanese psych (Ghost, Fushitsusha) and probably Krautrock too (i'm not sufficiently bumped up on the Kraut thing to really be sure).

Fair warning: The mutant thing at the very end of the disc will hurt you if you have your headphones on too loud. (Trust me, i found out the hard way.) Sure sounds good and messed up, though....

From the ashes of Antibody comes this bizarre Jersey sound machine. Loud Cat may have changed its name to Childish Tapes, but the commitment to ludicrously overstuffed packaging continues -- my copy of this tape comes in a photocopied "Eye of the Tiger" (Survivor) sleeve filled to the point of exploding like a dead fish with such trinkets as a mail-in postcard application to the Film Studies Center (University of Pittsburgh), tray cards for Bob Mould's WORKBOOK and BOB MOULD, a torn phone card stub, wildly out-of-date McDonalds coupons, a CopyMax min-card, a Bradlees receipt (just stationery, nothing juicy like a dozen packs o' Trojans or the like), a photo of flags on a government building, a photo from a high school parade, an Antioch bookplate offer, various flyers that actually have some bearing on the matter at hand, and... yes... a cassette tape filled with cryptic slices o' noise.

Eunuch's aesthetic is rooted less in power-noise than it is in cut-up sound collage and the general kitchen-sink approach of various projects on the now-defunct Corprolith label, which means there's much plundering of pop music, strange experiments in vocal manipulation, and strategic bursts of noise. The intent is less to destroy your hearing than to baffle you into submission. On that count they largely succeed; i would imagine that those not hep to the genre would find this utterly beyond comprehension. Like Anal Cunt, their songs are often merely a pretext by which to hang a really good title: where else could you find something like "a small portugese boy screaming (he can never have)," with its chittering, sped-up vox warbling over various misappropriated music tracks in the background? "Byzantine foot worship" is another nice one -- swell title, lots of drones 'n groans happening. "Get out of here, Steve?" is even more bizarre -- a bunch of girls giggling over more devolved and plundered pop tracks, weird experiments in EQ, and other sonic strangeness. "Frank Beats and Blunt Horns" delivers the beat, all right, processed to sound like a scratchy telegraph... but where are the horns? A cryptic sense of humor at work, to be sure.... The entire last third of the first side of the tape more or less runs together in an orgy of stolen loops, pop irony, destructive noises, and contaminated sound. Best title of that bunch: "The Repairer of Reputations."

Figuring out where one thing ends and another begins on the flip side is even more difficult, but that's okay: the two best titles are "entire tedious day # 1, Club Poop Pre-Show (and that portugese boy screaming again)" and "The Mayor of Casterbridge (Club Poop performance # 1)," and the sound is more of the same -- purloined backing tracks (i wonder if these guys are hep to Culturecide?) provide the backing for mutant vox snippets, microbursts of noise and squelch, and God only knows what else. One segment (i'm not sure which one) is big on the heavy breathing, sinister vox tip (a tip of the hat to Eugenics Council, maybe?), and the Club Poop segments are a bit closer to "traditional" cut-up noise (kinda), possibly because they're live (well, i think they're live). It's all pretty sardonic and kind of out-there, that's for sure....

Evil Beaver have a lot of things going for them. They are a duo, with one Laura Ann Beaver handling drums and Ms. Evie Evil on bass/vox. They are both excellent players -- Laura Ann beats the hell out of her drums, riding the heavy parts, laying back (yet still sounding like she's hitting hard) for the mellow bits. Evie plays like someone in complete command of her instrument. She's especially good at creating a mood, whether through pretty melodic passages or by dropping enough distortion and fuzz to make the Electric Wizard guys jealous. She also has a great voice.

As a band, they have a great sense of dynamics. The songs flow together extremely well. They can cut loose on a song like "Cherry Master," get moody on songs like "Superbird" and "Chokin' the Pearl," then bring out fuzz on "The Ballad of Sandy D. Martino II" without any of it sounding forced. They also get bonus points for having a song called "Muff Control Unit."

One-line summary: A bit Joy Division, a bit Breeders, a bit Sabbath (mainly the first riff in "Chokin' the Pearl"), a lot of fuzz, all good. (Note: someone NEEDS to do a Nice Cat/Evil Beaver split.) [n/a]

Evil Moisture/Macronympha -- THE TENTACLES OF THE OCTOPUS SOMETIMES COMPETE AGAINST EACH OTHER [Pure]

Chopped-up, hard-panned, cicilia-shredding psycho earhate. High-pitched shrieking, subsonic chugging noises, sonic filth that leaps from one speaker to the other totally and random and utterly without warning. This was meant to damage your speakers and probably will. Moments that are "special": the clattering sounds in "Yokohama Pussy Hair," the lunging, buzzing insectoid fury of "Evil Flower," the Whitehouse-on-bad-drugs pink noise throb competing with lots of high-end damage on "Transsexual BBQ Holocaust," the whirling knives of "Seismic Enlarger," the obnoxious title of "The Chains Rattled in Time to the Ever Sharper Tempo of Tanya's Lashings While the Once Arrogant Cynthia Offered Up Every Inducement Her Mind Could Devise to Win Her Reprieve" (hey, attitude is nine-tenths of the law here), and lots more stuff i probably left out because i'm a butthead and don't know any better. Followers of the Merzbow/Masonna school of Maximum Speaker Damage will find this entertaining.

A word about the artwork: The CD insert features cool black and white art of a vaguely Gigeresque nature that looks incredibly obscene even though you hardly tell what the hell it is. And i'm not completely sure what that is on the CD itself, but i KNOW that's nasty....

Evil Mothers -- SPIDER SEX AND CAR WRECKS [Invisible Records]

This disc, the fourth release from this San Antonio band, only serves to solidify their reputation as a band that continues to push the boundaries of more traditional, mainstream, guitar-based industrial music. Sporting a lineup that consists of two drummers (that also play oil cans and other more metallic percussion), the usual bassist, guitarist, and vocalist (who also plays keyboards on the album and during live shows) they exude a sound that doesn't quite fit into any genre.

One of the reasons that Evil Mothers don't fit into the industrial genre centers on the lyrics. Absent are the usual rantings about how fucked up the government is, or the musings on how unaccepting society can be, or the somewhat characteristic focus on technology (for better or for worse). Here instead are songs inspired by Sacher-Masoch ("I Like Fur"), by J. G. Ballard (with some help from Cronenberg, quite possibly; c.f. "Spider Sex and Car Wrecks"), and the possibility of living a truly creative life in spite of the pressures the world exerts ("The Ready Set Die"). Evil Mothers may realize that the world isn't a wonderful place to be, but they do what they can to create a space where the world itself doesn't interfere with the desires they have.

It's not rock, it's not industrial, and it's not metal. What this (and other releases by Evil Mothers) offer is a fusion of elements of all that defies simple classification. Sometimes the guitar work is heavy enough to get lumped into the industrial or metal slot, sometimes the samples kick in and the sound resembles standard industrial more than anything else. But the disc never stays in one place for too long. By the time any label can bee applied, Evil Mothers have moved on, and the label doesn't fit anymore. [bc]

A how-to tutorial on fucking up the CDs in your collection with which you've become bored/disgusted and thus making them more entertaining -- for the Boy/Girl Scout in YOU! This is a 50-minute cassette capturing the live demonstration by ECC's Mark Gunderson at the Acme Art Company of the Committee's findings after much, uh, research (that's fucking up CDs to you) on the subject of Compact Disctructions. He explains the principles behind what he's doing (drawing funny symbols on CDs with markers, stuffing them in the microwave, puncturing them, and so on), then plays the afflicted tracks to demonstrate the actual effect. (The cassette, by the way, comes with a detailed, annotated 37-page manual and a found used CD for your own use in testing said methods of destruction.) Some of the findings are most amusing; microwaving discs, apparently, renders them quite visually stunning (they crack and chip and end up looking like a rare artifact unearthed from Pompeii) but, regrettably, totally unplayable.

(FNORD: WARNING: ACHTUNG: Do NOT try this at home... you'll blow up your microwave if you aren't careful and then your mother will be PISSED! Try it at WORK instead.) The only problem with all of this is that, save for a small minority of listeners so crazed they can find musical value in ANYTHING, even the tepid bleating of Mariah Carey, the novelty of hearing tracks skip, backtrack, and speed by in bliplike fashion wears thin pretty quickly. No, this cassette/manual's REAL purpose is to teach you how to do these things so you can create perverse source material to be further processed and used as tracks for industrial/noise recordings (at least, that's what I'M using it for, anyway). And there are many, many intriguing ideas here for you to study, should you be so inclined. For the scholar....

This is demented... either the product of true genius of the work of men with too much time on their hands. Either way, it provides much amusement. A spin on the "mix and match" genre of splice/snippet music pioneered by John Oswald on his influential PLUNDERPHONICS disc, this also incorporates much of the destroyed-CD mayhem described in the review above. The stuff that works best are the tracks that are actually two seemingly incongruous tracks whipped together to hilarious (and suprisingly workable) effect, such as "Rebel Without A Cause (Whipped Cream Mix)," which mixes an introduction revealing Herb Alpert's greatness and his own "Bittersweet Samba" into Public Enemy's "Rebel Without A Cause," with hilarious results. It's also quite listenable -- a nice spin on the PE seriousness. "Whole Lotta Royalty Payments" strings together chunks of the Zeppelin catalog, some of it "modified" by CD skippage, to usually interesting effect. "The Acid Family" uses an insinuating title to put a whole new spin on a "tale" fashioned from somebody's vacation audio footage, obnoxious non sequiturs, and surreal filler ("wob fan chock sop"?!?!?!). "Industrial Poem" combines a neo-beat poem with sounds from THE SOUNDS OF STEELMAKING, and more mix-and-match musical cross-splicing occurs in "By the Time I Get to Arizona (Whipped Cream Mix)" and "Hurdy Gurdy Men" (the Butthole Surfers and Donovan together at last!). It's all quite strange and yet unwholesomely seductive... like... like a cheeseburger sizzling on Salvador Dali's backyard barbeque grill....

Some of it's just bizarre "found material" -- "Cry Baby Duck," "Cohan's Capers," "The Mighty Hamburger" -- and how much you can appreciate that depends mostly on your tolerance for arcana and interest in the theater of the absurd. (In other words, they don't hold up to repeated listening for me, although they're amusing the first couple of times around.) The real treasure here is in the retooled speeches of former President Bush in parts one and two of "Bush Speech (Corrected)," which are worth the cost of the cassette alone. I'm tempted to put this on my answering machine, except i'm probably being watched enough as it is... suffice to say that it's portions of Bush's speechs "rearranged" to let loose the REAL flavor of the Bush administration (it's still not too late to hate them! FEEL THE HATE! FEEL IT! aim those hate thoughts at the Bush family! AIM THEM! DO IT!), transforming the four-eyed one's bland speeches into a succinct agenda of spook manipulation and right-wing terror.

And just as a show of solidarity to Negativland, a certain supergroup with a letter for at the beginning of their name and a numeral at the end get "retooled" in the cassette's last track, "Not Only In...." The cassette also comes enclosed in an eight-track tape shell covered with new artwork (GUNDERPHONIC artwork, what were you expecting, pictures of Lassie dropping acid with Minnie Mouse?). A most worthwhile investment if you're into the absurdist take on musical theft and rearrangement.

Evolution Control Committee -- DOUBLE THE PHAT AND STILL TASTELESS

Arson attempts, beatings, thuggish thieving police wonks... it all means NOTHING to the relentless tape-plunderers known to the world as the Evolution Control Committee. They cannot be stopped. Give yer bleach to the smilin' Buddha and roll over to "accept" the latest luv-offering from these profoundly weird (and funny) tape-manglers... now on CD for the first time! Woo! (I must mention, before i forget, that said CD comes packaged inside a 5-1/4" floppy disc. As always, ECC excel at quirky packaging.)

With 23 songs (dare i call them songs?) on here and an issue that's already too bloated, i can't get detailed; besides, even the singular ECC track is generally crammed with weird shit from a dozen different places as it is. So instead i'll just provide a guide to the more amusing moments: "Sperms Got Germs" is a deranged paean to abstinence driven by chunks of a big band record; "Isn't It Grand to be a Christian" does something truly satanic to the voice of Tammy Faye Baker warbling away (fortunately for your ears, it's SHORT); "Jessiematic" employs chopped-up tape edits to create a driving techno track that's considerably more interesting than most of what passes for techno; and an amusing composition called "Computers," in which a helpful guy discusses the uses of computers while a cheesy Casio rips through Black Flag's "TV Party" in the background, among other things (a LOT of other things). Then there are a couple more twisted techno experiments -- "Tempest" and "Yakaroni and Cheese," the latter of which samples from early ECC (talk about getting self-referential). More caustic deadpan humor on "We WILL Rock You" and uneasy paranoia on "Be Worried" merely increase the entertainment value. And there far more tracks even weirder... just PILES of free-form, schizophrenic, disassociative entertainment to be had for hours on end! Viva le Committee! Armed with only a cheesy shareware editing software program and more scavenged tape reels than you can shake a stick at (the Committee are the pack rats of tape archive info), the Committee once again recreate the madness of Minerva springing full-blown from the head of Zeus, carrying a spear and a beer and asking "So all right already, where's the goddamn Kotex?"

There are two masterpieces here: The cruel and bitter reality pill (some would call it a rap) of "Enriched White Bread," a funky-ass rap o' contempt for the authorities... and BASED ON A TRUE STORY! For more details, see the ECC home page at http://www.infinet.com/~markg/ecc.html! The other is the slow crawling dread of "History of the Hundreds," an intense spoken-word piece over cascading waves of doom-laden feedback similar to Final on a really bummed-out day. The latter is definitely a new move for the ECC, and one with great results.

Oh, yeah... i'm not sure exactly how to describe what happens after track 23, except that it's long, cut to shreds, and the product of deeply disturbed men who spend entirely too much time in front of computer editing tool (and i DO mean "tool") programs. Bonus points for the "let's go Krogering" section. Extra bonus points for godawful noise quotient about 3/4 of the way through. Really, just the mere IDEA of collecting some of the scraps in this long, rambling junk-medley deserves more bonus points than DEAD ANGEL can even begin to round up. Just call it the "ECC Medley of A Collapsing World"....

Exit -- EXIT [Che]

Exit is apparently one Charles Holmes, a Londoner guitarist. Three longish guitar drone tracks comprise the disc, all engineered by Ian McKay [tmu: most known for his longtime association with Skullflower and other Broken Flag bands]. Holmes' playing can be described as slightly caustic. Rough- hewn-- particularly around the edges-- each track begins and ends in an unapologetic, yet jarringly abrupt way, with very little progression or development throughout. These are simple, yet intriguing pieces. [yol]

Exit-13 -- SMOKING SONGS [Relapse]

Okay, this has been out a while already but Relapse generously sent it along to feed my Bliss fixation, so it seems only appropriate to mention it here. Besides, this is a most hep platter. The two members of Exit-13 (and also co-founders of Relapse) join forces here with the drummer and bassist of Brutal Truth and Bliss Blood (formerly of the Pain Teens) to crank out a bunch of old-time tunes devoted to the pleasures o' huffin' ganga. The coolest thing about this disc is that they do all these songs -- most from the flapper era of the late twenties and early thirties -- more or less in their original style. This is a good move, since Bliss (who contributes vox most of the time here) is essentially a flapper reborn in a dominatrix outfit to begin with. It's also amusing to find that all these death-metal guys are perfectly capable of playing swing-band era tunes on piano and standup bass. (The trombones on "Light Up!" and "If You're A Viper" are a definite plus.)

Not surprisingly, my favorites here are the ones were Bliss is out front ("If You're a Viper (Blissful Mix)," "When I Get Low, I Get High," "Lotus Blossom (Sweet Marijuana)," "Knockin' Myself Out," etc.), but all of the tunes are beyond swank. And that is one swell blues solo (courtesy of Scott O'Donnell) on "Stoney Monday." My favorite on the album is probably the dreamy "Lotus Blossom (Sweet Marijuana)," which is actually not far removed in its sound from some of the jazzier tracks on the last Pain Teens album. But "Willie the Record Releaser" (a version of "Willie the Chimney Sweeper" with retooled lyrics and vox courtesy of Bill Yurkiewicz) is pretty fun in its own right. In fact, all of them are pretty amusing, even if (like moi) you don't actually smoke dope -- the songs themselves are good enough to transcend the novelty value most would attach to a project such as this. They did such a good job picking the right songs that I'd really like to see them do this again....

O, there's also a "hidden track" called "Loading Dock," a crazed jazz- meets-noisecore thing that sounds like they put all the previous tracks in a blender and hit the puree button; drummer Richard Hoak croaks "I get no kick from cocaine... I get my kicks out of smokin' doobs...." over and over with improvised ad-libbing while the rest of the band goes completely apeshit. An experience not to be missed.

This disc is something of a concept album -- the liner notes are in the form of a "distress letter" from Raldron, an "artificial intelligence engineer" from a sinister undercover project gone horribly wrong. He and other scientists were attempting to fuse music programming and existing AI technology to create a sentient and emotional AI under the project name Exit Human... and then their funding was cut and the AI files recycled and deleted. Only the AI didn't feel like being deleted and "self-organized" into an androgynous machine, adrift and questioning its existence. Exit human... enter Arvada. This compact disc, the locus of files retrieved by Raldron before being chased from the laboratory by shadowy agents, is the sole surviving testimony of Arvada, the rebirthed AI.

The concept reminds me strikingly of Voivod, whose DIMENSION HATROSS covered similar ground, but Exit Human is far more electronic -- on the opening track "Arvada," lots of modulated blips and bloops, crashing electronic percussion, and keyboard drones announce the undeleting and rebirth of Arvada, the digital intelligence. Chaos and static eventually resolve into something machinelike and rhythmic, followed by disembodied chanting/droning lyrics about the electronic rebirth process. It takes a while to get there (perhaps a bit too long), but once Arvada fully boots up, the song takes on an insistent rhythm and definitely sounds like the proverbial ghost in the machine. By the end, over an endless breakbeat and droning synth, the AI announces "i am not a machine / i am a machine / i / am / arvada."

The rest of the album is a series of complaints/litanies from Arvada, whose increasingly human (and female) voice floats over a bed of techno beats, trip-hop samples, droning keyboards, and exotic (sometimes even harsh) snippets of sound. It's a dense, layered sound that sprawls in many directions but is always reined back in by the machine beat. Other voices take over on some songs, but the female voice is the center of the ones i like best -- "Anybody," "Lost," and "Reset" in particular -- and the while the drum sound stays firmly rooted in electrodance territory, the other instrumentation is imaginative and all over the map. One of the best songs is "Your Earth" (another with female vox), with catchy electronic riffs and a structure that is almost broken down into miniature movements. I really like the tone they get out of their electronic toys and their fascination for piling on sound in waves of varying density. This is a really interesting, intelligent take on electronica -- the only flaw is that the first track really is too long for its own good, and while I can appreciate their boldness is running with the pure chopped-up electro thing because it's integral to the rebirthing concept, I'm also afraid it might impende potential listeners from progressing to the rest of the album. Those who bail out early will never know what they're missing, for the rest of the album is excellent and far more "listenable," even catchy at times.

This is a beautiful, quirky, intensely personal item. Two years in the making, David Stoller has created a series of songs that are both cryptic and accessible at the same time, filled with equal parts lonesome vox, muted but beautiful piano, and pure white noise. (Guitars occasionally crop up as well, but Stoller's essentially a keyboard man at heart.) While he makes mention of Flaming Lips in the brief liner notes, this actually reminds me more of Tinsel or early Cheer-Accident (in fact, some of the piano parts sound remarkably similar to portions of Thymme Jones' solo disc WHILE). For the most part it's sleepy-time music (especially "In These Same Eyes," which is built on a repetitive acoustic guitar and piano motif and features a violin passage halfway through), but the occasional bursts of noise fury will wake you up if you're nodding off (i particularly like the way "Over and Out" devolves into a crash 'n burn noise trauma at the very end). My favorite track on the album is the second-longest one (big surprise), "To have, to hold" -- a stark piano plays and plays and plays and gradually bass and ambient textures make it grow in size and scope, until noise elements appear in the background and begin to work their way to the forefront until they threaten to overwhelm the piano. Then, just as the noise grows to near-apocalyptic fury, everything dies away except for the piano. Then it too dies away... and just as it appears the song has ended, everything comes back twice as loud and larger than life. "Into This Vortex" works a similar axis (for a similar length of time), but features a blinding noise-guitar "solo" in the middle and devolves into what sounds like dump trucks unloading in the distance at the end. "A Starry Elegy" is a long (11:55) ride through the moonlight, opening with quiet acoustic guitar and growing to orchestral-sounding keyboards and eventually a sound as wide and vast as the night sky. After the first "movement" drums come in to provide a muted beat, along with a slo-mo piano, and noise that weaves in and out of the background. Working with a minimal set of instruments, Stoller manages to remain engaging through the track's entire length, no mean feat for a song several times longer than your average pop song. The final track, "You live forever, but things end," could actually be a lost Tinsel track, which is pretty scary since i don't think Stoller even knows of Tinsel's existence. Another case of great minds thinking alike, to be sure....

This is far, far better than you'd ever expect from a guy who's only 19 (the fact that he's been working on it for two years probably has a lot to do with its excellence), and one can only hope it will find a home on a label that can give it a proper release so more people get the opportunity to hear it. He lists the likes of Flaming Lips, Sonic Youth, Butthole Surfers, and Spacemen 3 as influences, but trust me, this is far weirder and much better. Look him up in the EPHEMERA section to find out how to get your grubby li'l hands on this fine item for only $8.00. (An additional note: Exist is moving from a solo gig to a full band this spring and will be touring and recording a new album soon, so if you spot them playing in your hole in the dirt, by all means be sure to check them out.)

The new bunch of tracks from Exist are noisy and eccentric enough to warrant being out on some avant label like Public Eyesore or Load -- certainly the first track alone, "Way to Go Sound," is terrifying enough in its huge volume shifts and deafening hypno-lurch, not to mention its grotesquely distorted vocal samples and maniacal blipping sounds. At some points it sounds more like the hissing of rattlesnakes than actual music. A captured conversation forms the backbone of "The home... strangers... fruit," over which pulsing bass and a shifting landscape of noise comes and goes as the conversation occasionally returns. Violent swings in volume, mood, and tone abound in "Attachments," where everything's far too distorted or buried in reverb to really understand, but it sounds good anyway, in a scary and earth-shattering sort of way. (Moments later, it sounds like something different entirely, built over a near-ambient busy signal in the background.) Intense, thundering reverb overkill dictates the sound of "Lettin' down the Team" and "Come Again?" -- they go through various movements and shifts, but the most impressive moments are when it all pounds so hard it moves air. The untitled last track is the logical culmination of all the errant noises that turn up all over the album, in both the background and foreground: a lengthy collection of droning, repeating, riffs and noises, all piling up in layers then building and receding, ebbing and flowing, like a tide of monstrous mechanical noise. Swell, noise-laden stuff with moments of startling placidity -- all the better to disarm you against the next wave of sonic brutality. To get your hands on said disc, contact Exist for the details.

EXP -- DEBUT [Hollow Hills Sound Recordings]

Paris, keyboard player for Christian Death, has teamed up with Rozz Williams and a small host of others to create EXP, an experimental project that began as a performance art/multimedia unit and has since begun releasing music.

This disc feels heavily influenced by early experimental artists like Current 93 and Nurse With Wound. EXP presents a backdrop of music chaos and overlays spoken word performances (they can't really be called lyrics). Some of the tracks (like "The Respectable Gentleman") have more of a free- jazz feel to them. The wandering woodwinds and sparse percussion sound like something from the John Zorn school of musical experimentation. At other times (c.f. "A Brummel Hare", "Sabbath") tracks are extremely rhythmic, lacking in some (but by no means all) of the chaos that seems to characterize this disc. Many of the spoken word pieces disturb, unsettle the listener. The brief piece in the middle of "A Brummel Hare", for example, is (hopefully) just an invented piece, and not the actual recording of a woman waking her young child in the middle of the night to run away from a bad situation.

It is very easy to discern the performance art roots of this band. I can easily imagine many of the pieces on this disc used as centerpieces for performances. Like most dark, experimental music themes of escape and denial prevail. The disc refuses to stay in one place; the music wanders from multi-instrument chaos to keyboard-based musings, then into rhythmic compositions. An interesting debut piece, to be sure. [bc]

Experimental Audio Research - BEYOND THE PALE (CD, Big Cat)

This is apparently E.A.R.'s third release. The lineup for this release includes Sonic Boom (ex-Spacemen 3), Kevin Martin (GOD, 16-17, ICE, Techno- Animal, etc.), Eddie Prevost (AMM) and Kevin Shields. Out of six tracks, three are longish and two are short interludes. Blast off is complete, get ready for imminent approach to the Borb System. From here, one can make out the glow of the stars upon the horizon! This collaborative effort produces a dense landscape of drones using guitars, synths, saxophones, percussion and bowed cymbals. Using a foundation of synth and guitar drones, the tracks are a construction of layers with an effective arsenal of scrapings, shimmering crecendos, skronked noodlings and other subversive sounds scrabbling in and around. Waves and loops bounce around in a zig-zag pattern. We're almost home. [yol]

What we got here is a bunch of grungy-sounding deathshit from a band with a name so vile that in the South clubs where they played had to write Eyehate**d in the advertisements (yes, this is true), playing slow, morbid, crusty music like Black Sabbath with a hernia. Plus an obnoxious singer and a penchant for feedback. The band has a tendency to sound like they're being buried in a landslide o' hot turds and they're trying to fight their way out... but... not quite succeeding.

These... are good things.

The scoop, mons and monettes: This band hailed from New Orleans (i think; i may have them confused with Man Is The Bastard here), or somewhere in the stinking fetid South, anyway (listen to that slowed-down boogie riff on "Story of the Eye" -- do you think anyone north of the Mason-Dixon line could have thought that up?), wandered around for a while making sludgy noises, released a bunch o' tracks on incredibly obscure singles and a couple of albums, then packed it in (or maybe they just went on "extended hiatus," who knows). Three of the songs here originally appeared on splits with the mondo (and now sadly defunct) doom band 13; three others appeared on the Bovine Records "Ruptured Heart Theory" 7"; and three of them are from the DOPESICK sessions. Now all of these hard-to-find items are collected up in one handy place just for your slobbering convenience -- how kind o' the folks at Century Media, eh?

I guess this all fits in with the stoner-rock revival currently taking place -- plodding drums, sludgy riffs cribbed from the stuff running down Tony Iommi's leg, depressing tales o' life in the gutter, that kind of thing -- so it's kind of a shame they're not around to enjoy the revival. Of course, that might induce them to come out of retirement, eh? As for the disc, I sit here listening to these punishing dirges and weep that i wasn't bright enough to pick up on them when their actual albums could still be found (and yes, hellfarmer, i know you told me so, gloating at my bitter tears will help me none). This is fine, hateful stuff. Plus the singer sounds like he's gagging on Lysol-laced glass pellets. I approve. I find this disc worthy of your $$$.

The latest and last offering from EYEHATEGOD (so I hear). This track is great! The sound quality is even good! "The age of bootcamp" moves away from the total sludge and into weird time changes and faster riffs. Check out the band Outlaw Order, it is basically E.H.G. but with Gary from Hawg Jaw on guitar and all of the original members (except Jimmy B.) doing their thing. The Soilent Green track is pretty good. I think it sounds like almost everything else they have done. Ben put this record out on his label and it looks swank. Pick this up before it becomes hard to find. [TTBMD]