And here you were wondering just what Tabata must be up to, now that Zeni Geva's on hiatus while scouring the earth for a decent record deal. Now you have the answer: He's been working some powerful psychedelic noise mojo. And mon, it's a LOUD kind of psychedelic -- just scope out the opener "Sleeper's Concentration Camp," where ringing feedback drones grow and grow and GROW until they explode into psyched-out shards of noise capable of flash-frying mastadons from fifty paces. Seriously, there is some evil feedback happening in this song... and yet it retains an eerie, ghostlike vibe. This may be the first time i've heard extreme feedback harnessed for the purposes of actual psychedelia (Gravitar doesn't count, mon, they have more to do with the exploded soul of Sun Ra on steroids than actual psych behavior or anything like that). "Hello Brainsville" is equally peculiar: grunting dinosaur sounds, chopped and diced noises, and other effluvia get trampled under Casio tones, banjo-like guitar, and rotating cyclodrones. The feedback screeching overdrive of "The Monarch" makes it tempting to believe he's been taking notes on the science of the Nullsonic, but that quickly mutates into weird crunchy filth for a while before returning to the high-end weirdness. Tones fade in and out as guitars shudder and ripple before it all fades to black.

While none of this really resembles "songs" in the traditional sense, "Escape" does have a discernable structure and guitars that actually sound like guitars (cool folk-like trills, too); it builds into a circling mass of repeated guitar riffs, shimmering reverb radiance, distant screech feedback, and other odd sounds. "1000 Tears" sort of resembles Skullflower on fast-forward: twinkling starlight guitars, vague subterranean rumble in the background, wailing pig-stuck guitars, slapback delay guitar lines... it's all pretty mind-altering, all right. "Cry Ghost" initially sounds like Tony Conrad having a fever dream -- violin-like screeches that gradually get dragged through miles of loop and delay, gradually growing and building on each other before falling back, at which point the song takes on a heavier, more distortion-heavy vibe. The song ends as it began, with the raga-like drones, but with a different tone and a minimal beat added. Feedback mania finishes it off, almost like a dessert. "Goodbye, Brainsville" reconfigures some of the sounds and tones of the initial song it makes reference to, chopping the drones into sonic salad and layering on even thicker sheets of ghostly reverb. For good measure, the opening track gets chopped and channeled into a whole new hotrod on the closing track "Sleeper's Concentration Camp Again." This is the lowrider version, stripped of all the screaming feedback and swaddled in ebbing waves of low-end guitar shudder.

This album may come as a surprise to Zeni Geva followers; it certainly doesn't sound anything like ZG's recent output (although it does have some antecedents in the earliest ZG recordings, back when they still borrowed more heavily from Pink Floyd than from Big Black and Swans). It also bears no real resemblance to Leningrad Blues Machine, Tabata's other quirky project, which just released a new album (which i, tragically, have not yet heard). Useful tidbit: If you pick this up and find it to your taste, check out the E+J web site, where they are offering a limited edition companion disc called LAST EXIT TO BRAINSVILLE, which consists of outtakes and alternate versions of the album sessions. I know i'll be checking into it, mon....

Tabata -- "Children of Woods / Meiro" [Fourth Dimension]

Interesting... this is not what i expected. Tabata is, of course, the second axe-mauler for Zeni Geva, who once also fronted jazznoisedamage acid masters Leningrad Blues Machine. I was prepared for something somewhere between the two; what he offers up instead is something akin to an instrumental Slap Happy Humphrey ("Children of Woods"), where freakout noise guitar gives way to pastoral acoustic picking, occasionally overriden by blasts of psychotronic millionnotespersecond twiddling guitar psychosis. "Meiro" is even odder; imagine Final on a blues kick -- quasi-blues lead fortified with an avalanche of sustain over ambient guitar washes and a tolling bell sound. Eerie. Different. Swell. Methinks Tabata should put out a full album and explore this weirdness a bit further.

Tabata -- "Hardcore Space" [Apartment Records]

Seeing as how Zeni Geva is experiencing a bit of down time while they seek out a more amenable record deal, it's not terribly surprising that Tabata -- the twitchy semi-psychedelic guitar who has long toiled in Null's formidable shadow -- should be releasing piles of stuff on his own lately. (In addition to this, he makes appearances solo and with Yoshida from Ruins on a current E+J Recordings sampler to be reviewed next month, and will be releasing a full-length disc on the same label shortly.)

The results may be surprising to those used to Tabata's machinations in the wall-of-fury known as Zeni Geva. The offerings here are of a distinctly more psychedelic nature; "Sleeper's Concentration Camp" contains some of the minimalistic thunder of his main band, given that the entire thing is anchored by a beat and a drone, but the guitars are looped and spacy, turning the song into more of a trance mantra than anything. "Roll Over Mancini" is even more unusual: acoustic guitar, MIDI keyboards emulating Mancini (you know, the guy who bestowed upon us "The Pink Panther Theme," among other things), swelling drones, and tons o' reverb. Pastoral spaciness that ends with ping-pong reverb. Most hep.

The proceedings get a mite noisier with "Electric Reqiem" (his misspelling, not mine), with all sorts of twitchy noises and heavily-reverbed wailing. The sounds are interesting (especially the inclusion of what sounds like a toy keyboard trying desperately to emulate a saxaphone), but ultimately this track is a bit of a throwaway. "Dopamine Overdrive" is a weird one -- irradiated guitars twittering away in the background while quasi-new-wave synths burble in the foreground. Definitely not what one would expect from this man. At times it almost approaches techno. I'm not sure if this is a good development or not... hmmmm.... At the least, it's an interesting artifact in the documentation of Tabata's musical evolution. Now i'm really curious to hear what the full-length disc will sound like....

Every once in a while a record turns up in my review pile that absolutely throws me. I mean generally I'll know within the first five minutes if I like something, sometimes it takes a few spins, but I usually manage to form some sort of an opinion, positive or negative, that I can hack into a review.

Then along comes a record like SHOOTING DOWN THE AIRWAVES. Part of me wants to rip into this disc as a waste of plastic. That's the anti-POP part of me. The part of me that hates the AAA album format and anything associated with it. The part of me that despises bands like the Wild Strawberries or any music that could be played in a book store. And make no mistake, it wouldn't be much of a stretch to imagine a song like "Beauty Burning" wafting through your local Chapters or Barnes & Noble.

However, there's another, less reactionary, part of me that kinda digs the noise-lite moves and groovy bass lines of tunes like "Waiting to Come Down" and "Take Height" or the spacey- drone of "Grounded" On those songs Tagging Satellites kind of sound like a less (and I mean MUCH less) malevolent Pain Teens. [n/a]

Taint -- STRANGE FEELING, SHIT COMING [G.R.O.S.S.]

More savage, distorted bleating from the land of concealed weapons. Four intensely ugly sonic painscapes on one 50-minute cassette, as produced by Akafumi Nakajima's renowned Japanese cassette label. "Strange Feeling" consists of a bed of buzzing electronics overlaid with periodic blasts of white noise, clattering and scraping sounds, and -- the best part of any Taint release -- someone beating the pee out of big metal drums with a big iron bar. Occasionally the drill noises spiral up into the range of the truly piercing and will make you roll around on the floor weeping with agony if you've got it turned up too loud.... I can't tell where that one leaves off and "Shit Coming" starts, but what i take to be the latter is more "traditional" power electronics -- lots of white noise, wavering sound, blasts of pure eardrum meltdown, scratchy/hissy/ugly noises, in the style of Merzbow and Whitehouse.

"Held Together With Scabs" has lots of bumping and thumping -- like a really violent struggle in a room full of delicate objects being shattered one by one -- in addition to some truly ear-piercing electronic whining; not quite as intense as the other tracks but still not likely to be mistaken for ambient anytime soon. It has some more of the metallic percussion Taint does so well. "Inflatable Love Slave Part 1 (Excerpt)" returns to the pure white-noise aggression, with lots of cicilia-stripping high end damage. Taken as a whole, easily one of the best Taint releases and a good starting point for those unfamiliar with loud and sordid world of the noise god from Waco....

Taint -- PIECE-MEAL DISSECTION [self-released]

More throbbing sinus-headache sickness from Waco. Side A features the regular, metronome-like pounding of metallic percussion (what sounds like someone beating an oil drum with an aluminum bat, actually) as jagged broken-glass sounds, sampled snippets of conversation, and gruesome screeching noises roar around the percussion track. The ear damage comes and goes in waves, but never disappears completely, and the clanging percussion continues unabated through the length of the piece, right up until the track disintegrates in a clattering burst of white noise. As with other Taint pieces, there's a lot of sounds in here that are pretty much impossible to identify, and all of them are sinister. This is followed by another long piece filled with chopped conversation and periodic clattering percussion, which is periodically overridden by what sounds like a bandsaw cutting through telephone poles. Some kinky-sounding samples in there too....

Side B has samples of unhealthy-sounding porn over eerie tone-driven pink noise, Whitehouse-style, in addition to the regular assortment of disturbed, unidentifiable noises. This leads into a track of ear-splitting white noise, jumping up and down rhythmically like an overdriven telegraph machine, then another track of white-noise churning in a different fashion with much the same results. The last track is a mix of shrill, piercing feedback, crunching filth, horrible screeching, and various other kinds of bad juju designed to rip your eardrums into confetti -- a masochist's delight. Overall result: much like Whitehouse, only on steroids. Painful.

Taint from Waco, Tejas again (home of the Barbeque Pope Koresh), with more sonic unpleasantness. This unlabeled cassette release comes in a polybag with a printed insert that aims at offensiveness and generally succeeds, although the degree to which it does depends on your hardcore gay bondage porn, i guess....

Taint's style combines elements of early Whitehouse and the high-end damage of Merzbow with lots of ugly screeching, disturbed metallic percussion, and samples taken largely from gay porn, as far as i can tell. This tape is low on the percussion and heavy on the screeching samples, particularly on the opening cut "rosebud," which begins with grotesque sexual patter before exploding into a long, jagged swirl of screeching white noise. One of the best tracks also has the most offensive title -- "boyrape" -- and there a repetitive rhythm of heavy pink noise underpins a whirling montage of ugly sounds that rise and fall in intensity. "berdella's fist" and "bathroom cock" are just loud and painful, while "justmeat" is a crunched-out painfest in which one loud, static noise riff is augmented by a growing, tumbling avalanche of destructive noise and pained voices in the background. On "thick fist," the crumbling dissonance and screams are underpinned by strange tones that float in and out of the mix, finally merging into a wall of screech and rumble. Early Whitehouse-style pink noise and throbbing "rhythm" surfaces on "new to shit scene," although it's far more dynamic here (to me, anyway) than most of Whitehouse's stuff. The dense wall of static and screeching on "asswomb" is more reminiscent of Merzbow, complete with abrupt cuts to silence (but only for a millisecond or so) designed to disrupt your nervous system. The Whitehouse style of throbbing pink noise, only cranked up to ridiculous extremes, pops up again on the last track "expensive tastes," a brief taste of excess that rounds out the tape. Truly damage-intensive stuff....

Taint / Smell & Quim / Con-Dom -- PERVERSE / ORAL / THE BEAUTIFUL [Red Stream]

If you're feeling generous this year, and you think customs doesn't appreciate the finer things, Red Stream has a treat for you. Customs agents are sure to get a thrill from this triple-CD, a keenly tasteful excursion into utter depravity from three of the leading perverts of our time. It's what falls into the category of all-in-one: perversity, twisted obsession and hate.

To be fair, the individual elements that go into this work are not particularly 'bad' by noise standards, but it's the thought that counts. And a lot of thought has obviously gone into this one. Visually-stimulating snaps, including an attractively-rendered damsel-in-distress, cover a well- padded cardboard box. Each plastic-wrapped CD comes with a full-size CD- insert and each artist takes this opportunity to unveil his own twisted vision. Taint is especially eloquent in his liner notes, a heartwarming tribute to the enlightened philosophy of 'perversion at all costs.' "The more repulsive they are, the better," he notes, and I'm sure he speaks for us all on that count.

Always the pushy sort, Taint articulates the first vision: PERVERSE. PERVERSE consists of several short but pointed scumnoise bilgeries. The first, "Guttural Pleasures," finds Taint returning to his traditional style: massive grating metallic screech unloads from every which end while various wretches communicate their perverse pleasures in the background. Then things get a bit sick. "Perverse I" posits harshass evisceral commiseration over the more expectant low-brow, bungplug buckling. I have no idea what's going on back there but it sounds damn saucy. The theme continues for much of the remainder of the CD, only progressively lower on the frequency pole; way beneath the gutter, and some several levels below the sewer. Low-end perversity eats up the lingering transitional tastes, all culminating in an out-take from the Victimology manifesto: Amber. Our man twisted-shit closes out with a bonus sampled soundbite featuring a thoughtful dame who defends and commends the occasional liberties and excesses men seem prone to take. 'Pervs are encouraged to contact Taint,' and no wonder.

ORAL offers a closer peak at Smell & Quim' favourite fetishisms and even endeavours to answer the leading question 'where did I put my earplugs?' England's most famous degenerates initiate a heads-on, no- utensils-barred exploration of overtweeked contact mikes and previously- neglected cavities. Richard Ramirez provides loopfuck accompaniment on "Mouth": washbasin fanatics invite tinfoil pajama throngers to partake of philosophical discourse and bodily fluid. "Attempted Mutation Without Jacket" is a concrete collage of creme boulez, military butterfly collars, poisonous diarrhea, York holler, stolen infants, fundamentalist perversion and Dennis Cohen, all swinging together on rusted chariots and crowded subway tunnels. Kapotte Musiek gets in on the fun for a frolicsome dose of repetitive buzz-cut power electronics titled "The Recovery of the Thighs." Next, Expose Your Eyes go down on some "Athletico Spunk," most of which gets immersed in pools of wriggling larvae before ricochetting down vertical drainpipes plugged up with anal leakage. "Matthew Bower's Shitpump" also sees a little droning action, while cavernous underbellows gloat with dark glee. Finally, acid fudgcicle hum-piddle pieces together fragments of the above and then, with Tea Culture's blessing, veers off into disco land.

All the loose ends -- and Smell & Quim do that to ends -- come together on THE BEAUTIFUL. Three unsettling sermons call the faithful to arms and rain all the shitty glory of hell down upon their perverted brains. First, a stirring rendition of "America the Beautiful" gives way to plucked repetitive birdsong, heavy breathing and militaristic percussion complements of Militia. Con-Dom ascends his pulpit and spends thirty minutes spewing fire and brimstone with all the authority, wrath and incomprehensibility of God. The faithful will, of course, easily identify this as a withering condemnation of "The Beautiful," but just in case we didn't get the message -- and it is pretty incoherent the first time out -- two shorter tracks nail the point home. Glittering, crystal-driven swallow- squeals pour out the smoldering gates of fundamentalism, low-ebb bongos eke out a presence, while a Southern baptist-type reverend ministers to his flock. Soon Con-Dom takes up the chant: "Heed my warning," he admonishes, then "Get right with God," a chilling intonation with obsessively ironic conviction. The final sermon features funkier rhythms, flitting insect chit-chatter and mild, somewhat sporadic, controlled overload, all backed by some good Southern soul. Sure, Praise the Lord, but remember: before the Day comes, you're gonna suffer. Punk. [JK]

Seriously disturbed shit. The band plays like a spooky and depressed hillbilly country ensemble, but then they envelop the entire thing in sheets of white noise. It sounds like they're standing in an open field, playing as big dudes pound on sheet metal behind them. This is what the DELIVERANCE soundtrack would have sounded like if the wall-eyed hillbillies with banjos had been weaned on Einsteurzende Neubaten instead of Flatt 'n Scruggs. This is creepy in the same way Current 93's DOG'S BLOOD RISING is creepy, only louder. Much, much louder. I greatly approve of this aesthetic. [pym imitating rkf]

This is REALLY LOUD. The title is also so unspeakably cool that the actual music doesn't technically matter, it's automatically cool just because of the title. There are eighteen separate tracks, but it's so loud and overblown and distorted and just basically grotesque-sounding that unless you pay attention, it all comes across as a continuous blare of activity blown up to white-noise proportions. I don't know what the noise source is, but it's mainly feedback of some sort constantly hovering right on the edge of breaking up. Their rhythms and aesthetic are vaguely gothic, leaning toward medieval even, but their mysterious industrial folk rhythms are bathed in acres of droning reverb and mixed to be seriously-treble heavy, with almost no low end, and accompanied by the high-volume noise antics. The noise here isn't from the cutup, exploding-nova-star school of overprocessed sound; rather, it comes from the natural properties of instruments that have been recorded entirely too loud, then played back even louder. Did I mention this is loud? Imagine Current 93 as mixed by Merzbow and you have some sense of the potential for heavy evil here. [pym imitating rkf]

The aesthetic terrorists The Anti-Naturals once again lift their umbrellas and sewing machines to the sky with a new incarnation, known as Tart. Comprised of Scott and Karla from Idea Fire Company and Graham of The Shadow Ring, Tart have given us a real head-scratcher of a puzzle as their debut album. While there are lengthy pieces of electronic manipulation and some moments of ambiance, the bulk of Radio Orange is made up of nauseating and truly surrealist sound collage. Listening to the sounds that make up the two part "The Rabbits of Mantgarau" is probably not the most engaging way to spend a Friday, but try to imagine the room all this is going on in... water is being poured into buckets while a glass bottle repeatedly rolls down the inclined kitchen table without ever landing. The ceiling is now leaking into a bucket which just materialized, and sounds to be quite full already. Someone is babbling a repeating nonsense syllable on the TV, someone keeps punching a wall in the other room, and just when it seemed that someone is getting ready to scream out their frustration, a bag of coins falls to the ground. Even more out in the woods is "Woman in Her Womb," the most recognizable sounds of which are Karla's moaning, which sound like she is either in labor or ecstasy. Again, the pipes are leaking everywhere, someone seems to be trying to wedge an oven tray into a spot far too narrow to hold it from about four directions simultaneously, a duck seems none-too-pleased to have been placed in charge of delivery, someone keeps having to move a dining room chair to the other side of the room. No, that's not right, put it back over here... no, over there. Clouds of cumulous feedback keep hovering in the high domed ceiling (which is still leaking), the duck is catching a cold, someone's been coughing in the metal reverberation room again, and in general, everybody seems to be anxious to be moving heavy furniture.

The variety of the tracks is what makes items like this even more wholly disorienting and alien. "Chopin In A Shell" hearkens back to classic Throbbing Gristle recordings, with its 20 minutes of churning, off balance synth shards, which splice quite oddly halfway through into the "bing! bing!" one gets when one's door is ajar (hell, in this world, the idea of a door as a glass container is about the most reassuringly commonplace event that may happen all night). The final track resembles the Residents circa '79 as remixed by Tod Dockstader, and "Astride Such Delicate Pins" shows similarities to Graham's other side project, the voice-manipulation/collage oriented Elklink. Even a atmospheric and spacey track like "The Mums" fits in on this album, if only because we're thankful to actually hear something we understand.

Like any piece of art, sound or otherwise, this will not reveal everything to you on even the first ten listenings. It's inscrutable in the best ways, and it's forging a path towards new glorious times, not with an arsenal of newfangled electronic gadgets, but with a harsh and demanding reappraisal of what's been missing from experimental composition to this point, and filling that need. Miss out on this, and be prepared for some heavy ribbing in 20 years time when you're guiltily picking up the CD reissue of this on the "Innovators of New Music" series. [cms]

It's taken a while, but FINALLY... the record gets reviewed. A joint release between Chainsaw Records and Candy-Ass Records, the two itty-bitty labels run by Donna Dresch and Jody Bleyle respectively, this is a pretty solid record (in more ways than one -- unlike cheap-ass Matador and the Helium album, CR/C-A laid out the cash and made this THICK vinyl, no bendy-bendy crap here, this vinyl's so thick and heavy that it's probably bulletproof). The songs are mostly short, fast, and totally cranked-out. Of course, the twangy surf guitar thing sounds kind of bizarre next to the stop-and-start crunch fury, but i think that's supposed to be point... and it WORKS, so hah! New addition Marci Martinez adds a serious amount of thump in the drum department, Kaia still sounds great (and intensely pissed off on "Hate the Christian Right"), while Donna and Jody remain the backbone of the band's careening, punked-out core. Forget about those goofy fools in Green Day, this is real punk... which inevitably means that they sometimes thrash around wildly for no apparent reason and out of control, but for the most part they manage to keep the thunderball firmly on the tracks. The lyrics (for which they helpfully provided a lyric sheet this time, useful in light of the fact that while Kaia's voice sounds great, you can't tell a damn thing she's saying) are the usual punk stuff, only with a "lesbionic" (their word, not mine) spin, which should hardly be a surprise or anything. It's too bad almost nobody will hear this while Green Day will continue to sell millions, thus proving my opinion that the vast majority of the world has abombinable taste.

Team Dresch: "Hand Grendade / Endtime Relay / Molasses in January" [Kill All Rock Stars]

Massively cool single from Donna Dresch of about a million bands, Jody from Hazel, and Kaia (from Adickdid). This is NOT what I expected; for some reason I thought this was going to be, like, um, hardcore punk or something, but NO, it's actually closer to "pop" (well, there IS a punky kind of edge to it). "Hand Grenade" is the big catchy one, mostly due to Donna's nifty guitar; sure wish I could tell what Kaia's singing, though (but she sounds lovely while she's singing it, whatever it is). "Endtime Relay" is a little closer to what I had expected: fuzzed out guitar and a racing, racing, RACING bassline, most peppy! "Molasses in January" is slow and kind of weird... parts keep popping up that you don't expect as it shifts gears every so often just to keep you guessing, all to good effect. As for what the songs actually SOUND like, well, Donna sounds like she's been taking lessons from Rebecca Gates in places, but otherwise comparisons are difficult -- they're their OWN WOMEN, all right? None of this copycat crap for Team D....

Oh, and the cover is totally inspired and utterly hilarious, but I can't tell you what it is. (That would spoil the fun....) Buy it and find out for yourself....

More weird shit from Broadrick, Martin, and co. This is an odd compilation of tracks from the ELECTRIC LADYLAND compilations and the CYCLOPS, PHOBIC, and UNMANNED 12" singles. (So where's the shit from BABYLON SEEKER?) The tricky part comes in that i'm not sure these are unmolested tracks -- i think they've taken the tracks from those singles and further perverted them. It's hard to say, since i don't have the singles in question (they're kinda hard to fuckin' find), and info is, as always, kind of spotty. But that's of no matter to you, right? You just want to know if it's worth your trouble to hunt this down and make it your own, yes? Exactly. So the answer is... uh, a definite maybe. The material here is kind of disjointed (it was recorded in bits and chunks for different singles, so that's to be expected, eh?), and none of it is as mind-shattering as their previous full-length album RE-ENTRY. But it's certainly cool enough for what it is. There's some bad-ass beats (especially on "Intercranial" and "Fistfunk"), lots of "what the hell is it?" noises, hypnotic frippery, and doomed ghost vox, and it's certainly weirder than your average techno album, that's for sure. In fact, i'd debate that the band is really a techno band, but that's a question for another time. The bottom line is this: if you're already hep to the band, you probably should get this simply because it collects up so much hard-to-find shit. Really, you'll go insane trying to track down all the singles, and there's sure some messed-up noisy beat hate going on here, surely enough to fulfill your death fetish, right? (A tip for those who've only heard the first album GHOSTS: Techno-Animal currently sounds absolutely nothing like that album. Be forewarned.)

A journey into nothingness. Time at a total standstill. Listening to this record is like going into a coma. Wave upon wave of deadly riffs and agonizing vocals. Drums that are beating you into the ground, never stopping. The atmosphere that this creates is dehumanizing, bleak, leaving me wanting more. POSERS BEWARE! [ttbmd]

Richard Teitelbaum - GOLEM [Tzadik]

This recording is billed as an "interactive" multimedia opera. It's based on the mythical tale of the Golem, a zombie built from a pile of mud and ashes and the use of Jewish mysticsm to call upon the spirits of the dead. The story of the Golem goes back to 1580 in Prague. In response to a rise in racism, hate and violence, the Golem was intended as a devoted protector of the Jews of Prague. Mute and unhappy, in the end, the Golem went amok. This opera was recorded live in performance at the Ijsbreker in Amsterdam. The music itself is a mix of avant garde classical composition structures and traditional Jewish melodies. The result delivers a deeply emotional dialogue with the audience as the story unfolds. [yol]

Tel Basta -- LICKERISH (Circular Reasoning)

Tel Basta started out under the name Bast. The first recording I heard of theirs was on the original ARRHYTHMIA compilation back in 1990. The track involves a tribalistic tabla phrase backed up with primitive synthesizer programming that has a slightly evil, angry edge to it. From there, they changed the name to Tel Basta, dropped the overtly scary musical presentation and took up a bit more relaxed, loving vibe. LICKERISH draws a straight line from their eponymous 1992 release where all of the trappings of a heavily orchestrated, but intentionally beautiful, grandiose and deep gothic sound are present. There are moments on that album, but there is a more than subconscious urge the label it as a decadent attempt to emulate sounds that other bands of a similar flavor were pioneering at the time. While this new album doesn't really do much to forge new ground, it shows what a band can do to enrich and mature their sound and their capabilities. My big complaint with LICKERISH is in the placing of the vocals in the mix. In general, I have become very ambivalent about the use of vocals. Unless the artist is doing something truly unique and interesting, it always seems to come across as overstated and trite. Perhaps if the vocals were a tad buried in the mix -- so I could hear the rest of the instrumentation -- I would have been less concerned with its inclusion. Tel Basta make some nice ear candy, but it's time for them to explore a dialectic that evolves from a place inside themselves. [yol]

Telepherique / Contagious Orgasm / MSBR -- CONTACT # 1 [MSBR Records]

Weird sounds from the other side of the ocean... Japan, to be precise. MSBR and the other two units collected here are not really part of the power-noise thing; instead, they seem to be more interested in assembling strange soundscapes of heavily processed noises in a fairly ambient fashion (except much of the time it's a bit too bone-rattling to really be ambient, heh). There are six tracks here (laid down on slablike vinyl -- sturdy stuff, mon); one solo work by each of the three contributors, one of MSBR and Telepherique, one by MSBR and Contagious Orgasm, and finally a track by the two that aren't MSBR.

Telepherique opens with "Weltgeschehen" -- all swirling sand noises, babbling conversation, pinging sounds, and other eerie effluvia. Coolness. Contagious Orgasm and MSBR collide on "Operation Crossroads," combining found sounds, a steady beat, a galloping synth (???) rhythm, disembodied voices, and other chaotic elements to create the picture of a mysterious event in the making... a civilization in flux at the crossroads. MSBR's "Fire Wall" closes side one with a devastating blowout of screaming white noise channeled through galvanized steel piping, like an avalanche in progress on fast-forward and intercut with bursts of static, insane chittering, subsonic levitation, and more structural mayhem than you can shake a Pixie Stick at. Loud, intense, and godhead if you happen to worship Merzbow-style electrodamage.

Side two takes much the same approach, only in different configurations (but employing a similar sonic approach). Lots of throbbing bassbeat on "Untitled," a collaboration between MSBR and Telepherique, accented by lots of spiraling phaser sounds, crunchy grinding filth, and various other forms of textural grief. Contagious Orgasm's "Thematic Apperception Test" is interesting; a minimalist layer of sound overlaid with vaguely rhythmic clattering sounds (i think it's the sound of billard balls connecting), marginally intelligible scraps of conversation, and occasional grotesque noises all come together to be interpreted any way you will (hence, i suspect, the title). The mind-blower of the disc, at least in volume and intensity, is the Telepherique/Contagious Orgasm construction "08.05.1945- 08.05.1995" (contemplate that title for a moment if you need any doubt that this material is definitely Japanese in origin). Scary sheets of hissing sound, cryptic shouted vocals, ominous throbbing, a gradual crescendo of fury... eek! A really solid record all the way through, in other words. El scopo it outo....

Six long, grim exercises in dark slo-mo riffing so thoroughly drenched in feedback and reverb that it only marginally resembles music anymore, sounding instead like lost souls wailing in the earthquake taking place far, far down in the abyss. This is scary stuff, somewhere between slow-as-fuck Khanate (minus the psychotic shrieking) and Unearthly Trance, with a lot of Skullflower / etc. thrown in for good measure. All the action comes courtesy of Christopher Walton, of the now-defunct ritual / ambient drone group Endvra. The six tracks here are a natural extension of Endvra's drone, but laced with serious doom and black metal tinges, resulting in a dark and ominous sound."crown of horns" has beautiful waves of diabolical feedback shimmering and wailing like the haunted wind roaring through bare, dead trees over a buzzing riff so downtuned and buried in reverb that it sounds like machines breaking down. The brooding minimalism of "lord heroin (has surely come)" may be too much for some, but the ringing feedback and shuddering drone tones in "with the wings of god above you" are forbidding and majestic, and too dark for anything but the old school, dig? And then there's the wailing drone that opens "ten stars ten horns," a lovely and sinister sound that's eventually overlaid with more feedback and drone, growing steadily thicker and more oppressive; a similar strategy gives "shrines i-iii" the otherwordly feel of a ritual in progress after midnight, the kind of ritual designed to call up manifestations and gods better left sleeping. Powerful stuff, and if you're down with the doom 'n drone of bands like Sunn O))), Earth, Maeror Tri, Troum, and Cold Electric Fire, you should be getting in on the ground floor here while you still have the chance. The first edition is limited to 50 or 100, I forget which -- it comes in a black dvd case and is largely gone already. A second pressing in a white dvd case is coming shortly, so keep your eyes open....

Teuber is credited on the cover as playing a tenor saxophone, but this is a lie. Sun Ra has informed me that he actually plays alto sax. Sun Ra has also assured me that this wee error will be fixed in subsequent pressings, so we can safely move past this revelation now and into the music itself. The disc consists of nine collaborations between Teuber and Paul Rucker on cello, with the sax lines generally more prominent than the cello. The sound is sparse and uncluttered, sometimes even droning; on cuts such as "Pussy in the Sky," the cello also takes on a percussive element, providing a more pronounced rhythmic background over which Teuber solos at will. On "Some Are More Equal," Rucker's hypnotic bass figure provides the structure while Teuber makes odd percussive sounds before beginning to solo in earnest, and percussive bass plucking drives "Palmetto" as well. The lack of formal percussion makes some tracks like "Day Two" (and its variant "Day One") feel weightless and unfettered, their solos like repetitive lines of melody drifting slowly by, creating a spare and desolate vista of minimalist sound. Other tracks are busy enough to make percussion superfluous. The control exhibited by both participants, and the clarity of the recording, make this release a strong collection of intriguing duets.

This is interesting. Therefore is a duo (i think) from Olympia (home of the Spinanes!) whose stated objective is to "provide 'music for the masses' through long, free performances; public site sound installations; unique, one of a kind, free cassette tapes; and progressively priced mass produced materials." So while i don't know how much they sell this disc for, i'm betting it's not much. I say it's interesting because this comes on the heels of much discussion (on my part) with various souls in the "biz" about digital online distribution and the philosophy of free music... talk about synchronicity....

So what are they? On this disc, chaotic explorations of found sound and noise. Which is intriguing since Olympia is not what jumps to mind as an experimental scene, eh? But experimental they are. Over the space of twelve untitled tracks (they're differentiated in the CD digipak sleeve by bands of color) they whip up an impressive array of sounds cribbed from man and nature, coaxed out of efx pedals, and assembled into solid chunks of musique concrete. Some of the sound passages (especially on the first and third tracks) are quite harsh and grinding; other sounds are just plain painful (the high-speed wailing of track four, for instance). But whatever the sounds are, they don't stick around long -- the soundscape is constantly evolving, changing, shifting gears. Occasionally the sound abruptly cuts off into bursts of silence, only to resume even thicker and more distorted than before. Often it's like a piledriver of blinding sound, possibly the sound automobiles make when they crash into concrete pylons, only drawn out and chopped up over the course of a full CD. Liberating or exhaustin, depending on your musical politics.

The presence of so much noise raises the question of how much they have in common with "traditional" noise and power electronics genres, and the answer is: not much. They certainly don't appear to be politically motivated (outside of possibly subscribing to the "free music" movement, although that's never stated in the CD booklet), they avoid the crude and offensive graphics/titles so frequently favored by most power-electronics adherents, and they don't appear to be aligned with any particular noise scene. Amazingly enough, it appears they just like making ear-splitting noises and want to share them with the world. Imagine that, chopped up sound with no agenda....

TMU: I am going to confess right now that the band sent me this tape like, eons ago, and it has been sitting here waiting to be reviewed for reasons that remain unclear, except that possibly i am a lazy bastard. So we're gonna play it and it ought to be good....

TTBMD: Very sparse horn action here on "kedge." Lo-fi action. I like this a lot.

TMU: I'm already lost about where one song ends and another begins so i'm not even going to fuck with that. I like what they're doing here, the minimalist school of thought. If you turned this down it could be ambient music for background listening, but if you turn it up there's plenty of sawteeth to its sound waves.

TTBMD: Repetitive.... Delay... delay... guitar... guitar....

TMU: It's a hazard of working in the minimalist school, true. Sort of like being a minimalist architect -- if your only building blocks are a circle and a square, you're gonna build some mighty funny-looking houses.

TTBMD: Uhhhh..... they've calmed down a little on this new track.

TMU: It's the killer drone of doom! Oooo!

TTBMD: Oh yes, it's getting louder, then quieter....

TMU: Rising and falling....

TTBMD: Acoustic guitar! Humming! Vibrations!

TMU: Good, good, good, good vibrations....

TTBMD: The sound quality's really poor, though.

TMU: Well, i'm pretty sure it is homegrown and maybe their manuals were in Swahili, but i like it. Lo-fi is not a problem. The mood is coming across... they got their mojo workin' in the house of love. Can't you feel it?

TTBMD: I feel something. I think it's heartburn. I've been drinking too much lately. I ate two packs of Rolaids yesterday.

TMU: The horns on this song are really loud. The horns of destiny have convened so that all may hear! Is that a pipe organ back there?

TTBMD: Yeah, but it's one of those really cheap old-school ones, like your grandma used to have in her spare bedroom. You can get some very good sounds from these....

TMU: My grandmother has one of those right in her living room.

TTBMD: You need to take that and get it out of grandma's house.

TMU: Eventually... eventually....

TTBMD: Let's hear side two. (they switch sides)

TMU: This is certainly a gritty sound, to be sure. It's called "ebb" in keeping with their ocean motif... i guess this is supposed to be like the water lapping on the rocks at low tide or something, right?

TTBMD: Horns! For... everyone.

TMU: They do have a stylin' horn player. I'll bet he wears a big cream-colored suit with wide shoulders when he bleats away for this group.

TTBMD: Sure. It's very minimal. Kind of like jazz, sort of....

TMU: But, you know, with not so many notes. Like a rhapsody in D Minor after taking away all the minor keys. Or something like that.

TTBMD: I am ready to move on to the next review, o my brother.

This is why DEAD ANGEL likes getting demos... the joy of hearing obscure unsigned stuff that actually sounds better and more interesting than most of the albums currently being released by signed acts. An American industrial/goth band (and much more) that often comes across like a cross between the better parts of Skinny Puppy and Cocteau Twins, this is one of their earlier works: they now have an album, THREAD, available from Arts Industria. On this one, the album opens and closes with two versions ("Dog's Eyes God" and God Sized Dog" respectively) of a snippet of white noise. The opening piece gives way to "Cocytus," a danceable track with a percolating synth line and a strong sense of dynamics, with 4AD-ish vocals from Jeni Sheldahl. "Clutching at the Sun" is moodier and initially less pounding, but quickly gathers steam, with cool lyrics like "You're so warm/ I could drown in you forever / I could swim until my spirit fucking bloats." That segues into the instrumental "Nobody's Taunt," and "Phosphene," another istrumental, opens side two with a bass rumble capable of making your speakers rise to the ceiling. "Cycles" is dark and propulsive, eerie stuff, but the real secret weapon of the tape is the nearly ten-minute "Paved In Skin," an apocalyptic roar of scary samples, noise, and destructive percussion designed to fuse your synapses. Powerful stuff indeed!

Thirst -- THROUGH THE WIRE [Iguana Records]

Anthemic rock that beats the pee out of anything being flogged on MTV these days, particularly on "Climb" and "Eskimos," which -- with more justice in this world -- would be hit singles right now instead of the swill that currently spews forth from the radio. This is pretty much straight-ahead rock with swell vocals, sort of like Live minus the pretentious need to be grandiose (or the silly haircuts, for that matter); these arrangements are not particularly avant-garde or anything, but they are clever enough to keep from becoming pedestrian, and the four musicians here are sharp and forceful enough to make simplicity exciting, which is fine by me. Other fave moments: The soaring vox and musical introspection of "End of the Millenium," the quirky swirl of "Gyrate," the ominous and full-bodied funk of "twister," and the blinding heavy reverb guitar on "sun." This is not the most "out there" of albums (in other words, it's not a dissonant freak- out festival of fear and loathing like, say, Skullflower or something), but it's certainly well-done and in its higher moments, powerful and passionate (they have the emoting thing down cold... is this perhaps more accessible emo-core?). Worth your time when you're seeking an momentary escape from the taxing joys o' dissonance.

This Is Not Here -- "Overman / Sleep Walking" [Surreal Records]

Sort of like the Smiths, except that the singer doesn't sound anything like Morrisey and the guitar player has much bigger balls than Johnny Marr (or his guitar does, anyway). Lots of tremelo fury in the background of "Overman," though. Overall effect is kind of like, um, well, imagine if Robert Smith actually sang (with some force, in fact) instead of howling like a wounded luv-puppy, and the rest of the Cure played one of their dirge-like tunes while pretending to be a really heavy, heavy band with bigass guitars. "Sleep Walking" is more of the same, just different subject; both are catchy little shits. Sort of "alternative" without being goofy or whiny or wimpy or any of that bad stuff that no sensible band would want to be. Plus the rhythm section is so totally spot-on that they blink in 3/4 time during their REM sleep. This is well worth checking out... very interesting... catchy... all the good things a band should be... plus I'll bet they're real energetic live too. (The drummer apparently used to play for Gang Green.) Plenty of crunch here for MY taste....

More darkwave -- no surprise given that it's on Middle Pillar -- but this is a far more rhythmic and percussive brand of darkwave. The third release by James Izzo, a self-described "cybernetic musician" with an unusual outlook and arresting appearance (he was born with hands and his prosthetic metal hooks are a prominent part of his stage persona), this comes on the heels of an EP (IN SWEET SORROW) featuring Jarboe on vox and a remixing project for Coil. While the album is firmly in darkwave territory, he differs from many in the genre by often focusing more on the rhythmic elements than the gothic ones -- the opening track "The Horror of the Undeserved Gift" features pounding beats, rhythmic sample loops and keyboards, and "A Cloud Without Form" is built largely on subterranean percussion and loops of demolished sound. A similar motif, used to somewhat less punishing effect, runs through "Biomechanical Intercourse" as well. Powerful beats and difficult sound loops permeate "The Malformed Heart," and the third portion of "The Horror of the Undeserved Gift" (subtitled "Pain Compensation") is almost nothing but a brief snippet of screeching noises and deformed loops that segues into the album's first "traditional" darkwave song, a duet version of "In Sweet Sorrow," in which Izzo duets with Jarboe. "Blue Darkness (Orchestral Mix") features plenty of bombast, as its remix title suggests -- lots of billowing violins and forbidding tympani. More cryptic noise loops and rhythmic destruction show up on "2 Wards" and "Contours," which makes the sparkling piano ballad that follows ("Saudade") a nice change of pace. The album closes with "New Horizons," another slice of rhythmic propulsion buoyed by unusual and often dissonant sounds mixed in with the droning keyboards, a nearly ambient track built on a static rhythm. An interesting album that brings some new textures into the darkwave territory.

Thru the Tulips -- AFTERNOONS AND PLANS [self-released]

Cool guitar/synth pop, catchy stuff. Bassist/singer John Lowe, guitarist Mike Oria, and drummer Randy Zamora have put together a solid piece of work here. Aside from the sheer technical proficiency of the players (which is considerable), the two main things going for this tape are the slightly-skewed lyrics about ordinary relationships and some highly-developed songwriting skills. The overall effect falls somewhere between the same vibe generated by bands like Heavenly, the Spinanes, or Liz Phair -- which is not to say they sound the same; the band has its own distinct personality.

The high point is "Where's Sharon," which -- in a much, much better world -- would be in permanent rotation at the top of every radio playlist instead of the horribly inferior and faceless junk currently clogging up the airwaves. Besides, how can you not like a band capable of coming up with lyrics like "when I dreamed of meeting you, it was/ less expensive than it proved to be / not in a financial way, I still have / all my t- shirts / but no sanity"? Total coolness....

Unfortunately, this is all kind of after the fact, since the band doesn't exist any longer. The band members went their separate ways a while ago, much to my distress... BUT, John Lowe, the main instigator here, has a NEW band (which might even have a name before much longer, you never know), from which we can hope to hear more great things.

This is electronic music for people who claim they can't stand electronic music -- an album whose use of electronic sounds so closely rivals the sound of acoustic instruments that most would never realize it was composed and played on a PC. I don't know much about the circumstances under which this was recorded (in Timosoara, Romania, the home of Thy Veils composer Daniel Dorobantu), but the sound is excellent and spacious, the sound of a full symphony orchestra captured during a particularly dramatic performance. This is the man's third album, so he's had a while to refine the machinery, and it shows. The album's nineteen songs are more like movements in the sinister soundtrack to a foreign gothic film, presented in a style (and sometimes sound) reminiscent of mid-seventies Tangerine Dream, in which electronic instruments are used to recreate the orchestral sounds of an classical ensemble in service of droning harmonic soundscapes. Slow and deliberate sheets of sound create powerful, resonating musical tapestries of harmonic and melodic soundtrack music -- the songs / movements are minimalist in their structure and form, but richly abundant in harmonic tones and highly evocative melodies. The existence of such an album bolsters my long-standing belief that talent outweighs equipment every time (if you don't believe me, imagine Mozart with a cheap Casio versus your rhythm/melody-impaired Aunt Claudine with a symphony orchestra at her disposal: which one do you think is going to win?) -- the supposed limitations of recording with a PC are no match for a composer who knows what to do with the technology he has at hand.

Nearly all of the music on this disc is instrumental ("Desorien" and "Vacuous Seas" are the only exceptions, as far as i can see) and possessed of a dark, eerie beauty that's all the more exotic for being from Romania. The classical motifs and structures are elegant and well-executed (it would be interesting to know how it was all programmed, but such knowledge isn't necessary simply to appreciate the disc's sound), and this music certainly doesn't sound like the product of a bored dude fiddling around in his bedroom. Dorobantu's talent as a composer is sufficient that it may well make him known outside of Romania -- this is apparently his third album, and if the other two are anywhere near as good (i gather from quotes pulled for the promo thingy that they probably are), he shouldn't remain obscure much longer. Followers of electronic music with classical roots would be well-advised to investigate, although i don't know how freely available it is outside of Romania....

The 15 tracks on this self-released effort (available via CD Baby) are not so much songs as they are short bursts of repetitive and spooky sounds, suitable for chillin' and dronin'. Using mainly thumb pianos (possibly treated), broken guitars, toy keyboards, and various efx, R. P. Collier manages to create a wide variety of sounds, frequently highly hypnotic sounds at that. Voice, synth, and a drum machine come into play form time to time, but mainly it's all about the mighty drone, endless and neverless. This is the music of the Navidson House, o my trembling li'l goat-children. Dark and spooky, ambient and sometimes melodic, like the reverberating sounds of animals and insects carrying out secret rituals in the vestibule of an abandoned church. Dancing tunes from a mechanical forest on the edge of oblivion. Soothing tones from a ghost world, occasionally broken by rigid beats from the drum machine as disturbing sounds lurk in the background. Such a soothing sound on the verge of paranoia, suitable for your next dark and contemplative moment in the chill room....

So what's the deal here? Where's the rest of the band? Where's Helium? What's suddenly possessed Mary to go the solo route? Oh wait... these songs are a fair bit different from Helium's usual moves. Still recognizably the product o' Timony's obsession with mysticism and dungeons and unicorns and stuff, there are some distinct nods away from Helium's standard sound, especially on the opening piano "ballad" "The Dungeon Dance." But then "Poison Moon" sounds like it was lifted whole and entire from the last Helium album, complete with those weird suspended chords she favors so much... so what gives? I'm lost, mon....

So i guess the question on everybody's mind is: Does this solo effort rank up there with Helium stuff? Well, i guess so... hell, it's not that different from the last Helium album, although there's a lot more emphasis on piano as the primary melody-maker, as opposed to Helium's wall o' droning guitars. Lyrically, the album continues Timony's growing fixation on mystical hippie shit, which i find mildly annoying -- i much preferred it when she wrote about people as opposed to dungeons, mountains, and bumblebees -- but whatever, it's her bag, eh? Musically, the album is solid enough, although i have to admit that i strongly favor the stuff that reminds me of Helium ("Poison Moon," "The Bell," "Painted Horses," "13 Bees," and especially "The Golden Fruit," one of the best songs on the disc and one that really should have been on  Helium album). In fact, while listening to this disc, it's hard to keep from wondering why it's a solo effort and not a Helium release, which is somewhat distracting.

There are some interesting, different moments -- "Whisper From the Tree" is is an eerie (and brief) mix of acoustic guitar, plodding drums, and strange background noises that creates a certain mood and a sound that is fairly different from the rest of the album. There are other brief snippets -- songlets, if you will -- that serve the same function, and they're often more interesting than the songs they bridge. Part of the problem here is there's very little ground here that she hasn't covered on previous Helium albums, and three-quarters of the album sounds like outtakes from the most recent Helium releases. In fact, it occurs to me that perhaps that's why this album exists -- perhaps it's a way to collect up material that was originally intended for those albums but were dropped for space considerations. I don't know if that's actually true or not, but that's sure what it sounds like....

Bottom line: regardless of the fact that Timony's doing the work herself, this is essentially a Helium album in disguise, and it's Helium in a holding pattern. More than anything else, it's a continuation of sorts of THE MAGIC CITY... which is not such a bad thing, but i was expecting something different, eh?

Tinsel -- I WISH THE TALKIES NEVER WOULD HAVE COME AROUND [Keyhole Records]

This EP is a surprise entry from left field... and a hard one to classify, at that. Tinsel is apparently one Michael Sell plus invisible assistance from time to time (Michelle Whitlock is credited with violin on "Wax Covered Face" but for all i know Sell played everything else on the disc), and music Tinsel produces is... is... uh, maybe lounge-driven drone music is the best way to put it. The opening track, "Neurotic Dancer," reminds me greatly of the brilliant Thymme Jones solo album WHILE, especially in the piano parts, and the overall feel is not unlike something Cheer Accident might create in a really contemplative mood (at might have on THE WHY ALBUM, anyway, the closest they've ever come to a pop moment), except that Sell is a much different breed of singer -- he has a deep, mournful voice well-suited for droning in the style of early Leonard Cohen. In fact, "Castaway" could almost be an outtake from Cohen's LOVE AND HATE (and here you thought Godflesh thought of that title first, eh?). His songs are deceptively simple, usually centering on an endless repeated motif over which he drones ominious lyrics and occasionally throws in odd samples and other distractions in the background to keep things from getting too monotonous. (Oddly enough, the tinkling piano part on "Castaway" -- the whole tempo and rhythm, actually -- makes me wonder if he's copping a bit from old Don MacLean albums, bizarrely enough.) There's a deliberate lo-fi element running through the recordings, which i like -- the hissy intro to "Silent Canyon," the incidental bumps and thumps throughout, the uberfuzzing of the overdriven vocal mike... these are all the things that make the recording interesting. It's more like listening to someone's intensely personal demo tapes as opposed to a sterile finished product, and i like that a lot. (He also gets a really killer piano tone across the entire disc, something else that greatly impresses me.)

He's not afraid of noise and unpredictability -- in addition to leaving in the thumps and bumps, the breakdown in "Silent Clown" is a most bizarre one, jarring even. After a few listens it starts to make sense, but the first time you hear it the abrupt shift in sound is unsettling. The tumbling looped sound that introduces "City of Candles" is pretty odd in itself; as the song goes on, it's briefly accompanied by bass notes of some kind (guitar? piano? hard to tell) before the piano begins to wind through and he begins to sing, fighting to be heard over the cryptic noise. A bizarre but oddly compelling performance. The Thymme Jones comparison creeps up again in "Wax Covered Face," whose mildly paranoid lyrics are offset by a jagged four-note riff repeated over and over as he sings. Eventually the cello joins in, and just when you least expect it, the piano and cello burst into a gorgeous harmony as the song really begins to take off. An acoustic guitar joins in, adding another texture and dimension to the work. The result is amazing -- eerie, bleak, and beautiful all at the same time. Call me staggered. This may be my favorite disc of the issue. I hope there will be more from this man....

(Almost as soon as they emerge from the vent, they realize they have made a horrible mistake: their bumping and thumping has not gone unnoticed, and a small army of Wittbots are waiting for them, all of them heavily armed. They turn away from the vent to find five hundred Dirt-Spore Revolving Vapor Resisters pointed at them. C12, needless to say, is not pleased.)

C12: Oh, this is just fine! Just fine! You bring us out of the vents to face an army of Wittbots! Every one of them a replicant of Alicia Witt with a titanium alloy core and armed with... with... goddamn it, with whatever those ugly things are called!

TG: Dirt-Spore Revolving Vapor Resisters. They fire dirt pellets soaked in ammonia vapor and the idea is....

C12: I DON'T CARE! What are we going to do about them?

TG: Waste them, of course. (draws guns and begins firing wildly) Look at the bright side -- we must be reaching the bottom of the barrel as far as defenses go, since the purpose of the Wittbots was to satisfy the Moon Unit's sick fantasies, not to defend the Hellfortress. They must have been drafted into service here.... (ducks to avoid burst of vapor fire)

C12 (cringing behind a desk): Why did he need so many of them?

TG: He keeps shorting them out... like I say, his fantasy life is pretty damned disturbed....

C12: Well, since you appear to be occupied, I suppose I'll just hide here under this desk and review the Tinsel album. Perhaps if I'm lucky there will still be a room left when you're finished....

TG: Flattery will get you nowhere, you fey wimp. (hurls a handful of Time-Warp Spansules and a Flatline Generator Unit at the Wittbots)

C12 (as CD plays): My, but this is a nice one. The CD comes in two formats -- 200 copies are being released in this hand-packaged gatefold CD album, and 300 will appear in the standard jewel case. The handmade ones look lovely; I have no idea about the jewel case versions, although I would assume they are similar, just not as ornate. The package also includes an artwork sheet and a lyric sheet, which comes in handy since MIchael's vocals are not always easy to decipher....

TG: He does have tendency to bury them. (drops empty gun, draws expanding plasma sword) Let's see them dodge this! (runs the sword through a Wittbot's eye)

C12: This is the first full-length release from Tinsel, by the way, for those keeping track of these things. This is also being presented as a joint release by Keyhole and Broken Face in Sweden, so it should be available in some sense of the word overseas.

TG: So what's the deal with Tinsel? I'm not hep, I was reading MAGNUM QUARTERLY the last time he reviewed them... (tears the head off a Wittbot and throws it into the advancing crowd of similar replicants)

C12: A one-man band best thought of as a combination of Leonard Cohen at his most melancholy with Tom Waits and his most experimental -- imagine combining the individual portions all the tracks from Cohen's SONGS OF LOVE AND HATE and Waits' BONE MACHINE and the result would be much like this. Lonesome acoustic guitar and other "traditional" instrumentation bump up against bizarre sounds and samples, rhythms made of squeaks and strange sounds, while drones wind in and out of the work. The sound is both bleak and oddly beautiful, grounded in the sounds of the ordinary world yet otherworldly at the same time.

TG: What's up with the Syd Barrett references in the promo thingy?

C12: There's a similar feel to Syd's early work. It helps to keep in mind that while Syd is generally cross-referenced with Pink Floyd, he was also greatly inspired by the early work of legendary experimentalists AMM. That's the part of Syd's influence that shows up here. What I have always liked about Tinsel is Michael's ability to transform ordinary sounds into something mysterious, suggesting that even within the everyday world there is a hidden, secret universe of emotion just waiting to be discovered. The recording environment probably plays a great part in that sound -- these songs were largely recorded in an abandoned stone building, and i have no doubt Michael left in the sounds happening around him as he recorded (and then added more of his own later).

TG: So tell us about the songs themselves, wise-ass.

C12: The album opens with tones from a glockenspiel (maybe) and wind on "The Halo Seeds," sounds that are soon lost in a cycling whirlwind of eerie noise -- eventually the sound dies away and segues into the lovely "Rebecca," driven by a slow but deliberate acoustic guitar and a shimmering, unidentifiable drone over which he sings lines like "You're a crooked lady and I'm a crooked man / But we both give straight answers." Lesle Chalim supplies backing vox from time to time, but in such subtle fashion that she's easy to miss if you're not paying attention. The instrumental "Golden City" is interesting as well -- it opens with plucked viola strings, which are eventually joined by crazed chittering sounds and muted screeching. Even better, however, is "The Great Indoors," a soothing melange of guitar, ambient sounds, and cryptic samples to provide the "beat." The lines "The melodies make me weak / The harmonies let me sink / Into my shoes" might well be the mantra for Tinsel's entire existence. "Rusty Symphony" is another nice one, filled with exotic sounds and drones and one mumbled verse (repeated twice) that sounds more like a dream than an actual song. I also really like "Sleep is Deep," with its cicada-like rattle and sleepwalking vibe, and "Keep Silent and Silence Will Keep You" is most pleasing as well, with its cyclotron background and repeated motifs (mostly found sound and samples, as best as i can tell) form a hypnotic background over which Lesle Chalim's ethereal vox float like the wind in the trees. The album's tenth and final track, "The Lead Shoes," is minimalist in its sounds, and while those sounds begin in the background, behind the singing, they eventually creep to the forefront until Michael's voice is almost lost in the swirl of sound. A fine, exotic-sounding album from start to finish.

TG (surveying the fruits of her labors): Ah, every last fucking one of them, dead as a doornail. So you'd recommend this album to people?

C12: Oh certainly. Highly recommended. People should track it down quickly, however, while it's still available.

TG: Swank. So which one of us is gonna do the Troum disc? (points to ladder in the corner of the room) Hey, there's what I've been looking for -- the way to the roof!

C12: I believe it's your turn....

TG: No problem. Cue it up and we'll do it on the rooftop.

C12: Is there some particular reason we're going to the roof?

TG: To see what's there.

C12: Ah. I see. (rolls eyes)

It's been a while since Michael Hopkins last graced us with a Tinsel album, the lovely and brilliant THE LEAD SHOES -- too long, I say. The time off hasn't hurt him any -- in fact, this short (33 minutes, essentially) cd-ep is a more than worthy follow-up. The same melancholy sensibility is still at work, resulting in slow, brooding songs steeped in equal amounts of confessional pop desperation and eerie dark-folk / country strains. There's a high drone quotient at work here, and this disc seems far more psychedelic than any of his earlier releases; the rhythms, in fact, have a machine-like quality to their slo-mo drift that brings to mind early Coil (who, like Hopkins, are heavy on the Leonard Cohen tip themselves even while diddling down in the drone pool). The six songs all unfold at a leisurely place, swaddled in drone and unusual sounds, and the album's sonic palette has been carefully around to sound very much like it was recorded way out in the country on an old tape-recorder -- and the songs themselves resemble the work of a reclusive brooder in the house on the edge of nowhere, using homemade instruments to make music that is sometimes drowned out by the sounds of the abyss outside his front yard. By turns beautiful, melancholy, and unsettling, throwing this on is like stepping through a window into another world and time. Don't be fooled by the mention of rhythms, by the way: this is full-on droning dream-rock, and this album wouldn't be out of place next to albums by Stone Breath, Dead Raven Choir, Maeror Tri, Flying Saucer Attack, or even the Black Heart Procession. It's also limited (100 copies, directly only from Hopkins as far as I know; see EPHEMERA for contact details) and comes in a nice and handcrafted package of a full-color sleeve, slim but elegant gray booklet for the liner notes and lyrics, and a slipcase for the cd, all in a mylar bag. I feel sorry for people who haven't heard this. If you want to hear it, you may want to move quickly....

A new offering from Tinsel, always a cause for pleasure... this is a promotional single being sent to radio stations for a track ("Eclipse," duh) that appears on the compilation CD bundled with the upcoming issue of
BADABOOM GRAMOPHONE. It comes on CD-R, enclosed in a handmade package with the lyrics on the back, and is a bit of a departure for Tinsel. While the Michael Sell's eerie and Cohenesque voice is familiar, the instrumentation is a bit different, opening this time with strummed acoustic guitar. By the end of the first verse, though, Tinsel's penchant for odd percussion and peculiar background sounds has joined the fray, with the result being a sound that is hard to describe but instantly recognizable. Tinsel, in fact, continues to have one of the most distinct and unique sounds around. As usual, Sell's lyrics are eerie and brilliant: "You left behind their rulers left behind their guide/ left behind their Jesus and you left behind their pride," and "You were looking for a habit to kick a dozen with red lips/ to cover up the sun so this would be your great eclipse." As always, i'm left wanting to hear more....

This record was released way back in 1993 and has resurfaced with a little help from Greg Anderson at Southern Lord. One of the best sludge / doom records ever put out. Depressing and slow. This band has not received proper attention. Too bad they are no longer around. Better than Grief, heavier than Burning Witch. Burn a fat joint and space out with Toadliquor. [TTBMD]

Today is the Day -- TEMPLE OF THE MORNING STAR [Relapse]

I'm still trying to decide what i think of this one. It's definitely an odd duck. Guitarist/shrieker Steve Austin (boy, with that name no wonder he's pissed, God only knows how many bad bionic jokes he had to endure growing up, eh?) calls the band's aesthetic "the tales of three insignificant people against the world," and that's about right... they have a severe attitude problem... hardly surprising, since they were originally signed to Amphetamine Reptile, where they don't allow you to record unless you're so fucked up that staying out o' prison or rehab is considered success in itself. But they're from NASHVILLE! What the hell is a loud, ugly band doing from NASHVILLE? Aye mate, it's a troubling world all right....

So anyway, they appear in their publicity photos dressed like cult leaders (and i must admit that Austin makes an excellent creepy Manson- clone -- check out those eyes, mon!) and the album's cover features millions of li'l wigglies straining to hump a pentagram, so i figured they were going to turn out to be black metal, but no, they're not that at all. What they ARE is immensely nihilistic -- Austin's lyrics are some of the most genuinely psychotic slices of self-loathing you'll ever hope to see. Witness, i say unto you, the sum total of the lyrics for "The Man Who Loves to Hurt Himself": "I came out backwards my head's fucked up I need some violence I need real love big man wipe that slate clean my heart is racing as I'm thrown to the ground the earth was shaking when I came in her mouth." Aaaaaaah, okay... down, Steve... BACK I SAY... JUST STAY COOL AND IT'LL ALL BE ALL RIGHT....

So they win big bonus points and a DEAD ANGEL approval rating just for the lyrics alone. Let's see, let me count here, aaaaah: death is referenced in six songs, violence, pain, and hate are checked in eight others, one is about a rabid dog (bonus points for minimalism since the lyrics are nothing but "rabid lassie"), they advocate shooting the police, beating people up, falling down blind drunk, fucking people in the ass... i think they might have some aggression issues to work out....

The sound is pretty interesting. For a band that's sort of death-metal they sure have a sick fondness for tinkly acoustic guitars and synth washes. Of course, they back this up with subsonic bass quake and air-raid drumming, and since Austin generally sounds like he's trying to shit a mason block, i don't think they have to worry about opening for Joan Baez or anything like that. Some of the best songs, actually, are the ones leavened (betcha never thought you'd see a word like "leavened" in a death- metal review, did ya?) with the acoustic guitars, like the opener, the first version of "Temple of the Morning Star." (The same song closes the album with a much heavier version that subtracts the acoustic guitars and adds tremendous amounts of distortion. Sort of like the way Neil Young opened and closed RUST NEVER SLEEPS with two radically different versions of the same song, and i suspect this is not coincidental.) When they're not shakin' those folk strings, though, they are heavier than dead Mama Cass sittin' on an elephant's ass. Like on "Hermaphrodite," which opens with all sorts of ugly screeching and squeaking and static rumble before turning into a slo-mo subterranean death riff. And i must admit, in a time when plenty of artists are pulling back to avoid being dropped over controversy and being sued by deluded zealots, it's kind of startling to see a band with the balls (or pure nihilism, i'm not sure which) to come right out and advocate committing suicide, as they do on "Kill Yourself." Plus "Blindspot" is immensely heavy and out of control, lurching all over the place, which is fine with me....

They have a fondness for perverting samples. A sample of a Waylon Jennings tune gets folded, spindled and mutilated, while "High as the Sky" opens (for no real apparent reason) with a snippet of women talking about licking assholes. And dig the mod feedback that opens "Miracle," mon! Hey, these guys are all right by me... i just hope i never have to share a prison cell with one of them.

O, the obligatory hidden track is a reasonably suave cover of Black Sabbath's "Sabbath Bloody Sabbath." Just thought you should know.

I know I talk shit about Relapse Records. I know that most of the bands on the label suck. Today is the Day is the exception to the rule. Another great record from Steve Austin. On this we are victims to the torture that is unleashed. The riffs are amazing and the musicianship is, as always, top-notch. Unique, crazed sounds coming in and out from every direction. Great production. This band is always changing and that keeps others playing catch-up. Look for them on the road and you will be even more impressed. [ttbmd]

To Live and Shave in L.A. -- WHERE A HORSE HAS BEEN STANDING AND WHERE YOU BELONG [Western Blot / Skin Graft]

This is an odd one, all right. But you expected no less, did you? While TLASINLA don't like being identified with the noise scene (and reasonably so; they have more to do with the Beatles' "Revolution No. 9" than they do with any of the power-surge generated by the likes of Merzbow or Aube), there's no shortage of noisy, chaotic behavior happening here. This is the chaos unit's fifth CD, what they call "an exercise in problem solving," and in a deranged sort of way, it's actually a remix album of sorts: cuts from their still-in-progress double CD, THE WIGMAKER IN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY WILLIAMSBURG, are beaten down and twisted out of shape (one assumes; God only knows how weird they sounded to begin with before the mutation began), then sequenced in such a manner that the CD grows denser and more chaotic track by track.

This isn't really the kind of thing you'd want to describe track by track -- suffice to say that most of the pieces (with peculiar titles like "For Metal, $3650," "Cotton and Pale Cotton Leather," "Overlay Tulle," and "Sleeveless Sheer Signature" -- all related to the craft of wigmaking, perhaps?) sound like they picked the mixer up while recording, started running with it, lurching wildly through the streets, banging on car hoods and waving it about madly, with all the mikes and instruments trailing behind... and then ran the resulting mix through a battery of phase shifters and oscillators for the maximum chaotic perversion effect. I doubt you could hump to it, but the results are entertaining just for the wild unpredictability of it all.

Fair warning, boyeez and goilz: this is not "music" in the sense that most would define it, nor is it the "noise" that hormonally overdriven teenagers in Merzbow shirts find so soothing. Rather, it is art dada at its most deliberately annoying. And if you don't know what that means, you definitely should listen first before purchasing, get it? Yah... you get the picture now. Some forms of weirdness are not for the weak.

TMU: What the fuck is this, mon?

TTBMD: This is some pretty abrasive power electronics, not too far removed from Intrinsic Action or Whitehouse, but without the vocals.

TMU: If there's no vocals, what the fuck is all that ungodly shouting about, then, mate?

TTBMD: Those are samples, some kind of comedy samples....

TMU: This sounds very devolved.

TTBMD: I like this. It's got some nice sounds going on. There's only two long songs, and it will be interesting to hear what he does in the next one.

TMU: This song is called "Sinatra Exploited," by the way. I'm not sure what this has to do with Ol' Blue Eyes, though. Or even less with Shirley MacLaine.

TTBMD: I think this is Sinata telling jokes in the background... probably in Vegas.

TMU: Viva Las Vegas! There was this big fat whore I met there once, she sat on me and wouldn't get up until I gave her all my cash....

TTBMD: It's actually a roast in the background. A Dean Martin roast. You know, the fryers?

TMU: Ahhhhhhh, the serrated edges of the masterplan begin to fiendishly dovetail.... Do you think they know about the MASTERPLAN? Tollbridge Snakediddle or whatever they're called, I mean?

TTBMD: Yes, I think they're tuned in.

TMU: That's fucking good, 'cause when the MASTERPLAN -- the goddamn snake-humping god-fucking MASTERPLAN -- goes down, we're going to need all the hands and guns and limitless rivers of ammo we can absolutely motherfucking get.

TTBMD: It sounds like he's fast-forwarding a bunch of shit.

TMU: If i was having to suffer through motherfucking Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra telling bad jokes i'd be fucking fast-forwarding too.

TTBMD: That's for sure. They're all a bunch of scumbags.

TMU: Dead scumbags.

TTBMD: Drunk, wealthy, dead scumbags.

TMU: Just like Elvis. Except he had better pipes and worse taste in clothes.

TTBMD: This other song is "Bluesdoctorwitchmaster."

TMU: Do you think it has anything to do with big-boned girls in bondage?

TTBMD: Hell no!

TMU: What the hell was that? (jumps at evil sounds emanating from speakers)

TTBMD: I don't know, but this is pretty damn original. I like this. Freak out, man!

TMU: I wonder what James Elroy would make of this.

TTBMD: I wonder what Judy Blume would make of it.

TMU: I think she'd be fuckin' paralyzed with a great and shining fear, her eyes filling with water as she huddles up and goes fetal on the floor sobbing "It's not real, it's not real, IT'S NOT FUCKING REAL...."

TTBMD: O my brother, it is all too real! This is worth checking out if you're a diehard fan of powerscapes.

TMU: They sound like they're all being slaughtered like fucking pigs with dull machetes. Blood everywhere. Tiny bits of the skull grinding beneath their boots. NOT ONE GOD DAMN FUCKING PART OF THE ANIMAL MUST BE WASTED!

TTBMD: This song is better than the last one.

TMU: Yes, there are no references to dead Italian and Jewish drunks.

TTBMD: Damn! That's too bad....

Tone -- BUILD ep [Dischord / Independent Project Records]

This is a swell ep by an equally swell band. Of course, some are of the opinion that this is the only thing you'd ever need to own by the band -- the disc pretty much sums up their aesthetic in six tracks, and their subsequent album SUSTAIN doesn't really add anything to the equation (there's just more of it) -- and maybe they're right, but hey, it's definitely something everyone should hear at least once, if not own outright. Imagine Rhys Chatham or the Band of Susans (minus the pile o' distortion pedals) scoring spaghetti westerns are you're in the right corral.

Their "formula" is simple but effective -- various guitars of different tone, volume, and weight come and go, adding and subtracting in complex equations, laying out guitar lines like construction workers laying miles of pipe in every direction. Their fondness for twangy sound and dry, arid song structures result in a distinctly western feel, especially on "Milhous" and (to a lesser degree) "Mr. Authority." Others like "Theory" sound a bit more like, madly enough, Joy Division gone surfing. All of them are built on the theory that you can never have enough guitars, a truism that always worked for Glenn Branca and the Band of Susans (whose main guitarist Robert Poss, incidentally, produced their full-length album SUSTAIN); the difference here is that their use of distortion is minimal, offering clean guitar lines that only even hint at distortion just when the guitars all pile up together.

The best track is the last one, the slowly building "Galvanized Mass." Starting with just hibtone basslines (like early Joy Division!) and matching guitar, the guitar pipelines gradually begin to branch off in different directions and tones, until a wall of interlocked guitars are all joined together by the time the beat finally kicks in around two minutes into the song. About midway through the guitars all join together for hge, crashing tone blocks, before separating again into individual lines. It's a fine masterpiece of tone, pacing and structure that neatly encapsulates why their name is so appropriate.

Tone, for those not already in the know, is an offshoot of Savage Republic, which should give you an idea of their artistic intent right off the bat. But more than that, they are a guitar orchestra -- combining the attack of punk with progressive tendencies and worshipping at the altar of Ennio Morricone. Tone have always sounded to me like the soundtrack to an epic spaghetti western, only with way more guitars than actors in the movie. Here they refine their sound even further, adding actual orchestra instruments (French horn, cello, trombone, etc.) to round out the guitar sound, and stacking the guitars up instead of spreading them out. (The choice of Robert Poss, former guitarist/leader of Band of Susans, may have a lot to do with this.)

Describing Tone songs track by track is kind of pointless -- they're all instrumentals, they all revolve around the interplay of interlocking guitars (and here, other instruments as well), and they are all highly orchestrated, all of which tells you very little about the way they actually sound, does it? So let's focus instead on the way they work. There are six (yes, six) guitarists, two bassists (actually one bassist and one guy who doubles on bass and guitar), and a drummer at the core of the band. Together they construct latticework structures of guitar lines, all of different timbres and tones, that often come together as one monolithic juggernaut of sound. Imagine Band of Susans with an interest in spaghetti westerns as opposed to rock and roll, or perhaps a more intensely rhythmic version of Godspeed You Black Emperor, or a modern counterpart to Rhys Chatham around the era of DIE DONNERGOTTER, and the big picture begins to come into focus. Now imagine, on this album, that the band itself is working primarly as one giant rhythm instrument and the orchestral instruments are overlaid to provide tonal color and melody. This, then, is the sound of Tone.

One thing about Tone is that, like the Band of Susans and Rhys Chatham, they are far more concerned with how guitars interact and with the pure force of rhythm than they are with elements of melody. Melodic lines do exist on this album, but unlike most rock or pop albums, they are clearly subservient to the rhythm here. Some listeners may find this hard to swallow. Devotees of rhythm and percussion, however, should be totally enraptured by this disc. It's worth noting that Tone's attention to structure and detail, already well-developed, have only improved even more with this album, and the addition of orchestral elements is an excellent development. This may be their best album yet, at least overall (i actually still prefer moments from their first album, BUILD, in terms of songwriting), and like all of their releases, it sounds brilliant, capturing a wide range of tones and overtones and clearly capturing all the different guitars, no mean feat with this many instruments in the mix. Add in the really appealing packaging and you have a release that ought to throw the average Dischord fan for a loop....

It's a fetish world, as I'm sure our esteemed editor/tyrant will be happy to agree. [tmu: O my yes.]

Record collecting (as opposed to music collecting) has always been a fetish business... why else would one spend slop-buckets of money on multiple pressings of the same copy of SERGEANT PEPPER'S LONELY HEARTS CLUB BAND (on mono, on stereo, on U.S. and England! on insert-included and lock-groove so dated!). Isn't it all more or less the same songs? Well, yes, but you see, this one feels more like how it sounded THEN, and this one is more how it sounded after the advance of NEW TECHNOLOGY, and this one has the liner notes, so you can see what they were really saying to their fans, ad nauseum.

You get the idea. Everybody's happy nowadays, because not only can they finally purchase a copy of the first Modern Lovers album (and if you have not yet done this, I chastise thee in the most self-righteous tone of voice my Christmas cookie-encrusted throat can muster), but on 180-gram vinyl... oooh, yes, tell me more, tell me more!

The two converging obsessions among the rekkid hunter these days seem to be repressings of micro-editions and high quality/heavy vinyl. Thus are born new labels like Tonschacht. So far, the label has released six 7-inch records, each in identically designed white-on-black hard cardboard covers, each containing some of the heaviest vinyl I've ever seen for a 45, and each in strictly limited/numbered (oooh, I got number 164!) in an edition of 500. Plus, they've somehow managed to defy physics, in that they are all played at 45 RPM, yet many sides clock in at over seven minutes, without any notable decrease in fidelity! Impossible, I cluck, but then I put it on again, if only to stare in wonder at the little record that spins so fast, yet runs so long. Hmmmm.

So, what do these damn things have on 'em? Oh, y'know, just a buncha the finest electronic/experimental sounds from all over the world, some possibly familiar, some very obscure even by obscurists' standards. With your permission, I will now provide a quick little tour-guide look at the first five Tonschacht 7"s. (Why not all six? Read on, friend.)

1. Minit -- Music Can a band be a supergroup if nobody's heard of any of the parent groups? Mull on that for a bit while digging through past Forced Exposure catalogs for any info on either Alternahunk or The Garbage and the Flowers. The former aussie all-girl trio has one supersnazz release on the equally ultragonz label Dual Plover. They contributed Ms. Jasmine Guffond. Garbage and the Flowers, a New Zealand noise-rock odd lot gave up Mr. Torben Tilly. The two together create a tightly woven net of analogue synth tones and textures. Whether you ally with the Subotnick/Stockhausen big-toned academic orgies, the early '80s Severed Heads/DAF sick pop, or the '90s hard twitch cochlea destroyers like Lode Runner or SOf Tillins And, you'll be pleased with this record. It's very soothing, but you find yourself constantly getting out of your comfy chair/coccoon to dance around and yell out "man, this is so great!" The fact that SIde A is a Chicks on Speed remix guarantees an instant sellout of at least 1/10th of the print run. Best release on the label so far.

2. The New Peculiars -- Dance Music 2000 If you haven't already got wise to this band's previous two 7"s on Betley Welcomes Careful Drivers, I'll recap. This is Scott and Karla of the long-running experimental band Idea Fire Company, along with Karla's parents on violin and keyboards. Of course, this is even more intriguing when you realize that Scott and Karla have been at this game for a long time, making parentals Gloria and David Borecky eligible for AARP disocunts for many years now. What do they do? How about some free noise/improv, mixed with some choice '70s artpunk covers (their second single contained a brilliant cover of "Bored" by 13-year old art-tykes the Prats, from way back in 1978).

Although two of the three tracks do the full-bore clash and rake (minus the weird humor of the first two releases), the title track is a deeeeep gooey keyboard mantra, comparable to Microstoria or Oval, over which moms and pops Borecky slowly and solemnly chant the title again and again. If this is the dance music of the future, I'd better start saving up for a new pair of two-tones real soon!

3. A.F.R.I. Studios -- Room Service 1-3 Now, HOW would you possibly hear about htis guy, unless you owned a chain of successful wholesale shoe outlet stores, allowing you the ready cash needed to obsessively buy every new release that arrives on the Anomalous Records web site (they are the only distributor I've seen that carry this guy's other work, a 20-minute self-released CD EP)? Well, if you're like me, a combination of completist fetish and a warm feeling of consumer confidence about this label (they've steered me right so far, how could this suck?) will probably contribute to this purchase if anything will.

Although analogue in production, the sound is closer to the sparse digital tone/crackle of technicians like Ryoji Ikeda, *0, Richard Chartier, Noto, and so forth. It's a series of very minimal tones that probably do that thing where they sound different when you listen from different parts of the room. I don't know, I'm a but too antsy to explore things like that slowly and meditatively. Certainly there's nothing wrong with this release, but for me, it wasn't especially right, either.

4. Ashtray Navigations -- "End-of-the-Pier" Vault Go ahead, ask me what I think the best shit going is right now. Hands down, it's Ashtray Navigations. Phil Todd (also of A Warm Palindrome and Green Monkey, plus the imperator for life behind the Betley Welcomes Careful Drivers label) has really got it going on with this drone/soundwaves project of his. Normally dealing in lengthy and genuinely mind-altering landscapes that sound like surrealist nightmare soundtracks piped in from 75 years ago, this platter is a bit of a deviation. Side one has four high-pitched and very short computer-generated pieces, each lasting from 20 seconds to two minutes. This clarity is unexpected considering the dirty, decomposing tape sound of most of his other releases. The lengthy piece on side two follows the style of his live appearances (not to mention his contribution to the drone compilation SCENES FROM THE RINGING ISLES), layering a pre-recorded slow pick acoustic guitar pattern over live guitar and amp blowout. Not really my favorite aspect of what Ashtray Navigations has been laying on mostly heathen ears these last couple of years, but absolutely worth your time. For the real thang, also check out his TRISTES TROPIQUES CD on Betley/Blackbean and Placenta. Or just about any of his CDs, there's a ton of them out there. Try Eclipse Records.

5. Joseph Suchy -- Tau Warning, warning! The following is a warning to fans of "serious" experimental music, people who do not like joking or tomfoolery or traces of less reputable musics mixed in with their post-Cagean modern classicism. Do not buy this record, you will shake your head ruefully within seconds of the needle sinking into the thick audiophile groove, thinking of all the nice Incus CDs that this $6 could have been put toward.

For those of us who had semi-normal childhoods, i.e. we listened to Judas Priest or Van Halen or prog rock or all sorts of things that weren't avant garde or credible, finally digging on the abstract after years of digging FOR it, you'll have a real calm feeling inside. The feeling that two halves of yourself have been resolved. Suchy has supposedly been working on a debut album (which just hit the racks, I'm informed) since 1978, scrapping various half-finished attempts along the way. In that time, he's become something of a guitar virtuoso; one might even say a bit of a hot dog. This record is two sides of noise guitar, and it's wanky and rockin' and fun and silly in all the ways your old records were. You know, the ones you grooved hard on before you started also following the PSF label with a curious ear.

Coming across like some three-headed chimera offspring of Cock E.S.P., Loren Mazzacane Connors, and Yngwie Malmsteen, Suchy dives and thunders in a sea of hiss and overloaded digital and analogue processing, then all of a sudden you'll hear a high speed metal run, and you'll pump your fist in the air, just in time for a cascade of tumultous feedback to bop your noggin. A long and lonesome blues melody will carry you along for a while, and then the cycle starts again. And again. It's a 14-minute record, by the way. Another label highlight.

And that's it. Whay, you say, what about number six that's also out? Aren't you going to tell me more? Sadly, this is where I must part with Tonschacht, at least from a completist stance. For you see, Tonschacht number six is by none other than Hrvatski, whom you may know as forcedexposure.com's resident blowhard about all things electronic. The schmoe who wants you to buy twenty new techno 12"s and wants you to believe that they are really pushing towards a new glorious age of music. I've heard the record, and it's typical Autechre-plunder with 25 times the complexity. Get it if you must, but I don't wish to have that man's music in my house. A future edition is rumored to be the much-rocking and fun drone ensemble the Vibracathedral Orchestra. I'm psyched, and you know I'm psyched.

Will these records become collector's items in 25 years? I don't know, as I really can't get a bed on whether or not willful obscurity will translate as well to the collectors of the future as impoverished obscurity appeals to us. Regardless of resale value, you might want to give some or all of these records a happy home, but to do so, you gotta move fast. [cms]

The whole concept with Torso, according to the wee blurb on the back of the disc packaging: "Artificial and impossible spaces are made possible through torso's processing of spatial audio phenomena! Ethereal noise and digital density create explorations into sonic architecture." All of which is a roundabout way of saying they have some efx pedals and aren't afraid to use them. As with the Fragment King disc (of which this is an offshoot of some sort), minimalism is the key here: the efx themselves are used in minimalist fashion, although at times there are several going on at once and it gets pretty dense. The noise generated by such experimental sound processing, especially with the use of distortion and delay, is often gritty and booming, the sound of disturbed things happening in vast open rooms. It's the sound of machinery left to run in empty rooms, a cold and formless sound that implies the absence of humans to control the vibrations. There are moments when the rumble nearly drowns out the rest of the sounds, but then it recedes to reveal much that was previously hidden -- a practice of playing hide 'n seek with great shapes of sound. There's a heavy drone quotient at work in places. Interesting work of a loud and dark ambient nature.

Torture Chorus -- IN THE LAND OF LULLABYE (Vanilla Records / Charnel Music)

This is... uh... REALLY WEIRD. Sort of like PeeWee Herman and Mr. Rogers "mating" in a dark closet after listening to too much Japanese noise albums and attempting to tell children's stories while whacked on bad, bad acid. This is DERANGED. Really and truly DERANGED. It's also quite funny in a lot of places. I think this is supposed to be Japanese performance art (or mroe accurately, Americans doing performance art in Japan) or "shock theater" or something like that; whatever it is, from the look of the back cover, it apparently involves wearing silly animal costumes and really ridiculous hats.

"Johnny Over the Ocean" is reminiscent -- in a really roundabout way -- of the Butthole Surfers' "Waiting For Jimmy To Kick," and is essentially some guy coaching a tinny-voiced kid to "sing" a ridiculous song about Johnny breaking milk bottles... most peculiar. "It's Still Not Worth It" (one of the three live tracks out of nine total) is more "traditional" noise, I guess... like PeeWee Herman doing Merzbow this time. A couple of the songs, like "Men Who Come" (not what you think! at least, i don't think so) and "Chocolate Train" are warped kiddie sing-alongs, while the ending track (i'm not sure i dare call it a "song") "The Pigeon and the Onion Pie" combines thunderous crashes of noise with a lot of ranting about flying and onion pies, whatever the hell that means. As i said, it's weird.

When they're not being noisy, the music tends to resemble a sick take on those sing-along childrens' albums... you know, the kind with songs about trains and happy people and campfires and that Carpenters thing, "free to be you and me," that kind of stuff. Kitsch, in other words. So I suppose your interest in this CD would hinge largely on your taste for kitsch and wildly eccentric behavior. As for me, I still don't know what to make of it... it isn't often something throws me for a loop, but this sure has. Weird. Very very very... weird.

I know, i know, i know... this Skullflower/Total/Ax/Husk/JFK/Ramleh thing is getting totally out of hand. Pretty soon DEAD ANGEL's going to have the largest collection of Skullflower-and-related effluvia east of Mason Jones' house in sunny sunny Cali.... Why they don't just release all of this stuff as Skullflower is beyond me, since none of it is THAT far removed from the original group's focus. This particular album is a bit more ambient than most Skullflower output, but only marginally so; in fact, most of this could have fit in easily with the material on LAST SHOT AT HEAVEN, so why it deserves a separate project is kind of unfathomable....

But the members of Skullflower have carved out a nice niche for themselves in the realm of the unfathomable, so here it is. As for WHAT it is, well, it's... um... a kinder, gentler version of Skullflower. Sort of. Another Total listener described it to me as being really creepy if you listen to it in the dark, and that's accurate enough -- it's kind of like the soundtrack for a serial-killer movie, only for the parts where he's sharpening his axe or standing around at the hardware store debating the merits of icepicks versus piano wire. The implication of violence as opposed to the actual thing, in other words. The entire album is edgy without ever quite working up the fury to actually get in your face and explode... interesting.

Of course, there's a fine line between ominous and sleep-inducing, and i suspect that many people will find this album crosses that line early on. It certainly doesn't put ME to sleep, but i'm one of the converted, so i probably don't count in that respect. If you can't live without beats or go for long stretches without having something "happen," then you probably want to avoid this... but if you're an ambient kind of guy (or gal) and can deal with guitars that drone, drone, drone, then perhaps you will regard this as manna from heaven.

Total -- SKY BLUE VOID [Freek Records]

OK, that's it... I'm going to find out where Matthew Bower lives and then one night while he's getting piefaced, I'm gonna break into his house and steal all his guitar pedals. Although from the sounds on this album, I'll probably need a couple of extra guys and a wheelbarrow or two to carry 'em all away.... Best track on the album is the first one, "Tannery # 1," where the guitars sound like sterile pigs reincarnated in a Binson unit, with one guitar lurching along like a lazy Susan rolling down the side of a hill while the others... uh... do OTHER THINGS. Squeaky, squalling things. Overdriven, distorted feedback comes into play on "Hustler," only it's all force-fed through some many chorus and delay pedals that it comes out all tinny and hateful, shuddering and resonating like rats chewing through the walls. Things get a bit quieter on "Nowhere Shining," which would qualify as ambient if the jagged distortion drones didn't kep creeping in from time to time. On "Lift Every Voice," one guitar turns into a high-pitched machine-gun phaser while another keeps sending out lines that spiral up, up, UP and disappear... very "spacy" indeed... and "Azure Dragon" ends everything on a more ambient note (well, sort of), sounding the most like Skullflower of anything on here, actually. The overall effect is one of complete guitar weirdness minus drums, rockisms, vocals, any of that junk... just screwed-up sounding guitars resonating forever in the middle of a wasteland on Planet X somewhere beyond the stars. Got that? Good....

Total -- EXPLODED STAR SAD SERVANT [Self Abuse]

More screeching sonic filth from Skullflower guitarist Matthew Bower. I find it interesting that more and more, Total resembles early Skullflower. I'm not sure what this means, but when he's firing on all cylinders -- as he mostly is here -- then it's a good thing. There's only three pieces on this disc, although it clocks in at nearly sixty minutes -- Matt apparently prefers his sonic disembowelment on the long and excruciating side -- and the first one, "the shuttered room," is just pure hateful noise terrorism. It sounds like he fed an already overamped guitar through a speaker system with too little wattage and the speaker basically crapped out on the first note... but he kept PLAYING ANYWAY. Ow! Call it brutal, mon... shrill, drilling wails of fury, and it goes on for QUITE SOME TIME. God only knows how Bower has any hearing left. This makes my inner ear queasy just listening to it at low volume, it would probably kill me to actually turn it up all the way... let's see... (turns up headphones) ACK! At high volume it's like being inside a streetcleaner sweeping across the Marinas Trench.... Anyway, the second collection of distorted sounds, "drainage angels flare," is not quite so obnoxious; it's mostly shimmering strands of feedback and hornlike noises with weird chattering in the background, like listening to cicadas out in the country while under the influence of tinnitus and heavy drugs. Then "frost" peels everything back with wind, bursts of feedback, scratching, and other ugly noises. This is cool stuff, although some of it maybe goes on a bit too long without doing anything "new"... but that's just a taste thing, i think. A strong showing and recommended for those who like their guitar noise loud, formless, and totally without worrisome "mainstream" connotations associated with melody and chord progressions....

Total -- GLASSY WARHEAD [Pure]

Twittering, cheeping, droning stuff buried in a big wall o' noise. Insert of dubious value (folded sheet of toner-death graphics, mostly of the word "PURE" and a portion of a letter to RRRon that appears to be of somewhat racist import, the catalog on the other... minimalist or cheap? you decide), the cover looks exactly like all the other Pure releases (for the budget conscious!). Then again, the Skullflower/Ramleh camp have never been real fixated on stunning graphics anyway -- hell, you're generally doing good if they list the personnel, which they didn't on this album (it's Matt Bower, if you were wondering). Um... let's see, what else... um... this is a lot like the last Total release, BLUE SKY VOID. The "songs" sort of settle into a churning groove of unearthly hurricane-in-slow-motion sounds and just pretty much stay there. This is not BAD, mind you, but it's also not breaking any new ground for Bower, either. Somebody needs to sit down with these guys and discuss the concept of quality control and persuade them not to just release everything that pops out of their mixer.... Or maybe i'm just being a cranky li'l bastard today. You'll never know unless you shell the $$$ to check it out yourself, will you? I'd personally recommend BEYOND THE RIM myself, but my tastes are notoriously erratic... i'm rambling again... and i don't even smoke dope, how scary....

Okay, the songs, gotta get back to the music, right (digs frantically for book of overused review cliches). Oh GOD i can't find that book! Oh no! Truly i am doomed! Life is so damned unfair! Look at me, i'm weepin' now! [THS-CG: It's true. He looks pretty damn stupid doing it too.] Anyway, uh, the music, the music... it's okay. Like ambient music along the lines of Aphex Twin after being bound in duct tape and savagely beaten and daisy- chained to many, many weird EFX pedals and shoved face-first into a front- loading dryer. Look ma, the guitar is turning over in big circles! Wonk, wonk, wonk! Weeeeeooooooo wonk wonk wonk! WeeeeeooooOOOOSKKSIKSKXJSKLSEEEE wonk wonk wonk SSSSKKKKKRREEEEEEE wonk wonk SSSKKKKKKEEEEE wonk wonk wonk wonk wonk! Actually, this CD sort of reminds me of when i was in college and it turned out that a serial rapist terrorizing the city (Arlington, Tejas, for the geography majors out there) was living in the apartment across from me and my (then) girlfriend. Through a series of bad-ass police moves (ie., he kidnapped a convenience store clerk and conveniently left his car so they could trace the plates; obviously he was studying to be a particle physicist, hmmmm?), they busted a move on him while he was raping said store clerk in the shower at knifepoint, and in the ensuing melee, he shoved his head through the front of the TV set while it was still on. (I've often wanted to do the same thing during OPRAH.) Amazingly enough he lived, and was in fact sent to Huntsville for several years (but is probably back on the streets now, doesn't that make you feel all warm and secure inside?), but for the few moments his head was stuck in that TV with the tubes frying in his ears and piles o' volts running through his dumb- assed body, i'll bet... yes, i'll STAKE MY LIFE ON IT... that what he was hearing sounded EXACTLY LIKE THIS CD. I'm sure of it. A rabid, foaming crow told me so in a dream after eating too much wall paste. God, i've got to stop reviewing these things late at night....

Total -- CLEAR FACTORY [Majora]

All right, Matt finally wises up to the old adage about either shittin' or gettin' off the pot... well, sort of (i mean, pot -- the smokeable kind, anyway -- seems to be at the very HEART of everything that goes on around the campfire at Broken Flag Hideaway). This is cool stuff. "Free Air" opens up with lots of high-end hissing guitars and lots of thrashing around, sort of like the new Skullflower single ("Total" -- see above), and it's not bad (not brilliant, either, but at least as good as anything that's Bower's been waffling away on in the past year or so). But then "Thursday Evening" opens with what sounds like chinese water torture taking place in the Hall of Great Wind, then slowly builds to a wave of stuttering guitars all sliding down a metallic hillside, which then mutate into the sound of those same guitars being sheared in waves -- SHST SHST SHST SHST, SHST SHST SHST SHST... suave.... But the best is yet to come: the totally swank "Candle Aimed at the Sun # 3" that takes up all of side B opens with piercing, hornlike guitar and then actually GOES SOMEWHERE (!), building to sections laden with majestic grandeur before crashing through repeated walls of noisy guitar torture. Arguably the most focused Total release since BEYOND THE RIM (keeping in mind, however, that i have yet to hear TANSMUSIK DER RENAISSANCE... i'll, uh, probably get to that in the next issue or so).

Total / Merzbow -- MERZBOW MIXED TOTAL [Sterilized Decay]

You knew it was only a matter of time. Masami Akita and Matthew Bower have been aggravating eardrums across the globe separately for years now in the guises of Merzbow and Total, and since Merzbow has already recorded at least one album with someone from the Broken Flag camp (HORN OF THE GOAT with Consumer Electronics), this offering from the kings of pain is hardly a surprise. Released in a limited edition of 250 on cassette only via a somewhat obscure UK label, this 1997 issue of material originally recorded by Bower and then chopped up/remixed by Merzbow in July 1996 is one of the harder items to find in the Total canon... which is kind of a shame, because this is actually one of the better ones.

Merzbow and Total have the same problem: they record (and release) way too much stuff, and since each man has a fairly regular approach to his wall of noise, after a while the results start to sound a bit... generic. But when they start filtering one man's raw work through another man's mixing and editing process, that's where things get interesting. Total benefits greatly here from Merzbow's evil redirection. Where the usual Total album consists mostly of unbroken, unwavering guitar screech, Merzbow has chopped things up, varying the pace and feel of each piece (there are only two tracks, for a total of just over fifty minutes); the sound also varies radically, with parts of pure guitar drone giving way to flanged-out hollowness, then irradiated walls of distortion that crumble and crackle and fall away in volume before building back up again. With Merzbow at the mixing desk, the material also benefits in terms of pacing. Total's sense of dramatic pacing has always been hit or miss -- Bower has a tendency to just throw stuff down on tape and let it be -- while Merzbow has a considerably better sense of how to pace the movements of different textures and shifts in volume for maximum dramatic effect. The results are sufficiently impressive enough to make me think that maybe Bower should just start letting all of his Total material be filtered through someone else's mixing process. This cassette is certainly more interesting -- and consistent -- than most of Total's regular output. Not to be missed, assuming you can find it (contacting Sterilized Decay via the address in the EPHEMERA section would be a good start).

Now I know what it means every time there's an earthquake report in California: that Totimoshi must be rehearsing. The catchiness muscles hinted at on earlier tracks like 'Cellophane" return here beefed-up on steroids, while everything is even heavier than ever yet considerably more distinct (courtesy of a boss recording job by drummer Don Newenhouse and Lars Savage at Lucky Cat in San Francisco). The songs here are in a whole new league -- compact and tightly-wound, yet filled with unexpected lurches and dynamic shifts that spiral into crazed, complicated-sounding weirdness. The trio frequently sounds like Black Sabbath playing Zeni Geva's catalog backwards (especially toward the tail end of "The Pigs Are Schemin'"), but now on some songs they've got a full-on pop fetish happening, as on "Light Lay Frowning," "Make Your Day," and "You Know." Even in the catchiest tunes, though, they hardly sound wimpy or twee -- this is pop music for loud people. Bassist Meg Castellanos gets bonus points for providing not only the churning bottom but frequently the melodic heft as well. The best song here is "The Hero Released From Fright," a lengthy instrumental that alternates between melodic picking and thunderous riffing until veering off without warning into a droning, psychedelic groove over which guitarist Antonio Aguilar solos furiously and with growing abandon. The heaviest is probably "Vader," a crushing slab of sinister brute force that kicks off the album, although the surging, hyperactive "The Skies Over Monolith Mountain" is just about its equal in heaviness. "You Know," one of the poppiest songs on the disc, proves that it is possible to be melodic, catchy, and heavy at the same time without turning into something cheesy. The entire album rocks like a pee-dog from start to finish, the artwork on the disc is great, and I've already seen with my own eyes that the new material rocks just as well live as on the album. If you have yet to discover the greatness that is the Toti and the Moshi, now is your chance.

Oooo, i always look forward to getting these tiny li'l three-inch works of art in the mail from throat, a small (but powerful) label that specializes in experimental noise releases packaged as three-inch CDs in modest highly effective (and well-designed) slipcases. In this particular case, Tralphaz -- actually David Lim, a film and sound guy from San Francisco -- makes use of his limited-by-design running time to offer brief but powerful bursts of concentrated harsh-noise machine-gun style. The first track, "poster of a cake," is soaked in harsh, blinding power' on "clap for hat," he lightens up enough to provide some much-needed contrast, seguing into actual tone-music on "off" whose movements are determined by mad jolts of hard noise. Tralphaz quickly establishes an ability to abruptly segue from power-noise to almost-invisible ambience (a scenario played out on "ear over rice"), and that ability makes the short album that much more unnerving to listen to because you never have any idea when the soothing ambience will suddenly explode into overamped noise fury. He plays with silence a lot -- some songs have extremely quiet intros or fades, or even large chunks of silence within the body of the song. There's a minimalist streak at work too -- the drone that slowly evolves then fades at the beginning of "drain," only to be joined with other equally simple drones, is evidence enough of that. After that, though, the piercing drill-on-fire noises of "f-art" will certainly get your attention.... This is the way noise should be presented all the time, in a reduced-time setting that encourages the artist to get to the point. The care with packaging is just icing on the cake.

Trance -- CONTENTS UNDER PRESSURE [Flying Esophagus]

Polyrhythmic madness from Mason Jones and his pals. Here we have 13 tracks, all apparently recorded live in various places with numerous participants. The songs themselves have no real titles; they're merely listed by venue, location, and date, which is kind of interesting (probably makes it real difficult for college radio programmers taking requests, though: "Hey dude, play that Trance song 'Guild Theater, Sacramento CA, September 25, 1993,' ok?" And the DJ goes, "Uhhhhh... what?"). Essentially what transpires in the sixty minutes of mayhem on this disc are exercises in polyrhythmic trance overlaid with various forms of guitar torture. Lots of strange tonalities to be found here, my friend.... "Guild Theater" rumbles along with spare, thumping percussion and the sound of an avalanche (or is it a vicious windstorm?) gradually increasing in volume in the background, then fading back to let the drumming get more kinetic. Jim O'Rourke (Illusion of Safety) provides wind-tunnel guitar in addition to Mason's own six-string diatribes, a nice touch. On "Acme Arts," conducted with Evolution Control Committee, a trombone gets added to the mix and Mason concocts some seriously ear-shattering guitar howling on top of everything else. Ow, my ears! Joe Papa (Controlled Bleeding, etc.) steps in on "Knitting Factory" to provide tortured vocals as a counterpoint to Mason's scraping, jittery guitar screeches. Keyboards and a mildly less frantic approach make the three versions of "KPFA-FM" the quieter moments of the disc; the second version in particular is fairly hypnotic. The hypnosis builds with the first version of "Heinz Club," while the second version is a particularly painful noisefest of shredded guitar wailing. "Lowell University" returns to the avalanche noises again, at which point "AV13" ends the disc on a bit more subdued note (plenty of scratchy, creepy noises in the background, though). While not the noisiest thing to come down the pike from Charnel (that would be the Gravitar disc, methinks), it is one of the more structured ones, particular if you harbor a fondness for a little rhythm with your white noise....

Trance -- AUGURY [Charnel Music]

Ominous and brooding, the music on this release is like a noir soundtrack for an equally nightmarish existance on this perverse and sad planet. Crows circle high above, uncaringly. Storm clouds slowly obscure a full, blood red moon. Images of being chased by drunken frat boys race through your mind. You are running endlessly down dark and foul alleyways (and tripping a few times too) late at night after a show at the local punk venue. This can't be happening. Don't panic... Oh gawd. You've locked the car keys in the car! For this fifth release, Trance has assembled four tracks which have been previously released on other various compilations (in slightly different versions) and adds in four additional new tracks. The last track is somewhat out of character, but hardly unwelcome, by introducing a fifteen minute aural intrusion of fevered improvisational tension and cacauphony assisted by Geoff Walker and Warren Defever. This sort of spectacularly orchestrated material is where Trance shines. [yol]

TG: So now that you know I'm all woman and waiting for you, big guy, when are you going to do me?

N/A: Never! I have a girlfriend already, thank you. A sane one.

TG: Sanity is really overrated.

N/A: I don't like guns, okay? You freak me out. Forget it! We're not going there!

TG (pouting): Then drum up another review for me, big boy. Or I'll blow a hole in your tummy.

N/A: Extra pissed-off non-thug hardcore from Sweden. Musically, they?re similar to label mates True North and Planes Mistaken for Stars. Similar, but not clones. Where Planes bring about a sense of melancholy and True North deal in frustration, Trapdoor Fucking Exit bring about a sense of pressure?like something extremely heavy pushing down from above. [n/a]

Trial of the Bow -- RITE OF PASSAGE [Release Records]

This is interesting: two guys from Australia who nevertheless sound like they've been camping out in a desert somewhere in the Middle East, soaking up Arabic melodies and the like. It's one of the discs that crosses a lot of different lines, mixing elements of ambient, tribal, industrial, and Arabic pop all into a bizarre but intriguing stew of sound. Using traditional non- western instruments in conjunction with sneaky synth moves and droning vocals, they combine the best of several genres into a compelling package with a much wider appeal than you'd think at first glance.

The opening track, "Father of the Flower," is a good place to start: it begins with synth drones, then a layer of tabla percussion, then other odd percussion instruments join in, followed by a lazy-susan guitar riff and throat singing. It builds into an exotic trance mantra that is followed by the more "upbeat" sound of "Ubar," in which the main instrument is some kind of horn playing shifting figures over a bed of plucked acoustic guitar and percussion, among other things. Both tracks contain much incidental sound and instrument that point to one of the band's primary strengths, which is in creating thick layers of texture that still sound open and airlike.

In "The Promise," neo-classical guitar and distorted piano lines lead into shifting rhythms overlaid with layers of violin-like instruments and cello; some of the same elements surface in the moodier "Serpent," along with more wailing horns. But then "The Lyre of Awakening" comes on like a sandstorm drone of different instruments mixed in such a fashion that the entire song seems to be drifting in and out of focus; the effect renders it almost opaque, and the resulting sound would not be out of place on a Voice of Eye album. This and the minimalistic "Muezzin" are the band at their most ambient, while "The Court of the Servant" sounds oddly like Tony Conrad on an Arabic bender. There's more of a gothic tinge to "As Night Falls," which (while still firmly grounded in the natural sounds found on the rest of the disc) is heavily synth-laden, and "Alizee" is a marvelous slow-building drone mantra festooned with incidental percussion, chant vocals, and various odd noises, somewhere in the territory of a gothic Gregorian chant.

This is a good disc for when you're in the mood for exotica. Most tasteful too, although possibly a bit somber for some (although that's more than okay by me). As an added bonus, the packaging is exceptional, from the nude statue on the cover to the clever typography inside; really, the case itself is a work of art that made me feel bad about having to remove the shrink wrap to get to the disc....

Tribe 8 -- "Allen's Mom" + 2 (Outpunk)

All-female queercore (well, I'm not sure about one of 'em... hard to tell in that photo), musically somewhere between Bikini Kill and L7, this is pretty interesting. The tattooed punk chicks on the front cover are pretty cool, especially the one with orange hair.... "Allen's Mom" and "Chickenshit" are pretty much straightforward punk, with lots o' energy and lyrics about a woman leaving her husband for another woman ("Allen's Mom") and the perils of dealing with the commitmen-shy; "Chickenshit" is the fast one (aaieeee don't throw me in the mosh pit i'll be a good dead angel i swear). "Mom Gone Song" took me by surprise -- it's a catchy sumbitch, with a squiggly riff and real live melody and startling lyrics that are way, way better than what you usually see in the punk field. See for yourself if you don't believe me....

Tricky Woo seem to choose the opening tracks on their discs very carefully. The first son on their last disc, SOMETIMES I CRY, was called "Altamont Raven." A rewrite of The Stooges' "TV Eye," it opened the disc with a bang and drew the listener into SOMETIMES I CRY's exploration of the mean side of late 60s-mid 70s hard rock. The opening track on their newest, LES SABLES MAGIQUES, is entitled "Ring Sweet Mercy." It lifts the riff from Bad Company's "Feel Like Making Love." That should tell you volumes.

It should, but it doesn't quite give the whole story. Yes, on LES SABLES MAGIQUES Tricky Woo dig through the dodgier side of the late 60s and 70s. Yes, some of the songs re too long. Yes, there are flutes, bongos, and violins. Yes, there are songs entitled "Szabo Gabo." All this would spell disaster for a lot of bands. It did in the 70s and it should now... but somehow Tricky Woo pull through. I chalk it up to attitude. The same "Yeah, it's derivative... so fucking what? I DARE you not to like it..." attitude that carried SOMETIMES I CRY is intact on LES SABLES MAGIQUES. It means they can stomp the wah and noodle all over songs like "Strange Meat" like it's 1969 and you'll forget that punk rock ever happened. [n/a]

(The rooftop turns out to be spacious, stretching as far as the eye can see, seven stories above the ice. Glaciers surround them in all directions; from their vantage point at the southeast corner of the roof, they can easily see the dogsleds of the top-secret experimental research teams moving across the ice far in the distance. A thin wind howls around them as TG, resplendent in her microscopic blue latex miniskirt and powerboots, surveys the panorama before them.)

TG: Pretty fucking majestic, don't you think? No wonder the Moon Unit wants the rooftop all to himself.

C12: Am I hallucinating, or is that really a swimming pool in the hothouse over there?

TG: Where else did you think he'd put it, out in the open?

C12: But we already have a pool inside... well, we did until you blew it up. Say, aren't you cold out here in that outfit? What little there is of it?

TG: I was genetically engineered to be indifferent to weather. It comes in handy.

C12: Of that I have no doubt. (plays CD) So, would you care to offer your commentary?

TG: Sure thing. This disc, which comes in a circular slipcase and everything, is Troum's latest direction. Troum, of course, is 2/3 of what used to be Maeror Tri, so it's pretty heavy on the drone tip. Here they're lacing their drones with shimmering harmonic moves, which is kind of nice. It sounds like what you'd imagine fog would sound like if, you know, fog had a sound.

C12: Oh, that's very helpful.

TG: The drones on "Wrota Sfer" fade in and out, heavily reverbed and creating an effect like waves of sound slowly bouncing around a dark underground cavern. It's the sound of the ocean as replayed in a cathedral, all waves and shining peaks of abstract sound. The sound of "Licht-Brandung" is not much different; the difference is measured more by the shifting of drones rather than any recognizable melodic change. The sound of these pieces (seven in all) is incandescent and dreamlike, the music of subterranean lantern fish.

C12: What do you know about lantern fish?

TG: I used to hunt them in my spare time while I was working for that deep-cover organization I can't name, okay? Are you going to let me do this review or not?

C12: Go on....

TG: An exception of sorts is "Skaun[ei]s," which incorporates various unidentifiable noises in the harmonic pulsations and sounds like a calliope playing in the deserted carnival of a forgotten dream. Listening to tracks like this, it's not hard to see why their statement (in the liner notes) "These are dreams dreamed by dreamers who are awake" makes perfect sense. This is truly hallucinatory music, the kind of thing that sounds like something from a trance state.-- a bit too involved to qualify as true ambient, but definitely not "rock" by any means.

C12: They sound a bit like Wendy and Carl. Or perhaps Main. Actually, this sounds very much like something Main would be doing now if Robert Hampson weren't otherwise occupied with whatever it is he's doing besides making Main albums.

TG: This is the first of a trilogy, by the way. I guess that means we can look forward to two more releases of a similar nature, which is okay by me. (looks at watch) We're running out of time here... gotta move on to the next review....

C12: Time? What are you talking about?

TG: We do have a deadline, you know. Whip out that Ulver disc and let's do it.

Oooo, more Troum... all good, all the time. The title is not a lie: this is indeed a fine collection of drones, five of them all, long and droning and possessed of an interstellar sound. The first track, "Schurphen," starts out oddly with peculiar scraping and knocking about before settling into a drifting, floating space drone. "Dhren" is more of a tumbling rumble that fades in from nothingness and settles into a hypnogroove around which sub-drones whirl and eddy, lulling you into an altered state akin to dreaming while awake (perhaps this is why the TJUKURRPA slogan is "These are dreams, dreamed by dreamers who are awake"). The third track, "Trahan," shifts up the ladder to a much higher pitch, but otherwise continues the droning, shuddering wave-of-sound motif begun by the first two tracks; "Afgod" is another slow burner, one that takes its time fading in and reveals itself to be another tumbling, shuddering brick of sound enveloped in drones, drones, and more drones. The final track, "Tiefenrausch" (boy, i sure wish i understood German so i knew what the fuck these titles meant), is more of the same, only... different. Frankly, trying to explain Troum's sound in words is kind of like explaining physics to your dog in Swahili -- it makes a hell of a lot more sense to actually experience it. All the more reason you should rush out and acquire this fine slab o' droning beauty while you still can (assuming it isn't sold out already).

If you've managed to get this far without grokking the mighty sound that is Troum, then frankly you're probably beyond saving -- but just in case it's not too late, you really ought to pick up this disc. While you're at it, pick up anything and everything else by them (good luck finding it). When the Day of Judgment comes, you will be graded by taste and having Troum listenables in your meager collection will go a long way toward insuring that you don't end up frying with the damned in the eternal pit of frost....

Troum return with a dark drone (you expected nu-metal?) punctuated by lengthy silences. It takes a while to really get rolling -- a few pings of sound, a tentative start trailing off, long pauses, disconnected swirls of noise -- but once it does, it rapidly coalesces into a churning, hypnotic washing-machine rhythm accompanied by long and mesmerizing drones. Limited to 500 copies on heavy-duty 10" vinyl and # 10 in the Lactamase series (other installments are by the likes of Tony Conrad, Rick Reed, Volcano the Bear, Coil, etc.), this offers no information as to what instruments were used or when and how it was recorded, but it sounds very much like the live set I saw them perform a couple of years ago at 33 Degrees. In fact, it's entirely likely this is from that very performance, in which they employed guitars through looped efx pedals and some kind of flutes or horns (didigeroo? sorry, it's been a while) to brilliant effect. For those who weren't there or aren't familiar with Troum, the sound is droning, ambient, all-encompassing, and beyond the limits of time. Psychedelic drone for those waiting to be swept away to new worlds filled with strange and exotic dreams. A must-have, no question.

The booklet that accompanies WE SPEAK IN CODE contains a series of photographs that present images of urban decay, Florida style. There are rusted-out cars, abandoned houses, drained swimming pools, and depressed commercial areas, almost all of which are shrouded by lush vegetation. The imagery is fitting. Most of the lyrics deal with empty promises, betrayal, complacency, loss, and helplessness. In the face of this spiritual desolation, the music (which is a variation on hardcore -- one that SWINGS and hangs on dissonance) comes up like the greenery in the photographs, giving a sense of movement, the sense that something can grow up, over, and out of the decay. Bad ass. [n/a]

Truthcircle -- 3/3 [Airquake Records]

This is interesting... heavy, yes, but mindless, no. Sort of like early Pro-Pain (only funkier) with a higher IQ and a singer who actually sings instead of just bellowing. This is one of the very few funk-influenced things done by a band not featuring George Clinton that i can actually stand to hear, so they must be doing something right.... Three guys, a lot of attitude, more solos than i would prefer (but at least they keep them tastefully short), cool spoken-word vignettes between songs about life in the mean streets, even cooler lyrics how we're all going to be crushed by life but me must struggle on anyway -- and the guitarist understands the proper uses of a fuzzbox. Coolest songs: The gloomy, paranoid "Lost in the Walls," the grim mean-streets epic "Carnival of Violence," "The Picture Never Lies" (which shifts back and forth from fuzzy metal to funk and back at will), the brooding "Survival Tactics"... actually, all the songs are pretty good; there are no stinkers here. I don't know if these guys will ever make it to the top o' the mega-heap, but i'd certainly rather hear them than [DEAD ANGEL's lawyers excise many, many lines now] and similar bands who sound like fish being castrated (and you know how bad THAT must sound); at least these guys can play.... They should probably be somewhat embarassed about the somewhat sexist lyrics to "Where Do We Go Now," tho. I do like the way they preface the obligatory "drugs are bad for you" song "Dead" with a spoken-word (sample?) that makes the direction of the intentionally vague lyrics a bit clearer -- suave move.... Incidentally, the best song on the album is the creepy "Phobia," a dynamics-driven song where the solos are actually warranted. Scope it out if you have a feel for the funk-metal thing....

Guitarist Dave Tucker visited the U.S. for the first time in 2001, and Ernesto Diaz-Infante helped him assemble the ensemble that appears here. As an ensemble, they lean toward a fusion of experimental improv and glitch electronics, hardly surprising in a group that includes axe-as-confusion guitarist Diaz-Infante on amplified acoustic guitar and a laptop operator (Scott R. Looney) processing sound in real time on all but one of the thirteen tracks here. (Also on board for the festive sound games: Danielle DeGruttola on cello and electric cello, Damon Smith on double bass, and Garth Powell on drums, percussion, and some diabolical-sounding device called the "idiophone.") The result is a series of chaotic-sounding tracks marked by unusual sounds, gaps of silence, and unorthodox juxtapositions of instruments. There are moments where the sound resembles that of a traditional (well, almost) jazz combo, but those moments are quickly destroyed by eccentric visions of instrumental distraction and just plain weirdness. Expect the unexpected, in other words. The album is instrumental and there's no indication of where Tucker came from or what country's sensibility he brings to the playing here, but it's certainly less frantic, more relaxed, and a smidge more cosmopolitan than a lot of the regional experimental music I've been hearing lately. Worth investigating, doom childe.

This is the one-man band's second release, following the self-titled three-track ep sold at performances of the play Circus Proboscis (multi-instrumentalist Jeff Wagner, responsible for said tunes here, wrote three songs for the play in question). The sound of these ten songs is one of exaggerated reverb, pulsating pipe organs, and a mantra-like noir atmosphere. Wagner was previously in bands like Sharking Teeth and Jumpknuckle, but apparently those were weaned on Stooges and noisy guitar, but there's none of that happening here. This is eccentric, mysterious, soundtrack music for sleazy musicals shot on a shoestring budget and full of penetrating truths about stuff beneath the radar. Odd-sounding but compelling, eccentric but build on catchy hooks and melodies and possessed of a singer / narrator of distinctive character. Interesting ideas about the shape of sound and a fondness for repetition are good things. Feel free to consume.

The third self-released effort from Tunnel of Love (actually one Jeff Wagner, assembling songs in San Francisco and Oakland) resides in a cryptic but toe-tappin' neighborhood on the fringes of DIY punk / pop, sounding like early to mid-80s postpunk and new wave on a budget. (Actually, a lot of those fab records by Wire and Devo and Gary Numan, etc., etc., that were such a nifty influence on ToL were recorded on budgets and equipment not much better than what your average bedroom recording enthusiast can dig up, so maybe that has something to do with why so many of the songs remind me of that era.) At times the vibe approximates that of the last Flaming Fire album, but Wagner's not particularly interested in pursuing any particular agenda (or if he is, he's figured out how to keep it from becoming to obvious). At times Wagner sounds like either an extremely demented Ric Ocasek or Lux Interior (trying to pass for an insurance salesman and failing, because you just can't hide that essential core of weirdness no matter how hard you try). Fractured pop experiments that would not be out of place next to Cheer-Accident, perhaps. In fact, I think a triple-bill of Cheer-Ax, Flaming Fire, and Tunnel of Love would be sufficient to completely befuddle any unprepared mainstream audience. Good, weird stuff, sixteen songs worth (to be fair, some songs are just short introductions or instrumental passages, but even those are pretty interesting); catchy and listenable while still being wildly unpredictable and surprisingly fresh. It even comes in a nifty li'l box. Trust me, this is way more out-there and interesting than anything you heard on the radio or saw on TV this week. See for yourself.

This is disc -- the sliver of aluminum -- that begat the Zenflesh dynasty. (It's also the one you've seen in the CD stores in the brown folded-cardboard package with a tongue-happy Colonel Sanders on the cover. Two artists are represented on the disc; can you, uh, guess who they are? [THS-CG: Uhhhhhh, the Spice Girls and the Backstreet Boys?] Turk Knifes Pope (a great name, by the way) clocks in with the long, fuzzed-ambient "sleep therapy suite" (further divided into six songlets with brilliant titles like "angel highway rose," "the brick molests a stranger," and "droning pale hair"); Petit Mal offers up "the process of emptying an open window." TKP's aesthetic is firmly established here -- the creation of subatomic noise and feedback that's then converted and smoothed out into drones whose ripples and waves form the construction of songs. Unlike most bands, TKP has absolutely nothing to do with standard musical idioms like harmony, dissonance, chord changes, structure, or anything of that spoo; rather, the entire point is to sculpt an audio slice of movement through processed sound. This is something TKP does extremely well (although i personally favor MAD DOG over this, actually). Vox make a rare appearance (albeit in grotesquely altered/processed form) on "a smile full of cavities" and are gradually enveloped in waves of bass feedback and desert-like drones; otherwise, the entire suite is nothing more (and nothing less) than a series of different attacks on the fortress of sleep-inducing drone. Petit Mal's approach is considerably less drone-intensive (and hence not quite as swank to me), but still plenty peculiar and definitely well outside the bounds of conventional songwriting. Lots of heavily repeated sounds and clattering that turn into the extended sound of a running motor and little else before eventually turning into another rhythm and finally a drillpress tone that rises and falls for several minutes before disappearing into the sound of the motor again. Toward the end there's an actual guitar figure that fades up, hovers for a bit, then fades back down again; it comes and goes for a good while before turning into a hollowed-out pong noise, which in turns mutates back into another drillpress tone before the song finally ends around the thirty-minute mark. Two extended styles of organic semi-ambient frippery; which one pushes your buttons, bwana?

Oooo, massive pulsing drones... kill me now, i'm in heaven. I like Zenflesh. I like Turk Knifes Pope. I like drones. I like their logo (a vacuum tube superimposed over a rorschach inkblot) and wish i'd thought of it first (except of course i would have replaced the tube with a similar-looking microphone, which is what i originally thought it was until i looked closer, and i would have made the inkblot look like an angel, natch). I like the nifty packaging -- the CD comes in a folded cardboard thingy with cool illustrations and wee cardboard mini-posters that are very mysterious and stuff. I like this first song "wa-ve" because it sounds like a lonesome guitar feeding back through a looped chorus pedal, winding its way through the fog with violins set adrift on a cold black river. I like the stacked-up drones and gong-like noises of "+symp/toms." I like the shuddering tidal ambience and cascading feedback waves on "b.la.st." I like Dustin LeBlanc's willful disregard for conventional punctuation (probably the influence of either too much e.e. cummings or too much beer before hitting the typewriter, maybe even both). I like the way all the songs make me sleepy. "'snor"e" is what heroin addicts hear after their eyeballs roll back and their skin turns blue. I like the ominious uberdistorted pulsing groan of "sli/ce" and its waves of zombified fear that sound like telephone wires screaming underneath a doomed sky. If telephone poles could play guitars this is what they would play and you would like it or else the telephone poles would fall and crush your tiny skull. Feel the wires shudder! Feel the quake! Let the droning distortion plug up all your orifices until you crash to the floor in a dazed stupor, totally unable to move, to even twitch your eyeballs! Stare vacantly at the ceiling as the waves pummel your weak flesh like ultrasound, damn you!

I like the microphone feedback on "nod\" (sounds just like the tone favored by Autodidact in its more excessive moments). I like the rumbling waves of sound like the ocean. I like the tapping in the background. I like to imagine this pouring out of the world's biggest speaker in the middle of Times Square -- all the salarymen and pimps and politicians and dope-addled bums and ordinary housewives and smut peddlers and barefoot teenage runaways and burnt-out crack-huffing poets from Madison, Wisconsin who came to the big city to make it big but failed miserably and tiny children of every ethnic division imaginable and sewer rats and goldbricking city utility workers and street vendors and cockroaches and every living thing in the street all stand rooted to the cement, poleaxed with dumb horror at the waves of sound bigger than the Titanic with a hard-on come pouring out of the world's biggest speaker and knock all the buildings down in slow motion, see the endless footage of smoking rubble on the evening news. I like to imagine these things even though this music makes me so inert that i basically want to curl up and go fetal and close my eyes and shut out the entire planet. I like "e.nvy" because it sounds like all of the above. I like "a= trial" because it has an actual riff in it under all the droning sludge. I like the riff. I like the sludge. I like the fact that i have been hypnotized into submission. I like this as a cheap, legal, considerably more efficient alternative to mind-altering drugs. I like the return to droning, subterranean ambience and not much else on "-neg-ative-" (are those violins in the background or treated guitars? only your dog will know for sure). I like "m%ad dog!" because the tinny repetitive guitar is like the devil scratching at your back door while wind chimes turn and wail. Hell has your number and it's etched in the fillings of your teeth. They vibrate at night when you awaken all sweaty with only the vague memory of the burning fever dream, and the ringing in your ears... the pounding in your veins... the turning of the wind chimes on your back porch sound exactly like this.I like this CD because nothing else has made me write prose this fucked up in a long time. I like this because it reminds me of what drugs were like before they all went bad and made me want to claw out my own eyeballs and eat them. I like this strange band. I like this CD. I like Zenflesh. I like. I like. I like. I like. I like. I like. I like. I like. I like. I like.

Turk Knifes Pope -- PERFORMANCE CRIPPLING DATA RESTRICTION [Zenflesh]

Given the name and the title, i had this idea (don't ask why, my ideas come from strange places, mon) that this was going to be a white-noise kind of album. Imagine my surprise to discover it's more about tripped-out psychoambient cathedral drones and the like. The title names are literally monosyllabic and apparently more or less random, but that's all right -- i get the impression that the work is carved up in chunks kind of arbitrarily anyway. (In fact, regardless of what the track listing sez, there's actually only one track on the album.) The whole shabozz opens with some swank microphone feedback drones, like a series of tumbleweeds blowing in the desert, or maybe a spaghetti western on Mars. These feedback drones, often heavily reverbed or force-fed through delay pedals from the sound of it, go on for quite some time, moving closer into the stereo picture, then further away. As the drones and swirls go on, it becomes obvious why TKP has been compared to Organum, Nurse With Wound, and Main -- the structural theory is learned behavior from listening to the rise and fall of Organum releases, and the kitchen-sink tumbling through space sound is reminiscent of Main's "if less is more, then a lot more of less should be even more of more" philosophy. As for the NWW connection, well, hell, i'm beginning to think everybody in the whole world who uses quirky sounds gets compared to NWW. (I never thought that much of 'em myself, but what do i know.) The li'l insert i got with this indicates that it's intended to soothe insomniacs, although how that's supposed to happen when blaring noises explode out of the background every so often just as you're on the verge of nodding out, i'll never know. (Perhaps TKP merely have an extremely subtle sense of humor. Or perhaps they're just sardonic.) I approve of this disc. I wish my bloated soundscapes sounded this cool and alien. If you'll excuse me, i think i'm going to go track down the other TKP disc now. Just... just as soon as i roust myself from my sudden hypnotized, jellylike state....

Two Assistant Deputy Ministers -- RACIAL OVERTONES [self-released]

And now, a wee li'l item for the hard of hearing... mein GOTT, this tape is LOUD. Not to mention violently abrasive. Or is that abrasively violent? Either way, it will clean EVERYTHING out of your ears... your sinuses... your brainpan... your bowels... hell, it might even wipe you out of existence if you play it REALLY loud. Jeez, blackout in the generator room time, m'boyo! The damage is contained in one ninety-minute tape, one long piece broken into four parts ("Racial Overtones I-IV"), with Jason Kushnir helpfully providing the impenetrable wall o' noise while Simone Stephens contribues vocals (or so it SAYS, anyway). A brief summation, then:

Side One: Cut-up bursts of static turn into a screeching wail and then it gets dense and frantic. You WILL damage your ears if you listen to this turned up loud. We're talking severely tweaked high-frequency scorched earth sonic hell here. Lots of sounds, all packed in tight, just a big mess o' disparate noises moving a million miles a minute. Like a refrigerator full of glass and ball bearings being force-fed through a garbage disposal with a TINY aperture. Like the voice of Satan rewinding backwards on big tape loops that have been hacked to shreds, set on fire, reassembled, and run at impossibly high speeds through a shiny fright machine. Monstrous.

Side Two: HIgh-pitched squeaky riffing, after some repetitive ear abuse, slides into a roar of swirling white noise, like being sucked into a jet intake. Then it just keeps getting louder, grittier, and scarier -- eventually cut-up junk noise from destroyed CDs, overmodulated bass hum, and God only knows what else starts running through the waste mill too. The product of a supremely deranged mind and equally damaged ears. My magic eight-ball predicts a hearing aid in Jason's future....

Type O Negative -- OCTOBER RUST [Roadrunner]

So the big question on your minds, i'm sure, is: Is it as good as their "breakthrough" album BLOODY KISSES? Surely one of the burning questions of our cosmos, a question that doubtless keeps you turning in your sleep all night wondering if Peter Steele's still got what it takes, the answer is: Why, yes. It's different, though. They've pushed further out into goth territory, largely dropping the metallic riffing (presumably to further expand their fanbase to include more attractive female fans for Peter to sleep with), and seriously drenched the proceedings in piles of keyboards and even bigger piles of reverb. Once you get past the peculiar joke of "Bad Ground" (an ungrounded amp humming for about a minute or so) and their spoken intro to the album, "Love You to Death" (not the Alice Cooper song) unloads on you like they're the second coming of Yes, only with better taste and considerably more restraint (an odd thing to say for a quasi- metal band, but what the hey). Peter's abandoned the pain and humiliation lyrical axis in favor of... uh... earth worship? Wooooo, it's a brave new world all right.... "Be My Druidess" actually rocks (they play at a tempo slightly faster than dirgelike! will wonders never cease!), and i would guess that "My Girlfriend's Girlfriend" is supposed to be the big catchy pop hit (luv that rotating Leslie organ bit, baybee, it's so sixties, mon), although it's not the best thing here. (That would most likely be "Die With Me," which is the closest the album comes to morbid excess of BLOODY KISSES and its title track.) Another contender for best of the bunch would have to be "Burnt Flowers Fallen" -- twangy guitars, monolithic riffing guitars, thunderous drums, minimalist lyrics, more layers of keyboards, they just pile it on into one big ominous groove, ees hep, senorita. They even do a monstrously heavy cover of "Cinnamon Girl" (!) complete with relentless drums and hyperactive hocus-pocus guitar and have a song written for no other good reason than to irritate the politically correct ("The Glorious Liberation of the People's Technocratic Republic of Vinnaland by the Combined Forces of the United Territories of Europa" -- the song takes less time to play than it does to say the title and is mostly the sound of looting and pillaging in the hills); what more can you ask for it? A suave continuation of good form....

For a bunch of guys who look so fearsome (especially singer/dictator Peter Steele, he of the massive pecs), Type O Negative sure are a sensitive bunch... all bummed about, um... let's see... well, everything. The whole world makes them go boo hoo. Especially death. Death looms large in their pantheon. Including the sardonic snippets of disease included here as "filler" tracks (three brief sound-efx psychodramas entitled "Sinus," "Liver," and "Lung," supposedly depictions of way three-fourths of the band expects to kick off thanks to their bad habits), nearly all of the album either alludes to or outright refers to said subject (the rest is neo-gothic babbling like "Pyretta Blaze" and a nose-thumbing Beatles medley cover). In other words, nothing new happening here. Steele's singing continues to expand and improve -- he's getting frankly Wagnerian these days, warbling all over the scale -- but the band is locked into the same drone 'n plod that they discovered somehow sells piles o' records on BLOODY KISSES, a stylistic move they've since embraced with a death grip. Really, these guys need to lighten up or something. I've got nothing against gloom and doom (which they admittedly do real, real well), but constantly remaking BLOODY KISSES is starting get a tad old. Of course, it's hard to tell how seriously they take any of this -- the first track, "Skip It," is a brief snippet of a CD skipping, and the lyrics to "Everyone Dies" are so frankly ridiculous that i have a hard time believing they don't have their tongues firmly in cheek. The deliberately bombastic metal-meltdown cover of "Day Tripper" (with a medley of various other Beatles tunes mutilated in similar fashion) makes it pretty clear that their sense of humor remains as twisted and opaque as ever (they are from New York, after all). All fine and good, but i think i preferred their earlier stuff, even though it sounded shittier then. Puzzle over that one while i patiently wait for the band to stop fucking around and move onto something halfway new.

Type O Negative -- "My Girlfriend's Girlfriend" + 2 [Roadrunner]

I bought this mainly for the "racy" cover (buffer-than-thou Peter Steele in bed nekkid with two tremendously hot babes, etc., etc., i know, it's sad what i'll stoop to, isn't it?) and the cover of "Black Sabbath (From the Satanic Perspective"). It's okay. "My Girlfriend's Girlfriend" is about menage a trois and is considerably more keyboard-heavy than anything from the last album; the Sabbath cover is really, really slow and morose and doom-laden until the last verse, where everything speeds up wildly (or as wildly as TON ever gets, anyway). Peter Steele has the kind of subterranean voice custom-made for covering Sabbath tunes and making them even spookier than they were before. (So why haven't they covered "Sabbath Bloody Sabbath" yet, eh?) The last track is a remix of "Blood and Fire" that is probably actually better than the original cut from BLOODY KISSES, and (of course) can be found nowhere else. As for the new album OCTOBER RUST, check the next issue for deep thoughts on that one....