Picked up a couple new things this week....
Was curious enough to give the new Delerium a test spin, and not to
be ambiguous or anything, but I like it and I donUt. ItUs got nice,
lush textures, vocals and voice samples to send any Enigma fan into
paroxyms of joy, and generally good beats. BUT, the beats are all
lifted quite obviously from your favorite bands (FSOL, Orb, Enigma,
etc.), the voices are doubtless all from world music CDUs (except for
a dandy, angelic live vocalist), and that Front Line Assembly industrial
sound and arrangement style is still vaguely there, not that thatUs a
bad thing in itself, but it makes the music not fit well with your
general ambient fare. ItUs hard to explain this last complaint, but if
youUre familiar with FLA you probably know what I mean.
Also picked up the Woob album just out on Emit, and I like it a lot.
It has the flow of a live ambient set (which it sort of is), in that
it doesnUt have your typical intro-buildup-climax-outro form, but
shifts from idea to idea, sometimes trancing out, sometimes not.
The ambient stuff is not so much unsettling as mysterious, with
snippets of voices, natural sounds, and icy textures. The drums are
tribaly with slow-trance breakbeats, usually build around some sort of
ethnic instrument or voice. He has a habit of pitching the voices
higher, which you would think would make them chipmunky and irritating,
but instead makes them rather alien and mesmerising. Cool stuff.
My current problem is that when IUm record shopping my eye keeps
wandering over to industrial/experimental ambient stuff, but I have
no idea where to start.
Muslimgause, Zoviet France, Paul Schutze, Mo Boma, Shinjuku Thief,
Hafler Trio...all there are things I want to check out, but every
time I think about it my bank account just gives me this withering
look and thatUs the end of it. So would anyone who has some expertise
is this genre (or just has tons of Extreme) be willing to make me a
sampler tape? I will gladly reciprocate with whatever.
Thank you for your support.
--Jeff