IDM Mailing Archive

quoted 4 lines From: CiM <S.Walley@uea.ac.uk>

> From: CiM <S.Walley@uea.ac.uk> > Silent Phase : Psychotic Funk (Transmat/R&S) > The title track is a slow, tribal, bass bending mood trip through warm chords > and subtle rhythms. ^^^^

At the risk of stating the obvious, you are playing the A-side at 45 aren't you? I wouldn't say it was *that* slow... Excellent record BTW. Someone asked about Mark Gage's Cusp work a while back. Here's my review of the album taken from FineTime, the South Wales listings and reviews magazine I write for. Bear in mind this was written for a pretty wide audience, so it's not as in-depth or technical as some of you IDMers might be used to... CUSP SPACE AND TIME, LIQUIDS AND METALS Swim (CD only) (Out now) Mark Gage is one of the lesser-known figures on the international dance scene, but he has quietly been churning out his distinctive brand of atmospheric, analogue-fuelled techno for several years on Richie Hawtin's Plus 8 label as Vapourspace, and on its Probe offshoot as Cusp. This album essentially brings together the hard-to-find Cusp material, together with a couple of new tracks, into a seamless seventy-minute blend of deep ambience and trippy techno. Internal (home of Orbital, The Advent, and more recently CJ Bolland) licensed the Vapourspace album, *Themes From Vapourspace* last year, and the Cusp material has been handled by Colin Newman's Swim label, a well-respected imprint on the UK underground scene. The album gets under way with the barely audible subsonic rumble of *Space Between*, evolving into *Venusian Satellite*, its squelching electronic percussion loops leading into the full-on techno assault of *Drone um Futurisma*. This is the most reminiscent of Vapourspace's classic *Gravitational Arch of 10*, with its sweeping analogue sequences and blasting drums. It continues through further dancefloor material with *Mars the Red Planet*, settling into a pattern of alternating ambient noodling and techno beats, closing with the eighteen-minute *Venusian Biosphere*. Overall, I feel that it works slightly better as a flowing album than *Themes from Vapourspace*. Cliched sci-fi titles aside, this is a very competent collection of electronica. However, the fact that some of the material is relatively old tends to show through in places, and in general the music falls short of the sonic and rhythmic inventiveness displayed by the likes of Autechre, Plaid and the other key players on the world-wide 'intelligent techno' scene. As a modern techno album, this doesn't really stand out as a classic, but nonetheless it's a solid release, and one that may grow on the listener with time. see ya _________________________________________________ tom churchill e-mail: tom@chrchfam.demon.co.uk electronic musician/dj _________________________________________________