IDM Mailing Archive

1998-05-20 18:22Tom Tongerhi all, some new and old stuff I bought last week: gas - zauberberg (blei) wolfgang voigt

From:: Tom Tonger <tom.tonger@uni-koeln.de>
To:: <idm@hyperreal.org>, <koeln-elektronik@uni-koeln.de>, <ambient@hyperreal.org>
Date:: Wed, 20 May 1998 20:22:19 +0200
Subject:: (idm) some reviews

hi all, some new and old stuff I bought last week: gas - zauberberg (blei) wolfgang voigt with a killer disc of lo-fi warmth and creepy coldness, mostly with very subdued straight beats that stay way in the background behind some very melancholic melodies that fit the name (thomas mann's novel, for those not german) perfectly. köln kompakt 1 (kompakt) 13 wicked, previously unreleased tracks from kandis, studio 1, j burger, dr walker, reinhard voigt, thomas brinkmann and other cologne heroes. all representing the same cologne stylee: always minimal, somtimes dubby, usually housy, and of course all funky as shit. I'm afraid this is only available at the köln kompakt store directly. david holmes: lets get killed (go beat) I'm surprised I didn't hear about this on the list last year. david holmes spent a weekend in nyc with a tape recorder and (according to an interview) an extra supply of acid and used his recordings to connect a dozen seriously funky tracks. while they're all cool, "don't die just yet" really stands out. I haven't heard a track with so many guitar elements that moved me so much in years. plaid: 333 (warp) ok, not much need to review this one. I'm neither disappointed nor thrilled. I don't really mind the vocals, nicolette comes in quite nicely sometimes, but what pissed me off was track 11 "Ol" starting out grooving away like there's no tomorrow, and then some uncoherent synth washes come in and destroy it all. not bad, but the clear ep was more beautiful and funkier at the same time. porter ricks: s/t (mille plateaux) mixed breakbeat, minimal house, and beatless tracks. most of them are quite chilled. some have guitar samples (one sounds like a van halen lick but they amazingly manage to get away with it). anybody know who these guys are? electric ladyland 5 (mille plateaux) I've heard different opinions here, but I think it's mostly mediocre noisy stuff that sounds scarily like fsol's last album (whatever that piece of crap was called). a couple tracks stand out, though: andre gurov with a distorted hip hop track that scares the shit out of the bassdrum delay button of my rebirth 338 :-), jammin unit with the melancholic "ausgangssperre", and sandbenders (who is that?) with an abrasively funky track "fallout". also nice is soulslinger's andromeda plate. but those 4 don't justify the below-mille plateaux standards of the remainder of this 2-cd. burger/ink: las vegas (harvest) how could I overlook this for over a year - it's brilliant. 10 very relaxed tracks, every single one is wonderful. some are simply touching. get this by all means. boards of canada: aquarius 7" (skam) I know you poor saps in the states won't like to hear this, but while you get the already beautiful aquarius on music has the right, chinook has got to be one of the 3 greatest BoC tracks I've heard to date. whith its deep, scary, kinda autechre-ish sound it sounds more like it could have belonged on ska008, but is not really in the vein of anything off music has the right. finding this sucker (2 of them, actually, but don't email me about the other one right now) made me smile for a couple days straight. ok, that's it for now. cheers, --tom

1998-05-20 19:01Sean Cooper> k?ln kompakt 1 (kompakt) > 13 wicked, previously unreleased tracks from kandis, studio 1

From:: Sean Cooper <scooper@best.com>
To:: <koeln-elektronik@uni-koeln.de>, <idm@hyperreal.org>
Date:: Wed, 20 May 1998 12:01:43 -0700 (PDT)
Subject:: (idm) Re: (k-e) some reviews
Reply to:: (idm) some reviews

quoted 6 lines k?ln kompakt 1 (kompakt)

> k?ln kompakt 1 (kompakt) > 13 wicked, previously unreleased tracks from kandis, studio 1, j burger, dr > walker, reinhard voigt, thomas brinkmann and other cologne heroes. all > representing the same cologne stylee: always minimal, somtimes dubby, > usually housy, and of course all funky as shit. I'm afraid this is only > available at the k?ln kompakt store directly.

actually, this showed up at the amoeba in san francisco a few weeks ago. sounds like if it's "usually housey" i wouldn't be interested, but it looks like a quality release for fans of the kolnish abuse of that genre... also, i'll add a brief review of my own. i just got the new lithops lp on eat raw in the mail. (lithops is the solo project of mouse on mars' jan st. werner.) it's called _didot_, and it's a dense, wonderful expansion of some of the sketches contained on the other recently released lithops lp, _uni umit_, combined with rhythmic and compositional ideas also present in koln-based artists such as fx randomiz, mouse on mars (more their _instrumentals_ material than anything else), and kandis/visor/senking (a couple of the tracks from the recent senking 12-inch on karaoke kalk could easily have appeared on _didot_). the production value is very high (much higher than on _uni umit_)--a real benefit since many of the sounds could get lost in the chaos. _didot_ is probably less impressionistic than _uni umit_, but it's also much more varied stylistically, moving through busy electro, weirdbeat "house" (that's never an accurate term for werner and toma's 4/4 freakouts), electroacoustic, and even something like ambient post-rock, making it overall a fuller, more enjoyable release. i've only listened to it once, but i can already tell tell this is going to be spending a lot of time on my turntable in the coming months. i'll be including a full-review of this in the next issue of urban sounds, but for lithops newbies interested in hearing more, you can check out my review of _uni umit_ at: http://www.urbansounds.com/home/styles/electro/us_electro_lithops.com there are also realaudio samples available for three of the tracks. thanks, sc onnow: john fahey : womblife (table of the elements)

(idm) Re: (k-e) some reviews