IDM Mailing Archive

Frimann Freyr Bjornsson wrote:

quoted 8 lines Can anyone recommend me some Scorn albums?

> > Can anyone recommend me some Scorn albums? > > Are any of these albums worth the money: > > Lick Forever Dog > Colossus > White Irises Blind

--these ones are kinda along the lines of the Godflesh releases, more "grind-core" than their later dubbier stuff

quoted 5 lines Evanescence

> Evanescence > Silver Rain Fell > Gyral > Leave It Out > Zander

These I think are excellent dark dubby tracks/albums. Really moody and bass-filled soundscapes with beats. Check out the excellent Meat Beat Manifesto remix of 'Silver Rain Fell'.

i'd also recommend the harris/plotkin collaberation entitled collapse (believe 'tis on release), which is a good beatless dark ambient (not in the monotonic drone way) album that i can actually just sit down and listent to. cool stuff, and makes good background music for 1st person shooters... btw, does lull material tend to sound like collaspe? dronier? screechier? anybody? ethan

quoted 2 lines Can anyone recommend me some Scorn albums?

>Can anyone recommend me some Scorn albums? >Are any of these albums worth the money:

Almost all the Scorn records are worth the money, but only a very few are truly stunning.

quoted 1 line Colossus

>Colossus

Interesting mix of grindcore and dub - definitely much heavier on the dub side, just has a very hard edge to it, so perhaps calling it grindcore is inappropriate. I don't regret buying it, but I don't listen to it too often.

quoted 2 lines Evanescence

>Evanescence >Silver Rain Fell

Ellipsis is the remixes of Evanescence - essential. Evanescence is a great record, but you don't really need it if you have ellipsis, which is far superior. I'll assume Silver Rain Fell is a single with the Meat Beat mix, in which case it's absolutely amazing, but all of it's on Ellipsis.

quoted 2 lines Gyral

>Gyral >Leave It Out

Absolutely essential, but Leave it Out is just a single.

quoted 1 line Zander

>Zander

Decent but just not as amazing as gyral, ellipsis, and logghi barogghi - the 3 you should listen to first (in that order). I've listened to one of those around every week for over a year. There are lots of other Mick Harris records, but the Lull lps are the only ones I enjoy nearly as much as Scorn (cold summer in particular), and they're totally beatless drifting ambient - very cold. --- the humble abbott arthur purvis set his hand hereto

quoted 3 lines Scorn recommendations

>Scorn recommendations > >Can anyone recommend me some Scorn albums?

Yes, I'm something of a Mick Harris/Nick Bullen nut :-) Release dates are approx.

quoted 1 line Are any of these albums worth the money:

>Are any of these albums worth the money:

Lick Forever Dog Colossus White Irises Blind LFD and WIB are only EP's. LFD is from 91 and is pretty heavy, nowhere near IDM. Industrial dub, perhaps. There are a couple of cool mixes on there, but I'd leave it till later. LFD is lifted from their first album Vae Solis, which is really good but more guitar-bass-drums orientated. Justin Broadrick (Techno Animal/Ice/Godflesh/Final etc) played guitar on VS and LFD. Colossus is from 92 and is somewhere in between their metal roots and their full fledged ambient dub material. It's pretty good, although WIB is the standout track and is quite brilliant. So perhaps it would be better to get the EP first to see if you like that sound or not. The mixes on the EP are OK but nothing special. Evanescence Silver Rain Fell Evanescence (95), along with Ellipsis (I presume you've already got that seeing you didn't mention it) are Scorn's two best, IMHO. Evanescence is where all but one of the tracks on Ellipsis came from. Get it now, it is EXCELLENT. It is very dub orientated. The only track on Ellipsis that isn't radically altered is Silver Rain Fell, which just has the vocals taken out and is made a bit more dancable. The Silver Rain Fell 12" doesn't have anything on it that isn't on El. or Ev. It's quite hard to describe... wicked live bass and programming with HEAVILY treated guitar and vocals. Regarded by many as one of the best ambient dub albums ever. I agree. Gyral (95) Leave It Out (96) Zander (97) Nick Bullen left after Ellipsis. Brilliant bassist, vocalist and songwriter, but he also had an alcohol addiction and a violent personality and ended up in jail for a year after glassing someone. He is now a baker. So these albums are just Mick Harris. These are very minimal and completely electronic (No live bass, or vocals or anything). Gyral is the best of these 3. Leave it out is OK, but you can get these tracks on a 2cd compilation called Sonics Everywhere. SE is all the 12"'s released on MH's label Possible and there's some other good stuff on there like PCM, who did the awesome The End remix on Ellipsis. Zander is very minimal and if choosing from these 3 Gyral would be the best starting point. I love all Scorn stuff, but apart from Ellipsis/Evanescence, it's not that accessible, so it's hard to know what to recommend. If you end up digging his stuff, you might want to check out: (For starters, he's got about 1000 side projects) Lull (MH's beatless ambient thing) Nick Bullen/Bill Laswell: Bass Terror (Damn fine CD) Ice/T-A: Ice's Bad Blood and T-A's Re-Entry are both brilliant and are the work of J. Broadrick, K.Martin, and others. They don't sound much like Scorn but most Scorn fans dig them. Painkiller: MH, Laswell and Zorn doing bizzare and usually very heavy impro jazz. If you're feeling particularly adventurous, check out the classic Naplam Death album Scum that features MH, J.Broadrick and Nick Bullen. :-) The dub terrorsit pages also have heaps of info on him and his work. http://dubterrorist.hyperreal.org/ Hope this helps, Tintin

can anyone recommend a good online record store? (no, not cdnow.com) also, i need some place to order the new autechre from in the u.s. and hopefully not pay too terribly much for it. thanks...