went shopping and picked up a few things i'd recommend:
Gentle People "Journey": I believe the CD single (which
i bought) contains both 12"s. This is a blend of 50s
mood music, an early 70s movie's cheesy soundtrack &
some spacey sounds thrown in. Reminds me a little
of Tuxedomoon's "Dancing under the moonlight" (?)
e.p. for some reason. The only thing about
this that I don't like is the cheesy vocals
(some FR, GE (?) woman blathering about the
gentle people and what they like & some male
background vocals which are just there)- as
this would work much better without them.
I'm not an aphex fan, but the aphex remix
is excellent (though i find the distortion
-added-for-effect in the middle of the track
to be a bit annoying). This single will definitely
make many top ten lists for the year (including mine).
Small fish with spine/Stickleback (sorry, can't tell
which is the artist name & which is the title):
This 6 track ep hosts a wide variety of styles
"siolin" is a minimal tune w/ a slow hip hop
beat, FSOL (ISDN) sounds and some Asian
(Japanese ?) string samples. "I hate you" has
a faster beat (somewhere between hip hop & break
beat), "dark" noises sampled into the mix.
also sounds very much like the latest FSOL. "junk
food" has no beat, just a droning sound that repeats
in the background w/ some lighter noises & samples
mixed in. "meika" opens w/ some radio wave-sounding
noises, a sample of a woman's laugh & a heartbeat
thumping, quite nice. "hollwood" is a cross between
FSOL & mad professor w/ a Tricky-soundalike on vocals.
"anjuna..." has a slow beat, some sax, and a few
interesting samples & synths mixed together.
Richar H Kirk "The number of magic". yes it's
been given a US release (TVT). (don't have
any track listing info), Big improvement
here from the last Cabaret Voltaire stuff
(plasticity/intn'l...-after which i stopped
paying attention to his stuff). Much more
experimental than his latter CV stuff,
while still very melodic & dubby. Samples
& echo galore here. track 2 has a disco
background to it (probably guitar samples
from some 70s disco tune), the drum work
on this one is rather nice, though repetitive.
the album sound is quite hard to describe:
a blend of 70s disco (guitar samples & slower beat)
bleepy/blippy stuff & some of the repetitive
stuff familiar from CVs latter efforts & some
"natural" (sampled) sounds blended in
(sax, middle eastern flutes, jazz bass).
Overall it's more complicated than the
latter CV stuff, but the stuff is worked
into the mix in a somewhat mechanical manner
that makes the 8 minute tracks become
repetitive after a while.