Well after much battling with some of the local Brum record shops, I
finally managed to get my hands on a copy of "Orange" by Atom Heart.
Its about an hour long, and I was pretty shocked to see how ambient it
was....seemed to be doing a bit of the old push back the boundary stuff
here.
The first track "One Atomsecond" is an eight minute distorted piece of
soundscape, with about 8 or 9 harmonics in there it seems. After about 4 mins
or so some little noises (twanging guitars? I cant quite place em anyway)
start coming in, tinkering along in the background which adds a bit of depth
(or a bit more depth) to the whole thing. Not exactly what you'd expect as an
opening track but sets pretty much the tone of the rest of the album :
ie minimalistic ambient..
The second track (name esacpes me) starts off sounding more like a Severed
Heads track, all tape loops and strange melodies, but slowly some more relaxing
tones begin to slide in and another soundsscape is created.
The third and fourth tracks I havent really listened to a great deal yet,
but both seem to be along the same lines of minimalistic ambient. When thinking
about this album I cant really give other names of other bands as a
reference point, apart from maybe other FAX bands such as Datacide. Suffice
to say that it is a strange album, and the last track, "Coda 2", manages
to demonstrate immense strangeness and variety of style (something i felt
this album need a bit more of. It was mainly minimal, almost always ambient,
which is pretty good when yr in the mood, but when you arent......).
"Coda 2" starts off quite ambient - relaxing this time, rather than
chilling (Uneasy listening) as on the rest of the album. After a while this
clicking noise begins to kick in. It sounds like a spark discharge
or something, but at first I thought it was the CD jumping or maybe my speakers
dying (this LP is very bassy) from the overload of sound. Later on in
this track a kind of dub piece comes in for about 5 mins, which wanders off
in its own style for a while before giving way to chilling, pulsating
sounds again......
The whole album when taken together comes as a surprise (ie can someone really
be THAT ambient), but generally the tracks seem to be a bit similar in places.
Another thing about it is the immense gaps between tracks (30 seconds at times)
anmd the fact that this album would sound a lot better if it was all mixed
together.
Contains some of the best stuff FAX have put out, but you definitely have to
be in the mood for it. Its limited to 1000 too, so I doubt that can be much
help in getting hold of it.
Re: The Hawtin + Namlook project (also on FAX). Well, I have got the CD,
bought it about 2 days agao. I havent really had much time to listen to it
yet, but as soon as I do, a review will be posted......
It goes under the name "FRom Within" and is another 70minute 5-tracker,
featuring one half-hour track which sounds very reminiscent of the 13-min
track by FUSE on Dimension Intrusion, but definitely has the Namlook feel to it
also. Genreally this CD has Namlook Tones but Hawtin Basslines.
Anyway, gotta be off now...anyone know when/if Air 2 and Namlook vs RDJ projex
are coming out?
Cheers....
darko.....
I think we should stop this drugss discussion...filling up me disk with
unnecesary rubbish.
You will have gathered I am not the best reviewer around!