IDM Mailing Archive

watch for: Si-{cut}.db - Behind You CD (Suburbs of Hell/The Sprawl Imprint SOH=SP-025) the small music / behind you / spectral reach / one size fits all... / what i have discovered / arbant / at all / tourist zone / mute point / spectral reach (scannered) / arbant (scannered) Douglas Benford and Robin Rimbaud (who produces the LP) team up. thank the miracle of e-mailable audio. boisterous and giddy electronica. intimate analogue cooing and dappled melodies play over buckshot snares. "the small music" has a Latin-ized swing which reins in the clattering breakbeats. Douglas Benford goes trippin' through the (Neo)tropics and comes out with a piece of densely detailed beauty. crisp vibes and bass booms on the title track and "one size fits all...," rhythms rattle, sputter, shiver, unpredictable as a drunken jaywalker. curious lovstruck beasties warble their mating-calls across the "spectral reach" and "at all," stretches of ambient texturology as dreamy as Sch?tze's [SEED] musings or Robert Lenier. "what i have discovered" - ... maybe the bloody remains of seraphic massed strings beaten into pulp by low-tuned drumbeats? Hercule Poirot could jump the 'tronica bandwagon if he adopts "arbant" as his theme; foggy and subliminally funky with just a demitasse of jungle-isms. "mute point" is probably the most straightforward (ha! don't count on it) "cut" you'll hear from "Si-" d(rum &) b(ass) cut; but it still owes much more to Nonplace Urban Field or Fila Brazillia than to any of the (yaaaaaawn...) Metalheadz or Reinforced "kru"es. Scanner's remixes are packed tight, condensed and compressed into less sprawling (sorry) spaces. the excised space actually gives Rimbaud's treatments more room for atmosphere, and it's nice to hear Scanner mellowing out again after those raucous (rock-us?) SoulStaticSound 7"s. 9/10 don't miss if you love: NUF/Drome, Atom Heart, _Richard D. James_, TPower's _Waveform_, Tipsy, Neotropic, _Music for Adverts_, _Lifeforms_, Uzecht Plaush, Immersion, an icy sangria, lounge chairs, "demo" mode on yr keyboard. Twisted Science - Cold Fusion EP(12") (Leaf Records - DOCK 8) cold fusion / snip / bleeder / minimal animal / harmonic / pinhead / mula / nine due out: 4/1/97 Crikey! i think "cold fusion" froze my stylus! sinister skulking cold-ass groove with a yawning stripe of pink noise. Jon Tye sounds much more confident on this second TS excursion. chilled and groove-alicious like DJ Shadow without the hype. if this doesn't seduce the headz, nothing will. to steal a riff from Andrew Barlow, it's like icicles down yr spine. crazy! Tye goes ballistic with the breaks and feedback on "snip," a clip which stops just short of DJ Panacea brutality. talk about a tease! he overloads noise of every discernable stripe - mechanical, organic, human, electronic - on the AWESOME "bleeder," a slashing HipHopFree-jazz/Jazz-free-Techno sortie straight out of the lost Books of Vadim. someone's been listening to his Techno Animal records... ; and then "minimal animal." - lock-grooved static which makes ? sound like a prime candidate for Thorazine. minimal is right! Tye's surely chuckling as he scrambles yr neurons. all sorts of havoc on "harmonic," most of it damn pretty. bass too low for even MJ Harris's ears and ascending whorls of strings and skree; then the breaks come in, like renegade snares eloping from a S.O.U.R. record. over all too quickly. damn you, Tye! you really love fuggin' with our headz, don't you. half-hearted plinking and plonking and, well, noodling on "pinhead." random fiddlings best left to Faust, Tortoise, Ui, and their ilk. back to the 'breakzville with "mula," another underwater Hardsteppa' awash in gurgling noise... which eventually takes over. sure to appear on a future Big Chill comp. file next to Sutton's early Boymerang gear. "nine" clones Pachlabel's "Canon in D" with the DNA of some obscure Xmas carol. turn off the vacuum cleaner (or is that a hair dryer?) while you're recording, JT. please. 9.7/10 get in line at the local rekkid store (now!) if you worship: TPower (esp the 12"s and FSET), Bedouin Ascent, the _Lo Recordings_ series, Vogel and Empire's more sedate moments, NUF (again! hey, Friedmann's very eclectic!), stereo test records, Merzbow, Organum, everything on SubRosa, Ntone artists, NWW, DJ Aida Vadim Gurov Units K?ner & Mellwig, St. Laswell. avoid if you're expecting: MLO. maybe next time. and now an experiment: Microstoria - Remixes 2x12" (Mille Plateaux MP37) no track titles or artists listed on this white-label. so how 'bout this? i'll make my guesses, and we can compare when it's officially released. deal? here's what Achim S. gave me to work with:

quoted 2 lines MP 37 Microstoria the remixes by Oval,Mouse on Mars,Ui,Stereolab,Jim

>MP 37 Microstoria the remixes by Oval,Mouse on Mars,Ui,Stereolab,Jim > O`Rourke,etc.

A -1: low rrrrrrrumbling, slowly swelling but very tuneful. weepy, woozy, wondrously gentle. that's either a pump-organ or a bagpipe, so i'm guessing that this is either a Jim O'Rourke treatment or Stereolab. -2: quiet bass taps, softly wailing vox(!), a card-in-the-bike-spokes fluttering and someone emulating Derek Bailey on a ukelele. the sinewy bass is a tell- Ui. not a project usually known as remixers. this is seriously freakin' weird. interesting idea, playing between/over/around Microstoria's skeletal blipwork. the complete absence of funk makes me wonder if this might be MoM. but that Saqqara Dogs-stalled-on-the-tracks feel screams "NYC!" a rather long track - with lightweight beats intruding 3/4 of the way through, along with squelchy tape-loopage which all but howls Tortoise or at least HIM. "... curioser and curioser," said Alice. not a trace of dub, tho. . . so i'm sticking with Ui. -3: beat happy - almost House! full of odd interjected screams and twitterings. here's your Mouse on Mars! or is it...? a nearly silent middle-third (still laced with odd Vulva-ic transmissions) leads into a sampling of noises which is VERY Steven Stapleton. this could have been lifted right out of NWW's _Homotopy To Marie_! i don't see NWW listed ("etc..." ?) ... and Stape's apparently been cloistered away in the studio with Stereolab. so maybe this is Stereolab. not. see C1. B -1: this has to be Mouse on Mars. blips and bloops with that unmistakable decayed-dub panache. static, ambient tinkerings, not much melody. almost sounds like it falls on the Oval side of the Microstoria fence. not glitchy enough. but maybe they've tired of that gimmick. argh! this is very difficult. a toothsome little flute solo and a few trademark bass wooshes seals it for me. Mouse on Mars. and i PROMISE that i won't say that again! unless this is just an artist on a serious MoM trip. :-P -2: Oval? but let's face it - Microstoria ---> Oval isn't much of a trip. a few steps at the most. the beautiful binary structures of the original have been dismantled, painted over, dipped in acetone, whatever... maybe all Popp n' Co did was scratch up a copy of _snd_! still lovely in that unique Oval sort of way. am i wrong, or is the charm of this bunch in their absolutely primitive approach to experimentation? like punks playing with Papa Stockhausen's toys while Daddy's back is turned. clumsy but irresistible. this sounds like a _Systemisch_ outtake. and it actually sounds a lot like... i won't say it! i won't say it! i won't say it! aaaaargh! -3: whoever it is has taken an almost D&B approach, making broken-glass breakbeats out of Microstoria's tiles. short and very sweet, with an instro outro for which Goblin would sell their organs. -4: wow... swarming with activity - a muted trumpet here, a glimmer of vibraphone there. the exquisite symmetry suggests a licensed sound-scientist like O'Rourke. very fragmented and loop-notic. quietly mesmerizing. i want to say that THIS is Oval and #2 is ...yeah, them again. C -1: low string-laced symphonics, a truly delectable bassline, Laetitia Sadier. Stereolab should do more remixing work... though, truth be told, it just sounds like another 'lab masterpiece with added subliminal bubbles. too pure, but too short! -2: a lazy sax. a piano. drone-drone-drone. some cacophonous noise. that wasn't there before! and it SHOULD be a giveaway... but it's not. it's very difficult to separate the source-material from the remixers' styles. which is probably why it all sounds like Oval/MoM! here's my guess: Alec Empire, fresh off _Les Etoiles..._ and still glued to his Atari Falcon? the noise damage is handled in such a subtle way, however. and a piano... maybe Martin Damm/Biochip C? Terre Thaemlitz? DJ Vadim? sure sounds like _Hypermodern Jazz 2000.5_. which Mille Plateaux-ite is most likely to be caught with a piano!?!?!?! AAAAAAAAAARGH! -3: beyond the original material, there's really not much to work with here... so gut-instinct says K?ner/Porter Ricks. but there's no beat. just a mass of echoing tones. could be Sonic Boom or K?ner. probably neither, since there's too much happening near the end. if it's not, i don't think i've heard this artist before. D -1: deep and full of gong tones. i think this one is Thomas K?ner. or Gas. no tell-tale Basic Channel rhythm, so it's probably NOT Porter Ricks. hate to say it, but this track isn't terribly involving. just distracted ambi-doodles. not much substance, padded out with long stretches of silence. zzzzzz.... -2?: seven degrees of penetrating drone and intonation. oh MAN! this could be anyone, but there IS an intimated beat towards the end. not a very complex one, and the way it plays dublike with the drone tags it as Porter Ricks-esque. not quite, but i've run out of MP artists! haven't heard Christophe Charles. and where are Khan and Walker?! i'm sure they're both in here somewhere. there's something about this track that could be Sonic Boom/E.A.R. the beat just really isn't strong enough for PR or Gas. anyone else have a pre-release copy of this excellent album? shall we compare notes and let the IDM-Lers be the judge? thanks for bearing with me. mo' later. GuerillaG2-G4/ gg -3: