mask 300 is worth it if you're one of those sad losers who needs
everything on the skam/musik aus strom labels; you know the drill,
electro/kraftwerk worship (there's a new one), warphlex cloning, etc.
noteworthy tracks are a1 (Ae style) and the bomb-ass b1, which almost
justifies the $ i spent on this: totally distorted meditations on the
drumloop from rob base & dj e-z-rock's "it takes two." i'm NOT kidding,
they even left in the "yeah! WHOO!" stuff. pretty cool. but overall,
more tepid explorations into that-which-has-been-done-already.
my markant question: i've been off this list for about a year now, so i
have not witnessed any conversation re: markant. one review i read said
that it was total Ae cloning, but as the same reviewer dubbed
funkstorung "original," i thought i'd get a second opinion.
worth picking up:
various artists remixes (fat cat)
if you don't know, you better ask somebody. the original various
artists (aka thorsten profrock, ok?) 12" on fat cat was trampled in a
stampede of sad gits running for the new, $125 v/vm 7" of old ukelele
78s, so you probably haven't heard it's brilliant use of collapsing
moog, organ drum machine and seriously bent polyrhythmic delay action.
but pick up the remixes for the fucking BRILLIANT Pole remix of "9",
which builds on the original with dub bass, strange squashing keyboard
pads and that patented damaged 4-pole filter click/hum. truly more
impressive and an obvious descendant from the bc/cr aesthetic, as
opposed to the somewhat less-than-breathtaking hallucinator or fluxion.
monolake clocks in with a turbulent ambience that comes in waves (and
colors) and eventually develops with a minimal rhythm played on the
spoons of the gods; clickety-clack go the arterial tracks. so deep and
absorbing i can't discuss it.
autechre, whoo, ha, yes. for the autechre remix you EXPECTED, listen
to the funkstorung clonejob remix directly following this track. the
actual booth-brown mix is a storming techno track which reminds me of
the "lyot" 12" if it was left pressed between two copies of mescalinium
united's "we have arrived," in the sun, for a week. abrasive,
near-four-on-the-floor (!!) beats with a hazy, near-industrial ambience;
not at all what i was expecting, and much better for it.
_friends of max ernst_ 12" (maxernst)
look for the unnamed 12" with the giant airplane engine on the label,
and if all else fails, pull the vinyl out and check for a blank space
between tracks with an etched thankslist on it; that would be this. two
tracks by brinkmann (one a steady, thumping 'techno' number that sends
out ripples of bass like waves on a pond, the other a sort of trip-hop
number not unlike the "now and real" track on the ester-brinkmann 12")
and two remixes of philus (i think) using the two-armed monster
turntable that turn the sterile minimalism (not a bad thing) of the
originals into a percolating, cascading electro flow. snappy. anybody
want to burn a CD rom of the horribly limited "supposex 100" LP by
brinkmann for me? PLEASE?!
(i'd even trade mask 300 for an original copy. no joke.)
various _chain reaction...compiled_ (chain reaction...)
this CD concentrates more on the beaty, club-playable side of the CR
12"s, i.e., the stuff that hasn't been on CD before. don't worry, if
you have the other CDs, this stuff ain't on them (although the vainqueur
track here isn't vastly different from one of the ones on
"elevations")... this is definitely worth having (especially if you
don't have turntable access), but i would recommend buying the other CDs
first (start with the basic channel CD, and then go forth and perspire).
parmentier _luxsound_ cd (sigma editions, australia)
former members of NZ drone-rockas Thela move to australia, buy cheap
electronics and forsake rock instrumentation in favor of
trance-inducing, minimal tonewerk that mixes nicely with sahko, noton,
etc, etc. certain tracks (esp. 5) remind one of of those m/bc/cr
people, stripped of rhythm and rendered as a deep, deep bass flow with
wisps of atomized, fractal sound evaporating from it. stromatolites,
anywon? not crowd-moving, but head-shaking. and if you sit on your
subwoofer, butt-shaking, after a fashion.
william basinski _shortwavemusic_ lp (noton)
i haven't listened to this enough to render a full opinion, but i'm
pretty amazed at this; shortwave radio noise/texture mixed with
slowed-down melody loops. kind of reminds me of _ch-vox_ seefeel
remixing _chiastic slide_ down into a soft haze of noise with the barest
trace of the hidden alien melody lines left. mesmerizing, and it mixes
really well with alvin lucier's "sferics."
dalek _negro, necro, nekros_ (gern blandsten)
dig it - for some reason this punk/weird label decides to put out a
hip-hop record. but instead of going for some obvious, easy-to-sell
stuff in the duff paddy mold, they sign dalek - who not only rhymes
intelligently (he should've been on _blackwholestyles_ instead of
abstractrude) but also cooks up some AMAZING deep, dark hip-hop that
reminds me of the better wordsound stuff, without being derivative in
the slightest. i mean, what hip-hop album have you heard this decade
that utilizes sheets of third eye foundation-style guitar on one song,
an amusing variation of the "tourist loses kidney" story on another, and
has the sheer BALLS to do a 10-minute track that ends with a 4 minute
tabla and sitar instrumental workout. completely out of nowhere, dalek
has rocked my world. and he's representing new jersualem, baby.
that's it for now. i'm at work, for christ's sake.
[gr]
"then why did i have the bowl, bart? why did i have the bowl?!"
awesoma_powa@hotmail.com
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