[ aquarius records — Electronic ]

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As a companion piece to Four Tet's newest full length Pause, this 4-track EP is a nice bit of more of the same, which is to say it's a wonderful mix of electronica and organic sounds. Four Tet is the solo work of one Kieran Hebden, also of Fridge. Just one song in common with the full length Pause (which you should get before this). For fans of Mouse on Mars and Aphex Twin and Fridge.

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Kieran Hebden, Putney, London-based wunderkind, has released some lastingly beautiful records as part of Fridge (whose amazing Eph was Windy's #1 album of 1999). Four Tet is his solo project. A little more "electronic" than the post-rock Fridge, this is very

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From Kieran Hebden of Fridge comes a remix ep ("Paws") from his latest album ("Pause") under the moniker of Four Tet. Four tracks, including remixes by Konshik, Manitoba, and Boom Bip (who makes the most unpalatable song from Pause, that "No More Mosquitoes" song, actually listenable.)

Kieren Hebden keeps himself busy, and it's a good thing 'cause most of what he keeps himself busy doing results in some really incredible, inventive music. Besides making great Four Tet records, he's also slowly piecing together a new album with his old band Fridge, collaborating with free jazz legend Steve Reid and of course lending his imaginative remixing skills to the work of other artists. This 2-cd collection features one disc of remixes Hebden did, while the other disc is remixes Hebden had done TO his band. Both discs are awesome! Disc one features Hebden working his magic on tracks from Radiohead, Madvillain, His Name Is Alive, Aphex Twin, Rothko, Bloc Party, Pole, Beth Orton and more. While the bands chose to remix Hebden include Jay Dee, Manitoba, Battles, and Boom Bip among others.

This is the most minimal and repetitive sound we've heard from Four Tet and we are loving it! Taking inspiration from 20th Century composers as well as minimal techno, Ringer finds Kieren Hebden back in the saddle as one of the premier forces in all of electronic music. The ep seems to be the perfect format for Hebden to really dive in and explore a new direction as he does so perfectly on Ringer. The songs are long enough to really reel you in, yet once the record is over you want to press play again right away and get swept away into the melodic trance that Four Tet so effortlessly creates in these four songs. Imagine if someone gave glow sticks and ketamine to Steve Reich and Terry Riley. Hmmm? We've always been fans of Four Tet in the past and while we haven't been as absorbed by the last couple records, this one is making us jump right back on board as big time fans once again!

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The super pretty and stirring full length from Four Tet begins with what sounds like a muted irregular heartbeat, the track then gradually fans out into an airy mingling of drum beat shuffles, glinting wistful piano melodies, chimey sparkles, reedy (oboe?) bleets, an occasional groovy bassline and a smattering of odd buzzing jolts. Actually the latter which happens only early on in the album closely resembles that sound when you slip up while playing that old board game Operation, and they're what keep the listener from completely drifting off on the mesmerizing lake of Four Tet. No complaints though, this album is quite simply a delight - layer upon layer of shimmering goodness that draws a very warm response every time we've played it in the store.

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Wow, we haven't been this impressed with a Four Tet full length in a long time, though truth be told it has been awhile since Kieran Hebden has released one. He has spent the greater parts of the last four or five years concentrating on remixes and with three solo collaborations with jazz drummer Steve Reid, leaving only one sole ep (Ringer) in between this release and his last, Everything Ecstatic. While that last record displayed an erratic and harder edged tendency to shake off the "folktronica" tag that has dogged him early on, it also seemed like he was trying too hard. On There is Love In You, Hebden is back to his strengths, keeping the compositions economic, but also beautiful, well-crafted and at moments truly sublime. Our excitement mounted when we heard the first single, "Love Cry", late last year. That nine minute minimal house opus as well as the awesome Joy Orbison remix was for some of us the single of the year! Though the bulk of the record is not as dancefloor oriented as the single, his masterful use of warmth, texture and editing make this an exciting listen all the way through, sounding at times like Cluster and Dif Juz filtered through Carl Craig and Flying Lotus. Recommended!

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Total slice and dice, chop and loop, skitter and stutter, bleep and bloop, head spinning, dancefloor destroying, 8-bit, video game. electro pop sonic mayhem, not that you'd be able to tell from the first couple tracks, a gently swirling bit of dreamy shimmer, with muted buried rhythms, slowly building to a poppy playful bit of processed skitter, that almost sounds like a Hello Kitty version of Venetian Snares. The same sort of rhythmic drill and bass, but way cuter and poppier, lots of video game sounds, little snippets of voices, bits of glitch and crunch, for all it's density and complexity, it's also pretty dang hooky, reminding us a lot of Aphex Twin's classic "Girl / Boy". The rest of the record is a non stop barrage of hyperspeed jungle beats, buzzing synths, woozy warped melodies, twisted samples, big beats, pounding techno rhythms, bits of throbbing dubstep, tangled electronic squiggles, all wound into super fun, and funky, booty shaking, rib cage rattling, high energy electro spazz groove. The record finishes the way it began, all washed out and dreamy, electronic ambient pop drift and shimmer, but between those two tranquil bookends, is a nonstop Technicolor explosion of tangled and twisted freaked out sounds and spastic beats!!

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Wierd Records (home of Xeno & Oaklander, Martial Canterel, Led Er Est, and those great vinyl compilations) presents another fine reconstitution of '80s darkwave or, for the purposes of the French duo Frank (Just Frank), "Vague Froide Moderne". Well actually, they're half French, with one of the boys growing up in New Jersey before transplanting to Paris. Synths, guitar, bass, and drum machines are applied to the skeletal, if lush arrangements of Frank (Just Frank), with the lyrics mostly being handled in French. Much of the songs take their cues from The Cure's bassist Simon Gallup who, especially on Faith and Seventeen Seconds, guided those songs through his bouncy goth basslines. As such, the guitars for Frank (Just Frank) mostly chime and jangle while the the basslines lead the tunes, whose detached emotions are furthered through the atmospheric synths and pleading vocals. The Brutal Wave? Hmm. A bit of a stretch as a title for this album which is far more sanguine than the title suggests. Nevertheless, Frank (Just Frank) deliver what is expected of Wierd these days, with allusions to the likes of B-Movie, For Against, Eleven Pond, OMD, Siglo XX, and of course, The Cure. We like.

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For fans of Plug and Two Lone Swordsmen, pleasant, bubbling, mellow neo-electro.

Latest single by former members of !!!.

Freiband is the most recent project of Frans De Waard, the Dutch chameleon whose collection of musical projects/recordings so far is larger than most musician's entire output. Yet to De Waard's credit, each project attempts to be its own entity with an intellect and an aesthetic all its own. Freiband finds De Waard working by himself, but everything that he uses on the Freiband albums is either stolen or borrowed... from the source material, to the software, to the equipment, to the compositional ideas, etc. Yet, De Waard is quick to point out that Freiband is not an example of the Plunderphonia of John Oswald or Wobbly. Musically, "Homeward" - the second Freiband album - is firmly entrenched in the ephemeral digital errata of Stephan Mathieu and Ekkehard Ehlers with a more pronounced sense of digital rhythms over the atmospheric drone; but unlike those two artists who have been forthright in who they had been paying homage to and / or remixing, De Waard doesn't allow us any insight into the origin of his 'stolen' samples, other than stating that Freiband pilfers from the "music of his youth." So the question remains, why tell us you're committing a felony when you're not letting us check out the stolen goods? Regardless of this conceptual conundrum, De Waard's "Homeward" is a solid album.

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Freiband is the project of 'borrowed ideas' from the ubiquitous Frans De Waard, whose name has worked under the names Goem, Beequeen, Kapotte Muziek, Captain Black, Quest, Shifts, and probably a couple of other monikers. The process that De Waard

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Pretty, chiming electronic melodies recorded back in '97, released in '99, and finally here at AQ. What's notable about this album is that it was made by a teen from the land of apple orchards known as Kelowna, BC. Geography lesson: it's a lovely little city located in the interior of British Columbia, Canada. Not exactly a hotbed of new music. Anyway, Scott August is his name, and he's constructed a disintegrating music box utilizing samples of analog sources. And it's all precariously held together by some steady drum beats. Quite nice.

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SORRY. So beautiful! Windy's #1 favorite album of 1999, an overlooked masterpiece from a band that's been building up to this after several mediocre records. They've finally done it -- destroyed every other post rock band out there with "Eph". Mellow, serious electronica filled with lovely layers and melodies. "The latest full-length from the trio of Sam Jeffers, Kieren Hebden (aka Fourtet), and Adem Ilhan, after a handful of beautifully packaged/sounding EPs and albums for Output, Piao, and Go Beat. The timing is perfect for someone to concoct a millenium-lullaby out of old casio beats, organ drones, phased guitars, swell loopery, and random acoustic/electric machinery; these guys have done it (with a few bright months to squeeze in a few table tennis matches). Positively, absolutely destined to be 'huge', if not I'm going into hiding, deep within the earth's crust until this whole thing blows over..." - Hrvatski/Forced Exposure

So beautiful!!! The London-based trio Fridge has finally wrested back the rights to their masterpiece Eph from the evil major label and have re-released it themselves in the UK, and for the first time in the US, on Temporary Residence. Windy's hands down The reissue also contains a second bonus disc that brings back to life the out-of-print "Kinoshita Terasaka" single and the "Of" EP, plus two previously unreleased remixes by Matt Herbert (Dr Rockit) and Viennese electronicist Patrick Pulsinger. You *must* hear this record. I don't usually use Andee's favorite final word in my reviews, but I have to here. ESSENTIAL.

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The UK trio Fridge's 1999 album Eph was a big staff fave here at Aquarius, a stunning combination of dark theatrical Morricone style melodies alongside electronic and organic instrumentation. It swelled with emotion and tasteful skills, like other Fridge's new album Happiness is another fine work, in my opinion, although some of my coworkers disagree and think this is unimpressive post-rock. While Happiness isn't as breathtakingly surprisingly good as Eph (which by the way is out of print until Temporary Residence reissues it stateside in 2002), it's nonetheless soooo lovely. The magic is in the simplicity of the music: each song features a lilting melody that simply carries you along for four or seven or eleven minutes, building upon itself with just a minimum of elements -- cut up piano and xylophone on one track, childrens voices on another, drum machines and glockenspiel on yet a third. The record will appeal to fans of Tortoise, Papa M, To Rococo Rot, and definitely Four Tet (Fridge member Kieran Hebden's other project).

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SORRY. First single for UK electonica/postrockers Fridge on Go-Beat after so many on Output. Dreamy and expansive (if taut) rhythms with occasional "Hindi" flares...sorta like a cross between Tortoise and Talvin Singh?

The London instrumental trio Fridge's album from 1998 is finally reissued here on the Output label from the UK. (Still an import, but at a somewhat reasonable price.) While there are folks who think this is Fridge's best record, I still say its followup Eph is

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A lot can happen in 6 years. That's how long it's been since the trio of Kieren Hebden, Adem Ihan and Sam Jeffers last released a record together. Since then 2/3 of the band have gone on to great success with their individual projects, Hebden with Four Tet and Ihan with Adem. As the '90s were coming to a close Fridge emerged as one of the shining examples of a band who totally knew how to bring all sorts of elements from various exciting musical movements (electronica, post-rock, hip-hop, etc.) into a totally cohesive, engaging and epic package. Six years later and they return sounding like no time has passed at all. The Sun sounds like Fridge stepped right out of the time machine, so for those who were hoping to hear that classic Fridge sound once again you will be very happy! While some of us hoped that maybe there would be lots of new twists and turns, there is no denying that they do what they do so damn well. This is like post-rock 101, so get your notebooks and pens out cause school is in session.

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SORRY. A three track cd single featuring Fridge (showcasing a more electronic side of their acclaimed sound) and Pluxus (bringing to mind early Warp releases and Commodore 64 video games).

If all of those Atom Heart pseudonyms as Latin percussion ensembles and charismatic bandleaders weren't enought, Burnt Friedman has gotten in on the action with his own Latin electronic stylings. Smokier, jazzier, and more drunk than El Atomo Corazon (who does make an appearance on the Moog on one track), Friedman's recordings are filled with laptop tricked-out vibraphones and groovy mambo beats.

We were immediately blown way by this twisted slab of primsatic psychedelia, all lo-fi rhythms, bagpipe like synth squelch, and spidery snakecharmer melodies. It's crunchy and fuzzy, feedback drenched, droned out and totally hypnotic, like a dizzying mix of the shamanistic mesmer of Dan Higgs, the minimal zoner kraut-psych of Zomes, and the warped rainbow rhythm-ed distorto-hop of Black Moth Super Rainbow (and BMSR offshoot Tobacco too)! And really, this record totally came from out of left field, we had no expectations, in fact at first we had no idea who Dan Friel even was, being mostly unacquainted with his band Parts & Labor, and what little we did know had us thinking maybe we wouldn't really even be all that into P&L anyway. But Total Folklore definitely has us rethinking everything. The first track alone is worth the price of admission, and even if the record had consisted of nothing but that lumbering, 12+ minute chunk of deliriously distorted, noise drenched, outsider grooviness, we'd still have made it Record Of The Week. After a short squall of tangled buzz and swirling tones, the sounds coalesce into a buzzing raga like melody, draped over a super crunchy, crumbling rhythm, a sort of hip hop / industrial lumber, each beat a burst of staticky buzz, sculpted into a dense, driving, motorik caveman groove, while over the top, those melodies are constantly shifting and swirling, stretching out into layered drones, streaks of feedback doused shimmer, and when the melodies to abate, leaving just the beat, to pound and stutter, when they do swoop back in, the result is a sort of chaotic noise-raga, that manages to be loose and freeform, but simultaneously tranced out and hypnotic. Eventually, the sound slips back into that opening groove, this time, all the synths and buzzing melodies even more distorted and blown out, making for a heady chunk of multi-hued noise industrial drone-pop zoner-psych that will have you setting it on repeat for sure. The rest of the record is divided into way shorter fragments, none of the remaining tracks clocking in at more than 3:45, with a handful of ultra short 'intermissions', but all of those tracks, intermissions and songs proper, displaying the same sort of blown out psychedelia. "Windmills" sounds like Sunroof! and Our Love Will Destroy The World mashed up and transformed into something a bit more playful and groovy, while "Valedictorian" drapes ethereal shimmer over what sounds like stuttering fuzz pop riffage, a swirling super catchy melody, and it's about as close as this comes to some mutant strain of ultra hook heavy noise pop. It's not hard to imagine this as some warped remix of a classic early era Flaming Lips jam. "Velocipede" is all woozy crumbling distortion, tweaked electronics, in-the-red synth buzz, a noisy blur that somehow ends up sounding more dreamy and psychedelic than chaotic. The rest of the tracks split the difference between tripped out experimental electronic groovescapes, dense noisy psychedelic swirls, pulsing pulsating komische freakouts and crazy catchy pop in electronic mad scientist's clothing, with each and every variation displaying an impossible knack for dense, heavily layered, ultra distorted productions that are pure headphone blossouts, but also even the most obtuse fractured bit of noisiness is somehow hooky as hell, whether it's the chugging blurred out crunch of "Landslide", or the crumbling feedback drenched electro-kraut churn of "Badlands". AWESOME!

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What more could be said about these two Fripp & Eno records than we've already written in countless Expo '70, Growing and Aidan Baker reviews? That's because these records are pretty much ground zero for all of the dark dreamy drifty processed guitar / tape / synth drone that we can't ever seem to get enough of. Perhaps there are other earlier influential touchstones such as Tony Conrad, and La Monte Young, perhaps Stockhausen and Terry Riley as well, but none seemed to have come so totally out of nowhere from two relatively mainstream players as these two records. Manuel Gottsching, Taj Mahal Travellers, and Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music all came a little later. After every other Eno solo album and collaboration (from Cluster to David Byrne) has been reissued, we are lucky enough to finally see both of these classic releases newly 24-bit remastered by Fripp himself and reissued on his DGM imprint. These have never sounded better! While this reissue doesn't feature any bonus material, we still think it's a must have for any fan of kosmiche experimental drone music. If you haven't owned this before, now is the time!!!!! Judging from the cover and title of 1975's Evening Star, it would be easy to dismiss this as a generic new-age record by Shadowfax or Mark Isham. It does look a bit Windham Hill-ish. But while its more melodic and dreamy than No Pussyfooting, this is certainly not pure relaxation music. It's way more cerebral and at times quite unnerving. Teaming up with Fripp once again after releasing three brilliant solo pop albums (Here Come The Warm Jets, Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy, and Another Green World), Eno started concentrating on his ambient period culminating later that same year in what would be his first solo ambient record Discreet Music. Using the same dual tape machine system as on No Pussyfooting, the tracks here feel more composed and purposeful. Starting with "Wind on Water", layered washes of phased high toned analog synths and flittering guitar drones pulse like a breathing entity before the Cluster-like piano figures of the stunning title track, "Evening Star" emerge augmented by a ringing guitar arpeggio and one of the most gorgeous Fripp solos ever put to tape. This track is like an early predecessor to Eno's soundtrack work for the NASA film Apollo, almost a decade later. So beautiful! The next couple of tracks delve further into gentler territory, with "Wind on Wind" being an excerpted version of a piece later included on Discreet Music. But the nearly thirty minute final piece, "An Index of Metals" returns us to the dark intense drone of No Pussyfooting. Sounding more metallic and cosmic than anything on that record, "An Index of Metals" with its deep resonant pulsations and expansively spatial guitar work at times sounds like the melting magma of a dying star, or Edward Artemiev's coldly terrifying soundtrack work for Andrei Tartovsky's Solaris. Awe-inspiring yet very chilling! So Essential!

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Newly reissued on vinyl! What more could be said about these two Fripp & Eno records than we've already written in countless Expo '70, Growing and Aidan Baker reviews? That's because these records are pretty much ground zero for all of the dark dreamy drifty processed guitar / tape / synth drone that we can't ever seem to get enough of. Perhaps there are other earlier influential touchstones such as Tony Conrad and La Monte Young, perhaps Stockhausen and Terry Riley as well, but none seemed to have come so totally out of nowhere from two relatively mainstream players as these two records. Manuel Gottsching, Taj Mahal Travellers, and Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music all came a little later. After every other Eno solo album and collaboration (from Cluster to David Byrne) has been reissued, It's easy to take for granted nowadays the influence of Brian Eno as the "godfather of ambient music", but in 1973 before he had even released his first solo record, Here Come The Warm Jets, Robert Fripp and Brian Eno were mainly known for their previous roles in King Crimson and Roxy Music respectively. Then this mysterious record parenthetically titled (No Pussyfooting) appears with its cryptic cover, a sort of ultra-modernized take on a hermetic alchemical engraving depicting the two artists (Eno at his most androgynous) looking in opposite directions, sitting in a small mirrored room with no doors reading a nudie deck of cards like the tarot on a mirrored table with what sort of looks like a line of coke (?), next to a mirrored guitar in a mirrored case in the corner, a translucent mannequin and an antique silver radiator behind them under glass shelves filled with old books. The back cover showing the same scene with both artists and playing cards missing. With its two side-long awesomely titled tracks "The Heavenly Music Corporation" and "Swastika Girls", what kind of music would this be? Rock? Prog? Glam? No one probably would realize until they purchased it and brought it home, that it would be this organically cerebral deep listening experience of the highest order. It's kind of a downer that we have such easy access to information nowadays, because when this came out, it was a true mystery object, which added to its esoteric appeal. But it still is to an extent, as numerous listens over the years still never fail to captivate, or confound how exactly the sounds are being made. Apparently,utilizing a system later dubbed, Frippertronics, two reel to reel tape decks were used to allow audio elements to be added onto a continuing tape loop building up dense layers of sound that would slowly decay as it turned around the decks' playback head. On "The Heavenly Music Corporation" layers of deep synth drones are layered in phased washes with Fripp's unique bowed guitar sound ringing ascending solo lines on top that sometimes loop and sometimes don't. Eno wrings out what sounds like synth lines in counterpoint to Fripp's part in similar tones so that at times it gets harder to tell who is making what sound as the piece intensifies. "Swastika Girls" starts with high pitched cascades of processed piano like tones with scraping synth squelches looping in counterpoint, before low rising bass notes and Riley-ish piano repetitions appear. Then Fripp's searing guitar crash-lands into the mix almost disrupting the whole process, but somehow it all works. Much more distorted and dissonant than "The Heavenly Music Corporation", it doesn't take the process for granted that everything will sound harmonious but remains still somehow cohesive, though far from easy listening. Sooooooooooooo Recommended and Essential!

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Not bad... but, not that great either.

We first discovered the oddly monikered Frkse (pronounced 'forks' we think?) via aQ pal Matt, one half of industrial doomdirgedrone duo Teeth Engraved With The Names Of The Dead, who was raving about this lp, and got some from the 'band' to pass on to aQ. It was suggested to us, that anyone who loved the weirdo power electronic abstract industrial weirdness of former Record Of The Week-ers Will Over Matter, would also dig Frkse, which was definitely enough for us, but barely prepared us for what Frkse was really all about. A one man band / mad scientist / audio alchemist, who takes loops and rhythms, weird murky samples, and all manner of noise, hiss and whir and hum, and deftly arranges them into strangely robotic grooves, android symphonies of rhythm and textures, sounding at times like some impossible hybrid of Pierre Bastien, Philip Jeck, Thomas Brinkmann, and Strotter Inst. There's the warped warble of experimental turntablism, the lush hazy washed out textures of that sort of blurred ambience, and the rhythms and grooves all sound very machinelike, as if Frkse simply built an army of machines to do his bidding, that bidding just so happening to be creating these stripped down minimal loopscapes and tripped out abstract constructs. Each track here seems cobbled together from building block like sonic elements, a loping beat, a strange detuned strum, a disembodied melody, a whirring buzz, all strung together into an ingenious series arrangement that manages to be impossible catchy and mesmerizing, even at its most minimal. Robotic loops churning through clouds of hiss and buzz, a woozy rhythmic drag, like some strange melted tape 33 rpm jams spinning at 16rpm, the sounds saturated and warm, lush in the way only 4 track tape hiss and old busted analog machinery can be, it's hard not to imagine Frkse's strange underground lair, dusty piles of corroded equipment, nothing grounded or properly shielded, arcs of electricity leaping between various hand built implements, the vast array of buzzes and strains of hiss, carefully cataloged to be used later, and to perhaps be mixed with other separate strains, creating whole new breeds of low fidelity noise. And for all its raw primitivism, each track tends to reveal gorgeous expanses of hissy, buzz drenched minimal mesmer, like a steam punk android Steve Reich, tracks peppered with sudden bursts of almost jungle like drumming, which upon closer examination reveals themselves to be simply endless rhythmic loops piled atop one another, in such a way, that they create glorious cascades of kinetic rhythms. At times it's like a home brewed, post industrial minimal techno, at others, it's a thick caustic almost shoegazey blacknoise blur, and still others a noise drenched abstract electronica. The sound constantly shifting, a burst of gristled crumbling industrial churn will transform into a stretch of mournful almost Slint like minimalism, gradually expanding into a loping post rock drift, all skitter and stutter, unwinding hypnotically like a super stripped down lo-fi This Heat, everything caked in a dusty patina of chordal hum, a glorious maddeningly mesmerizing collection of robo-rhythms and psych-kraut dirgery, of hazy soft focus loop-grooves and tranced out motorik mesmer. And yeah, fans of Will Over Matter will flip, fans of M Ax Noi Mach too, but even more so, folks into haunting low fidelity experimental loopscapery: Jeck, Strotter, Caretaker, Bastien, Tim Hecker, Belong and the like. SUPER LIMITED!!! Housed in hand silk screeened / hand stamped covers with a photocopied insert.

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Ben Frost records are scary. And beautiful. They're the stuff of dreams. And nightmares. They're like soundtracks for films that can never be made, the music conjuring up images that can only exist in the imagination. It's musical magic, or sonic alchemy, whatever it is, it's something few have mastered, and even those that have, barely approach the mysterious mastery of Ben Frost, whose previous record, By The Throat, remains one of the most terrifying documents of electronic sound art we have ever heard, weaving the sounds of snarling wolves into thick swells of corrosive bass buzz, and brilliantly bleak, yet impossibly lush sound design, and balancing that sonic grimness, with glimmers of hushed beauty, in a way that makes the sound both mellifluous and malevolent in equal measure. Aurora is another stunning sonic missive, and one that immediately conjures up yet another lost world, one that lurks in our collective imagination, but that has begun to bleed through, into our every day world. The shadows seem deeper and darker. The grey skies shout through with streaks of blood red, the nights interminable, the days, scorched expanses of endless time. All of this represented by strange sprawls of layered electronic drones, of gristled pulsations, of strange staticky rhythms, and mysterious buried melodies, the sounds this time around brittle and jagged, the loveliness sharp edged and flecked with rust and dried blood, the rhythms that surface are hauntological, reminding us of the dubbed out avant mesmer of groups like Demdike Stare, but here those rhythms seem to gradually splinter and fray, wreathed in thick swirls of soft noise, sculpted into weeping melodies, and darkly decaying textures, all hiding some glowing inner warmth, suffusing these sounds with an organic quality, that transforms a series of sounds into something alive, a crackling energy that is barely contained on the record, one can almost imagine the sound as colored sparks leaping from the speakers, bursting from the headphones, a cascade of brilliant sonic flares, raining down from above. Lurching robotic percussion is shaped into strange skeletal shapes, lumbering behemoths trading through fields of groaning, creaking chordal thrum, pelted with prismatic streaks of sound, a beastly groove, that builds to a thick swath of soaring epic psychedelic electronic majesty, like a meaner, moodier, more metal M83, a brilliant blacknoise blur, that blots out the stars, painting the sky in shade and shadow, eventually morphing into burnished stretches of grey ambience, laced with dubby skitter, all of which blossom further into a flurry of blissed out electro flares, which fade into crackling seas of gristle and hum, undulating imperceptibly beneath hazy layers of grumblingly distorted shimmer and grinding sheets of druggy thrum. A heaving landscape of tense cinematic atmosphere, smeared fields of tangled melody, wildly colliding synth streaks, and jumbled beats and rhythms, all wound up into a tightly coiled swirl, flurry of frenzied electrons, gradually crumbling into the ether, leaving just a barely there cloud of sonic static discharge, until finally, nothing. And emptiness. Simply stunning.

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We first discovered Ben Frost on, of all places, a dubstep comp. It definitely worked, this long brooding chunk of creeped out electronic dronemusic plopped down right between to stuttery stripped down dubbed out jams. It quickly became our favorite track on that disc, and got us to hunt down his full length, Theory Of Machines, which was just as good as that track. A strange assemblage of mysterious psych jams and minimal techno, drones and glitchy electronica, but all shot through with a mysterious darkness, that seemed to infuse every track with a bit of malevolence. But if that record was dark and mysterious, then his new one, By The Throat, is downright terrifying. Who knew electronic music could be this harrowing, this epic and intense?! Mixing organic instruments, field recordings (lots of wolf howls and growls) and fucked up glitched out electronics, Frost has conjured up an incredible cinematic electronic dronemusic masterpiece. Sounds like hyperbole, but it's not. This record is amazing, playing out like a soundtrack to some lost-in-the-woods Italian horror film, pianos and strings, dense swells of static, the aforementioned wolves, all wound into tense soundscaped vignettes, each one rife with tension, and emotion, and a sprawling darkness. The opening track is worth the price of admission alone, a series of slow building sonic swells, each a wall of crumbling distorted hiss, throbbing over a minimal stretch of subtle glitch and muted melody, the tones are jagged and sharp, the melodies are fragmented and minor key, bits of acoustic guitar drift over the squalls, ghostlike, while beneath, thick ominous low end rumbles and whirs. It's like a more electronic, more minimal, and much darker Godspeed. That track segues right into "The Carpathians", where the wolves make their first appearance, howling over Bernard Hermann like strings, their growls providing seriously scary low end, the baying matched by the mournful melodies, it's easy to imagine being lost in the snow, miles away from civilization, wandering through the dark, the night filled with the howling of wolves. The whole record really does play out like a soundtrack, each track evoking a certain mood, "O God Protect Me" is all clipped abstract rhythms and muted crystalline melody, soft glitches and distant beeps, pretty and melancholy and subtly ominous, while "Hibakusja", which starts out with a simple guitar melody and what sounds like the moan of horns, becomes the scariest track on the record, the wolves growling processed into fucked up glitched low end stutters, that original opening guitar remains, but beneath those fucked up grinding glitchy growls, totally intense, before becoming more and more staticky and abstract. If there's not a movie, someone needs to make it NOW. The rest of the record evokes still more strange territory, skipped Jeck-like loopscapes, all glitchy and tense, the skipping records offering up snippets that on their own would be fairly haunting and mysterious, but recontextualized become something even more, thick swells of buzzing cellos and harmonized voices transformed into massive crumbling walls of sound, various melodies and elements resurfacing throughout, especially a main theme that seems to define the record, and sounds like a simple melody, but here is infused with the terror and fear of the surrounding sounds, long stretches of layered high end shimmer, more glitched out electronic minimalism, again, all rife with tension, with a cinematic weight, that makes this record sound like so much more than just a collection of songs and sounds. Gorgeous cover art too, all reflective inks on a matte background, all images of snow and wolves and empty landscapes, the spare frostbitten white wasteland, where the seemingly imaginary events described by the sounds on By The Throat could have taken place. Intense and amazing.

MPEG stream: Killshot
MPEG stream: The Carpathians
MPEG stream: Hibakusja

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Ben Frost was a total unknown to us until just a few months ago, when we heard his track on the recent Mary Anne Hobbs Evangeline mix cd, which was soooooo good, a huge surprise, a totally left field electronic drone jam stuck in the middle of a dubstep mix. Some of us were definitely thinking jam of the year, even though the record it was taken from had come out the year before, but holy crap, it totally stole the show, and we knew we had to hear more. So we tracked down the full length, but then, to be honest, became a little nervous before digging in, worried that we might discover that THAT track, the one we were already obsessed with and already had, might be the only good one on the record. Thankfully nothing could be further from the truth. And in fact, a few of the other tracks are now vying to knock that one out of the top spot.� Theory Of Machines is a tough one to describe. It's electronic, but rife with strange glitches, with deep buzzing drones, blown out psych jams, mysterious murky minimal techno, all somehow woven into something totally cohesive, ultra dark and ominous, and so fucking kick ass. The record begins with the title track, the one from the Hobbs mix, but for those of you who might have missed that one, here's how we described it: An extended slab of slow burning blurred dronemusic, that over the course of its 9 minutes builds from soft shimmer to dense crumbling Tim Hecker style smeared gauzy beauty, to thick caustic blown out soft noise, to an super distorted almost-trip-hop. The sound is immense and epic, and so gorgeous, wreathed in crackle and underpinned by buzzing downtuned lowend, streaked with soaring synths, the track's climax, all skittery beats beneath clouds of hiss and whir and crackle and fuzz is totally intense and gorgeous.� Indeed! If lots of folks didn't already own the Hobbs mix, we would be declaring this worth owning for that track alone. But the follow up, "Stomp" is just as good. A shimmery minimal glitchscape, tons of space, swells of hissy buzz, and off kilter fractured beats, drifting in and then out, leaving long expanses of whispery hush, a blown out electric guitar, super processed, is smothered and muted into a stuttered decayed riff, struggling to let loose, the drums begin to pound, the guitar grinds out a noisy crunch, before retreating again, leaving just that soft almost techno skitter finally culminating in a super fuzz drenched industrial pound, a looped rhythm beneath that same damaged riff filtered through all sorts of static and short wave interference. It's so intense and weirdly ominous and sort of exhausting to listen to. So cinematic and fraught with tension. When the song ends you almost feel like you just crawled up from the sewers after being chased over rooftops, having the shit kicked out of you, leaping from a helicopter, saving the damsel in distress, and discovering that the city before you lay in ruins. So evocative and dramatic.� The next track, while still dark and haunting, is a bit of a respite, a moody trawl through a glitched out low end drift, peppered with a mysterious sonar like single note high end pulse, a subtle shuffling beat hovering just below the surface, the hiss and static swirling and crunching while a distant melody floats in an expanse of soft shimmer. A quick two minute arrangement of big beats, grinding electric guitar, whirling ambient buzz offers up the record's most 'rock' moment before slipping into the final jam, which is not so much a jam as it is an extended drift, deep resonant tones, ring out, decaying ever so slowly, the various sonic ripples blending into one another, creating soft, shimmery minor key melodies, underpinned by deep pulsing bass, that you almost feel more than you hear, very tranquil and serene, eventually jazzy drums come in, melodies coalesce into something much more tight and arranged, becoming a sort of dreamy jazzy slowcore, softly dramatic, with what sounds like swoonsome strings and warm organ warble, a surprisingly dreamy and sun dappled finish to a record that is otherwise pretty caustic and dark. Which is precisely why it's so good. Totally unpredictable, a jarring mash up of rock elements all fucked up and processed, glitched out electronics, of dark brooding drone and cinematic ambience, all woven into a creepy, menacing, beautiful batch of sound.

MPEG stream: Theory Of Machines
MPEG stream: Stomp

The first Fuck Buttons record, Street Horrrsing, was a bright colorful explosion of sound, we described it as "massive super distorted heavy electronic drone fuzz pop" and "energetically exotic and hypnotically repetitive and just chock full of sheer noise fuzz bliss, bulldozering over buried melodies, tribal weirdness, and equally distorted screaming vocals". Basically it was a noisy fucked up head spinning chunk of noise rock bliss pop infused with all manner of electronics. On Tarot Sport, the equation has been flipped, if anything this is an electronic record, heck, a techno record, that just so happens to be filtered through some twisted noise rock, lo-fi punk rock lens. Like Daft Punk for the noise rock set, these extended jams sound like some unholy collision between the Boredoms, Gang Gang Dance, Black Dice and the Basement Jaxx, the synths are throbbing and thick and buzzy, the beats bounce and pound and skitter and slip from lurching stutter to house-y pound to groovy lope, while all around these various sounds is wrapped a warm gauzy layer of M83 like fuzz, giving the whole record a super dreamlike almost eighties feel. "Space Mountain" sounds like M83 gone techno and then nabbed for a crucial scene in a remake of Sixteen Candles, "Flight Of The Feathered Serpent" is another one that has futuristic eighties jam written all over it, hazy and druggy, washed out and shimmery, the beats big and block rockin', with a gorgeously almost Jesu sounding second half, albeit way poppier. The first half of the record though, starting with the single "Surf Solar" is more on the Daft Punk side of things, still fuzzy and noisy and blissed out but way more techno. "Rough Steez" might be the weirdest of the bunch, with its super buzzy jagged fuzz bass, stuttery clipped rhythms, and squealing glitchy electronics, although there's plenty of fuzzy dreaminess creeping in already. This is one of those rare records that pretty much everybody here loves, it's groovy, noisy, fuzzy, druggy, the beats are bad ass, the atmosphere is hazy and eighties, and it's all wrapped up into one practically perfect set of future summer retro noise rock techno electronic jams. This is quickly turning into one of our new favorites...

MPEG stream: Surf Solar
MPEG stream: Rough Steez
MPEG stream: Olympians

Calling this an industrial record certainly does this record no justice... Although Fuckhead's overblown testosterone laden angst is clearly presented through digital technology, thankfully none of the dated Front 242 or Rammstein references appear. Instead dense hyperactive sampling and digital noise processing dominate the album. Certainly an odd choice for digital electronica saboteurs Mego to release, but nonetheless an brutal and beguiling album. Recommended.

Berlin-based electronica experimentalist Jan Jelinek, whom we've grown ever more enamored of thanks to his star turn in the role of Ursula Bogner (documented on a previous release via Jelinek's Faitiche label, purporting to be a collection of pioneering Radiophonic Workshop style electronic pieces by an obscure female composer from the sixties who it seems never actually existed except in Jelinek's imagination) here teams up with one Masayoshi Fujita, who plays a prepared vibraphone (and how many prepared vibraphone records do you have??), for a lovely, lovely disc of ambient droneworks. It begins with "Undercurrent", a track of wavering shimmering meditative hum, softly crackling around the edges, some gentle melody glowing within. The idea of nature-sounds suggested by the disc's title are not dispelled by this music, however electronic (and vibraphonic) it may be. Track 2, "Workshop For Modernity", is composed of whirring and tinkling, again gentle, as if the sounds were conjured from the breeze. The next, "I'll Change Your Life", is even quieter, more "lowercase" in presence. We don't know much about Fujita (assuming he's real) but would guess if he's Japanese, he has some familiarity with Japan's "onkyo" school of soundmaking. The following tracks continue this disc's patient and pleasant trajectory, with much shuffling glitch and soft focus digital stutter, alongside/overtop/underneath the melodious but abstracted vibraphone. It's only on album closer "IA_AI" that the duo eventually build up a thick wall of drone-distortion, louder and louder, a dramatic crescendo that ends with a sudden silence. Quite nice, as we like to say, quite nice!! Sometimes experimental electronic stuff can be too clinical and abstract, academic exercises y'know, but this manages to maintain a human feel, an exquisite emotional resonance, by existing in real space with the sounds of real instruments. Yes, quite nice.

MPEG stream: Undercurrent
MPEG stream: Waltz (A Lonely Crowd)
MPEG stream: IA_AI

Following the digital obfuscation of public domain recordings found on his "Frequency Lib" album, Stephan Mathieu presents his "Edits" series, dramatic remixes of his contemporaries' work under the Full Swing moniker. Originally, these edits of Laub, Kit Clayton, Antenne, Autopoesies, Raumgestaltung Eins, Ekkehard Ehlers, Monolake, Yo La Tengo (!), and Akira Rabelais were released as a series of 10" on Kit Clayton's Orthlorng Musork label, and now have been collected conveniently on one CD. What is immediately striking about this album is how strong and how unique Mathieu's signature sound is becoming. While the archetypal application of laptop DSP synthesis ends up tainted by antiseptic, clinical, or cold tones, Mathieu manages to wrap all of his digital pixelations in a dreamy, warmly crackling, and wholly inviting atmosphere, not unlike the beloved Aphex Twin album "Selected Ambient Works Vol II." For the Laub remix, Mathieu centers his recontextualization around one of Laub's lilting synth melodies, which slowly loops through flickering wisps of static, hushed drones, and occasional vocal interjections from Antye Greie-Fuchs, whose Bjorkish voice collapses pixel by pixel. For both Monolake and Kit Clayton, Mathieu re-arranges the original Chain Reaction pulse into deep low end fluctuations, amidst fractilized clatter. The work of Raungestaltung Eins has been stripped down to the root frequencies, sounding like a downpitched morse code transmission, with hyper-pointillistic surface noise crackle and time-stretched drones. Of all of the remixes, the Akira Rabelais reworking of a Carte piano study is the least deconstructed, by overdubbing subtle modulations of Rabelais shimmer and vibrato into a beautifully spun web of spindly tonalities. While Mathieu's work may hint at the discourses of ownership in a digital landscape since he has chosen to develop his sound almost exclusively through pre-existing work, his music ranks way up at the top the increasingly prolific laptop community alongside Fennesz, Carsten Nicolai, and Stilluppsteypa. "Edits" will undoubtedly rank as one of the best electronic record of 2002.

RealAudio clip: Raumgestaltung Eins 070300 Edit
RealAudio clip: Laub Weit Weg Edit
RealAudio clip: Yo La Tengo Hoboken Beach Bums Edit
RealAudio clip: Akira Rabelais ... Edit

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The last entry from the brilliant series of 10"s by Full Swing (aka Stephan Mathieu) who presents drastic reconstructions of various artists. Previously Mathieu has transformed Monolake, Yo La Tengo, Laub, Antenne, Ekkehard Ehlers, Autopoesies, and Raumgestaltung Eins into dreamy digital fractalization, and the same goes for these remixes of Kit Clayton's atonal electronica single "Latke" and Akira Rabelais's digital reworking of Carte. This entire series stands as some of most exceptional work to come out of the microsound / digital glitch schools of electronica.

Band names come in strange zeitgeists, don't they? We've had waves of "The Something", "Wolf Something" and "Black Something" bands, now it seems it is "Year" time. So far we've noted Capitol Years, The Early Years, Year Future, and The New Year. Now The Fun Years come drifting into view. It does seem to be a bit of a misnomer though. Indeed, this group's name as well as their album and song titles all strike us as being very incongruous with the sounds they make. We sort of expecting some doleful pop music or something, but nothing would have prepared us for the murky muted beauty of Life-Sized Psychoses. Every track a washed out minimal landscape of record crackle, bits of hiss and pop, a dense washed out backdrop for the guitar to sort of drift and shimmer. The record commences with "Powerball Annie", unobtrusive feathery shimmers of static that wash across lapping cycles of three-note sequences plucked out on baritone guitar. Strange reverby bits of percussion drift in and out. The whole thing very languorous and dreamlike. The second track weaves a similar spell, a crackle crusted loop, disembodied and haunting, repeats over and over, eventually joined by a laid back guitar line that gives the track's very Philip Jeck like turntablescape sound a distinctly post rock vibe. At times the Fun Years almost sound like some avant turntablist spinning super scratched up old math rock and slowcore records, all loping rhythms and muted minor key melodies, but draped in thick swaths of buzz and fuzz and hum and hiss. Some tracks are mere whispers, others glow and sound sun dappled, smeary blurry burnished soundscapes, all wreathed in those analog recording inconsistencies we can never seem to get enough of. Every track here is a subtle sprawl, and shifts and shimmers ever so gradually. No quick moves or hard edges. Just blurry, bleary eyed drift. So very nice! Definitely for fans of Jeck, Basinski, Tim Hecker, Machinefabriek, Jasper TX and the like...

MPEG stream: Powerball Annie
MPEG stream: Softy As Stilts

Okay all you techno-phobes (and we mean techno music), it's time to add another killer weirdo dark techno record to your collection, you know that little stash of brooding, pulsing minimal electronica that you maybe keep tucked away, hidden from the reproving glances of your punk rock or metalhead friends. But hell, if the recent spate of killer techno records hasn't convinced you that there's sonic darkness to be found creeping like a black fog across underground dancefloors worldwide, then you might need to revisit some recent faves: Shed, Raime, Terrence Dixon, Stefan Goldmann, even the witchy avant electronica of Demdike Stare or the recently reissued murky heroin house of Porter Ricks, all deliver the sort of dark, dubbed out, seething, narcotic, trancey minimal sounds we can't get enough of, and that have won over even the most techno/house music averse. You can now add Function to that list, the solo project of David Sumner, who happens to be one half of legendary techno duo Sandwell District, and whose debut, Incubation, is a seriously ominous slab of blackened techno, the sound slipping easily from cinematic horror movie creep, to prismatic dark kosmische, to spaced out digidub, to druggy kraut-house, and plenty of other sonic stops in-between. The opener "Voiceprint" sounds like a John Carpenter score, all tinkling melodies, heaving ominous drones, and the sort of ch-ch-ch, h-h-h sound effects that definitely reminded us of Friday The 13th. The follow up doesn't get any lighter, instead, it introduces a pulsing 4 on the floor beat, but it's a throbbing, skittery groove, surrounded on all sides by dubbed out blackness and murky sci-fi swirls, the result is less dancey and more trancey, a tense dubbed out minimal house music that gradually grows more and more druggy and abstract as the track progresses. "Counterpoint" ditches the rhythm completely, and instead unfurls a swirling psychedelic synthscape, all cosmic arpeggiations, and lush layered prismatic shimmer, it could be Oneohtrix or Cloudland Canyon, but then in swoops "Modifier", a skittier, jittery groover, that peppers it's muted melody with a disembodied intake of breath, giving the track a seriously creepy vibe. And so it goes, the sound in constant flux, pulsing house music is woven into Goblin like synth creep, sounds blossom into drowsy, drifty dubs, before slipping right back into some slithery techno skitter, or reprising the opening track, this time wound around a serious groove, the song transformed into a tense, intense sprawl of atmospheric, cinematic electronica. The record closes with the epic "Gradient I", which lays down a house-y rhythm, but then wraps it in keening tones and hissing high end hum, the tones stretched way out into tense drones, the sound murky and washed out, darkly psychedelic, minimal and motorik, but super hypnotic and mesmerizing, laced with swaths of soaring synths, but always slipping right back into a gauzy, druggy, techno murk. So great. Anyone who's been digging the recent breed of 'dark' minimal techno will flip for this, and the previously mentioned techno-phobes, this might be the one that finally convinces you to come out of the techno closet!

MPEG stream: Voiceprint
MPEG stream: Against The Wall
MPEG stream: Counterpoint
MPEG stream: Gradient I

We were really excited about this match up, Hospital Productions head honcho Dominic Fernow's gothic industrial techno project Vatican Shadow, teamed up with David Sumner of Sandwell District's ominous minimal techno alter ego Function. We could only imagine what sorts of fantastically grim and murky sounds would emerge from this unholy union, would it be monolithic slabs of heartless black techno, or swirling rhythmic sprawls of pulsing murk? Our imaginations sort of ran wild, and yet somehow, we never imagined THIS. The sound is definitely still plenty moody and dark, but instead of being harrowingly abject, or bleak and brutalist, it's actually sort of blissed out, and pretty dreamy much of the time, the vibe more hazy and soft focus, lots of atmospheric drift and Pop Ambient style swirl. There are beats too, but they're not so much beats as pulsations, often buried and barely there, almost always skeletal and ultra minimal, drifting amidst gauzy stretches of woozy, washed out nocturnal murk, soft focus atmospheres, and blurred dream-state ambience, the vibe ethereal and airy, almost like a blackened new age, but one that often drifts into fields of dark, swirling, chordal thrum, and softly tangled sheets of smeared melody, glistening and glimmering and prismatic. There are hints of Wolfgang Voigt's Gas, the Caretaker, the whole Pop Ambient series, Emeralds, lots of drift and shimmer for sure, but a few spots that get downright sinister and soundtracky, like on the "nemesis Flower", an ultra minimal John Carpenter style sprawl of murky throb, rumbling synth blurts, and distant melodic shimmer. It's not until the second to last track, "Red Opium" that we get any actual techno, and even then, it's a sort of laid back, blissed out mid-tempo house music groover, the tempo loping and hypnotic, the beat surrounded by soft billows of resonant overtones and blurred melody, which leads directly into the closer, "Bejewelled Body", which is about as close to a 'banger' as any track here, a churning, four-on-the-floor throb, wreathed in electronic squelches, keening fragmented melodies, and underpinned by some seriously droned out kosmische raga-like shimmer.

MPEG stream: Things Known
MPEG stream: The Nemesis Flower
MPEG stream: A Year Has Passed

Punchy trumpets and groovy swing breakbeats attempt to keep up with Barry Adamson in the search for the perfect postmodern 70's cop show car chase theme music.

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SORRY. The cd reissue of the now-out-of-print single by Funki Porcini who remixed the 70s spy-thriller composer Jerry Van Rooyen, plus two new cuts of tongue-firmly-in-cheek trip hop grooviness. Pretty great.