From Marc 3 Poirier Sent Sat, Mar 6th 1999, 03:44
Hear is my second V/Vm review for you all. "Machine Components" is a quadruple 7" release of incomplete music, meaning that you are supposed to combine & manipulate the tracks into new music. Maybe I'm not the best person to review this since I'm not so excited by that concept, but I'll try to be fair. I do still mostly really like this release. I just don't get so excited by buying records that are designed to be tools for creating the real music, firstly because I only have one turntable with no pitch control, & secondly because I don't need other people to make records for me to make music with. I do it anyway, & it'll be the music that I want to make. When I get records, I want to hear what other folks have made. Anyway, this set still has lots of really great stuff that can even be listened to & loved alone as it is, I think. There are a few really repetetive tracks that are the ones more in need of being "built into machines," but there's still a good 30 or 40 minutes of magnificent, dense V/Vm musical murk. There are a good lot of different things going on here, but heavy noise is present on almost every track, although different kinds of noise all throughout. The noise element is important to keep in mind if you're considering getting these since so many people are severely turned off by noisiness, but if you are not, the V/Vm people can accomplish really astounding things with it in really astounding ways that you may want to listen to. Marc Poirier