From Sean Cooper Sent Wed, May 20th 1998, 20:01
From Sean Cooper Sent Wed, May 20th 1998, 20:01
> k=F6ln kompakt 1 (kompakt) > 13 wicked, previously unreleased tracks from kandis, studio 1, j burger, = dr > walker, reinhard voigt, thomas brinkmann and other cologne heroes. all > representing the same cologne stylee: always minimal, somtimes dubby, > usually housy, and of course all funky as shit. I'm afraid this is only > available at the k=F6ln kompakt store directly. actually, this showed up at the amoeba in san francisco a few weeks ago. sounds like if it's "usually housey" i wouldn't be interested, but it looks like a quality release for fans of the kolnish abuse of that genre... also, i'll add a brief review of my own. i just got the new lithops lp on eat raw in the mail. (lithops is the solo project of mouse on mars' jan st. werner.) it's called _didot_, and it's a dense, wonderful expansion of some of the sketches contained on the other recently released lithops lp, _uni umit_, combined with rhythmic and compositional ideas also present in koln-based artists such as fx randomiz, mouse on mars (more their _instrumentals_ material than anything else), and kandis/visor/senking (a couple of the tracks from the recent senking 12-inch on karaoke kalk could easily have appeared on _didot_). the production value is very high (much higher than on _uni umit_)--a real benefit since many of the sounds could get lost in the chaos. _didot_ is probably less impressionistic than _uni umit_, but it's also much more varied stylistically, moving through busy electro, weirdbeat "house" (that's never an accurate term for werner and toma's 4/4 freakouts), electroacoustic, and even something like ambient post-rock, making it overall a fuller, more enjoyable release. i've only listened to it once, but i can already tell tell this is going to be spending a lot of time on my turntable in the coming months. i'll be including a full-review of this in the next issue of urban sounds, but for lithops newbies interested in hearing more, you can check out my review of _uni umit_ at: http://www.urbansounds.com/home/styles/electro/us_electro_lithops.com there are also realaudio samples available for three of the tracks. thanks, sc onnow: john fahey : womblife (table of the elements)