From Tintin Sent Thu, Aug 6th 1998, 18:25
From Tintin Sent Thu, Aug 6th 1998, 18:25
>Scorn recommendations > >Can anyone recommend me some Scorn albums? Yes, I'm something of a Mick Harris/Nick Bullen nut :-) Release dates are approx. >Are any of these albums worth the money: Lick Forever Dog Colossus White Irises Blind LFD and WIB are only EP's. LFD is from 91 and is pretty heavy, nowhere near IDM. Industrial dub, perhaps. There are a couple of cool mixes on there, but I'd leave it till later. LFD is lifted from their first album Vae Solis, which is really good but more guitar-bass-drums orientated. Justin Broadrick (Techno Animal/Ice/Godflesh/Final etc) played guitar on VS and LFD. Colossus is from 92 and is somewhere in between their metal roots and their full fledged ambient dub material. It's pretty good, although WIB is the standout track and is quite brilliant. So perhaps it would be better to get the EP first to see if you like that sound or not. The mixes on the EP are OK but nothing special. Evanescence Silver Rain Fell Evanescence (95), along with Ellipsis (I presume you've already got that seeing you didn't mention it) are Scorn's two best, IMHO. Evanescence is where all but one of the tracks on Ellipsis came from. Get it now, it is EXCELLENT. It is very dub orientated. The only track on Ellipsis that isn't radically altered is Silver Rain Fell, which just has the vocals taken out and is made a bit more dancable. The Silver Rain Fell 12" doesn't have anything on it that isn't on El. or Ev. It's quite hard to describe... wicked live bass and programming with HEAVILY treated guitar and vocals. Regarded by many as one of the best ambient dub albums ever. I agree. Gyral (95) Leave It Out (96) Zander (97) Nick Bullen left after Ellipsis. Brilliant bassist, vocalist and songwriter, but he also had an alcohol addiction and a violent personality and ended up in jail for a year after glassing someone. He is now a baker. So these albums are just Mick Harris. These are very minimal and completely electronic (No live bass, or vocals or anything). Gyral is the best of these 3. Leave it out is OK, but you can get these tracks on a 2cd compilation called Sonics Everywhere. SE is all the 12"'s released on MH's label Possible and there's some other good stuff on there like PCM, who did the awesome The End remix on Ellipsis. Zander is very minimal and if choosing from these 3 Gyral would be the best starting point. I love all Scorn stuff, but apart from Ellipsis/Evanescence, it's not that accessible, so it's hard to know what to recommend. If you end up digging his stuff, you might want to check out: (For starters, he's got about 1000 side projects) Lull (MH's beatless ambient thing) Nick Bullen/Bill Laswell: Bass Terror (Damn fine CD) Ice/T-A: Ice's Bad Blood and T-A's Re-Entry are both brilliant and are the work of J. Broadrick, K.Martin, and others. They don't sound much like Scorn but most Scorn fans dig them. Painkiller: MH, Laswell and Zorn doing bizzare and usually very heavy impro jazz. If you're feeling particularly adventurous, check out the classic Naplam Death album Scum that features MH, J.Broadrick and Nick Bullen. :-) The dub terrorsit pages also have heaps of info on him and his work. http://dubterrorist.hyperreal.org/ Hope this helps, Tintin