From david turgeon Sent Thu, Oct 21st 1999, 18:18
From david turgeon Sent Thu, Oct 21st 1999, 18:18
finally my paycheck came... & went, as i spent it all on music. here are some thoughts on what i ended up with: ~ squarepusher / richard thomas 'i am carnal...' 12" (lo) ~ well, i was expecting more beatfuckery than that, but overall this is a good slab of vinyl. 2 songs are downtempoish with nice beats but don't build very much. the 2 others are sonic experiments, surprisingly daring & not so far from the mego school of soundscrapping. not what i was expecting, then, but satisfying nonetheless. ~ kohn 2 cd (kraak3) ~ i was completely amazed the first time i listened to this album: the feedbacks are nice, & there's some great, unheard sounds (unheard at least in electronic music) in there, & the vocals actually work ~ but the thing is so deceptively simplistic it ruins any further listening. the notes on the songs are interesting though, but even those make the songs look more complex than they really are. a letdown. ~ shirt trax 'good news about space' cd (or) ~ i didn't expect to find an album with this sort of music (abstract, minimal, almost monochromatic) actually _appealing_, but this is exactly what 'good news about space' is. the sounds evolve slowly & produce some exciting sonic paintings which you don't need to devote your entire attention span to in order to appreciate them. think mouse on mars on ketamine perhaps, although that's probably not it. gorgeous cover design, too ~ you could mistake it for a bjork cd. ~ white noise 'an electric storm' cd (island japan, originally released in 1968) ~ i finally got it, & this is another of these albums i wasn't expecting to grow so fond of. the tech gizmo part of the work is amazing, but once you get bored with that ~ as i do quickly ~ you'll find that the actual songs are great! i was delighted to listen to 'here comes the fleas' again for the first time in ages (strangely, it was not quite the way i remembered ~ i remembered it as more dissonant & nonsensical, but it's still an awesome tune). the rest of the album is worth your buck if you can stand late 60s psychedelic music. yet, if you make abstraction of some of the proggish vocal harmonies, this disc sounds so current it's scary. a word on the liner notes: they spoil some of the 'mystery' surrounding the album, but otherwise are quite interesting to say the less. ~ v/a 'kompakt total 1' 2*12" (kompakt) ~ i can say straight that this has to be one of the best-looking covers in my entire vinyl collection. these little circles beat anything the designer republic may have done ~ it's even better than the music itself, perhaps unfortunately. this is a compilation of minimal techno from koln (where else do they even bother?), some songs are better than the others (usually when they're more leftfield) but overall, while being more varied than say '...compiled', it's still quite hermetic. still, if you like the genre, give it a try as this is quality stuff. it's just not very original. that's it. have fun. ~ david at http://www.notype.com