From s.f.w.d. Sent Mon, Aug 16th 1999, 06:00
From s.f.w.d. Sent Mon, Aug 16th 1999, 06:00
new vvm promos arrived at my door today. in a major sellout move, it was accompanied by promotional materials (??????____) in which v/vm inflate their egos and compare themselves with the likes of scanner and dj spooky... in the process of updating the vvm site to reflect the new goods that landed here, so in a couple days some audio will be up if i can be bothered with it... also, MACHINE COMPONENT mp3s will be up for any who wish to download and tinker with, two tracks from each machine 7". furthermore and finially... vvm contests will start next weekend. have various releases to give away that i've picked up here and there that i wish to find good homes for... first giveaway will be a slightly beatup vvmt2. contest page almost done, look for it next weekend if you feel compelled to do so... psuedoreviews(not really revies, but sort of like reviews) first oof OFFAL02 selected memories from the haunted ballroom not so awful at all really... pretty damn good actually. ballroom hits done the caretaker way. quite appropriately dubbed, 'selected memories frm the HAUNTED ballroom', has a very haunting feel to it, somewhat in the vein and overall feel of the stranger release. whereas v/vm releases have a tendency to shock listeners with abrasive noise/soundscapes, i find it much more shocking that they might come up with a wonderful, not-very-abrasive-at-all selection as this. you never know what to expect from this label, which makes it easy to miss out on what could be the ambient release of the year (unless of course there is a new scanner coming out) and the most creative use of ballroom tracks ever... OFFAL01 auraloffalwaffletenpintsofbitterandabagofporkscratchings (2xcd... yes, cd for all you no record player owning folks) v/vm making the move to broaden their audience? one might suspect such if you visitd the website lately which recently made move to brainwashed.com... the release itsself is a collection of older tracks from releases past (vvm1, vvm2, etc) and new material which plunders and trashes tracks left and right, mixing in attempts at 'noise' tracks. . with various contributes from the likes of kid606 and lucky kitchen crew, so you'd expect there'd be a track or two capable of being listenable, but seems even the guests decided that they couldn't be bothered. being a pretty big fan of vvm's work, i searched really hard for some redeeming qualities, a nice autechre/funkstorung melody or some of those psuedo idmmeetshiphop beats, but for the life of me i could ind none (ok, there were some nice horns but then and sounds of rejoicing at one point but then some noise came along) there's the alien pomidgets high altitude track also... JIM was kind enough to locate that at the beginning of the cd so as to save us from suffereing through such bloated poo-poo as yellow mmarina sub. i rememebr back in college. we all dropped lots of acid and went out into the woods in upstate. there were wild dogs in the woods and the entire party had nightmare visions of being ripped apart by the dogs. so we went home and drank lots of beer. but offal01 makes me scared like the dogs did and makes me want to drink. its horrible, its damn awful. 0/10. a visit to the can after a feast upon raw beef and peanut butter ice cream all topped with fudge magic shell is a more appealling sound.