From Hrvatski Sent Sat, Feb 14th 1998, 03:40
>soup disc. japanese label. ultra rare + expensive on this side of the >pacific. Actually, Soup-Disk, Weed-beats, Shi-Ra, and other Soup-disk splinter is all available in the US. It's all distributed by DEI, which means even towers should have them. In fact, the one in boston has at least three copies of each. Something like 25 titles so far, seems to be three new each week. They're about $20 each. That's not too bad for Japanese CD's, which cost about three times as much to manufacture as US ones. >its not groundbreaking product, but well executed. Heavily understated. These artists are from japan. Big cultural gap. What they translate as 'Avant-Garde' come far closer to said movement than the 'Avant-Gardism' thing. Really out there. For example, take Jigen. The first track is just a break, digitally cut up for three minutes. It's not in time. At all. Another record (I'm not sure which) is made entirely with two turntables and two copies of Alan Sondheim's "T'other little tune" LP on ESP (killer shut-in "speak th' black truth" free-jazz-rant circa NYC 1967). Others just feature sounds. Just sounds. There's one called "piano breaks" or something. It features looped prepared piano hits and lines, and super-low-res (8-bit 11k) hip hop breaks. That's it. Despite my obvious pro-Soup Disk affections, there are some bad ones. But the aforementioned ones were clearly THE sound of 1997 in my ears. Entirely self-standing and super individualised, sounding like nothing else. Very japanese. Just like the Musica Transonic, and the way it made rock good again in the last four years. And this in a time when clone of clone of clone of clone was the prevalent 'Hot Sound", and people's favorite records were ones they didn;t have. Maybe Soup Disk's are just too available for anyone to get excited about. Damn Gil. -Hrv=E5tski. __________________________________________________ Reckankreuzungsklankewerkzeuge.________________________ _________________________________PO Box 382864-2864 Cambridge, MA 02238-2864____________________________ _______________________________________________USA _______________Main URL: http://www.tiac.net/users/sheket __________________________________________________