This second Black Dice album initializes with the disconnected mass of "Cloud Pleaser", and already you know this is not gonna be a regular listening experience. The 6-minute mini-fantasia "Treetops" confirms this, displaying an evolving fabric of electronic gurgling, rambling rhythms, guitar strumming, random noises, and naive vocal ditties presented in an elliptical manner. The 9-minute "Creature" further raises the stakes, exhibiting an ectoplasmic avant-delirium made out of a vibrant hum, vocal outbursts, bleeps, random rhythms, whose harmonic and rhythmic density keeps being tweaked, keeps forming different configurations of the elements at bay, eventually resulting in a shrill Industrial rhythm.
The centerpiece is the 15-minute "Skeleton", the apotheosis of their biological music, a specter of ghostly noises, a fragmented living tissue that dissolves in other living tissues which in turn unite and form other living tissues, an algorithm that calculates three-dimensional synthetic possibilities. This mind-blowing track represents a peak, it's as simple as that. The 7-minute "Night Flight" is more two-dimensional, but still represents an orgy of chaotic sounds intent on disrupting the harmonic continuum. Get it here (includes pics of the CD).
Pindrop begins with "Fear", which is tense and neurasthenic Electronic Post-Punk, whose closest relative is probably that first monumental album of Suicide (without the rockabilly). But "Troops Out" is surprisingly upbeat and poppy (could be an Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark outtake), while "Carnal" is theatric and pounding. "Watching You Dance" returns to the spirit of the first track, albeit in a calmer setting, that of the nocturnal threat looming around taut senses. Taut senses that overshoot in the paroxysm of "Hunt", the paranoid rampage of "From The Heart" and the unhealthy disquiet of "Locust", as well as another exercise at building intensity in "16 Hours". Finally, a relative release is found in "Carmen" (that sounds like The Fall would sounds if they played Synth Pop). However, "A Certain Way To Go" revisits the lunacy in a calmer, almost ethereal, but still threatening scenery, while the icy-cold somber calmness of "Prelude" fragments into agonizing outbursts, presenting the icing on the cake of this masterpiece. Get it here.
Nico's sophomore effort was a dive into the void, a descent to a bottomless ocean, a hypnotic state which awakens the mind through life, reincarnation and beyond: "Lawns Of Dawns" introduces the hypnosis, the mesmerized mind reciting an incantation amidst a cacophonous maze of mirrors. "No One Is There" recalls 18th century romanticism, in what is basically a funereal chamber piece with the strings clashing with each other.
"Ari's Song" is a feverish psalm, "Facing The Wind" an obsessive liturgy and a psychotic cabaret piece, while "Julius Caesar" travels even further down the past (the chorus of some ancient tragedy, the ecstasy of a dervish). Eventually, the last two songs reach a terrifying apex. "Frozen Warnings" sets the icy sunset, through which the Valkyries' catastrophic call of "Evening Of Light" heralds Armageddon. Get it here.
Glenn Branca's The Ascension is played by an ensemble of 4 guitars, bass, and drums. It starts conventionally with "Lesson No. 2", which is elastic punk-funk, with the 4 guitars giving it a "symphonic" sound, but the track ends with crashing monotones, which speed up, slow down, speed up again etc. The 13-minute "The Spectacular Commodity" starts with Stravinsky-an ebullience, a sort of Rock in Opposition meets No Wave meets Chamber Music hybrid, but the continuation is quite anthemic. A series of movements follows, forming what is essentially a highly fluid mini-symphony, though a bit of pomp isn't avoided. "Structure" is an interlude which returns to cold, geometrical, glacial repetitions, layered in such a way so that they sound enormous.
The 8-minute "Light Field" is a perverse military-march of sorts, with the ensemble's typical huge sound. The movements are more subtle, with guitar lines that hide behind other guitar lines, until they align and "move" the track forwards, which itself represents a plexus in constant motion blur. Ambiance comes to the fore in the 13-minute "The Ascension", with reverberation creating a resonating sound, much more cosmic and religious than any of the previous tracks, with vibrant streams that represent an antenna that picks up spiritual forces; by 6:00 minutes, with the introduction of percussion, the track does indeed constitute a hymn of catastrophic intensity, until it freezes (7:30), re-starts, re-freezes, and then the track resumes on a slightly different harmonic scale, still representing a tortuous flow of cosmic forces, until they unite to form a spectral supernova and the track ends. Get it here.
The influence of Cabaret Voltaire and This Heat hangs heavily over this release by 23 Skidoo. But arguably, there's enough of their own personality to justify it's cult-status.
Check "Kundalini", with funk bass, industrial noise breaks, ethnic overtones and distorted vox. Or the more conventional funk-jazz "Vegas El Bandito". The anthemic "IY" sounds pretty conventional too, but is carried by orgiastic percussion.
Much more important was "Mary's Operation", an ambient piece with disorienting symphonic textures and dissonant jazzy brass. This is clearly illbient 15 years before it became a movement. Ditto for "New Testament", which also adds a threatening industrial clang to the recipe, and then finishes with a deformed ritualistic tribal chant. Also "Porno Base", where slow-motion bass engages in "dialogue" with vocal-samples. Then "Quiet Pillage" ends the album accordingly with a mutant exotica. Get it here.
Αfter the unassuming debut, Sophia's sadcore assumed formal perfection with The Infinite Circle, a set of depressed, philosophical, epic, stately ballads ("Directionless", "If Only", "I'd Rather", "Every Day", "Woman"). These songs displayed a rare magniloquence, which bridged romanticism, the requiem, the meditation, the poetry of Leonard Cohen, the transcendence of Tim Buckley, the bombast of Scott Walker. In fact, their epic nature overcomes the manic depression, thus becoming a metaphor for the human condition ("Bastards", "Within Without", "River Song"), and with the reprise of "Directionless" completing a perfect circle, which is a metaphor for life itself. Get it here.
Better production values dampen the attack somewhat (their peak remains the "primitive" Deathwish EP), as evidenced by the new version of "Cavity", turning from a panorama of frenzied distortions into a more clean-cut form of morbid psychedelia. Nevertheless, "Figurative Theatre" shows they haven't lost "the edge", seeing as a tame dark-punk verse derails to an explosive chorus, while "Burnt Offerings" shows that despite the clearer sound, theirs is still a paralytic form of death-disco, a terror acid-rock if you like.
"Mysterium Iniquitatis" is a very important track; firstly it showcases a progressive complex structure, and secondly it displays an angular bouncing chorus, whereas their death-rock moves closer to agonizing spazz-rock and what will eventually be called math-rock. In the meantime, "Stairs" dwells on atmosphere (lush and middle-eastern), and the same goes for "Romeo's Distress" (lush, epic and romantic). "Resurrection" is also an important track, where they gradually freak-out along an unusual harmonic scale. The final track "Prayer" shows a desire to experiment on the electronic free-form sonic environment (which Rozz Williams explored more convincingly in Premature Ejaculation).
The unsung hero of the album is Rikk Agnew, whose guitar leads and distortions battle for attention with Rozz's vocals: vitriolic, morbid, demonic, hysterical, agonizing. Get it here.
