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Draft 7.30
[Warp/PIAS]
Listening to an Autechre record is always an intense and incomparable pleasure as much for the mind as for all the senses. Despite their six albums and eight EPs, each new journey in their sound universe always brings about the same wonder while remaining a particularly difficult exercise. Indeed, Sean Booth and Rob Brown, the two members of the Manchester-based duo, can be especially obtuse at time, often taking a vicious pleasure in steering their electronic windings in always unexpected, unforeseeable directions. Xylin Room, the track opening the album, is the perfect example. It rebounds thrice, taking each time a totally different direction. If IV VV IV VV VIII seems insurmountable, 6IE.CR, at the opposite, is almost bombastic. The track is a crescendo and appears to be the more "logical" (to us, not them) of the album. The magnificent Reniform Pulse, Surripere or Theme of Sudden Roundabout, P.:NTIL or the almost danceable (!) V-Proc provide other pleasurable moments, endless and always renewed experiences shared by the duo. But the enumeration of the tracks is difficult because each of them is made of numerous elements which appear to be incompatible at first. If this album has more relief than "Cornfield", which might be their hardest to grasp, some of the tracks are still particularly difficult but will be unravelled after several auditions which are always necessary to perfectly get Autechre's works. If it seems they will never attain again the madness and clarity of "Gantz Graf", Autechre tirelessly carries on imprinting the history of electronic music, and once again "Draft 7.30" will establish itself to the next generation as a new measurement unit without the slightest clue as to its essence, like a brand new device without a user guide.
Christophe Labussière |
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Anxiety Always
[Ersatz Audio]
Adult's long-awaited "second" first album is now released at last. Indeed, whereas "Resuscitation" was mainly a compilation of brilliant singles, "Anxiety Always" is a real album, made and recorded in one go during the second half of 2002. Adam Lee Miller and Nicola Kuperus, the married couple hiding behind Adult. (more famous since Nicola's appearance on the recent Death In Vegas and Swayzak albums), had several times underlined that they wanted to "harden" their sound for this record. But where one could have expected an even colder, rougher and above all purely electronic music, one surprisingly discovers... guitars! Turn Your Back develops an obvious electro-punk tone, with its typical bass and its Siouxsie-like plaintive voice. As for Glue Your Eyelids Together, it sounds like a Fuzzbox remake sprinkled with Adult.'s trademark deadpan humour. An obvious sense of humour that inhabits most of the tracks, like on the very good Kick in the Shin which, between sorrowful softness and humorous violence, ends the album. A rich program indeed... And the notable difference with the two tracks mentioned before, is that one is here surrounded by a totally electro universe which reminds of Kitbuilders, Adult.'s alter ego from Cologne. Besides, don't be mistaken: the duo hasn't changed their habit, for only three tracks out of ten on this album include guitars. Adult. is still Adult. and tracks like Nervous (wreck) are here to remind it. Neither retro, nor future or "no future", just "The Forgotten Sounds of Tomorrow".
Carole Jay |
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Sleep and Release
[Chemikal Underground]
On the cover sleeve, a naked woman holds in her hands what could be a record, or a rusty circular saw, or maybe both... One couldn't have better illustrated what comes out of this brilliant new album of the Glasgow-based quartet (Arab Strap, Mogwai, Belle and Sebastian, The Delgados). Their gloomy and extremely rich rock music, a crazy and unlikely mix of electronic sounds, post-rock and even metal, permanently goes from softness to violence, from fragility to rage. Therefore, an a priori quiet, acoustic with serious vocal track can, at any time, change to a thunderstorm of guitars and screams, thanks to the ability of Craig B.'s voice to go from an extreme to the other (Older, Wood). Even if these explosions are finally rare, the result is an intensity and emotional strain that won't let anybody unscathed. Fortunately, the album ends on a bright and quiet note with an untitled, almost instrumental and irresistible track. Beware, dangerous record ahead.
Renaud Martin |
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Stargazing
[Catalogue]
Both protégés, with Craig Armstrong, of the Massive Attack's old trip-hop label (named Melankolik and displaying the funny "Glad to be sad" motto), Corin Dingley and Andy Jenks from Bristol had already offered us two very nice records, "Come from Heaven" (1997) and "The Impossible Thrill" (2001). From now on with the French label Catalogue (Sporto Kantes, Télépopmusik), the band gives us a new album which at first stays very close to their previous works: melancholic melodies, subtle and classy instrumentations (violins, guitars, samples) which go straight to the heart, the whole served by the usual voices of Wendy Stubbs, Martin Barnard and Helen White, joined for the occasion by Kelvin Swaybe (Portishead Adrian Utley's collaborator). If there's no radical changes in the form, the talent and the inspiration are still here. "Stargazing" is a classy, bewildering album (see tracks like A Perfect End, I Just Wanna Make You, Blue Autumn or the very soul Elvis) that avoids, falling into the trap of monotony which had been the case on the previous album. A brilliant achievement.
Renaud Martin |
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Monday at the Hug & Pint
[Chemikal Underground]
We had to wait for two years before the release Arab Strap's follow-up to the magnificent "The Red Thread", a long wait made easier by the release of their respective solo projects. "Monday at the Hug & Pint" marks the great return of Arab Strap and its dark real life songs, its melancholic and disillusioned chronicles of everyday life. Sex, jealousy, infidelity, treason, alcohol and other substances are the main themes crudely approached by the band, to the point of having the "Parental advisory" sticker put on their record. With the participation of fellow musicians from other bands (Bright Eyes, Bill Wells Trio, Mogwai) and brilliantly accompanied by violins and cellos, Aidan Moffat (vocal) and Malcolm Middleton (guitar) deliver thirteen tracks scanning once again the biases and deviances found in relationships, and in which we find this contrast between an always crude and heavy songwriting and a subtle alternation (even richer than in "The Red Thread") of haunting pop, folk ballads and more dub rhythmed tracks. We can only advise you to dip or even drown yourself in this "Monday at the Hug & Pint", probably the most achieved album of a band with a unique writing style.
Renaud Martin |
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Compilation
[Bip-Hop]
The sixth volume of an astounding series of compilations which doesn't anything else to prove, this "Bip-Hop Generation" completes its predecessors. Among the musicians to be found this time are Alejandra & Aeron, the Spanish-American couple founder of the Lucky Kitchen label, proposing a kind of abstract mix of acoustic strings. The result is charming but a bit soporific and one quickly understands why by reading its title (Listening to Radio Rioja Before Going to Sleep). But fortunately, it quickly makes up for it with two excellent tracks by Scanner. Bewildering melodies, fluid and light ambiences punctuated by "hashed" (and hacked) voices, Robin Rimbaud's compositions are rarely disappointing. BitTonic, alias Iris Garrelfs, follows with her original mix of glitch and aquatic drones wrapped up in her soft and reassuring voice. The contrast obtained is striking... As for the generous Ilpo Vþisþnen, he delivers three tracks quite different one another, but which stay in the minimal and hypnotic line developed by the Finn until now, reminding us that he isn't the other talented half of Pan sonic for nothing. Battery Operated, a trio of two musicians and one video director proposes us two original compositions. One is a very strange compromise of chaotic structures and hybrid texture while the other (Kloppy) irresistibly reminds of Dat Politics or Gram's Simple Funk. A group worth following which should soon release an album with Gescom. This ends with Ilpo Vþiasþnen again, here with Dirk Dresselhaus (Schneider TM) under the deceiving name of Angel. Deceiving because this eleventh and final track starts with the noise of a sledgehammer which tends to confirm that these two sounds terrorists' work yard isn't near the end. Just like Bip-Hop's compilations, we hope.
Carole Jay |
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Paradise
[Ad Noiseam]
This is a funny paradise that Zak Roberts offers here. His Eden, or at any rate the sound interpretation he does of it, evokes more the hot flames of hell than the silly paded landscape of some paradise... and so much for the better.
His music is a compromise between breakbeats' clubbing and bewildering and light layers which constitutes his tracks by giving them a density and above all an obvious originality. Cdatakill easily renews the breakcore genre by also including bits of other musical styles, a bit like Venetian Snares do. Some of his compositions deftly flirt with jungle while others alternately evoke sounds more dark ambient, industrial or rhythmic noise.
In the opposite, the second CD (this is a double album) contrasts by its quietness, even if it still is in a very gloomy musical register... "Brazilian Nightmare", that's its name, is a CD-R re-edition released last year to one hundred units only on the American label Eupholus. Decidedly more ambient, it's also opened to other musical genres including, for example, classical music (A Question of Purpose). If you didn't know Cdatakill yet, here's a good mean to get all his CD discography in one go (!), the musician was until then used to vinyl releases and especially to split singles, as his numerous collaborations with Resurrector, Abelcain, Minion, Low Entropy and soon Fanny prove. The two records have three remixes each, made each in turn by Somatic Responses (for an efficient re-reading of Cabrini Green, one of the best track of the triple compilation DHR "Don't Fuck with Us"), Tarmvred, Detritus, Matt Demmon, Jason Snell and Stick.
Carole Jay |
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Transition
[Mark XIII/UWe]
Oddly enough, it's the same chap, Pi from Marseille, who lies behind Komplex and Communication Zéro. If the first project had been a real discovery, particularly original in its treatment of voices and melodies and tracks construction, the second hides behind an electro a la Ant-Zen somewhat less exciting. As too often, the big machinery tries to hide the weakness of the whole and all is too strongly influenced by the elders. Nevertheless the successive listenings may get Communication Zéro through us, for the whole contains in some places interesting sound treatments, some industrial loops and welcomed voices' samples (Connected (Emotional Technology), Missing (You Killed Me) or the Sulphuric Saliva's remix Lose Kontrol which ends the album). But this will not be enough for "Transition" which shouldn't resist time. At the best, it'll incite the listener to revise some of the classics that he appears to know by heart.
Christophe Labussière |
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Compilation
[UWe/Mk2]
Some records need no superfluous comments for their titles speak for themselves. Here's the case with this electronic music's collection used for cinema. An outstanding selection of, all too short, tracks that illustrated various films such as "Pi", "Matrix" or "Basic Instinct" (the only cinematographic weakness of this compilation). Some titles really stand out, particularly the magnificent Summer Overture of Kronos Quartet (taken from the soundtrack of the incredible "Requiem for a Dream"), DJ Shadow's Stem ("187: Code meurtre"), A Pure Person of Lim Giong ("Millennium Mambo") or the haunting Clubbed to Death of Rob D. ("Matrix"). The whole is absolutely splendid throughout and gives us the opportunity to rediscover exceptional films ("Pi" or "Requiem for a Dream" to cite a few) which, obviously, have all in common a neat soundtrack. The whole is fluid and particularly light and was made by some experts at UWe and Mk2 Cinema. Essential.
Christophe Labussière |
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Berlinette
[Bpitch Control/Ping Pong]
Since her excellent first album, STADTKIND, in 2001, Ellen Allien notably set fire to numerous dancefloors around the planet during an electronic world tour. An experience that both deeply enriched her and renewed her feelings of identification with her home town, celebrated through the title of this new album. BERLINETTE is as homogenous as STADTKINDT, but sounds definitely more experimental and destructured. The founder of the Berlin-based label BPitch Control pushes her sound aesthetics a little bit further here and delivers a groovy, intelligent electro, interrupted with breaks and acid clicks (Abstract Pictures), elegantly saturated with synthetic, sizzling sounds and electronic buzzes. The demanding DJ obviously had fun using her voice as instrument: tortured, blurred or mere broken whisper, her singing is more present than ever. Enhanced by airy rays of light (Augenblick) or discreet guitars (Open, Thrash Scapes), the elastic rhythms of "Berlinette" also let serene (Secret) or softy melancholy (Wish) accents peer through. Indeed, Ellen Allien excels at creating intimacy and emotions in her music (Sehnsucht). Far from surfing on the unequally interesting electroclash wave, "Berlinette" displays a subtle and irresistibly efficient electronic music, haunted by the delicate presence of its creator.
Nathalie Peronny |
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Sans Titre
[Divine Comedy]
New comer at the very deserving label from Marseille, Divine Comedy (which released Land's first album "Opuscule"), this "Sans Titre" from the French duo Fin de Siècle will delight the melancholic and twilight ambiences' amateurs. Nostalgic and autumnal, the thirteen tracks of this (already) third album finely depict ancient landscapes, sepia memories of a time not yet troubled by the twenty century's great wars. A piano, a few samples, keyboards constitute the fragile framework of this intimist souvenirs' collection where an atonal voice that sometimes has some life breathed into it. Evoking childhood and nature, Fin de Siècle brushes against drama never falling into an abysmal pathos, favouring stealthy sigh of a discreet melancholy which reminds (in the content more than in the form) the first Collection of Arnell-Andrea. A mature and remarkably expressed work it would be a shame to miss.
Stéphane Leguay |
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Souvenirs
[Psychonaut/M10]
Underlying since "How to Measure a Planet?" in 1999 and "If_Then_Else" three years ago, the rupture between The Gathering and its metal passive announced last winter by the 12' "Black Light District" is now accomplished. That's for the form, as for the content, it stays in the famous atmospheric and luminous vein introduced by the Dutch on their mythical "Mandylion" in 1995. Mature and confident of their talent, the quintet delivers its seventh album "Souvenirs" that can only leave you admiring the group's mastery acquired as time went by. A mastery you can also find in the melodies softly intoxicating (You Learn About It) as well as in the elaboration of paded and etherical ambiences (We Just Stopped Breathing). A simple bias which gives this album an intimist characteristic, the few pop and trip-hop influences widely did their job here. An overture not distorting yet the Gathering's touch and its more emblematic treasures, Anneke Van Giersbergen's beautiful voice is more than ever the keystone of this precious album. Despite a rather sophisticated although discreet production, the guitars stand back, the band yet kept some spaces for power (Monsters) to better dive in the quiet and melancholic waters of "Souvenirs" which shine by the finesse of its compositions and the intrinsic magic found throughout the album.
Stéphane Leguay |
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Keep on Your Mean Side
[Domino]
Yet another name begining with "The", another couple making by itself as much noise as a whole band (White Stripes are you here?), another would-be saviour of rock'n'roll... Wouldn't the anglo-american (real, this time) couple of The Kills consisting of VV and Hotel (aka Alison Mosshart and Jamie Hince) be another band joining this infamous new rock wave? Yet, after listening to this album with its exquisite title and its monochromous, dirty and primitive rock (evoking Royal Trux, Cramps, Mazzy Star, PJ HArvey or Sonic Youth), one has to acknowledge that the whole is full of character. And when you manage to find a killing name for your band (we actually wonder how nobody thought of it before), that you call your songs Fuck the People or Fried My Little Brains, you have no rights to be bad. The Kills are plainly good, and with this first album, brutally rock in its gist, they join their colleagues of The Strokes and The White Stripes in the leading trio of this new rock scene of these 00 years which, like it or not, really exists.
Renaud Martin |
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Arena
[Brume]
While some, like goldsmiths, work hard to shape their sound to a precise, abrasive, rough, always fine form, Oil 10 casually allow itself to make theirs malleable, elastic, like some weightless soap bubbles which moves would be totally controlled. The result spurns so all references and easily gets rid of all tags and known names. We might try to qualify "Arena" of electronica, but the tone is much more playful that this genre got us used to and, as if nothing, dips out of the 80s tagged synthetic and new wave sounds. With Dernier jour and Lost in Metropolis, the album takes a turn and draws us to Sci-Fi cinematographic ambiences with their seemingly old-fashioned sounds, but on which the shadows of Carpenter and Kraftwerk wisely glide. Gille Rossire bafflingly plays with fascinating ambiences and, if the "winks" and references are numerous in this album, you precisely have to go into it like in a huge arena which every part is perfectly mastered by our host. A more than ever personal, much too short fourth album.
Christophe Labussière |
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Sleeping With Ghosts
[Hut/Delabel]
Tenser, darker and punchier than "Black Market Music", that we tended to sulk, this fourth album finds again the energy we vainly looked for after their first eponymous masterpiece. As to cloud the issue right away, Placebo immerses us in a raging instrumental: Bulletproof Cupid, which will remind of the best parts of their begining, just like This Picture, Second Sight, Plasticine and The Bitter End, the single which efficiency needs no more proofs. But "Sleeping With Ghosts" isn't an improved remake of the band's old albums. Even if we perceive here and there sounds taken from diverse sounds' experimentations started on "Black Market Music" or with Trash Palace for some electro parts (see the intro of English Summer Rain, Sleeping With Ghosts or I'll Be Yours subtlely Depeche Mode like). This delicately shaded album also has more intimist tracks like Without You I'm Nothing where Brian Molko apparently very comfortable, offers us very personal lyrics, like the splendid and dark Special Needs (that the Cure's fan will appreciate), Protect Me From What I Want or Centrefolds, simple but dense ballad played by an almost tearful piano. As a climax to this album mixing rage and gravity to a fragile melancholy. A Placebo to overindulged in at the risk of becoming your own shadow.
Catherine Fagnot |
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Access to the Second Floor
[Edith Sample Records]
For those who thought that the French noise scene was dying since the split of the Thugs, Sexypop comes just in time. When you hear "small French provincial town trio", a first maxi 45 recorded in the Black et Noir studios, a sound engineer called Olivier Fournier (Hint, La Phaze), doesn't it ring a bell? So jump on this new first excellent emo-noise-power-pop (sic) album, which spreads during thirty minutes a concentration of familiar and fascinating energy. After a Near Death Experience like intro, Broken Window starts softly then explodes after a few times and impose itself as obvious. Obvious in its tinged power which reminds of Drive Blind for the vocal, Second Rate or the Portobello Bones for the guitars and some melodies, inevitably. The album quickly unwinds, very quickly, too quickly, with its compositions of three minutes thirty on average. Yet the subtlety is present and the space is cleverly filled, balancing between ruffling riffs and unavoidable melodic discoveries. There's little rest between all these potential noise hits (Prayer, Access to the Second Floor, The Counter to mention a few) except the dubish but excellent Kate Too, distant cousin of Ministry's So What, punctuated by a "Attention, we've got a style. If he doesn't understand, he's gonna be laughed at!" which probably will trigger some laughters but also mark the renewal of a vital scene whom Sexypop might well be the next leaders.
Catherine Fagnot |
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Back and Forth Six
[Subconscious]
It's a shame to have to wait for bands splits to be able to benefit from their treasures. The sixth volume of the "Back and Forth" series is a real gold mine in which cEvin Key himself allows us to access. From Meat Flavoured Factor, first track written under the name of Skinny Puppy to Hardset Head, recorded at the Doomsday Festival in 2002 and unfortunately absent from the volume 5 (but available in MP3 on the Netwerk label's website), the CD is full of new tracks which origins are always soberly commented upon on the booklet. A serie of curios, but no wastes. Indeed, we find real gems such as Brassy Excellence with this Front 242 side to it or The Poison Mouth and its particularly strange vocal, the excellent Subskull and Morphous. A new opportunity to realise the greatness of this major band, the darkest and the most creative that the indus electro scene ever offered us. This little gem is, of course, exclusively intended for the fans, the others will have to dig in the band's exceptional discography. And if the packaging isn't as exciting as the previous volumes of the collection, the booklet nevertheless contains a series of unpublished photos, all precisely credited. To be listened at waiting for ohGr's second album, cEvin Key's and above all the unexpected new album of Skinny Puppy, successor of the excellent "The Process".
Christophe Labussière |
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Advance into Unknown
[Out of Line]
Two years after "Paradox", the German trio Solitary Experiments appears willing to change gear in its leadership of the dark-electro sonorities that the band's third album "Advance into Unknown" constitutes. Of course, the big references are the same since the creation of the group in 1993, from Skinny Puppy to Evil's toy and Leaether Strip, but the production gained in density and the construction of the tracks gained in diversity. Indeed nothing very original in the program: some aggressive and morbid synthetic music, some obsessing verses-choruses, some deep, sometimes clear almost crystal like sounds, an oscillation of very fast martial rhythms and desperate ballads. The whole wrapped in a distressing gothic / futurist atmosphere worthy of the worst hours of the late label Celtic Circle. Nothing really exciting except that the alternation of manipulated and pure voices is cleverly used between verses and choruses (as to be able at least to understand the chorus and sing together...) and that some nice, almost new melodies are found here and there on an album avoiding so the monotony. Not a must-have indeed, but a nice effort that will delight all fans of hurried groups, except maybe for a few purists.
Stéphane Colombet |
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Des courbes et des choses invisibles
[Dora Dorovitch]
To begin with, a question needs to be answered. How come Diabologum, who offered us three delirious and delicious albums, managed to lastingly imprint our minds? A bit like David Lynch's films, those with the faculty to incite our unconscious to ceaselessly come back to them, intrigued by an odd detail. For the unique universe created by this group from Toulouse isn't dead with its disappearance. Indeed, as soon as 2001 and the first times of Expérience (the Michel Cloup's formation), the most faithful offspring, or of Programme (Arnaud Michniak's band) the sickest outgrowth, in 2000 and today Téléfax, we always brutally go back to this so peculiar universe. And if with Téléfax there are no real direct connexions, Francisco Esteves, the bassist nevertheless collaborated to Expérience's first album. The lineage is crude but essential. All the madness and the roughness of the mentioned people is present here, nursed with a bit of grace especially with the, too rare, appearances of Marielle (Playdoh's singer) on Our Talk and Rose. Electronic sounds and post-rock instrumentation live in the greatest perversion together, offering moments of great intensity where the vocal, always declaimed, guides some polymorphous compositions. Crammed with emotion, tormented, depressed but never ponderous, "Des Courbes et des choses Invisibles" really is an engaging, almost moving record.
Christophe Labussière |
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DJ-Kicks
[!K7]
Tiga, our dearest man Tiga Sontag, the very one who, with his mate Zyntherius (alias Jori Hulkkonen) inflicted us the unbearable cover of Sunglasses at Night, the one for whom the electroclash tag appears to have been invented for, comes back on!K7 for an uneven DJ Kicks. He delivers a mix of good, even very good surprises (Carl Finlow, Crowdpleaser, St Plomb, Swayzak and the excellent Charles Manier) and some radical lapses in taste, like the presence of an irritating saxophone between Chromeo and 2raumwohnung, an old Soft Cell's track (...So) coming at the wrong time, and a few musty smells of Italian disco that one would rather avoid like the plague and that sometimes spoil the audition of these yet rather well mixed 24 tracks. Except for these mistakes, let's notice the presence of two remixes by Black Strobe and a track by Volga Select (common point Ivan Smagghe), or Deceptacon by Le Tigre (Kill Kathleen Hannah ex-Bikini's band) who might carry for a long time yet the electro tag that's stuck to them especially since the release of the remixes' record from which this track comes from. We'll also notice that the CD starts with an efficient re-reading of Jolly Music by Adult., a wage of good taste (this band's remixes are rarely bad), and finishes with Tiga's famous remake of Madame Hollywood (a Felix da Housecat's track, originally sung by Miss Kittin). Finally this record is meant as much for the feet as for the ears, so despite the above-mentioned mistakes, let's happily dance to forget the surrounding moroseness.
Carole Jay |
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Elephant
[XL Recordings]
The red and white rock terrible couple formed of Meg and Jack White (a divorced husband and wife, or brother and sister depending on the versions) is still here and not ready to give up, for the White Stripes, leaders with The Strokes and The hives, of this apparently unavoidable "guitars' rock" renewal, release here their fourth album, a very expected follow-up to "White Blood Cells", the record that revealed them. No revolution ahead, apart for a few novelties like the appearance of a bass in the first times of the excellent first track (and single) Seven Nation Army and some rare synthesizers, their music is faithfully the same as it was on the three previous albums, that is to say an efficient garage-rock tinted with blues and country. Let's notice however the cover of a Burt Bacharach and Hal David's classic I Just Don't Know What To Do With Myself, and above all the very funny last track It's True that We Love Each Other in which Jack and Meg, together with Holly Golightly, ironically sing about this famous relationship that bewilders so many people. If not innovating, "Elephant" is an awfully rough and efficient record that definitively consecrates the Detroit's duo as the best in their genre... Rock'n'Roll!
Renaud Martin |
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Casting Shadows
[Strange Ways]
During the last decade, Wolfsheim has been one of the leading group of the German dark electro pop wave. The authors of the now classic The Sparrows and the Nightingales followed their route beside bands like Deine Lakaien or Girl under Glass, never going astray. Except that the duo was probably the quickest to make a real commercial success in Germany. A success that shouldn't stop with this sixth album. The successor to "Spectators'" offers a new set of very smooth ballads and some tracks with more dancing beats, the whole being served by a clean production entrusted this time to Axel Breitung (the dance producer of DJ Bobo (Chihuahua) and Lou Bega) and Andreas Herbig (A-ha). Although sometimes at the very edge of mushiness, the honeyed voice of Peter Heppner and the melancholic melodies of "Casting Shadows" are catchy and quickly hummed. Calm, clean but engaging, the German duo's songs should please the A-ha fans ("Lifelines" period) or De/Vision. One thing's for sure: in the synth-pop department, Wolfsheim remains a quality value.
Laure Cornaire |
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Zombie Commandos
From Hell! | |
Compilation
[Geska]
At the origins, "Zombie Commandos From Hell!" was a (English written) comic book made by Stéphane Dumais, a Canadian. Moreover, the author is an illustrator, responsible for, among others, Assemblage 23's cover-sleeves ("Failure", "Addendum", "Defiance") and Negative Format ("Static"). It isn't these works, nor the recently published third volume of the series that we'll discuss here, but rather what appears to be their ideal soundtrack. A compilation made by Stéphane Dumais himself (he recorded excerpts of the comic with his own voice and used them on several tracks) and masterized by Millennium Studios (Mlada Fronta). We find once again the young generation, familiar of the electronic-EBM ambiences, emerging on both side of the Atlantic and surrounded by some identifiable values. And the result is perfect and faultless. The compilation is indeed perfectly homogeneous, which is a rather surprising deed when one knows the characters of each actors. A "complete" piece, particularly logical which could almost be a new Bill Leeb and Rhys Fulber's side-project (delicious mix between Front Line Assembly, Noise Unit and Intermix...) so much everybody deftly uses cybernetic and cinematographic sounds and ambiences usually proper to the Canadian duo. An omnipresent fineness and a baffling creativity which fully allow the enjoyment of this compilation, even if you don't know the comic book series, but which will doubtlessly delight all fans of Stéphane Dumais' ruined and destroyed universe.
Christophe Labussière |
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The French-speaking indus-metal scene appears to be in a rather good health. After Y Front, Sin and Punish Yourself, heaps of young groups have been blossoming in the first half of 2003. New recruits of Quebec's Geska label, Jailbird and Foetal Void just released their first productions. "...Inside Nonsense", the album of France's Jailbird, unveils a rather interesting work which, despite too obvious influences (Young Gods, Treponem Pal) displays its most efficient aspects through its slowest compositions (Go Insane). A clean production with interesting sonory discoveries that should delight all demanding crossover fans. More synthetic than their colleagues, Foetal Voidreleased "Know Ep", a 7 titles EP whose eponymous track (and its three remixes) shines with its heading chorus and shrewd synthesizers. Melodies seem to be the strong point of this Belgian combo whose first album should be released before the end of the year. To be followed.
Still in the indus-metal genre, Porn, a band from Lyons, just released their first four titles EP with a particularly achieved production. A very clean sound which, there again, portends a good melodic potential (Recycle), to the condition however that the quartet gets rid of its cumbersome influences (Marilyn Manson and Nine Inch Nails) in the future. A not quite innovating cyber-porn mixture but all in all rather pleasant to listen to. Dark and bewitching, the universe of Re_Org, a duo from Nevers (ex-Tambours Du Bronx, Punishment Park, Fingered) goes between icy mid-tempo pop, tribal crossover and rhythms that could almost be danceable if it wasn't for this heavy leaden lid covering the eleven tracks of the album (except for a last tongue-in-cheek track ). A rather successful first effort. Finally, the award for Best Iron and Steel Noises definitely goes to Muckrackers, another French duo. "We produce industrial anthems for bombshelled dancefloors": the slogan may make you smile, but it is nevertheless a very good definition of the Muckrackers sound: "#2", the band's second production, is no nursery rhyme indeed and violently hammers the band's political ideas (Massoud - ist Tot) with the help of German lyrics, rending guitars, murdering beats and intelligent samples. A sound terrorism somewhere between Ministry and Bile, cleverly mastered and dreadfully efficient. An extreme experience and a must-try.
Stéphane Leguay
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