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Downside Up
[Polydor/Universal]
As the sticker on the set-box indicates: there are 55 tracks on 4 records, 34 of which can be heard on CD for the first time. There's also a 76 pages booklet with the lyrics of the songs and including the comment of one of the three members of the group. What is it about? It's simply something the fans had been waiting for twenty years: Siouxsie & the Banshees' B-sides, all of them anthology tracks, adored by the connoisseurs like little moments of creative madness, which marvellously reflect the talent of this band. So, the tracks are in a chronological order, from the first single, "Hong Kong Garden", released in 1978, right in the middle of the punk era, to the last one, "Stargazer", in 1995, very different from the yesteryear's ambiances. The first CD encapsulates the 1978-1982 period, the group's most troubled time. The second CD goes from 1983 to 1987, when the band was successful in the medias after releasing hits after hits and conquering an always larger public. The third CD shows the last era of the Banshees, 1988-1995, when they played a neat and nice pop and they had a worldwide success. The fourth CD is only made of four tracks, those of "The Thorn", released in 1984, this anthology EP is different from the rest of the band's discography, it's made of versions including a symphonic orchestra. It's hard to emphasize on one track more than the other, because these B-sides sparkle with intelligence and originality; when most of the bands simply put remixed versions on their B-sides, or put tracks that weren't as good as the A-sides (let's notice that, generally, "B-side" also includes the novelties appearing on CD-singles), Siouxsie & the Banshees always bestowed a special importance to these tracks by injecting in them all their creative potential, all their ravings and frustrations. This set-box isn't the best way to discover the band if you don't know it, but it's a great Xmas present for those who fantasized on the crimped goddess and her Egyptian make-up, accompanied by her blond elves.
Frédéric Thébault |
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Interplays, In Between
[Ad Noiseam]
"Interplays, In Between" is the Ukrainian minimalist and experimental eclectronica composer Andrey Kiritchenko's second album. It's sad there is no legal mention that would say "please, turn the volume of your stereo up", as the signs of life from those nine instrumental tracks are far from being pervasive and turbulent. But it's not the aim of this kind of music, which, like the Young Gods' recent "Music for Artificial Clouds", could be described as environmental music. What means ambient music as well as a sound envelop, like the ones that justly accompany modern art exhibitions. We think of the way they can caress the space and create the breath of life all around those inert buildings. One will need to prick up his/her ears and even pull on them, in order to listen to the differences and resemblances between Kingdom of Blessed Dream, Bits Colashade and Raison d'Être, about which some of us will say that its title is eventually the question of its own existence. This record is for the initiated, and is a journey to the raw sound, the one without any seducing melody, where the mix of electronic and acoustic music all comes to a question of high and low frequencies. Physics, all in all.
Bertrand Hamonou |
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Néons Blancs et Asphaltine
[Noise Digger]
The aestheticism of the cover-sleeve and the album's title will catch your attention right away. Entering Arman Méliès' universe is a bit like opening a poetry book. You can find an outlandish world tinged with softness and sensitivity. This singer-guitarist is one of these artists who bring freshness to French songwriting. Rehabilitating French lyrics, Arman Méliès appears to be a very good author. The melodies are catchy and the clear timbre of his voice goes ever so well with his guitar playing. Melancholic as you wish, these little ballads, alternating with instrumental tracks, will act on you like a soothing balm and bring you peace and serenity. With his very own style of writing, Arman Méliès releases here a very promising album, and may now be put among the new wave of composer-interprets who are currently renewing French music.
Delphine Payrot |
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| Collection d'Arnell-Andréa | |
The Bower Of Despair
[Prikosnovénie]
It took time to release this sixth volume of the Collection d'Arnell-Andréa. Eight years to be precise, almost a decade punctuated, here and there by a double compilation "CollAGE" (in 1998) and a studio recording "Tristesse des Mânes" (in 2002), which, excepted for some novelties, was covering seven chamber music tracks. But, there wasn't any real album since the very flowery "Cirses des Champs" in 1996. But, our patience has been rewarded. Resuming a rock formula we thought they gave up after "Tristesse des Mânes", the band is know offering us a marble-like cold album with an electric poetry, all along which meanders the powerful melancholy you can find in each of their work since the EP "Autumn's Breath for Anton's Death". Close to the referential and the mythical "Villers-aux-Vents", to which they borrow the guitars-cello alchemy, the eleven tracks of this album follow one another in a nice wintry homogeneity, like a funeral procession lead by the confident and intoxicating (all in English) vocal of Chloé St Liphard. Like a flower imprisoned in the ice, it appears difficult to isolate one song from this snowy landscape without risking breaking the dark charm gliding over "The Bower of Despair". If we're tempted to name the languorous Wild Trees and its harrowing strings, or the very energetic Time Always Blows Away, we quickly realise that the whole album should be put forward. So, always outside any trend and mode, Jean-Christophe d'Arnell and his kins manage once again, to fill us with wonder, all the while avoiding copying themselves, and above all, far from the artistical inertia. The 2004/2005 winter has found its soundtrack. Superb!
Stéphane Leguay |
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No Cities Left
[Bella Union/Chronowax]
True prophets in their own country, the Canadian band The Dears are coming to Europe with their second album entitled "No Cities Left", in the hands. Led by Murray Lightburn, the band follows his charismatic singer's well assumed ambitions. The European dream actually comes true, since after opening for Morrissey in Los Angeles last October, this Montreal-based band is coming to conquer the old world thanks to a long British tour this February. Their weapon is simple, efficient and surprising: English pop-music. Nevertheless, the results are pleasing and well-produced, but not very original. It's taken a while for an European label (Bella Union) to decide to distribute this album, originally released in Canada in spring 2003. Those who liked songs like La Comédie and The Universal by Blur will appreciate this record for sure. The first impression gets confirmed after a few times of listening, and one may wonder whether this is the new record of a vaguely ‘crooner' Damon Albarn-like singer, as the voice with the manners of some transatlantic version of Jarvis Cocker (Lost in the Plot), gets very close to the original, as far as with the words of the lyrics on Warm and Sunny Days themselves. This is a record under high influence of both brit-rock and brit-pop, with horns, flutes and violins, for the one who would fancy a mix of Blur, Divine Comedy and all the others.
Bertrand Hamonou |
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Remixes 81-04
[Mute/Labels]
How to do something new with old stuff? Take a mythical group, like an electronic sounding Beatles, wait until its future is darkened by rumours of break-ups, that its music is less and less dancing and is replaced by a sullen electronica worthy of the worst cars' ads, that the average consumer of the new generation's pop music almost forgets the Basildon's kids... then, don't release a greatest hits compilation (it's been done several times before, the first time was almost twenty years ago with the singles "81-85", then a second time six years ago with the singles "86-98"), but do release a compilation of its greatest hits' remixes. We feel a bit cheated. It's not that the remixes are bad, on the contrary (especially in the 3 CDs limited edition, which offer you 36 remixes!!!), but except for ten or so, all these remixes are already known of the band's fans (especially those of François Kevorkian, Daniel Miller, Flood, Adrian Sherwood and those of the band itself). Yet, only fans are aimed by this kind of production, the others content themselves with the albums. Moreover, in the case of Depeche Mode, like in many other electronic bands', the contribution of a remix is small, and even could work against it, we have to admit that many original tracks are much better than their poor remixes. But, if this article doesn't deter you to buy this 100% marketing product, be aware that Depeche Mode is nowadays declined in fashion version, à la Mike Shinoda (the author of the re-interpretation of Enjoy the Silence, which you can hear nowadays), Goldfrapp, Air, Underworld, Speedy J, William Orbit, Kruder and Dorfmeister, Dave Clark, DJ Shadow and even Colder… remember that, like for Kraftwerk, the electronic music wouldn't be as big without Depeche Mode.
Stéphane Colombet |
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Future Prophecies
[Out Of Line]
Even if it'll displease some spiteful people, Daniel Myer is not about to retire, and while the year is ending, he just decided to add another electro side-project to his already long list. And even if the title of the album isn't very engaging, its contents (a very well-done kind of synthesis of the different currents of the so-called industrial-electro) makes of this album his best record since Haujobb's "From Homes to Planets". So, yes indeed, in it Myer copies in turns Front Line Assembly (Contamination), Velvet Acid Christ (Broken and Abused) and obviously himself (the very Haujobb sounding Into the Deepest Dark), yes he plays with fire, with the useless and the lachrymose Sir Wiliam (the compulsory slow track of the album) or by dangerously leering at the future-pop (Judgement Throne, Denial of Life, Bullet in Your Head), but despite this, we finally end up with a globally tough record, full of efficient hits. The alternations of genres and influences, the use of either clear or dirty vocals, the global quality of the tracks and their dancefloor ambition avoid that the listener gets bored or has the impression of déja-vu. A very good point for Myer, who, thanks to Destroid, is back in the top squad of the current best dark-electro bands.
Renaud Martin |
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Compilation
[DFA/Labels]
Each era has its favorite labels, those who discover, innovate, promote bands that nobody else would have wanted, those, who often create new genres and quickly become THE unavoidable reference. There was Virgin in the 70s, then Mute, Beggars Banquet, 4AD, Creation in the 80s, Too Pure, Big Cat, Alternative Tentacles or Sub Pop in the 90s, yesterday we looked towards K7! and recently we look at a New York label called DFA. You can safely bet that the bands present on this second compilation (the same that were on the first one, for most of them anyway), will be known one day or the other. All this thanks to the only band who can finance the label: The Rapture. The musical lead of DFA is an explosive mix of punk and disco, of dancing ambiances and experimental madness, of "death disco", as some name it. So, there's nothing bad on this compilation of singles released in vinyl, we even ask for more: LCD Soundsystem, who already made several hits and The Juan MacLean (a former member of Six Finger Satellite, a crazy noisy band of the 90s), with their cold dance in an "early New Order" style; j.o.y, very close to the 70s' punkettes of Slits, we would like to hear a bit more of them; Black Leotard Front, a conceptual band, who doesn't content itself with music but who also does dance, sculpture, photo, is present with a fifteen minutes long track of obsessing disco sometimes interrupted by screams; two of the members of the latter, under their real names, Delia Gonzalez and Gavin Russom, play a splendid moving track; Pixeltan and Liquid Liquid, who have as much talent as the others; and finally, Black Dice, the only one who don't do dance (except on this compilation, where they offer us remixes of their solely experimental music). All these groups are playing here their first tracks, let's hope they'll offer us others, and that seems to be the only vice (or is it the only quality?) of this compilation: it makes your mouth water. In bonus, DFA offers you a third CD including the same tracks than on the two first ones, but all are mixed in one, as to remind you that their main ambition is to make you sweat on dancefloors. Promising.
Frédéric Thébault |
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Frank Black
[Cooking Vinyl/Wagram]
While The Pixies are reformed and tour the world, a strangely entitled double album is released: Frank Black Francis, a cross between the solo career Frank Black and the leader of the Pixies, Black Francis. This first CD is made of "never released demos' recordings dating from 1987 to 1991". For the demos, we hear Frank Black on acoustic guitar, alone in his kitchen (or is it his bathroom?) in the process of creating the tracks that will become future worldwide hits. It might interest the diehard fans, or make them smile, but we can't imagine them listening to it again and again. Fortunately, there's a second CD, and what a CD! It's really worth it, and shame about the first one's disappointment.
Our hero got the help of two Pale Boys, Andy Diagram and Keith Moliné, respectively trumpet and guitar/synth players, who also play with the singer of the mythical Pere Ubu, under the name David Thomas & Two Pale Boys... All three re-interpreted Pixies' titles, transformed to the point you wouldn't recognize them. It's not a simple rejuvenation: these tracks are different, they only kept the basis of the original. We're right in the middle of experimentation: lots of strange sounds, few drums, and a new recipe for each new track. This Monkey Gone to Heaven becomes psychedelic, Caribou takes a surprising dramatic dimension, Velouria becomes a very moving love song, Into the White is really mournful, Holiday Song becomes a really exciting New Orleans' jazz and Planet Of Sound is a fifteen minutes long hypnotical raving. The result of these sessions is the best tribute ever to the Pixies' songs. A must!
Frédéric Thébault |
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Rêves Mécaniques
[PIAS]
One of the big disappointment of the end of the year is the album of The Hacker. When you know the CV of this gifted young man (he is the man who worked in the shadow of Miss Kittin on her "First Album"), the release of this new production could only but be a good surprise. But, unfortunately, "Rêves Mécaniques" is only another "boom boom" electro DJ record. By dint of plundering the electronic music of the 80s, all the artists lacking inspiration, have just reached the middle of this decade. This new step could have caught our attention, but the result is very superficial and rather boring. Even if at the beginning, the tribute to Nitzer Ebb on the first track (Radiation) seems to be able to give some relief to the whole, it doesn't really work and we didn't find any soul in this techno-pop, too often metronomic, sometimes acid house or stingily tinged of bleeps. Even the appearance of Miss Kittin on one track doesn't manage to save the whole. The only rare reliefs are the performance of Mount Sims on Traces, or the tracks It's the Mind and Electronic Snowflakes, which are stifled by the rest of the album. In the end, "Rêves Mécaniques" is more destined to DJs' turntables and their dancefloors than ours.
Christophe Labussière |
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The Liquid-Crystal Sins
[Atoll]
LaôH has found some support from Atoll who distributes their first album, "The Liquid-Crystal Sins". This French band that's been talked about lately thanks to a lot of touring, is one of those gifted musicians pool who sing in English only. Like the French band Frigo, those people from Nice (France) deliver here a very professional album where ballads and a both low and energetic rock gather altogether (Grown Too Fast). Nevertheless, Jérémie Lapeyre's voice hasn't got the strength nor the precision Max B's one (Frigo) has, though it matches perfectly the shoegazers-like ambiances (Liquidz). LaôH care about melodies and non-linear structures (her@untitled.com, These Are Letter/Dragons), and we would have liked the keyboards to be way much more present for a band that claims to be both rock and electro. In fact, there's no mistaking it: LaôH's music is made for the stage, and "The Liquid-Crystal Sins" is a guitar / bass / drums album, as proved by Nothing = Ruby or Little Fagget in Slumber Land. This record is a nice debut album, with a sound that's willing to get stronger, but should avoid to many irritating choirs.
Bertrand Hamonou |
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Not a Second Time
[Kalinkaland]
Ophelia's Dream's second opus is the perfect example of the album difficult to write about. Difficult, because it's far from being all black and white, which usually simplifies the journalist's task. This record is crammed with a pretty heavenly voices tending towards neo-classism, it's admirably well prepared, gracious, celestial, dark all the while luminous, in short, it's the essence of this genre. That's where it becomes difficult. As pleasant and delightful as it is, this romantic and baroque collection is unfortunately not original at all. Even worth, it persists in digging again and again the same, now deep, groove of the post-Dead Can Dance era, which has been outdated for more than ten years. Indeed, ten years separate the exploits of Anchorage and Stoa, the baroque apostles of the label Hyperium and its "Heavenly Voices" multi volumes compilations and this album, "Not a Second Time". And even if the sound hasn't aged, the formula is too well known to deceive the most critical among us. Yet, everything is here: a pretty high-pitched voice, rather realistic orchestrations, angelic ambiances, couragous moments, some percussions, some strings, a fistful of Renaissance, a pinch of Middle Ages, obviously Ophelia's Dream and their mentor, Dietmar Greulich, know and master the subject. But, maybe, they do it a bit too well, that's the problem. It won't bother the less demanding of you, but the others won't forget it easily.
Stéphane Leguay |
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Global Speaker Fisting
[Schematic/Asphodel]
Listening to an Otto Von Schirach's record is often a psychotic experience... Just by looking at the cover-sleeve (on this one, you can see a bloody self-portrait where he's gutting himself), you quickly understand that what's awaiting you won't be an easy job. Halfway between Venetian Snares (with who he shares the liking of mixing genres) and Richard Devine (with who he shares a perfect technicality), this doctor Frankenstein of electronica uses his laptop as a lab and don't hesitate to (re)constitute musical monstrosities with the most varied sounds which are often very far from the aseptisized world of electronic music. For instance, Goat Sperm, is a hilarious death-metal parody, chanted in the genre's purest tradition, and La Sangre Del Dedo Intelecto includes in its sonic junk a rather unexpected instrument: the accordion. The result is really surprising. Still, we regret that some purely electronic tracks remind of some others (we could even say they copy them), such as The Inventor of the Milf'ed Decible which reminds of Russian Roulette of Solar X. Nevertheless, Otto Von Schirach offers us a good album, but let's hope that the best is still to come.
Carole Jay |
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Discopunkture
[Autoproduit -
"Une poule sur un mur, qui picore du pain dur..." ("A hen on a wall, who pecks hard bread...", is a French rhyme editorial note). "Picore" ("Peck"), what a nice name for a group. In it, there's "Pi", and there's "core", which give you all the clues you need to understand their music: an aleatory aspect, infinite, always questionned and a latent violence, fond of electric and industrial sounds. "Discopunkture", like the name of the band, says it all: it pecks at our musical habits, makes us call them in question and forces us to only think about music, to sink into it in order to analyse better its diversity. We could compare them to another excellent French band, nowadays vanished (?), called Hint. Tracks of industrial sounds, rap phrased, hip-hop, hardcore, trumpets, the whole is mixed, like the hens' grains, in a boiling cauldron of ideas, and the result is very original and very well done. Nasdaq is a tense and nerve-racking, Burundi swells, shatters and unnerves us, The Picnic Beatnic hesitates between suffocation and despair, before Oblong comes to flirt with Nine Inch Nails and Walkyries of Soul ends the album with eleven nauseous minutes. Picore convinced us, the hen still has to fatten up a bit until it goes from talented to genius, but we won't get tired of listening to this record, which you should preferably consume before the end of the world, as it is said on the booklet. Moreover, the members of the group (there are almost thirty of them) seem friendly despite their baldness and their plumpness: the singer is the double of José Bové.
Frédéric Thébault |
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Get Rid
[Sony]
We were eagerly expecting the second album of the two neo-punkettes of Robots In Disguise, after their very promising first eponymous album, which confirmed the good impression we had of the mini-LP that revealed them, and the production of Chris Corner (Sneaker Pimps) was obviously an extra asset. Our expectations aren't deceived. Even better, this "Get Rid" puts the Robots In Disguise among the current best electro-punk-death-disco combos. If the first album left in our memories the impression of falsely cheery music, the second one quickly erases this feeling. Obviously, Dee Plume and Sue Denim, the blonde and the brunette, listened a lot their colleagues (strangely, female groups are above the rest —Chicks On Speed, Peaches, Miss Kittin, Le Tigre…—), without forsaking their admiration for their famous elders. They even say it in Turn It Up (if you listen closely, you'll notice some albums' or songs' titles: Pretty Vacant (Sex Pistols), Ashes to Ashes (Bowie), Teaches of Peaches (Peaches) or Hatful of Hollow (Smiths)) and they also cover You Really Got Me of the Kinks. So, all these good references can only give good music, and this time it's unleashed, fun and exciting. Of course, the robotic side is always there with its outfashioned synthetic bip-bips and glug-glugs, even if it's still in fashion nowadays, it doesn't take away anything to the whole. Moreover, like on their previous album, they satisfy our patriotic ego by singing one song about France in French. Thank you darling robots.
Frédéric Thébault |
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Next Time We Go Sublime
[Monopsone/Chronowax]
Supercilious needs all of our attention. Not only because it is the musical project of a label fellow of Laudanum, Bathyscaphe and Micro:mega, but because Alexandre Vaudin's arrogance is justified and well appreciated. What band can afford to call itself Supercilious? The only one that can claim its next album will be sublime. How could it be possible to better serve Yucky Yummy's malicious, nonchalant, childish and innocent voice, than by offering her such frenetic and seducing compositions, as on the blowing Energy has forgotten my harms? With some imagination, the micro-sounds Supercilious use could be as many alive insects trained to play drums with their antenna, their legs in front of Yucky Yummy's wide open eyes (Give us back to the witches, ). She could win the prize of "Alison Shaw of electronic music" if the contest should ever exist. Half of this record is instrumental, very rhythmic but never overloaded, and offers us jewels of sunny electronica like Senor Alec Thompson. And this quite pretentious promise: «Next Time We Go Sublime». The fact is that we have to admit we believe them!
Bertrand Hamonou |
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Sea of Sins
[Maniac Depression]
Some twenty years ago, the oldest among you were able to listen to some sparse tracks on obscure compilations of a young French group named Wallenberg. A promising band offering a dark and tense music, close to artists like Theatre of Hate, despite the claimed influenced of The Cure or Virgin Prunes. Promising and original, they fit their time so well, even if in France, we're always behind our English friends. Then, Wallenberg disappeared, swalloed up by the house wave, then the grunge, the techno etc. Nowadays, is it a mode phenomenon or a real necessity, but Wallenberg do like a lot of their colleagues: they're reborn from their ashes. And they release their first album! From the past, there's only the singer / leader of the band left, but otherwise, nothing has changed: there are the same electric, stressed and nerve-raking atmospheres, the same emphatic vocal and the same lack of humour. Unfortunately, that's what bother us: this musical inertia. We would like to say that the album is great, we'd like to shout the gothic renewal, but after a nice first impression, we only feel a light boredom, we forget what we're listening and we feel like hearing something more modern, less "clichéd", or on the contrary, to listen to our old vinyls. The second CD (in a limited edition) covers the 84-88 period, which completes the discographhy of a band, whose only trace left, despite the actuality, is a good memory, nothing more...
Frédéric Thébault |
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There we go again: fasten your seat belt, because the vehicle driving us here is none other than ChineseBlack's and their third album, "Monstersushi" (Pandaimonium): on their way, we find a lot of Apoptygma Berzerk with a pinch of dance, of breakbeat and something else rather unclassifiable and very heterogenous, like a punk reminiscence we found in the past in the Prodigy and the Chemical Brothers. "Monstersushi" may not be the album of the century, but it's a good colored techno-hybrid surprise. Strange.
In the same difficult to define register, there's also the second opus of the Belgian Nebula-H, "H-20" (Alfa Matrix). With a big sound, a square production, with their very 242 sounding rhythmics epoch "Front by Front" and a bit of madness (there are some sentences recited in French!), and the whole with the raging desire to dance and sing. Neither techno, nor future-pop, even nor retro-EBM, Nebula-H doesn't care about labels. The important thing is to make you move with the hammering of the machines, and it works: it's hard to stay put all along the album. It's basic, but terribly efficient in a register between Juno Reactor and Praga Khan, the whole assorted with conquering vocals. Why ask for more?
Let's go on with something more threatening, which takes itself much more seriously: "Strain", the new album of Fleshfield (Dependent) who, under cover of imagery and warlike aestheticism -very well done after all- borrowed to the movie "Predator", offers us a new style: the cinematographical industrial music. Surely, Ian Ross and Wendy Yamko were inspired by the tribal violence of some movies adapted from video games; the sounds of drums and the samples of woodwind instruments à la In The Nursery, won't contradict this analysis. The idea is good, but the tracks are so long to start, that we quickly forget our references. It'll be hard for the "Strain" tracks to find a space on the dancefloor because of their frequent rhythms' breaks. As for the voices' mix, it's very much in the background and there's room for progress in the future. In any case, this record doesn't make concessions, a bit like a new genre:Wumpscut:, Fleshfield imposes its power and its serious.
We gently end with a much more civilized record: the second album of Sero. Overdose, "No Time for Silence" (Alfa Matrix), offers us a melodic and melancholic, simple and mastered futurepop. Surely, the group from Berlin has taken some good things from VNV Nation, with a bit of German synth-pop à la TOY in bonus. The whole is made of sixteen well built tracks and a rather fresh male vocal, which enable Sero.overdose to hoist itself to the level of some good clones such as Angels & Agony, Pulsher Femina or Colony 5, before playing like big names, such as The Covenant and Assemblage 23. Not so bad.
Stéphane Colombet
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"Seven Veils of Silence" (Hymen), the new album of Hecate, is totally dedicated to the myth of Salome. Each track evokes the event which will lead to Saint John the Baptist's beheading and the whole is strongly tinged of oriental sounds, a bit like "Aswad", the latest album of Squaremeter. What will immediately surprise you when listening to this record, is the unexpected calm: less breakcore, but just as dark, the music of Rachael Kozak is simply more feminine here, more seductive, but always as insidious, and even demoniac (we often think of a horror movie soundtrack), like the story of the woman inspiring this record.
"The Fears" (Ad Noiseam) is the first album of Mothboy, alias Simon Smerdon, a Londoner, who first tried to play bass guitar in different hardcore bands before changing completely and haunting the dark-hop scene, especially with Mick Harris, just the time to release an album with his former band Ocosi. With "The Fears", he offers us some very good tracks (the obsessing Spiders or X in His Territory, based on the rhythmics of, once again, Mick Harris) which mix with difficulty with other tracks more dub, hip-hop and even frankly boring and very jazzy, with a saxophone in bonus. The technique is present, but the style is a bit incoherent, the right balance is still to be found.
To finish, let's linger a bit on the first album of Velapene Screen, "Medical Breaths" (Frozen Empire Media). Surely intelligent, sometimes dancing and clearly melodic (in short and in three letters: IDM), this recommendable record could be classified somewhere between the productions of n5MD and Toytronic. Composite material combining lightness and creativity with some rhythmic influences more hip-hop towards the end, it mixes all the unavoidable elements which make a good electronica record in 2004, but beware, 2005 is here...
Carole Jay
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Since their first album, Placebo has always managed to impose one or two "hits" on each of their records. So, the release of this "Best of" was the ideal occasion to discover all these tracks on one CD. But, in the end, we're surprised this list of hits isn't as long as we thought and that the heavy rotation the medias have been imposing us for years has almost turned us off. The only satisfaction brought by "Once More With Feeling" (Delabel) is the second CD, which is full of very interesting remixes often very far from the Placebo universe.
There are two things that characterize Archive, the emphasis and the out-of-phase instrumentation of its compositions. So, to find the band playing acoustic on this album entitled "Unplugged" (Warner) isn't very interesting, and to listen to it from start to finish is even a real bore.
The first album of "Superdiscount" had been a real commercial success, "Superdiscount 2" (Solid/V2), will surely go the same way. With a rhythmics reminding of New Order (Brutalist) and a bass just as inspired by them, Étienne de Crecy and the five stars of the French electro he employed, Alex Gopher, Philippe Zdar, Hubert Boombass, DJ Medhi and Julien Delfaud, make a less superficial record than the previous one, and if it's not revolutionary nor terribly innovating, it's made of stuff that will catch your attention. The titles of the tracks, which are borrowed to Peer-to Peer programs' names (Soulseek, Audio Galaxy, Bit Torrent, etc.), will make the web pirates smile.
In the electronic domains where the quality is often guaranteed, let's talk about the new album of Black Lung (David Thrussel of Snog's side project). "The Grand Chessboard" (Ant-Zen) is terribly efficient. As usual, we enter a maze of rhythmics, textures and sequences, which construction and laying out are always astonishing. This is a delight for the neurons and a pleasure for the dancefloors. If the term of Intelligent Dance Music is now outdated, the music of David Thrussel is yet one of its most efficient representation.
With "Amek" (M-Tronic), Dither goes on in the way of the finely cut electronica. But if his previous album,"Summit", caught our attention, this one, even with all its class, seems to have lost its soul. Maybe is it our ears chilled by winter that want more warmth, or is it Marc T. who knows the subject through and through that has nothing more to surprise us, you'll decide.
We talked to you about 8kHz Mono in June 2002 when their first EP "Monolog" was released. We had to wait more than two years before hearing again the Swedish formation with their first album "Monochromator" (Progress Productions). Their synthpopizing (!) EBM hasn't aged a bit and it's always as efficient. We find here the much more achieved versions and even the more efficient tracks of the previous EP. The fans of this genre will surely appreciate it.
Stephan Haeri put Télépopmusik aside in order to work solo on the project 2 Square and to offer us the album "Superconductivity" (Warm). More homogeneous than what his previous band offered, the electro-pop universe of this new project still is very close to it, but with more padded ambiances. A pleasure placed in prominent position by the luminous voices of Laure Milena and Muriel Bonfils (his ex-colleague of Planète Zen), as well as the male vocal performance of Mau. We don't know yet if the advertising agencies will plunder this record as they did with Télépopmusik's, but in any case, it'll squat our CD players.
In a completely different domain, we can only but praise, once again, the work of Robert Smith with the remastered reedition of the first album of The Cure, "Three Imaginary Boys" (Fiction), it goes with a second CD which includes a series of demos and novelties that will delight the fans, and will give them the opportunity to discover again this 25 years old album!
Congratulation too to the label Infrastition, who has just re-released, for the first time on CD, the whole discography of the band Baroque Bordello, with their two albums and their first EP put together on the same record, "83-86". Those of you who already now this formation will be delighted to hear these recordings, the others will have the opportunity to discover a real museum piece, the French cold-wave band the most important of its generation (lead by the irresistible voice of Weena), whose first EP, you can find here, was produced by Lol Tolhurst. A second CD full of demos and live recordings completes the whole, which is an absolute must.
Christophe Labussière
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The French project Kamido:tu (Dead Bees Records) delivers "Naegi", far less repetitive and gloomy than their previous release "Revealed". At last, it dares to use a wider sound bank than the way too much used flat guitar sound that figured on their first works. Finally, the short instrumental pieces composed by the lonely protagonist (recently invited at the palais de Tokyo in Paris) acquire credibility, and get rid off that "before Christmas toys shops ambiance" label. "Naegi" is more varied, more complete and more ambient than the previous records, and then should open new horizons to its writer. The French Morbihan-based Hijo Data sing in French on a music that owes a lot to our English neighbours' filth-pop and noisy pop genres, mainly on Le Dernier Objectif. Their first self-titled album is on nowadays air, not more nor less, with quite good programming on Mes Vieux Ennemis. Their internet site is a few steps ahead, as it presents some extracts from some forthcoming tracks sung in English. Let's stay in France with the band Nova (website/) which proposes the reverse plan. The Parisian quartet's just released a five-track self-produced ep, with an amazing maturity accorded to both the artwork and production work (Bedtime Story with its guitar borrowed to Joseph Arthur). Choruses are rather efficient (Time or Supernova) on this band's slow-tempo pop-rock songs, who's now working on some French tracks.
The state of Washington (USA) bred the duo Growing and their sumptuous instrumental and experimental album "Soul of the Rainbow and the Harmony of Light", which looks like a record to beat: only four titles for hardly one hour of music. Both minimal and infinitely wide, their music is composed of slow and hazy notes, lazy then strident ( Anaheim II). The architecture of their tracks are impossible to see, as it's some kind of long movement without any apparent melody that we'll likely listen to in order to relax, like the static Onement, rather than to move.
Bertrand Hamonou
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