\ / | ----- /\ | \ / |== |== | / | \ / Week 17 \ / | | / \ | \ /\ / | | |/ | \ / Number 78 \/ | | / \ |--- \/ \/ |__ |__ |\ |__ | MERZBOW & GORE BEYOND NECROPSY - RECTAL ANARCHY (CD by Relapse) O.k. so you know who this first band is, and maybe you have that 7" Merzbow did with these punksters. Here they team up for a collaborative work, consisting of 31 tracks. The CD version opens with CD only bonus track, lasting some 18 minutes. The 30 remaining tracks breath the atmosphere of punk. Short, heavy pieces. Death metal industrial punk, tons of feedback, and screaming. If something needs to be proven, it should be that in the 90s musical boundaries disappeared. So my best guess is that Merzbow is doing a gabber CD soon. Let's hope for it. (FdW) Address: CHIKY(U)U (CD Compilation by Ash International) Chiky(u)u is japanese for Mother Earth - in case you didn't know. This is the first part of a trilogy of compilations, (this) one with Japanese artists, 'Scatter' with US artists, and 'Decay' with European artists; all in handy plastic wallets. As we know, mother earth is shaking some parts of this world, so it may not seem to be a big surprise that a lot of these pieces refer to earthquakes, ground, stones, topography etc. There is a hidden track (put your finger on the rewind button, at the beginning of track 1 until it really can't be rewinded any futher) and this is an anonymous recording of a quake. Part of this musical geographical journey is by well-known noiseheads, such MSBR and Aube, but they remain all very subtle on this compilation. Apart from these, there are also people from Japan that I never heard, like Aira Yamamichi, Toru Yamanaka, Tamaru or Hatohan (who delivers a great piece actually). Most of these pieces have sampled sounds of processed environmental sounds, that are in general very subtle. Tak++ high frequency experiments reminded me of Ryijo Ikeda's stuff. So jap-noise freaks are warned: this is not over the top noise compilation number 1000! After track 10, there follows another 87 index points on this CD, all fits with silence and noiy outbursts - i.e. more fun to shuffle around. This compilation is well entertaining and an absolute must to get. (FdW) Address: THD 02 (Magazine plus CD) The second issue is now at the shops, mainly in holland (but hey it's all in Dutch anyway). Was my reaction to the first one, keep up the good work, now I have to be more critical. The Varese article is a summary of a book written by Elmar Schonberger and adds nothing new. There is incestious story about the opening evening. There is stuff on Vee-Jays I have never seen, or on the animations of Jaap Drupsteen (again unseen) and some guy named Bernard Strik. I can see more on the CD-Rom part, but luckily I don't have a CD-Rom player. But here is the audio part: the Charlemagne Palestine piece was released before on Staalplaat's Sonderangbot CD, Paul D. Miller's piece on his 'Death In The Light Of Phonogrpah' and yes so are Kong and F Crijns. Only two are exclusive tracks. Now come on boys & girls of THD there are gifted musicians outthere who would love to an exclusive track on your CD, but do they know where they are? Gert-Jan Prins' piece takes the skipping needle of a record to create a rhythm to an otherwise noisy piece. Kong crossing over hardrock to dance rhythms, but no thank you. Miller's spooky piece and Palestine's live piano piece are excellent (but we knew that already). Blast is a free piece of fast changing rhythms and horn blowers are nice for those who still have their heads turned to Henry Cow and finally Luc Houtkamp is doing an improv piece... (FdW) Address: DELPHIUM/BIG CITY ORCHESTRA (7" by Aquese Recordings) Still one of my favourite formats and still one of my favourite labels to put this kind of music out. Delphium (the band from the label as they say) have been around for 4 years, and has several releases on various small labels. The first track builts violin samples with orchestral ones. Quite a melancholy piece that could have been made by Autopsia and released by Hyperium. The second track has a fuzzy guitar and drum samples from trip hop. For me the better piece - and let's hope there will be more of this. I am told to expect Delphium CD soon. Big City Orchestra may not need any introduction. The short piece is the spoken introduction about what this concept is all about (and I am not going to repeat that!). The long piece on their side is a densily layered one, with tones shifting back and forth. Apperently recorded by abusing records, needles and recordplayers. A strange piece of repetitive sounds, noise and scratches, but nevertheless a nice piece! (FdW) Address: 13 Warren Close - Sandhurst - Berkshire - GU47 9EL - UK HYBRYDS - EIN PHALLISCHER GOTT (CD by Crowd Control Activities) This CD shows two different world inhabited by The Hybryds. The first side is the ritual side with its slowly envelloping synths and calm banging reverbarted beats. Voices whisper along. The other side of The Hybryds is the 'industrial side': more darker, highly processed voices. Creepy and sinister. No doubt this will go down with the fans very well. (FdW) Address: RAPOON - EASTERLY 6 OR 7 (CD on STAALPLAAT) This is the latest release by Robin Storey as Rapoon, and as regular readers of this screen will probably recall, I vowed never to review another CD by this gentleman again, especially as the last two released on Soleilmoon did absolutely nothing to get my juices flowing. Easterly 6 or 7 contains 9 tracks, the first four of which tend to meander about with no apparent direction. One of them includes an abrupt sample of a very famous, over-used and possibly Yemenite female vocal ( which I first heard on 'My Life In The Bush Of Kate, nice idea, sorry, Ghosts' and then days later on an excellent cassette release by a man whose name eludes me for a moment titled ' Last Summer In Sue's Red Mini'. (Anybody know this?)) Anyway something changes during Track 5, we enter into an interesting droneworld generated by Robin's usual artillery of delay and sound-dusting devices. The all too familiar throb of cross-faded loops pulses out of the speakers in several of what I think are his more interesting tracks since 'Alchiva' which opened the best of his CD's "Raising Earthly Spirits'. (Alchiva resides in my top fifty tracks of all times.) These drones continue throughout the rest of the CD with very slight sprinklings of blurred percussion and occasional voices. In all, it sounds a bit like overhearing music played in another room... comes close to a soundtrack for spiders spinning cobwebs in a dusty sunshafted space. Interior music ooze. (MP) Address: Vital Weekly is published by Frans de Waard and submitted for free to anybody with an e-mail address. If you don't wish to receive this, then let us know. Any feedback is welcome . Forward to your allies. Snail mail: Frans de Waard - P.O.Box 11453 - 1001 GL Amsterdam - The Netherlands All written by Frans de Waard (FdW), The Square Root Of Sub (MP), Ching-Chong Jing-Jong (CP), Radboud Mens (RM), Sister Clika (RTH) http://www.compusmart.ab.ca/tbennett/staalplaat/st-home.htm. -- Vital Weekly is published by Frans de Waard and submitted for free to anybody with an e-mail address. If you don't wish to receive this, then let us know. Any feedback is welcome . Forward to your allies. Snail mail: Vital Weekly/Frans de Waard -P.O.Box 11453 - 1001 GL Amsterdam - The Netherlands All written by Frans de Waard (FdW), The Square Root Of Sub (MP, ), Heimir Bjorgulfsson (HB), Dolf Mulder (DM), Meelkop Roel (MR), Brian Lavelle (BL, ), Gerald Schwartz (GS), Niels Mark Pedersen (NMP), Henry Schneider (SH), Jeff Surak (JS), TJ Norris (TJN), Gregg Kowlaksky (GK) and others on a less regular basis. This is copyright free publication, except where indicated, in which case permission has to be obtained from the respective author before reprinting any, or all of the desired text. The author has to be credited, and Vital Weekly has to be acknowledged at all times if any texts are used from it. Announcements can be shortened by the editor. Please do NOT send any attachments/jpeg's, we will trash them without viewing. Backissues may be found at: www.staalplaat.com and http://www.aesova.org/vital