============ VITAL WEEKLY ============ number 333 ------------ week 31 ------------ COLLECTIONS OF COLONIES OF BEES - FA.CE (A (CD by Crouton Music) SILVERMAN - REQUIEM SETTINGS (1-6) (CD by Soleilmoon) NOISE MAKER'S FIFES - RAW (CDR by Absurd) NOISE MAKER'S FIFES - MUZOOK (10" by Beta Lactum) NEGATIVE ENTROPY - CITY OPEN TO THE NOMAD (CD by Beta Lactum) TU'M - NINE SONGS (CDR by Grain Of Sound) C-DRIK - DISSOLUTION (CD by Hushush) MOONSANTO - FRAUD-HELL-DOPE (CD by Hushush) POLYVOX POPULI - (CDR compilation by Nexsound Records) DEAD LETTERS SPELL OUT DEAD WORDS - VANISHING RED BY THE MOVEMENT OF A HAND (CD-R by Fukk God) JAZZKAMMER - SOUND OF MUSIC (Mini-CD by OHM Records) HOWARD STELZER & FRANS DE WAARD - TORN TONGUE (CD-R by Absurd) ~FLOW - ~FLOW (CD-R by s'agita recordings) COMMUNICATION PROBLEMS (2CD compilation by Vibragun) VIR UNIS & SAUL STOKES - THERMAL TRANSFER (CD by Hypnos/Binary) VARIOUS ARTISTS - COLLECTION 1-OPENING (CD by Databloem) VARIOUS ARTISTS - COMMERCIAL AD HOC (CD by Seeland Records/Illegal Art) VARIOUS ARTISTS - OPENSOURCE.CODE (CD by Source Records) VARIOUS ARTISTS - POST OFFICE (CD by Logistic Records/Telegraph) BRENDAN WALLS - CASSIA FISTULA (CD by Idea Records) COLLECTIONS OF COLONIES OF BEES - FA.CE (A (CD by Crouton Music) From the ever active improv circles around the Crouton label, a new work by Collections Of Colonies Of Bees. This is a duo around Chris Rosenau and Jon Mueller, both of which are also a member of Pele, aswell as various other impromptu improv workings. Together these boys play acoustic guitar, lap steel guitar, piano, electronics aswell as percussion and vocals. The CD starts out fairly guitar based and sounds like post rock number umteenth, but all done in a nice mood. From the CD grows into a more imrpovised music matter, with some rather nice surprises as the seventh piece (no titles of course) when a drum beat kicks in. Other tracks sound fresh and direct, when we hear birds, a squak of the chair these gentleman sit upon or a bump here and there. Their improvisations don't hurt or harm. They play in a rather silent, contemplative way, going through their sounds in a nice way and with a delicate closing tracks track 'mu:rder' - the only track with a title, but with it's ten minutes and nice playing on guitar with just a little bit of a dying computer sounding, most rightly the one with a title. (FdW) Address: www.croutonmusic.com SILVERMAN - REQUIEM SETTINGS (1-6) (CD by Soleilmoon) This is the Silverman's fourth solo CD, but by day and night Silverman, nom de plume from Phil Knight, is the hardcore member of The Legendary Pink Dots, together, of course, with singer Edward Ka-spel. Together they form the core of this band, which originates from the UK, but reside in The Netherlands since quite some time. It's there that Silverman found his inspiration for this CD. Living right on the border between The Netherlands and Germany, an area that was heavily fought in the second World War, the relics are still present. This, and the death of his father, inspired the six works on this CD. Much unlike anything The Legendary Pink Dots do, this is a work of experimental ambient. Using the sound of bullets being struck together, train and wind sounds, along with sound processing and analogue synths, the six pieces are all austere musicworks, sobere and sombre, a worthy requiem. Loaded with references - war, death, transition - it's also an album that tells many stories. Evocative music. If the Pink Dots are too much of krautrock band for you, then it might be worthy to dive in the solo works by it's various members (Niels van Hoorn's CD was reviewed last week): they go way beyond the ordinary and provide you an insight in the various interest, culminating in the work by the Legendary Pink Dots. (FdW) Address: www.soleilmoon.com NOISE MAKER'S FIFES - RAW (CDR by Absurd) NOISE MAKER'S FIFES - MUZOOK (10" by Beta Lactum) NEGATIVE ENTROPY - CITY OPEN TO THE NOMAD (CD by Beta Lactum) From my perspective things have been quiet for a while around Noise Maker's Fifes. They (although I believe they were reduced to a one piece band over the years) released a number of CD's some years ago, but after that things slowed down. Here they have two fairly new releases. The CDR has two extensive live recordings made in Greece in 2001 (and when they were presented as a four piece band) where they play their performance 'Inversage'. Scraping metallic sounds from the basic of the lengthy second part of that piece. It opens with a more droning character, and after a break speaker hum opens the second part. The other piece is a live film soundtrack of a rusty, unsettling musique concrete. The recording quality is not really top notch, but the music is kinda raw and inspired and that makes up a lot. 'Muzook' is a 10" released in Beta Lactum's Lactamase series, the seventh in a series of 12 (reviews of others will follow shortly). I assume this is a studio recording. Part 1 (also known as side A) is a densely layered environmental work. Sounds from cities drop in, with distint luna park sounds and a marching band providing the music. Occassionally a voice loop says 'Be careful'. The whole things sounds alienated and has a displeasing feel. One waits for a sudden incident to happen, bt it never happens. Strange music, but fascinating. Field recordings are also the foundation of the other side, but here they are culled from nature. Bird calls, cow sounds with an undefinable hum in the background. Hyper ambient music that entirely deals with nature sounds, albeit in loop mode. Nice record indeed, two opposites. The main man of Noise Maker's Fifes is Geert Feytons, who is also half of Negative Entropy. The other half is the well-known Micheal Prime, reknowned solo artist and core member of Morphogenesis. Their CD doesn't contain really recent works (all dating from 1994 to 1997). The collaboration sums up their various interests: drone sounds, musique concrete and field recordings. The four lenghty pieces shift through all of these interests, at times working seperately and at other times working together. Especially their drone capacities work well, such as in 'A Desert Realm Of Fish', with it's careful built up and thoughout structures. Things only go out of hand in the more noisy and improv bits, which didn't do much for me. (FdW) Address: Address: www.blrrecords.com TU'M - NINE SONGS (CDR by Grain Of Sound) Tu'M are mostly known for their website acitivities, were tons and tons of musicians do short soundtracks to images. But Tu'M, now reduced to a duo, also do their own music, and they have released a CD on Jason Kahn's label before. On this new Portugese CDR they have, how original, nine songs. Tu'M play improvised music, created by laptops. Every cliche you can imagine about improvised music created with laptops, is present here. Scratches, peeps, hiss, feedback and an occassional rhythm, they work their way through it, as if there is a CD available: "sound bank for micro glitch artists - all 13 scratches". Most of these pieces don't seem to go anywhere, but occassionally they glitch into a nice fragment, or nice sounds. But just as with so many improvised music, this lasts for a few moments, and then it leaps back into lesser fragments. I guess it's all sort of alright, but maybe in a concert situation they should proof their improvisation qualities. (FdW) Address: www.grainofsound.com C-DRIK - DISSOLUTION (CD by Hushush) MOONSANTO - FRAUD-HELL-DOPE (CD by Hushush) Hushush is a label from Canada, but their background is in Belgium. Just in case you wonder why they release so many belgium artists. C-Drik is one of those. His full name is C-drik Fermont and was a student of Annette Vande Gorne. He also works with Moonsanto, Ambre, Ammo, Xingu Hill and Crno Klank. This is his first solo CD, and the pieces were composed between 1997 and 2001. C-drik's interest lie in drones and rhythms. He sums up the best of both worlds, from say Thomas Koner to Rapoon, but also from bands like Ambre and Xingu Hill. A highly electronic force of small sounds, loops, voices and electronics. Nicely pleasent music to hear with not a single disturbing moment. Also, I hasten to say, not with a single original moment. C-drik's music remains calm, with strict boundaries of his self-defined style. That is not a bad thing, since the music is alright. As said C-rdik is also part of Moonsanto, a group that includes members of Silk Saw and Xingu Hill. Apperentely Moonsanto released a limited CDEP 'Dogme' that was received well, and after years of silence this is the full length. Their central theme is the current use of biotechnologies. They have some professor (Professor DR. Goodseed) speaking words through a voice synthesizer, which in the end works a bit boring. Moonsanto's music ranges from drone to gabber like rhythms and back again. It's all highly diverse, but I guess too diverse to please throughout. It's hardly imaginable that one doesn't stumble over a fragment that one doesn't like. For me the gabber piece was right out of place in this collection. The more daring experimental pieces, with guitar strummings, sounds swirling in and out the mix, make a much more lively impression to me. So, despite it's diversity, I still would rank this CD as a positive one. The scissors of editing should have done their work however. (FdW) Address: www.hushush.com POLYVOX POPULI - (CDR compilation by Nexsound Records) About ten years ago a compilation came out called Novaya Stsena, featuring underground music from Kharkov and other cities in Ukraine. It was an amazing document of the creative sounds produced before and right after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Now a new compilation shows us that great music is still being made in Ukraine. Polyvox Populi, the title a play on words of vox populi and polyvox, the soviet version of the moog synthesizer. Ten groups perform 12 tracks, two of them being collaborations between 2 of the groups. What strikes me overall is how the CD flows together, as if they were produced by the same group. Some of this is due in part to groups sharing members, or collaborating, but more likely a result of the thought put into compiling the tracks for this CD. What really appeals to me is how the groups here seem to not be affected by current fashionable trends in electronic music, and prefer to operate in their own sonic realm. Yes there are some clicks and cuts (most notably in the great harsh edged track by Kotra) and laptopisms, but the music has feel of experimental music of the late 70s-early 80s, with its analog sounds, rhythms, and drones. But it never succumbs to retro fetishism, rather more a result of the years of cultural isolation under soviet rule. One of the few benefits of the old regime, was that experimental music developed on its own, with its unique take on western influences when it encountered it. The track by The Moglass could have been released on the old UK label Third Mind, with its process guitars, rhythm box and atmospheric sounds. Sidhartha presents us with a nice looping bit of electronica, swirling keyboards, tabla-like glitching, along with the accompaniment of a baby's cries. The Moglass team up with Alphonse De Montfroyd for a track of lightly played, percussive guitars and intriguing loops and processed environmental sounds. Alphonse' solo track is a hard edged rhythm machine, like old Esplendor Geometrico. Nihil est Excellence, which is nexsound boss Andrey Kiritchenko's project (along with Sidhartha), creates a highly irregular pulsating piece of musique glitch concrete, composed environmental sounds. Cold War Mechanizm's track is very reminiscent of the 80's hometaper band F.A.R., with its sequencer lines and processed ambient sounds and tapes. The other groups on this compilation, Caste', First Human Ferro, and Fragments are contribute strong tracks. Most of the groups contained herein have other releases on nexsound in cdr format, all of which come highly recommended. (JS) Address: http://www.nexsound.org DEAD LETTERS SPELL OUT DEAD WORDS - VANISHING RED BY THE MOVEMENT OF A HAND (CD-R by Fukk God) An intriguing release by fukkgod label boss Thomas Ekelund, Dead Letters gives us lofi static and lowercase compositions, that are always full and thick of sound, that never fade below the threshold. These 8 tracks were recorded from 2000-2002. The first track is a sea of record surface noise in all its glory, that seems not to have undergone much digital sanitization. All of the music is raw and crackly, having a warm tape feel to it, and some of the sounds were probably created outside of the digital realm. There are low rumbling drones as on track 3, and squeaky tonalities as on track 4, sort of like a duet for wine glass rims and playground swings. Track 5 is almost like Ultra Milkmaids recorded under water with no high end. With fluttering machine-like sounds, deep bass drones, feedbacks, strange rhythms, glitches and more, DLSODW create a universe of their own, sometimes dark, sometimes agressive, but always with that certain edge and a great feeling for sound. Things move slowly in their universe and that is good. it gives enough time to go from one piece to the other. Basically, as a listener, one is continuously in transit (which sounds bad, but it's not in this case), waiting for what will happen next. This kind of open music is always high on my list. (MR) The splattered CD artwork of black and grey paint on white paper accurately reflects the music therein. A very nice release, that works well when played in the background and also at loud volumes. (JS + MR) Address: http://www.fukkgod.org JAZZKAMMER - SOUND OF MUSIC (Mini-CD by OHM Records) The title of this latest Jazzkammer release is a very nice reference to their tactics: they create sound out of music. With the help of electronic equipment and a guitar, they blast their way through definitions of the term that shocks so many. This little disc leaves no questions about Jazzkammer's intentions: they want noise and they'll make it happen. In twenty minutes time they offer the whole spectrum of the genre as we know it: fierce rumbles, glithches, hisses and piercing tones. And not to forget: some looped melodic elements, heavily distorted and, more often than not, buried under an avalanche of other noise. In the end it's actually possible to make out a guitar, be it one with a grim sound. Having said this, it must also be said that it's a good piece, with enough happening to keep it interesting and exciting. Way to go! (MR) Address: www.ohmrecords.no HOWARD STELZER & FRANS DE WAARD - TORN TONGUE (CD-R by Absurd) This CD-R comes in a very nice paper cover, let that be understood. Now, many of you may know that Howard Stelzer is the man behind Intransitive Recordings from boston, USA. But he is also one of the most gifted tape-jockeys in the world. This collaboration with Frans de Waard started some five years ago, when Stelzer was asked by a visual artist to add sound to an exhibition. He chose to record the artist's voice in different locations, while she was reading from her journal entries. This project turned out to be more than part of an exhibition. While playing around with the tapes and the tape recorders, Stelzer found that he became more and more interested in the sound of manipulating the original material. Her asked several people to work on the same material and then the whole thing thing was sort of forgotten, until recently, when he picked up the project with Frans de Waard. Frans was by now working on computer and this proved very interesting in combination with the analogue tape manipulations. The result is forty minutes of highly concentrated sound work, with quite a lot of silences and subtle sounds. And indeed, the combination of the digital and the analogue works very well. The sound spectrum is very wide and there is almost no trace of the original material. There are drony parts, cuts and glitches and all is put together very well. To put it simply: this is a beauty. (MR) Address: www.anet.gr/absurd ~FLOW - ~FLOW (CD-R by s'agita recordings) Yet another alter ego of busy bee Frans de Waard: ~flow. He seems to be collecting AKA's as others collect stamps. ~flow contains two long tracks, based on material from Beequeen's album 'Ownliness'. Beequeen is one of Frans' other alter ego's, of course, together with Freek Kinkelaar. So actually we can wonder if this is Frans' highly personal view of the material recorded by Beequeen. The work has some the elements that we know from Shifts: long drony sounds that are layered to create a mass of overtones. But there are also references to Frans' digital glitch project Freiband: stretched sounds, rhythms and weird manipulations. In the end it's probably a subtle mix of both with Beequeen sounds. Put it this way: Beequeen recorded and manipulated by Freiband and mixed by Shifts. Can you still follow? Anyway, the result is a gentle and flowing mix of Beequeen material, partly disconcerting and partly soothing, but in general warm and very friendly. This is better than reggae on a warm summer night like this. (MR) Address: http://sagitarecordings.vze.com COMMUNICATION PROBLEMS (2CD compilation by Vibragun) The Australians that go under the label Vibragun present a collection of modern day electronica in a loosely thematic approach of 'communication problems'. I have no idea how this relate to the enclosed music, but I am just hear to view the results. As goes with things like this, it seems that the various artists delivered one of their tracks, for good compilation's sake. It is to be welcomed that Vibragun managed to get some well-known celebrities aswell as some people that need to be introduced as newcomers. More or less the following division is to be noticed: on disc 1 we have the more rhythmic outings and on disc 0 (digital life is all about 1's and 0's) the more ambiento works. So techno celebrates on the first disc, but there is also a hip hop piece by Sensational and a drum & bass piece by Quoit. Nice pieces on the first disc are by Atom Heart, Sensational (not that I like hip hop so much, but it's really an odd ball in the entire collection), Kettle (whose ten second piece leaves more to dream about) and Cray, who's Lustmord inspired piece cracks down in a dying computer crash. Disc one closes with one of the last pieces composed by John Watermann, who offers a hetic piece that proofs to be one of the more interesting pieces here. The tower of babel as the source of communication problems. The second disc has less rhythms, and the artists here seem to be using (faulty) data streams to enlighten the subject - and so much more they do a better job. Pimmon's morse transmissions sound rusty and untrustworthy, but on those lines there is a problem, aswell as a densely layered piece. Two boys having no communication problems are Markus Schmickler and Thomas Brinkmann. Their piece is mostly spoken word, like a conversation, on building a piece of music, but they seem to get a long well. The track is not so interesting, as it's not really to play over and over again. Two tracks didn't do much for me and that was the piece by Steve Law, which is straight off Scanner rip off and Plenum, who seems to be throwing just some sounds together. Good pieces come from Thomas Koner, Farmers Manual and Oren Ambarchi.Martin NG here. All in all a pretty varied compilation, with much nice music and the usual out of place pieces. (FdW) Address: www.vibragun.com.au VIR UNIS & SAUL STOKES - THERMAL TRANSFER (CD by Hypnos/Binary) Stroboscopic is a helicopter sinking through a time warp in the Bermuda Triangle. This disc begs to be played at riskier volume. Tracks blend inside each other like a tidal wave of tropical vibration as in Replicants in Orbit. Vir Unis, last heard on the collaboration Blood Machine (Green House Music) with Steve Roach is in superb, groovy form on Thermal Transfer blending his sythesizers with the ample rhythms of the Bay Area’s Saul Stokes. Portland label Hypnos has established Binary, a sub-label forged in deeper groove-laden recordings with an emphasis on sequencer relationships. Modea's Liquid Metal is a churning concoction of quirky percussion and smooth hand forged electronics via Stokes. This track merges fluidly into Blurring Maguro (which is then remixed for the disc's final track). The Interstitial (John Koch-Northrup) remix crosses semblances between itself and Aphex Twin with an air of free-fusion electronics. This is a sizzling collaboration by two artists who normally reduce the bpms in half. Here we have a solid combine of two electronic wizards, making for an overall more buoyant, singular voice. Turning the tonal levels to a crispy, but darker element, The Burning Ground shrouds the listener in a heavy handed transitional track that emphasizes its weight. On the title track, the preeminent tick-tocking breathes an inverse, anxious sigh. An active listen that performs like stormy weather, complete with its own abstract fractal sunset. This is a recording that pulses above the line and beyond the pale. (TJN) Address: http://www.hypnos.com/ VARIOUS ARTISTS - COLLECTION 1-OPENING (CD by Databloem) Databloem, another new label with a noble mission 'dedicated to bringing you excellent contemporary intelligent electronica'. The music is ambient, groove-ambient, down-tempo, experimental and related sonic creations. Here we have five artists each with 15-minute tracks nourishing our ears with fine sounds from five continents. Opening with The Circular Ruins (APK's Anthony Paul Kirby) whose Aperture: A Lesson in Cosmology is a safari, a search of unknown terrain. This Canadian band's name was taken from a story by Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges. Aperture is a dreamy investigation, like taking a digital camcorder into a tropical bird sanctuary and lying motionless while the rapture of nature fascinates the senses. We are offered the spectral, kaleidoscopic results. Mutagene (Alexis Glass) offers A Borrowed Skin, which is music from Ironson, a documentary directed by Cousin Chang. Glass, an acoustic audio phenomena student in Fukuoka, Japan, has developed a calming piece that hovers and probes. Its fluorescence builds and stabilizes with an insightful use of modulating synths. Spheroid is a project of Kiel Germany's J. Wolfgang Röttger, whose name means a subcutaneous calcification, but he spares us the gore in this soaring astral projection of sonic ambience. Imbedded Neptune is filled with fireworks and flying orbs. The track wavers a bit on the edge of new age, tipping into AOR territory, but bears enough hypnotic interlocking sequence to mark its muted Berlin-school approach. Kwookyworld is offered by Austrailian namesake Kwook whose peripheral sounds keep us above the surface. Kwook writes music for game software and Toyota uses the sounds he has created with another project, Wiggly, in car commercials in Japan. The final track on this disc is Encounter (In An Unexplored Nebula) by Sweden’s The Civilized Electrons (TCE). There is something of a chamber orchestra shrunk to the size of a music box here. TCE is Positron Alpha, a university student working in the electronic medium for about eight years with a wry sense of humor. The end result is anything but a laughing matter in this weaving piece of intense stillness. Collection 1- Opening is a rest stop on the electronic superhighway. (TJN) Address: http://www.databloem.com/ VARIOUS ARTISTS - COMMERCIAL AD HOC (CD by Seeland Records/Illegal Art) Ad hoc collage indeed! What a world sampled on this pleasing disc of cut-ups and paste-backs. Poking fun at our hyper culture of buy/sell the Evolution Control Committee (DJ Pantshead) plays the listener for a fool in the irony of its Music For Selling. Roux Partout makes paper doll poems in #5 (Life Without), a no-frills dada take on life, rats and Mozart. Pimmon, a favorite act of recent memory, distorts radio archives on Sales Pitch’ 67 with the warbling replication of voices and Victrolas. An acid trip merry-go-round ride built inside a hall of mirrors. It takes the clever minds of the folks of Seeland Records and illegal art to furnish a lusting audience with a host of brainy samples proving that People Like Us, V/vm and Stockhausen & Walkman aren't the only breeds creating such manipulated send offs. We are treated to the limitless pings and modeled reckonings of commercialism. With prolific rendering these cries for our undivided attention become horrifically modified from the once commonplace in tracks like Realistic's (James Towning) Trademark Messaging. The Army, Intel and various haircare products never seemed as sinister between episodes of Charlie’s Angels when I was a kid. Adkins’ Breaking scritch-scratches its way through pre-sampled breakbeats and treats us to a Libran take on the instrumental life of UK commercials. Mr. Meridies’ short story Easy finds its way in unknown territory as a black man speaks his truth about contemporary living and the drone surrounds him, drowns him. Created on the Mac, this seven minute pleaser has a depressive tonal stance and a filmic, enigmatic flavor. The listener implicates the character and is left to fill in the blanks. Spacklequeen strips infomercials down to the nub, slicing and dicing their absurdity, and "BAM" you have (Royalties), a four-minute blur of elongated blah-blah-blah complete with squeaky retorting horns! The Bran Flakes take a trip to the poppy-aligned fields alongside the yellow brick road on Turn The Channel, It's Another Commercial. Carters' Little Liver Pills is the Big City Orchestra’s sampled manipulation or "movement" on the assumed wholesomeness of past tense remedies mass marketed in the earliest days of television. This lil’ disc that could proves that you should never judge anything by its packaging, as this recording comes in an unassuming white sleeve with a inkjet printed label, guts intact. (TJN) Address: http://detritus.net/illegalart/ VARIOUS ARTISTS - OPENSOURCE.CODE (CD by Source Records) Bring it on! Source Records is the new force behind post-glitch. Their new compilation opensource.code includes To Rococo Rot's Robert Lippok, Thomas Brinkmann (Profan), Move D (Warp), Jan Jelinek (Scape), Monolake and Sutekh among others. Opening with a wonderfully funky Synthaxis 2 Montreal-based artist Marc Leclair aka Akufen (Force Inc) samples his way into our disco heart and busts the house with a strobe light of progressive ambient. On his heels German low-fi dub-techno whizkid Jelinek (Farben) is logged in on Music to Interrogate By, wired for micro-static subtle beats. S.E. Berlin offers the lounge-flavored dub house minimalism of Toninas with an offbeat hint of future islands. Berlin-based Lippok is a busy man, having just recently played at this year's Lovebytes Festival, and in between strategies with mainstay band To Rococo Rot shows no signs of wavering. On 6 a.m. Lippok is burning the candle of time, er the glow of his Powerbook, perhaps. The whir and buzz is so nice, so acidic, yet goes down smooth as silk. Bton (Jonas Grossman) proves that using muffled cornet (or an artifice thereof) can be effective. On Nocturne Deep Space Network's Grossman shows us how to create an alter world where the wee hours are where you are just getting started. By far the funkiest track on this disc, its soul lies in its interpretation to make you recall impressions of bygone eras. Hailing from the Bay Area Sutekh (Seth Horvitz) has released a handful of reputable platters on Mille Plateaux, Plug Research and his own label Context. Having recently toured France, Poland and the US Horvitz presents us with the airtite Asscr, trancy techno with a funky finish. Leave it to Thomas Brinkmann (aka Soul Center) to serve us such a lacquered finish on Momoklick, complete with a sodered and unspecific organic edge. This is dance music without a floor. This is making something of the sediment that is suspended in its open-air construct. Cologne-based Brinkmann's loops and altered beats are unprecedented in this field of micro-tech tunes. David Moufang, known as Move D (Compost/Fax), has worked with luminaries Pete Namlook and Deep Space Network. On µst we are into warbling vibes tick-ticking with a vibrant chill out ambience. Alex Cortex is recontextualized by Tom Thiel in this remix of Laconic, a dry reduction with open wires from the full-length of the same name. Studio Pankow (Kai Kroker, Moufang) closes the program with Linienbusse, a lovely meeting of sonics and piano. This mesmerizing avant minimal track is filled with light and purpose, plotting like a lullaby. This disc stays true to its title - in the way classic collections like Clicks + Cuts (Mille Plateaux) and Microscopic Sound (Caipirinha) this seems to be a likely third installment in the world of micro-sound greatness. (TJN) Address: http://www.source-records.com/ VARIOUS ARTISTS - POST OFFICE (CD by Logistic Records/Telegraph) From the very first funky note the bpms are getting me moving. This Parisian label also has one of the best websites I have seen in a while. Bringing together funky electro acts Post Office delivers! Dawn by Cabanne gleefully bounces the opening on this disc. Its squeaky appeal pops and drives its minimal house format. Ben Neville expands the minimal concept here a touch and adds shorted breath sample and light cymbal percussion on Petid. Unknown Mysterioso (Karat), a project by Ark, offers the bad-ass techno house pleaser Taimz, turning the disc into an instant party. Alter-ego Ark then plays Pro-Blaim with its deconstructed acid flavor and inferences to the cult classic Liquid Sky (listen closely). Label owner (7th City, Accelerate) Daniel Bell's (Tresor/Klang) up-tempo glitch-house number Rhodes 1 steals the sky. Hailing from sunny California, Bell, who has collaborated with techno genius Ritchie Hawtin, spins us right round with enough propulsion to catch a second wind. In the totally distorted Oral 3 Afuken provides all the reptile beats and stunted vinyl antics. Warped fare for the X generation for sure. Interlude (Cabanne) offers the very short Trex which pokes its high pitched sine waves and signs out. Drawing back from 1997's Do The Dimbi is Germany’s Dimbiman (Perlon) sampling and fretting the bars of electronica, climbing higher and higher with an irresistible dance beat. Up next is Robert Hood's (Axis, M-Plant) abrupt Realm taken from the Monobox ep. The track paces the center of the recording by this seasoned techno specialist. And then - BAM - in comes the total surprise cut by Ricardo Villalobos (Perlon/Playhouse). My Life Without A Wife is a pop techno wonder - with just the right spices: disco, abstractions, muted voice manipulation and enough beat to shake a stick at, or just plain shake. This is the fortune in this cookie - stop-starting with percussive fun, and a dash of latin drums. This German spinster has a lengthy future ahead for our sake! Closing this shop down is Deperissement Progressif creating a street beat tick-tock sizzle and live feel to Panic Patrol Blues taken from their La Guerre aux Trousses recording on Karat 5. The track seems to have parts. An all out tech attack and then smoothing out after a pause into a jazzy guitar short ending the disc on an expressive, yet hmmm note. This is a great comp for funky people who want something to spin on continuous play. (TJN) Address: http://www.logisticrecords.com/ BRENDAN WALLS - CASSIA FISTULA (CD by Idea Records) Sydney-based Walls releases his debut solo disc Cassia Fistula, a work of electro-static energy and vibrance. The disc is split into three sections, raging with stealth, soaring noise frequencies. Drawing from high pitch tones and angular drones, this newcomer is working with Oren Ambarchi (Ritornell, Staubgold) whose minimal compositions and collaboration work are evident on the mix work in sections one and three. Working with defective hi-fi equipment and homemade electronic devices, Walls has developed a trip-like exploration of deep, organic (cassia fistula - a 10 meter tree) sound-sphere, not for the passive listener. This is not for relaxation, this is not click/cut/glitch, this is not dark ambient. This is discovery, almost improvised, in unfolding beauty, its nature warns of the dark side of the power behind its ornamental exterior. (TJN) Address: http://www.idearecords.com/ 1. From: taylor deupree 12k JULY292002 the knitting factory in L.A august 7th christopher willits (12k / fallt) shuttle358 (12k / mille plateaux) kenric mcdowell (darla / f”llt) zygote (alectric / under the radar) show starts at 9:30pm goes till 1. -- 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), Rene van Peer (RVP), Jos Smolders (IS), Brian Lavelle (BL, ), Gerald Schwartz (GS), Niels Mark Pedersen (NMP), Henry Schneider (SH), Jeff Surak (JS), TJ Norris (TJN) and others on a less regular basis. 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