Re-released by their hardcore fan Magnus Sundtröm on his Fin de Siècle, "Seven Hands Seek Nine Fingers" was Contrastate's 1989 lp debut, self-released on their own label Black Rose Recordings. Disbanded in 2000, Contrastate were then a duo formed by Stephen Meixner and Jonathan Grieve, and their first recordings haven't suffered from the ageing process - on the contrary, it's astonishing how some characteristics of their sound seem to anticipate the cold and obsessive blend of ambient and industrial of, say, many Cold Meat Industry projects. The three quite long tracks are built upon a minimal but carefully structured set of sounds: half of the opening "As time began", for example, is based on a cyclic loop (a bass guitar or some industrial machinery?), before evolving in more creepy ambiences. All very simple, but skillfully laid out and terribly effective. Also, the use of the spoken voice (as in "Thirst for knowledge") is in my opinion less obtrusive than in later releases of theirs. As a whole, the work has a solemn and sombre, but not entirely bleak atmosphere, and is probably one of the best examples of '80's mix of ritual industrial and dark ambiences.

In reviewing Aalfang's previous cdr release, "Mezethakla Mukabalatt", I pointed out how the project was really intriguing but still a bit unrefined in its blend of acid folk guitars, drones and concrete music. Well, while fully maintaining their formula, Mirko Uhlig and friends (five additional musicians, this time - no info on who plays what) have improved a lot in this new work. Current 93's "Earth covers earth" could be a suitable reference for the folkish movements of suites like "Jaja ungarinyin und nun zur leiche am ufer" and "Träumereien in den innereien eines toten sperlings", but most of all Nurse With Wound's surrealistic tecniques seem to be a huge influence for Aalfag. This time, pitch-bent and backward voices, manipulated instruments and ambient drones (and a few annoying stabs of noise) are mixed with great skill and sense of composition - pure organized madness, with the typical flavour of bad trip psychedelia which is so typical of good old Kraut music. I'm now pretty curious of hearing the band's collaborative 3" with Emerge (just released by Verato) and the upcoming cdr on Mystery Sea.

Okay, get-hard-be-strong Electro artists, keep your fingers away from your equipment and give your attention to this new and second release by this French project, because THIS stuff will teach you a lesson. This 76 minutes long conceptual release can be easily seen as a textbook about how to produce complex and innovative soundtrack music stylistically designed for a never released Science Fiction movie. This is the impression I had by listening through this album. Also a feast for the eyes is the excellent artwork which shows diverse industrial landscapes and machine impressions. Musically this album offers a wide range of diverse styles almost based on Dark Electro structures while integrating elements taken out of Industrial, Electronica, Ambient up to Powernoise. It is an instrumental album filled with uncountable FX samples, atmospheric layers and a depressive mood. The programming abilities are a next outstanding point, I have found here some references to FLA, SKINNY PUPPY or NUMB and it is not too far away from this handicap. Think about FLA’s track "Infra Red Combat" on the first half of this track and you maybe get an idea how this release will be. 12 tracks are here, and all have the name "Dislocation", no any other name. My favorites can be found with the tracks # 2, # 4 for the Dark Electro style with a light Powernoise touch, while # 7 and # 9 feature some guitars and break beats as well in this two overall very danceable efforts. This release is created as a whole floating unit, that means, the are no empty spaces in between the tracks. Please make sure to check this band out, it is a kind of demonstration and you won’t regret it. Get this sci-fi odyssey!!!

My latest encounter with Merzbow was the quite surprising and -ahem- rocking "Sha-Mo 3000" on the Brazilian label Essence Music. "Dust of Dreams" is a more predictable laptop noise+beats release, but a pretty good listen nonetheless. Packed in the usual eye-catching dadaist collage by Akita himself, the cd starts with the digital cracklings of "1339", soon turning into a typical synth throb mangled by bursts of distortion. The lengthy (37+ minutes) title track is more harsh frequencies with a rhythmic background (which must be a looped ethnic percussion) - a basic structure, but giving a nice psychedelic effect. The samples eventually fades out giving way to a piercing high-end drill, then more loops and a ping-pong distortion overlap, with an intense crescendo. The second half of the track is a more frantic Merzbeat thing, with a theory of fast paced loops. And a fat beat (a "techno" one so to speak) is also present in "0716", which is the shortest and weakest track of the three. Being no Merzbow aficionado, I'm not able to compare this to the rest of his discography, though I suspect this is not one of his quintessential works. But the title track alone, in its pompous, almost baroque approach to harsh noise, makes this surely worth a ride.

Eight tracks for 39 minutes of intense improvised playing, recorded in Berlin in 2003, by Gilles Aubry (computer, editing and mixing), Antoine Chessex (sax) and Torsten Papenheim (guitar). This has the sort of trademark sound you'd expect from a Creative Sources release, with barely recognizable sounds from instruments-played-as-objects, but also a more distinct electronic feel. I wonder if the computer also sampled and filtered the other instruments - probably not, but anyway the interplay of the three performers is quite remarkable, and the whole set sounds powerfully cohesive. Listen to track 2, for example, with (computer-generated?) white noise and the frantic blowing of breath through the sax, which eventually seem to mimic each other; but all the cd is filled with a boiling and constantly distressed set of abstract, yet brutally physical sounds. The structured disorder of the SwiftMachine trio makes this a very engaging listen throughout.