This one is kinda odd to me given I’m not a fan of T-Rex or anything like that, given that is Devenda’s major influence. With that in mind I was getting afraid of arena rock on this CD, but I was proven wrong thankfully. The CD seems very mellow, but the thing that caught me was his odd lyrics, which seem to bounce from one tangent to another (as if I’m one to judge given my poetry’s habit of this). His lyrics to me seem his ultimate strength and the music following behind, which is not a bad thing, since that seems his intention. The sound is very raw, just a guitar and drums, very primal (one of Gira’s loves). I oddly feel like he recorded this in a coffeehouse, since there seems to be the live atmosphere of a small club about. Rating: 8.

Tiamat’s second excursion into pop-goth, going away from the gloom of the masterpiece "A Deeper Kind Of Slumber" (described as one of my faves in the Lounge forum). A lot of people hated this move but I actually see Johan’s point on it being a move forward rather than trying each album to be more gloomy, as you can only stay that way for so long before life becomes pointless. And he proves he can do both dark poetry and the tricky edges of pop music. Pop writers tend not to be great poets and vise versa as we all have seen. "Vote For Love" is my fave on here, just a simple and direct song about getting up and rallying for peace in your own little way. It may not be "A Deeper... ." But hey you gotta move on sometime while the getting’s good and enjoy life you know ;) rating:9.

After a few experiments in the seventies not many artists have carried on the interesting practice of uniquely using their body or mouth to create music. Dutch vocal artist Jaap Blonk is one of these and his releases always appealed to me as having that particular edge of real, true and pure experimentation. In this release Jaap Blonk teams up with Dutch techno musician/engineer/visual artist Radbound Mens and the results are even better than usually. The synergy between the two is so great that you almost can't say that all the used audio sources are actually Blonk's voice. After extensive sampling, chopping, arranging, programming, assembling, treating and processing of these audio snippets you have five fluent tracks of techno music in flavors ranging from straight and minimal techno to drum'n'bass and gabber techno... if we only could get some goa too! ;-) "Bek" (dutch for 'mouth') is the fifth chapter in the Brombron series (read more about it in the Heimir Bjorgulfsson & Jonas Ohlsson review on these pages) and is probably also my favourite so far. Be on the lookout for Blonk's and Mens' old and new releases on Staalplaat (the latter also has a 12" coming out on Audio.NL records).

When you are listening at one third of the full volume of your system and your subwoofer starts violently and drastically vibrating one inch in and out of its normal position with a never before seen intensity so that you can actually hear the physical sound of the vibration much more than anything else in the room and the music itself, it's pretty scary! It happen to me with this record and I must say it never happened before... I don't know if he finds pleasure in experiment with inaudible sub sub sub frequencies that nobody will hear or if it was just something was missed when mixing or mastering the record, but it sure got me worried for a second (especially because at the beginning I wasn't sure why I was hearing sound form under my desk rather than from my speakers). But considering that Jos Smolders is an internationally acclaimed artist with a huge experience in sound manipulation and experimentation, I'd assume he knew what he was doing and is probably amusing himself knowing that he got me worried about my brand new sound system ;-) Presented in a ingenious, beautiful and classy hand-shaped cardboard wallet sleeve, Jos Smolders's new record "Music for Kalx.com" is entirely based on sine waves and therefore inevitably sounds like a collection of minimal drone electronics. So expect long experimental pieces with deep rumbling sounds, layers of harmonics fading in and out and subtle changes... Even though there is no sound in space this is a perfect soundtrack for one of those almost silent classic space movies from the seventies and eighties (I am thinking "2001: Odyssey in Space" now...). Jos Smolders has been doing his thing since the early eighties alone (as IOSS) and with Kapotte Muziex and Goem members Roel Meelkop and Peter Duimelinks (as THU20). I am not sure what exactly Kalx.com is and if it is related to Smolders. The website has lots of modern art and computer graphics with a political soul that sometimes is more explicit than other times.

Bequeen's tenth anniversary CD release (one of the two planned ones) comes with a 3 year delay because of the stinky situation of the underground record label industry (if you are a musician you know the story: not enough labels, not enough money, not enough interest or whatever the reason is...). But fortunately for all the fans of this band Staalplaat's sub-label Korm Plastics has decided to release this record (Beequeen prefers not to release too many CDs on their own record label so they tried other labels first and many were interested but couldn't release it for some reason), and that's how Bequeen's "A Touch of Brimstone" sees the light... A collection of both previously unreleased and released (but in some cases now unavailable or out of print or hard to find) songs spanning in time from 1989 to 1995 that represents a good summary of their activity for those who want to get into the band or for those who have followed them for years, like their longest dedicated fan Elenka Freikkar, whose writings even got selected to be part of the thick booklet, along with those of their site's webmaster (who is also the webmaster of the Muslimgauze website and of other band's websites adhering to the Pretentious.network), journalists and other friends and personalities... The booklet also contains lots of pictures and an updated discography (23 releases and counting! ...not including compilation appearances), so like I said before, a must for both supporters and those new to the Beequeen sound. For those who don't know Beequeen at all yet, think of it as experimental drone music. Beequeen is Freek Kinkelaar and Frans De Ward, who is also founder of Korm Plastics and one of the people who work at Staalplaat. At the top of this review I had mentioned that there is another 10th anniversary CD, and that one came out in time (1999) and is called "Do Be Do; A Live Anthology" (still available from their own label Plinkity Plonk records).