FINALLY!!! Finally somebody did notice this great Australian band whom I've been supporting and believing in for so long (some of you might remember they have been interviewed in Chain D.L.K. and featured on one of our CD compilations). Somebody, namely the Belgian label 3rd Brass Collective, has finally helped them get out of the limbo of self-released CDs (not that there is anything wrong with self-releasing CDs and doing-it-yourself, on the contrary, but having a label will probably help them get their music around the world and most importantly spread the very important message that Eye has been propagandizing with so many efforts for such a long time). J. Citizen, aka Eye, is the man that has been dedicating his life and his music to the spreading of anti-animal-abuse and anti-vivisection knowledge. Besides Eye, and his other musical projects Elf, he's also been running the Blatant Propaganda 'zine (http://blatantpropaganda.com), which I suggest you check out as soon as possible... Anyway, before I get carried away with complimenting Eye for his politics, I guess I have to let you know about the music too, right? ;-) Well, Eye plays solid electro-industrial music with an edge. Heavily inspired by old-school Euro EBM (think Nitzer Ebb for example) but also close to some acid cyber-punk. Frenzy beats, distorted guitars, political lyrics, crunchy synth lines and a shit load of vocal samples from the pharmaceutical, political and scientific every day scenario that annihilates us. Titles like "Goods and Services Tax", "Blind Progress", "The Vivisector", "Mandate", "Action = Life", "Does this look like Science to You?" should give you a grasp of what the themes are. John Cult, of 3rd Brass Collective, has assembled this vol.1 CD with tracks from various other Eye releases spanning between '94 and '01, so basically this is nothing new for fans of the band (except for a nice colour cover), but it's a great starting point for those who do not know Eye yet. Me? Well while you are getting to know the integrity and the sounds of this great one-man musical project, I will be looking forward for volume 2... 'Cause there will be a volume 2, right John? Right?

John Creamer's (French/Irish NJ-based) and Stephane K's (French who lived in Tokyo and NYC, previously with E Trance and Dj Katsu as Madam) credits include Kosheen, Satoshi Tomiie, Iio, Sinead O'Connor, New Order, Prince Quick, Peace Division, Dogma, Against the Grain, Danny Tenaglia, Celeda, Nat Monday, Kim English etc, so you understand that they have been around for while and they know their shit. That's why John Digweed at Bedrock picked them for the fourth installment of the "Compiled and Mixed" series. Deep progressive house-techno inspired by the legendary Sound Factory days is what it's all about, but luckily, for my own pleasure, these guys are not falling for the commercial crap. They go for really long mixes, with tribal percussions reminiscent of earlier productions, with slow evolutions and involutions and with a zoom lens on employing and additionally treating weird vocals in the forms of samples of spoken word, sung parts etc from popular, less popular, classic movies and from other sources... The dialogues that you'll hear are about anything, with a spin on sex, and they are hilarious! If you are looking to give your party the right groove and you can't afford to pay these big shots Djs, at least now you can play their double CD!

When a new record doesn't click for me I listen to it over and over, even more times that I would play one that I love, trying to understand why it is that I don't like it and most importantly trying to make sure I can offer the readers an accurate representation of what the band plays, especially when the project or its people deserve it for some reason... This is one of those cases, and I hope I am not gonna be accused of sexism just 'cause I am not very fond of AntiQuark's material, since these two beautiful women are way into feminism and on a mission to turn things around in the male-dominated music industry. I respect that a lot and I am sure they'll understand that a review is nothing more than a mere personal opinion and that they really do have my support for what they are doing and for their ideals... Ideas that, like I said, are about the value of female musicians and about the true ethics of punk and of do it yourself (applied to whatever music one plays), values that I myself happen to share and strongly support. I am not gonna say they are rrriot grrrls, cause I know that Kathleen Hanna (Bikini Kill's singer, who allegedly started the whole riot-girl thing, but who also didn't want it to become the commercialized trend that it -was- turned into later on) doesn't feel very proud and well-represented by that name anymore; even though AntiQuark actually opened for Le Tigre (Hanna's new band). What I am gonna say instead, is that these girls are really into what they do and into how well they do it. They are serious about the message and about the music. Their background is also very interesting. Ant is an Italian scientist with a master in Marine Biology and a spin on shark's and marine ecosystem's protection. Maren is a sociologist from Germany. Strangely they didn't meet in Europe, instead they met in San Diego, California, where Ant moved to in 1997, after having founded and played with the Italian punk/hc band Hex and where Maren had already been living and playing with the punk band The Peppermints. Bet let's get to their music, the music they have been playing for a year now, since immediately after they met. The nine tracks of "Mask" present you with a visionary synthesized experimental electronic music with various assorted noises and with vocals that mostly seem to caress the dark/post-punk era with references to cyberpunk (the treated vocals of the last bunch of songs) and that sing lyrics in a style they describe as a mixture of Burroughs, Manson and Lewis Carrol. The reason why I don't really like this record (musically speaking) is because the sounds are very outdated in my opinion and the song's structure is over-simplified by the minimal sonics. It sounds like they'd like to have a stronger impact but that they don't quite achieve that, which is probably just a matter of time, considering they are a new band and possibly even new to the genre. They come from a punk background, where naturally guitars and drums allow for a much more violent attack; in other words, it's easier to get that level of strength with the instrumentation of a punk band than it is with synthesizers and computers. Anyway, while Maren sings the parts in a settled, laid-back, quasi un-caring mono-tone, almost spoken-word deep voice (hell, she almost sounds like a guy sometimes, instead of screaming her lungs off like she probably does with The Peppermints), Ant produces easy soft-techno and extremely minimalistic 80es-sounding ebm beats working around dark textures, synth lines and some occasional rough fuzz-storted guitar parts. Another thing I feel is missing are strong, dominant, full bass lines. It sounds like there is no bottom end and that they focused on the synthetic patterns, the pads, and the hints of melodies that the sequencers play back, but that they forgot to build a solid and consistent rhythmical section to support it. I don't know, maybe I am expecting something totally different from what they actually have in mind, but I would have thought they knew better... Anyway, aside of my personal tastes, I invite you to check out "Mask" yourself. They just finished promoting it with a European tour. You can get the record from their above-linked website (which among other things has a nice flash intro by an Italian comics designer called Fulvio Bisca), or from their own strictly DIY label Pet Set Records, which, I wanna add, they run with an admirable attitude that is true and real, an attitude that would make the music industry a better one if only more widely adopted.

Has been a pleasure for me to listen to this CD. You know, I studied piano when I was nine for five years and that has been useful to play my own composition later. Well, when I listened to THE TEARS OF THINGS I felt the same sensations of when I was into a dark room playing my piano. Stauffer's composition are light and gentle but suddenly they goes epic (like the second track "Imaginosis" which remembered me the soundtrack of the video game Warcraft) just to explore different atmospheres, where the piano is the main instrument while in the background synth pads write sinuous tunes which are capable to stop the time for fifty minutes. The tracks are someway linked one to the other and all of them are instrumentals. If you love Wim Mertens' music and you want something darker, try this one and let me know...

This has been a fantastic year for Empire State Human. They released different albums (see our interview, you lazy ones...), did some gigs in the States for the first time and most important of all, they are getting more and more attention and I assure you that they deserve everything they achieved because they are talented and kind. It has been also a pleasure to see a Mexican label (Hi, Oscar...) doing everything possible to release good stuff with this CD and with Nexus 8 which also remixed for this CD "Night Flight". MUSIC FOR HUMANS as the previous release, "Pop Robot", contains high enjoyable synthpop, with six brand new songs (along with those you can find a new version of "Night Flight", a remix of "Shoot The Breeze" and the mentioned "Night Flight N8 Future Light Dub") which are melodically and rhythmically involving. The tracks goes to the fantastic potential hit (damn the charts which doesn't realize how fantastic this music is) "Shoot The Breeze" to the darker "Das Kapitol" (which seems an intriguing electro kraut track) passing through "Scalper", "The Plutocrats" and other five. It's enough to tell you that I love their music? Don't you think there should be a reason? :)