German label Paranoise Records presents a compilation of studio work in the industrial noise vein of spoken poetry set to sound BY German performance artist COCASPAR.OSP from 1998 to 2003. It’s a limited edition of 500 that includes a poster. Other labels have released most of the tracks but this is a good way to get a sampling OF COC.OSP’s (or CoCaspar, as I will refer to him for the duration of the review) work without having to hunt them all down individually. There are 9 tracks in all lasting a little over an hour. Beginning with a big BANG (not unlike a shaken vintage reverb chamber), "Thus Long Lights Light" is a miasmatic mix of strange birds and noise puffs and pops that gives way to a mélange of ambient voices, the kind you might find in a restaurant. One voice, reading a rather morbid bit of prose(?) emerges and takes the track to conclusion. I should mention that CoCaspar utilizes a rather electronically primitive assortment of paraphernalia consisting of tubes, wires, amplifiers, creaking chairs, etc. to generate his sonic atmosphere. This is actually a good thing, as it takes his expression far a field from the usual sampled fare that tends to dominate the dark ambient and noise genres. Some of the spoken word poetry/prose uses electronic voice processing and some does not. Those segments that did use the processing tended to have the voice a little too up-front giving the voice a separateness that I found to be a little too contrived. I felt that the readings worked best when the voice was unadorned and mixed in with the sound sculptures Cocaspar was creating. But hey, that’s just my opinion. I’m sure some listeners might disagree. For the most part, CoCaspar creates some deliciously malevolent atmospheres that rival vintage Coil in sonic turpitude. This can be heady intellectual stuff in a Nietchzean sort of way. The integration of spoken word with the sonics gives this "compilation" a cohesiveness that is often lacking on a regular release by many artists I’ve heard of late. A lot of people seem to have trouble pinning CoCaspar’s sound down; it’s quite unlike so many artists working in the darkambient/indstrial/noise genres. For lack of a better description, I can only say that CoCaspar creates his own reality via an "unreal" set of implements. It is quite nice that an artist like this can thrive (he’s got a LOT of releases out there, both audio and video) in a musical climate that has moved away from the electronic experimentation of the 80’s and 90’s. But then again, he’s a European artist and I’m sure they’re a lot more open-minded over there about fringe music. Fans of Coil’s more esoteric and less commercial ventures may appreciate this more than most.