Nicely packaged and stuffed of sounds, DARUMA represents the 150th Ant Zen's release. I haven't checked but since it contains thirty two tracks played by thirty two different bands on a two CD set which on the fist pressing comes along with two posters, stickers, cards, etc. It seems to me that almost each band who released an album is here greeting the label for its tenth year birthday, but I can't tell for sure. Anyway... The fist CD seems to be more concentrated on noise and rhythm bringing us new or remixed tracks by Orphx, Roger Rotor, Iszoloscope, Synapscape,Asche, Axiome, Cell Auto Mata, Contagious Orgasm, This Morn' Omina, P·a·l, Morgenstern, Individual, Mental Destruction, Converter, Monokrom, Hypnoskull, and Ars Moriendi. The second one has got Noosa Hedz, M2, Veruschka, L'Ombre, Ah Cama-Sotz, Ambre, Ultra Milkmaids, Rob(u)nent, Black Lung, Telerotor, Vromb, Imminent, Silk Saw, Templegarden's and Klangstabil. If you already know Ant Zen, you know what is expecting you: tons of rhythmical, noisy and ambient experimentation which made of the label a reference point for the genre. Now, since we kinda cleared what this compilation represents, let's try to understand behind the DARUMA concept which is part of the Japanese culture. By visiting www.darumaonline.com first of all we're impressed by the different kind of darumas and by the expression of the faces painted on those objects (I don't know if they are made out of clay or what else) but the concept of daruma could be more interesting. On the website you can read: " Everybody Knows DARUMA, If they are Japanese . DARUMA is so popular and connected with Japanese tradition and culture. Many people in Japan buy DARUMA for elections, success of business, weddings, and other happy events more.... [ DARUMA BRINGS HAPPINESS TO EVERYBODY ! ] DARUMA was a person who lived a long time ago. DARUMA was a prince in India. DARUMA went to China with the idea of Buddhism. DARUMA started Chinese Zen. DARUMA was 28 generations from BUDDHA. There is a very famous story about DARUMA. DARUMA sat facing a wall for 8 years meditating and..[became a saint] .... " A DARUMA is presented as a sort of stone with elliptical shape which never falls. When you received a DARUMA you've got to: first, please draw the right eye when you see in front of daruma in black, if your eye's color is blue, you should use blue it, doesn't matter. (*^_^*) Then, you make a wish, anything's OK , wish to make a boy or girl friend, succeed in your business, win in the big election, win the game, pass the examination, [WISHES OF HUMAN BEING NEVER STOP], usually........ (*^_^*) Anyway, when your wish comes true, please draw in the other eye. It will become a complete DARUMA, in front of you".

I would like to be able to say that Muslimgauze is back with his latest fatigue (he would sure have some lucid insights about what is going on in the world if he still was alive...), but at least we can enjoy some more of his previously unreleased music that is seeing the light through Staalplaat, where obviously there are plenty of tapes (I am assuming it's tapes these things are stored on because there's plenty of hiss) that are still in the dark ready to be dusted off. "Iranair Inflight Magazine" continues the tradition of semi-distorted and saturated percussions with the addition of some sparse electronics. With this formula it almost sounds more like an idm/electro record than a world music record. The tracks are long, similar to each other, and go by with little changes. You can hear very distant things but you pretty much have to wait for the third song and its middle eastern flute-like breath instrument to find something else besides the percussive track. Half way through the record you start hearing some stereo field experimentation with un-distorted percussive tracks on the left, a distant sitar and some electronic bass on the right, the whole thing glued together by movements across the stereo field and dub-like delays. Later on, around track six, the atmosphere gets a little quieter and samples of middle-eastern language spoken female vocals are introduced. Each of the tracks is named after a page in the Iranair Inflight Magazine and the CD is limited and hand-numbered to 700 copies.

Thy Veils' fourth studio album "The Diaphanous Depression" has just been released and features 19 tracks of minimal ambient music. After their dark-goth-influenced debut "Prologue", their second orchestral "Against an Oblivion of the Forgotten Abyss" and the third best seller "Immemorable", Romanian composer Daniel Dorobantu surprises his fans with a step back in terms of aesthetic grandness and a step forward in his search for intimacy and depth of the myserious atmospheres he works out. You will still hear some orchestrations, some even quite big (mostly in a neo-classical interpretation) but they won't be pompous or majestic, rather symphonically complementary to the darkly solar and warmly cold sonic ambience that pervades all of these new compositions. Think of it like a more mystical version of Zoar or a more minimal version of Penitent.

I've always been fond of bands achieving decent results when mixing metal with electronica, and in this case I even stumbled on something slightly different than what the average electro-metal scene offers. Of course I am not saying that these Adelaide-based guys are better than, say, Die Krupps, but they definitely have a very original approach to what they do, which could characterize them on the long run and make them remarkably unique. "Follow the White Line" takes the raging guitars that you will find in bands like the above-mentioned German masters or the equally interesting and innovative Flugschaedel and mix it in with dancefloor-friendly beats, synthetic sounds, electronic sequences and vocals that are somewhere between those of a rock singer and an ebm one. If you always liked Stabbing Westward, Sloppy Wrenchbody, Headcrasch, Swamp Terrorist, Marylin Manson or even Nine Inch Nails but you always wanted to shake that ass of yours to their beats the way you do during a rave or in a club, maybe you should turn to Circle Clan when looking for those emotions.

"O Superman Remix CD" is a remix CD (duuh!) featuring nine experimental artists busy re-working the Laurie Anderson sky-rocketing hit and pop anthem "O Superman (For Massenet)" (the original was paraphrasing Jules Massenet's song "O Souverain"). Anderson's version was first released on One Ten records and later re-released and distributed on her debut LP "Big Science" by Warner Bros (we all know how that went, when these fucking majors are after profits and don't respect the artists...). It was an outsider track, something alien to what the rest of the music industry was putting out. Her vocoded voice and all the electronics were painting a picture of an ill society becoming greedy and loosing touch with the importance of human relationships (she sings "this is the hand, the hand that takes", which incidentally is also one of the sentences printed on the beautiful hand crafted cardboard box case that Staalplaat specifically created for this release). Now nine names did go over all of that and came up with their own versions, some where the electronic aspect is emphasized, some where noises are added, some somewhat close to the original, others totally re-worked into newly crafter creations of digital sonics, glitch electronica and drones (Frans De Waard's new project Freiband, Origin of Sound), noise (Dutch Danny De Graan, Italian Massimo), beautiful IDM arrangements that would fit into the Warp catalogue (Com.a, Radbound Mens, Team Doyobi), synthetic Kraftwerkian sounds (Electric Company), experimental concrete weirdnesses (Staalplaat founder's project Staalplaat SoundSystem), vocal samples and so on... Few stones are left unturned when it comes to sonic experimentation. Definitely an interesting re-interpretation of a classic of avantgarde pop-electronica of the early eighties.