When a band mentions Coil and Boards of Canada, basically both cult bands but so different, as their main influences you know something's up, something good is cooking, and soon enough you'll know it for sure... It only took me a few seconds of the Cure's cover "Pornography" (from their upcoming FTC records tribute compilation "Strage as Angels"), revisited in a murky and melodic manner that made it sounds like a David Lynch soundtrack, to understand that these guys are good at what they do... Then they simply jump from that to a great mixture of rhythmic noise and IDM with their "is lust". Altough the two opening tracks are definitely the strongest and also the most diverse of the batch, the rest of the EP is not bad either (even though it's more anonymous and nowhere as intense as the two opening pieces). Lurking dark ambient that seeks a balance between oneiric soundscapes of uncharted territories and nightmarish atmospheres of uncertain message. I am not familiar with Emulsion's previous production, but I think if they'd manage the art of keeping the momentum at the excellent levels of the two opening tracks, and if maybe they could fuse the two genres into one unique and original magmatic sound, they would truly be one of the most interesting bands out there. Cover art work by John Bergin (Trust Obey, Tertium Non Data). Now the only problem for me remains what category to file them under.

There is quite a buzz around the Liars: the formerly artsy-fartsy-Williamsburg-based quartet, now living as a trio in New Jersey's woods, have been riding the wave of success (New York Magazine front cover, world tours with Sonic Youth and Jon Spencer Blues Explosion etc), and on February 24th, Mute released their brand new album "They Were Wrong, So We Drowned". Imagine three post-punkers jamming with Einsturzende Neubauten in the middle of the night and in the middle of the Blair Witch Project woods. With lyrics explicitly inspired by the witches of Brocken (the German location where the Walpurgisnacht legend originated) and convulsionary electro-acoustic out-rock meets art-rock meets punk-rock, they broome out the old stuff and make space for their new found experimental soul. They sweep away what people wanted them to be so badly and start with a clean slate of avantgarde/no wave constructions spiced up by hints to industrial and musique concrete. Weird, wired, odd! All in all it's all a game anyway. All they want you to do is go crazy about them and go crazy trying to file them under something, so that when semantics has been exploited and occasionally transformed enough for the occasion, they can move on to a new project and break out of the new box we've built for them... So what's our role in this game? Should we just mention every genre we know so that they are forced to create a completely new thing?

Ok, I have no idea who Dj Purry Pants is. Google has no idea who Dj Purry Pants is. And it certainly doesn't help when Dj Purry Pants sends me a 3" mini CD-R with absolutely nothing but his email, the envelope it was sent into, the postal stamp and the NY post mark (which I guess means Dj Purry Pants is in NY). Hell I don't even know if this CD is supposed to be self-titled or if the words "Free CD" that he printed on the envelope are supposed to be the title of this "thing", whatever this is... I hate when people do this to us! Anyway, 5 tracks, one minute each: (1) low-fi bluesy harominca solo, (2) a meowing cat, (3) a crazy string instrument solo, (4) a cheesy radio song and (5) some percussive sounds made with bottles or something... Basically a record that my 4 year old son could have made (if I had one). Am I being too drastic? Too hard on Dj Purry Pants? I wouldn't wanna be and those who read my reviews know that I have NEVER been this outspoken about a record... Maybe if this DJ fellow provided some motivation or some notes about this project I could better understand, thus better explain to my readers, but like this, to me these are nothing more than 5 useless senseless 1 minute takes of bullshit that have no reason to exist. Then again this could be the next Frank Zappa genius out there... You never know!

It looks like somebody is gonna make sure that we don't miss a note of Muslimgauze's massively vast assortment of interesting recordings that never made it out during his lifetime. Originally distributed via the internet by Pretentious (in 2000), Muslimgauze's main outlet, Staalplaat, has released a 700-copies limited edition digipack of "Jebel Tariq", an eight track CD that really only has one kinky track on it, mainly percussive and mainly playing around the same theme for almost an hour. The rhythmical theme offers occasional voices and vaguely rai-ish instruments. If he was alive and this was an actual new album of his, I might say that the album lacks a little of inspiration and variety, but it's no place for me to say anything like that, since this is obviously not a refined and thought out release meant as a release, but rather just a collection of musical notes that probably would have been explored, worked and reworked into compositions, and obviosuly Staalplaat's/Pretentious' way to give the fans more of this amazing mind-challenging artist.

When BLC goes encore it goes encore for real: what I mean by that is that the second volume of their "Interbreeding II Industrial Mutation" is actually a double CD as well, so if EBM is what your doctor ordered you to get you in shape, here's your chance to get your fix!
Kubikzahl, Generated X-ed, Jerico One feat. Marc Heal, Hocico, The Pain Machinery, Implant, Things Outside The Skin, Injury (with a Pulse Legion Remix), Beta, Soul Circuit, The God Project, ESR, Diverje, Dioxyde, Type001, Xiphoid Process, Stark,
Void Kampf, Skoyz, Tactical Sekt, Agonoize, Angel Theory, Run Level Zero, The Thessalonian Dope Gods, Centyl, Severe Illusion, The Pain Machinery, More Machine than Man (remix by Syrian), Croc Shop, Infekktion, Thirteenth Exile, Liquefaction: quite impressive list, right? More reason to be impressed is that most tracks are brand new previously unreleased songs or exclusive compositions or versions or remixes or demo tracks etc...
Cover art work by graphic illustrator Wilhelm "Deaddreamer" Steiner.