This sampler, subtitled "new ambient-electronic music from Italy", is the physical compendium to the excellent website Oltre il Suono, gathering several Italian underground projects and artists working in the fields of ambient (from dark to ethnic/ritual), experimental electronics and electroacoustic/concrete music. While the site has been constantly expanding, the cd-r, compiled by the trio Biasthon, features a selection of 11 artists, of whom I only knew Amon/Andrea Marutti. I guess that all tracks are exclusive/unreleased. Now, talking about the sounds, I really think it's hard to find such a well-assembled sampler. Music ranges from oppressive dark ambient (Amon, Maath, Nefelheim... ) to field recording manipulations and electroacoustic (Car, Logoplasm), from cosmic music (Regivar) to mesmerizing ethnic atmospheres (Ku), but these "tags" are often oversimplifications, since most artists seem to actually cross boundaries and opt for oblique approaches – see for example Anofele (who also collaborate with Car), Alessandro Fogar and Nimh (alias Giuseppe Verticchio, main responsible for Oltre il Suono, here offering a mix of live sounds from the streets of Teheran and abrasive analogue synth patterns). Throughout the whole compilations, emphasis is focused on pure sound experimentation, with almost no melody at all, except for a really brief hint at the end of Regivar's "Visioni" and the more "humane" approach of Ku – so expect gloomy atmospheres and often alien, disquieting sounds. A must if you're even remotely interested in deep listenings and aural experimentation, and a healthy portrait of Italian underground... Check this out and visit the site, where you can find lots of info about the artists, with sound clips provided. I hope a second volume of the cd will be compiled soon.

This is quite old but I wanna give it a quick review anyway, so bare with me. Ex-Suspiria member Mark Tansley and his pal Apollo, have released their new CD called "Irreverence", a powerful 12-track dancefloor-friendly electro-goth album with pounding industrial-dance hammerings, techno/trance beatz, well-done synth lines and background textures, treated vocals and more in that direction...
If you like to dance your ass of to strong goth/indus peaking on german ebm then give this a try...

This is a re-edition of Klimperei's first ever record, which at the time, or more than 10 years ago, already was just a selection of five hours worth of music. If you are into experimental music, you must already know this prolix french duo (in music and in life) and the fact that they have 28 old songs on one CD will probably be good news to you. Those who ain't familiar with Klimperei should try to imagine a unique experimental voyarism, musique concrete vanguard, baroque, romantic, visionary, old-fashioned (above all in a record with material this old!) and "french"; simple minimalism, short compositions with out-of-tune pianos (or even worse with classical guitars and piano, both are out of tune) and other home made or really weird and unconventional instruments. Forget punk, this is the new do it yourself stream, a monument to home recording as well! Spontaneous as in every mainly improvised record. Klimperei throw everyone off with their stuff. For lovers and people really into this.

Hungarian-born Gabor Csupo is the founder of the Californian quality-experimental/electronica label Tone Casualities and known for his music work on various TV shows. When he left Communist-ruled Hungary to move to the US he decided not to forget his roots and the Eastern European musical projects. In 1994 he started the label to give exposure to the people whose music he's been listening and have been influencing him. He didn't take too much advantage of the fact he owned a record label, in fact he only put one other record of his own out on Tone Casualities. So after many years he's now back with this ambitious double CD, packaged in a beautiful folding digipack with nice graphics. The two CDs are called respectively "Liquid" and "Fire" and present you with 35 left-field electronica pieces of great impact and quality. Although his extremely wide array of credited sources of inspiration spans from jazz/free jazz/fusion/progressive bands (Brand X, King Crimson, Miles Davis etc) to the pioneers of new music (Frank Zappa, Brian Eno, David Sylvian, David Torn, Bill Laswell, Laurie Anderson) to the more modern geniuses of the electronic pop sound (Bjork, Massive Attack, Lamb) without forgetting true electronics-only bands (Skinny Puppy, Leftfield, Autechre, Chemical Bros) you don't really find very much of this. Let's just say those influences are there but they ain't in your face. The list goes on and on and basically most of the folks he mentions are some of my favorite artists, therefore I thought this album was gonna totally kick ass!!! I didn't get what I was expecting musically (I don't really know what I was expecting with a list that big anyway) but I wasn't disappointed at all. It is an original album of sample-heavy inventive music. It's hard to explain. It has that particular "genius-at-work" shadow, kind of thing... It's almost like a concept album but I couldn't find a common denominator to be elected as the theme, expect for maybe his life... His life, his musical experiences, his emotions are probably all inside this, packed and ready to be put on display, so this is Him, this is Csupo, so please allow me to introduce you to Gabor Csupo!

I really dig the description of "mesmerizing trip hop listening experience", used by the label in an attempt to define what is just that what those words say, but yet so much more: Michael Banabila's second CD "VoizNoiz - part II", part of the Urban Sound Scapes series is a mind-altering thing... Rotterdam-based sound-manipulator Banabila has collected a bunch of voices and other sounds and turned it into this swirling electronic voyage that peeks into experimental musique concrete (never getting annoying though), lets you vanish within clouds of soundscapes and patterns of beats and doesn't ever forget the time-frame it is coming out in. Pulsing beats, freezing german-like Kraftwerk robot voices, beautiful patterns of changing rhythmical structures, skillfully arranged into a nice album where sounds and voices have never been used so magically together before, treated as one single thing, one entity. What I also really loved in this album is the use of almost jazz-line-up instruments (i.e. the soooo english and soooo cool song "Dinoh Dinoh", with an uprigth bass sample, funky brass instruments and hammond sounds) and other traditional instruments such as guitars, drums, bass clarinet... You got to check this one out!