This one is kind of odd to me, having a lot of swagger for a Projekt band, who usually carry more an air of laid-back melancholy. At points it reminds me of old school Mission UK with it’s goth-ballad swagger, sometimes like a poppier Love Like Blood. Grrrr, and I hate the fact they covered Leonard Cohen’s "Dance Me To The End Of Love", I wanted to cover that song for a while now! Oh well, plenty of other songs to cover. I could easily see this played on the radio or on VH1, in a good way. Projekt, with it’s newfound dabblings in dark pop like LowSunday (think Travis with powerchords), has paid off. But at times the swagger of Human Drama catches me, yet on other times that same song makes me wonder how much pop-rock I can stomach. But eh, on the same hand I have an uneasy relationship with pop in general. Choice cuts are "I am Not Here", "Lonely", and " Imitation of... .". "Lonely" esp., with it’s Schubert-style piano musings, catches my ear. Rating: 9.

"Colonna sonora per un film immaginario" ("Soundtrack for an imaginary movie") is Raffaella Graziosi's debut as Regivar. With a background in photography, Raffaella has been one of the main promoters of the brilliant Oltre il Suono webpage and forum (http://web.tiscali.it/oltreilsuono/); now her 1999 recordings see the light on Logoplasm's S'Agita Recordings, with the usual care for visual presentation (this time it's a minimal layout on cream marbled carboard) and a limited edition on 150 copies. "Colonna sonora..." is a fascinating work mainly based on synth waves and loops, with a kind of free-flowing stream of different fragments and atmospheres; at times concrete sounds (a rewound tape, drops of water...) crawl in, contributing to the feel of mystery... I like to think of this cd as a kind of intimistic sci-fi soundscape: the sense of wonder, subtle bewilderment or trascendental peace is all there, but moving within an inner universe... Sharing some "poetic" similarities with her label-mate AAL, especially in his more "cosmic" side, and I'll repeat myself for the 100th time by quoting Tarkovskij as an ideal counterpart for these dream-like sounds...

7 tracks for this 35-minute CDep by the Dutch trio Angels & Agony. The layout is not really captivating, and I still wonder about the sense of cramming 4 not-so-different versions of a song on one ep, but anyway, enough bitching: the music is good, melodic electro-EBM with lots of wave influences (i.e. melancholic, slightly retro atmospheres), with competent song composition and an equilibrium between catchiness and good taste, which prevents them from slipping into radio-friendly kitsch crap. The title track is especially well done, but the other songs ("Stormhead", "Lost" and "Ohm") manage to stand on their own without passing for mere fillers.

It's five years that we had no news from Maurizio Fasolo and Pankow. Since their early years he's been the main person responsible of the band's sound and direction, since the post punk years (see for example the recordings of the "Gathered" and "Free" compilations) and the early electronic experiments as a duo with Massimo Michelotti (Neon's singer older brother) arriving to the electronic incarnation you all well know with Alex Spalk as singer. After years of silence (the last self titled album which had Limbo's Gianluca Beccuzzi on lead vocals has been released on 1997), the terrific news came: at the end of November 2002 a new album will be released by Minus Habens (which released years ago their "Walpurgisnacht" 12") and it sees Alex Spalck on vocals and lyrics again! I'm holding the promo in my hands and I assure you that the fourteen tracks of LIFE IS OFFENSIVE AND REFUSES TO APOLOGISE will make you forgive them for their long period of silence. Violent, nihilist and minimal this new album sees the band (which sees two new members along with Alex and Maurizio) dealing with industrial influences, working in this way on their own roots and sounds re-assembling them into fifty three minutes of absolute tension. Lyrics are in English and German (as usual for Alex) and mixes no sense with everyday life. Melody is mainly given by vocals as the other elements are rhythmical ones: treated noises or distorted synth sounds with ambient background sound sometimes. We can say that Pankow are back to their distinctive sound of the "Freinheit Fuer Die Sklaven"'s days for a perfect come back that will make you realize who the masters are.

Tom di Muzio has been keeping him self busy since the late eighties, so it is almost normal that after twenty years of releases from long-time noise label RRR, the Legendary House of Misanthropy and ReR Megacorp records, he would come up with some sort of an all-star game of experimental players. Asphodel and Gench Music (sadly, I believe, a BMI branch) could not let the opportunity to release such collaborative effort pass by, so now we have a double CD, where the first disc ("Mono") is diMuzio just by himself, while the second one (dah, "Poly"!) is him with all of the following: his partner Chris Cutler (ex-Henry Cow drummer and owner of ReR Megacorp) , Nick Didkovsky, Dj Qbert, the great Fred Frith, Anna Homler, the quasi-historical Illusion of Safety, Scot Jenerik, Kadet Kuhne, Yasuhiro Otani, Radiosonde, Solid Eye, Atau Tanaka, the challenging Wobbly, the Jet Black Hair People and Zipperspy. Most songs have been recorded in different locations of the states of California and New York, which is something you might expect from the "Poly" disc but which is also true for the "Mono" disc. No matter what they might tell you, this is a record of pure experimental audio material, yes electro-acoustic, yes noise, yes avantgarde, yes musique concrete, yes ambient, yes electronic, but mainly experimental, like, for example, most of Staaplaat or Soleilmoon releases, only here just instruments (no vocals) creating aleatory soundscapes, extensive auditory illusions, screeching ethereal climaxes, droning and rumbling ambient music and floors of textures and stretching sounds.