Personal project of Dariusch Dalili, Bionic released only an album for OffBeat back in 1995. I don't know what he did in the meantime but his coming back album is really nice. Still having his roots on e.b.m. sound, Bionic offer to the fans of the genre a strong album with ten new songs where hard beats and melody are the winning couple. The CD opens with "It doesn't matter", a song that melodically and vocally reminds me of Sisters Of Mercy. Fortunately, tracks two, sounds more personal and based on 4/4 rhythms, clear vocals and cool retro e.b.m. sounds. Alternating dance atmospheres (check "Cold eyes"), new wave intuitions a bit of pop ("Somewhere"), Dariusch succeeds into packing a nice album that sounds fresh even if based on classic sounds. You can find also two nice remixes made by Accessory and Minusheart.

Well this is the last of the big batch of CDs I've been given to review and perhaps I've saved the weirdest for last. I'm not really sure what to make of this album. It's kind of like the Beastie Boys meets some minimal synth outfit like Absolute Body Control, The Normal, Crash Course in Science, Rational Youth, Suicide, etc if it were produced by The Residents. You can't really call it dance pop (I suppose occasionally you could spazz out a track with some beats in it); it's more along the lines of experimental pop. The album schizophrenically odd, and the first time I heard it, I absolutely hated it.

For the most part 'Conspiracy Generation' is terribly low-fi. It was recorded on analog reel-to-reel tape which some people are absolutely going to love, and others are absolutely going to hate. The sole member of this Allied Fracture (please correct me if I'm wrong) seems to be Jesse Baird from Bloomington Illinois. The album opens interestingly enough with 'Crisis Overture,' an instrumental track with medieval leanings giving you absolutely no clue as to what's to follow. (It ain't medieval, that's for certain!) I actually liked this track quite a bit'¦and I hope it was composed and not wholesale stolen, because there is an awful lot of 'stolen music' (ie; sampled) on the album, both dialogue and musical. Personally, it doesn't bother me much when song components from other artist's work and used in creating a new work- it just seems to bother the record industry and name artists who are making $$$. Apparently Worst Kitchen Records aren't bothered either. Then again, Allied Fracture flies so low under the radar, it's doubtful they'll be generating any controversy or lawsuits.

So from the medieval we head into Silicon Teens territory with the playful, buzzy 'Shock Fortified' and its dinkertoon synth melody. Vocals are Beastie Boy style with lyrics ranting against the technocratic fascist aspects of society. Whatever. The music is cute though. 'Feelin' Obsolete' begins with some sort of ghetto kidnapping story and morphs into a pastiche of odd sampled loops. More ranting about the techno-industrial complex, a little less Beastie Boyish. A cacophony of samples (dialogue and loops, etc) ensues.

'2,640 Volts' literally bases its rhythm track on the Association's 'Along Comes Mary,' albeit with song structure and lyrics quite different. I think it's kind of creative. Geffen Records would think it's kind of copyright infringement. 'Everybody Always' has vocals that resemble singing more than rapping (sort of) and a quirky, spazzy beat. 'Disorder' is a frantic cartoon hoedown complete with banjo loop I could see the Holy Modal Rounders really getting into. Bizarre, just bizarre. 'Subterranean Terms' has a touch of the Residents to it without that masking vocal processing. One problem though is the political rant gets old after a while. I kept hoping for something just plain'¦silly'¦nonsensical'¦maybe without an agenda. As if on cue, finally came around with 'Impatience' which is a totally frenetic carnival of hyperactive insanity; maybe a tad too long but a welcome lapse into lunacy. 'Apocalypse Muzak' is a meandering dose of psycehedelia that might indicate the drugs are finally working. The last couple of tracks weren't so great but I give Allied Fracture credit for trying.

To call this album uneven would be an understatement. It's all over the place, sometimes brimming with creativity, and other times cringingly embarrassing. If you're looking for something really weird in the DIY vein, you might want to check it out. Maybe for the next venture Allied Fracture ought to consider getting a more interesting vocalist (or at least some vocal processing equipment) and move up to HI-FI with the recording gear. I'd be curious to hear what this project does further on down the line.

Project of Harold Nono (Bearsuit) and Me Raabenstein (Nonine), Taub just released their second album titled THE WRONG PATH. It contains seven new tracks that sound really interesting because of two main points: the complex sound structure and the atmosphere created. One of the tracks that is indicative of their sound is "Badlands": it blends jazz bass lines, keyboards/piano and strings with tiny treated sounds (short guitar distortions or noises) which also sound melodic. About the atmosphere, I liked the way they are able to build melancholic pop experimental songs making them sound as they were simple when they are a sort of ambient / jazz / pop / i.d.m. mix. I know that this could sound like they are making artsy pretentious tunes but try them and, in case that was your thought, you might change your point of view...

Marc Houle grew up in Windsor, Canada, with a Commodore 64 in front of him, new wave music in his ears and Detroit on the other side of Lake Erie. Now, living from Berlin to New York and playing under his own name as well as with the monikers 2VM and Run Stop Restore, he's about to deliver at end of September probably his most personal album. An album titled DRIFT. Born with the aim to give sound to Berlin's winter, the album finds Marc mixing minimal synth techno sounds with an experimental form of New Wave where he gathers layers of delayed clean guitars turning the atmospheres of a snowy sightseeing into sounds using the dance language. Analog synth sounds, drum beats and looping melodies are his tools and I don't know if this is the sound of winter or not, but for sure is a nice way of warming the body and the soul of the listener.

Releases like this have the indisputable quality to help people like me to reconcile with soft electronic music that usually is filed under idm. This Italian musician has assembled a soft track-list that walks on the tight rope suspended between quasi-ambient and post-classic/soundtrack music, I'm sure you'll get it after a few tracks. Eighties Warp alike sounding synths, soft pianos, string sounding sections, bleeps, electronic devices field-recordings and other kind of instruments cross the aural scene and enrich every single track of a series of arrangements that soften the journey during the listening. Track after track I've been positively surprised seeing what emphasis he has put on melody and on the song structure in spite of getting lost in the useless search of some fake avant-gardist coolness. What I've just said doesn't imply Obsil is sounding like a zillion of other electronic acts, infact I think he managed to put a personal touch in the recipe, but after having experienced "Distances" I think you will agree his primary interest was not exactly working on the experimental side of song-writing. Obsil songs sometimes have been developed in a quite uniform way, sometimes present many unexpected variations, but in most of the cases it could remind a strange hybrid of Lusine with Plone and Plaid elements cut with some neo-classical Murcof alike solutions. In its apparent simplicity "Distances" offers the example of a good and well pondered release where the aesthetic profile is submitted to writing soft, easy-listening, emotionally charged electronic tracks non based on rhythms. Nice work.