The Flux Complex is a duo featuring Karsten Hamre, better known for his various projects in the dark ambient/industrial field, like Arcane Art, Dense Vision Shrine and Penitent; but here, along with Ioan Bârladeanu, he explores quite different paths, namely trip hop, electronic dub and techno. "Terra Mater" opens the disc with repetitive slow-motion pulses, while "Lux Aeterna" and "Mind Over Matter" add some catchy melodic patterns, and "Camera Obscura" pushes harder on the rhythmic side. "From Time to Time" is a liquid jazzy piece, complete with real drums and double bass, and possibly makes for the most interesting track of the album. Three tracks are then remixed by Defraktor, which is one more alias of Hamre's, but his versions don't seem to add much to the originals... they were ok, they remain ok. As a whole, this is a honest album of smokey late-night music, not very original nor groundbreaking,but thoroughly enjoyable nonetheless.

French duo Man, formed by François Rasim Biyikli (piano, Rhodes, guitars, melodica, noises) and Charles-Eric Charrier (acoustic bass, guitar, toys), are surely not afraid to experiment with different genres and inputs, naming influences as diverse as Satie and Labradford, Morricone and Arto Lindsay... Their third full-length release opens with a bizarre (and not entirely successful) rhythmic, and sung, track, but don't be deceived: most of "Helping Hand" is slow, delicate and painfully melancholic. The slo-mo heartbreak of "Drifting" merges the delicate atmospheres of Chaveau, Tiersen or Comelade with the vigorous post-fusion instrumentals of "TNT"-era Tortoise. Hectic euphoria sparkles here and here, but Man surely work best with autumnal soundscapes like "Separation" or "8mm", which closes the disc with a powerful crescendo. Their pieces are often daring, and not always balanced - sometimes the different elements just don't match that well, and end up being more distracting than fascinating - but "Helping Hand" is surely worth repeated spins to catch its different nuances.

Some months ago I reviewed a very nice cd titled "Chessmachine", by Torsten Papenheim (guitar, also playing in the Kainkwatett trio, on Schraum as well), Antoine Chessex (sax) and Gilles Aubry (computer). Here the latter teams up with Nicolas Field at percussion, and while being more disjointed and sparse than the "Chessmachine" sessions, i.e. more typically "improv", their performance features the same physical intensity. I still wonder if Aubry samples and filters what his mate is playing, as what we hear is often a sort of throbbing noise pulp, sounding like a digital chewing of acoustic inputs. Aubry surely works with field recordings and looped music samples as well, adding odd counterparts to Field's frantic drumming. Quite an intense record throughout, one that I'd surely recommend to those into labels like Creative Sources and Charizma.

Alexander Robotnick did it again. He put his miner helmet on and digging into his archive of old recordings he found eighteen unreleased tracks. Most of them are instrumental electro tracks, only "Mexicana", "La folie" and "Appuye sur le champignon" have got a classic song structure with lyrics and all. Being mostly instrumental we’ve got to focus our attention on the atmosphere that Maurizio Dami wanted to create with the tracks. So, if the opening "It’s not my life" is an acid ambient intro, "Intro for live performance" is an electro pumping track based on simple melodies that catch immediately the attention. And again, if tracks like "In the krypta", "Studio 01", "Base dance" or "The dark side of the spoon" sound just like they are the fathers of techno music, "Via del salviatino", "Salt peanuts", "Ar stack 1" or the eight minutes long "Salt peanuts 4" show another side of Maurizio’s music, because they are particular tracks that sound now ambient and now experimental (see the space ambient track "Salt peanuts 4"). Being the second volume of the "Rare Robotnicks" collection, KRYPTA 1982 is less immediate respect the first volume, because the first one was gathering tracks colleted from a wider period (1981÷1987) and it had more classic songs but KRYPTA 1982 is a good example of early electro tracks and it contains also some fun songs like "La folie" and "Appuye sur le champignon".

It’s like the same procedure like last year, Rudy R. of :WUMPSCUT: releases at spring time a new CD. While his critics expect another low repetition of his past two albums "Bone Peeler" and "Evolve", the master himself has finally found enough inspiration and luckily a theme for this new album like nobody else could handle it. Cannibalism is surely a pervert kind of human being which people better like to hide to death. I am not sure if Rudy has picked with this theme something what has happened around him (like the German cannibal of Rotenburg...?), or if he tries to bring light into own personal experiences (uuhmmm, what I do not hope...) - also, if his stuff here is well enough explored for a doctrine work, but nevertheless it is nice to see (the comic stripe work of Je Wagner, www.todesart.de) and hear the concept. It surprises maybe a bit that almost all track - with the one exception of the title track - are offered here completely in German. No special English version for all the people waiting for the Metropolis Records license version - well, I really thought, that this "experiment" was buried after "Böses Junges Fleisch / "Eevil Young Flesh" - but anyhow it works well here. Musically this new album offers that stuff which too many people seemed to miss on his past work, aggressive cuts ("Wir Warten", "Recht Vor Gnade") go in a mutual way with calm and melodic pieces ("Die Liebe", "Pass Auf"), instrumental pieces ("Auf Der Jagd") go in a unit with female-leaded tracks ("Pass Auf", "Hunger"), which are so typically for Rudy in all phases of his :WUMPSCUT: existence. His efforts here are distinct shown here, more clear then the previously released SiCD with both "Die Liebe" and "Jesus Antichristus" could really expect. Both tracks are maybe the ones which do not really fit with the overall concept of this release - better said, both tracks are changeable. So coming to a result, it is obviously that Rudy is still to young to make a retreat into retirement. For all of his futile copycats I have the suggestion to go back into their bathrooms to practice, and practice, and practice - own built ideas could maybe help a beautiful day. This is definitively the best :WUMPSCUT: release since "Embryodead" 10 years before - with all that respect that both albums cannot be compared!