Henry David Thoreau once noted that "music is constant, only listening is intermittent." This idea of the constant presence of music in the world around us is aptly represented in Alvin Curran and Cenk Ergün’s latest effort "The Art of the Fluke," which centers on the notion of spontaneity and finding musicality in daily occurrences that most people would overlook such as running faucets, clanking shoes, and rattling plates. At a first listen, "The Art of Fluke" is highly reminiscent of Nurse With Wound’s now legendary "Chance Meeting on a Dissecting Table of a Sewing Machine and an Umbrella. However, the primary difference between Curran and Cenk and Nurse With Wound is that the former are actually trained musicians with a diverse range of work under their belts from music theory to chamber music, to experimental music with the like of MEV. This formal musical sensibility does come across in the music in that while the "Art of Fluke" is composed entirely of found sounds, it is a very cohesive and well thought out piece of music that has an a very organic flow to it. Overall, "The Art of the Fluke" is a very interesting collection of experimental compositions in the musique concrete vein that moves beyond the usual amateur excursions into sound manipulation that most records of this variety tend to be.

Qebo’s second outing "Wroln" offers the traditional glitch bill of fare of erratic beats and digital noise that drops in and out of time in random intervals. "Wroln" can best be described as a combination of Alec Empire’s Gameboy pieces and Aphex Twin’s faster paced tracks from "Drukgs, which is very interesting concept in and of itself. However, the problem with "Wroln" is that is has no variation in that every piece sounds the same; having the same out of time rhythmic pace, digital effects, and buildups. It would have been nice for this album to have some ebbs like an ambient piece or digital noise collage or even a mixture of tempos. Instead, what you have is album that sounds fresh, innovative, and cool right out of the gate, but quickly becomes tiresome and dull to the point where it is difficult give the album a complete listen.

Going through the stack of CD’s that are awaiting review I noticed a very peculiar CDR with a small bag of curry taped to it with an index card that simply read "Please consider this for review." The name of the artist is Ophibre and the EP is entitled "Spice." The brainchild of Benjamin Rossingnol, Ophibre is an experimental project known for putting out limited edition hand packaged CD’s and cassettes that are accompanied by various objects from pine needles to condoms. "Spice" is essentially comprised of one thirty-three minute noise workout that fluctuates between low speaker shattering rumbles to high-pitched feedback. Interestingly, the while the noise textures on "Spice" are cacophonous and dissonant, the album achieves a rather calming effect, as opposed to works like Controlled Bleeding’s classic "Knees and Bones" and Merzbow’s "Pulse Demon," which makes one want to jump out of their chair and kill all of the Dave Matthews fans. I actually found the CD very nice to study to. While the concept of "Spice" is nothing new within the realms of noise music, it is a rather decent listen for what it is. Additionally, looking at Ophibre’s website it is apparent that Rossignol is someone who is simply in it for the sake of his art without the least bit of pretentiousness unlike Alec Empire and his tirades on "good" versus "bad" noise music which is almost as silly as his political ramblings.

The brainchild of a German computer scientist, Alarmen's sound can best be described as an intelligent mixture of glitch, ambient, and IDM that utilizes very mechanical synthesizer effects to achieve its aesthetic. The artist behind Alarmen describes the project’s full-length debut "There’s No Place Like Hoan" as "the soundtrack to the information chaos of our society." I find this description to be misleading, as the album is far from chaotic. But rather, "No Place Like Hoan" offers a collection of compositions that are very methodical and well thought out. Indeed, the beauty of Alarmen is his ability to create evocative music utilizing what would otherwise be cold and sterile sounds. This ability is best represented on the tracks "Feeling Better is Like a Dream" and "Three Inches Longer." The ability to make evocative music with such harsh sounds is a skill possessed by only a handful of experimental artists, which makes "No Place Like Hoan" a very exciting album. Moreover, when listening to the album I could not help but think that this is what CD2 of Alec Empire’s "Intelligence and Sacrifice" should have sounded like. Additionally, the album is that it is suitable for both active and passive listening, which allows it to be enjoyed in a number of different settings. While the final track on the album "Rocken Roal" is a bit disappointing for its repetitiveness and campy vocoder effects, the album as whole is very solid. In sum, I would recommend Alarmen’s "No Place Like Hoan" for any fan of the more digital branch of experimental electronic music.

Scrape�s latest effort entitled "Cruelest Intentions" is an album that can best be described by a single word, which is trite. While other reviewers have praised the album for charting unexplored territories in the realms of terror EBM and noise, I simply do not see what all the fuss is about. Most of the tracks on the album rely on most of the tried and true clich�s that have made the once exciting genre of EBM the bastion of mediocrity that is today. We all know the clich�s rather well from repetitive late 1980�s and early 1990�s sounding synthesizer patterns to indiscernible vocals using bad vocoder effects to the same 4/4 distorted techno rhythm. In the case of Scrape, they use the same obnoxiously corny vocoder effect on every single track, which is made worse by their incredibly hackneyed lyrics, which is the stuff of disaffected fifteen year old angst with lines like "When all love has washed away, I hate myself for how I feel, I see the world in a grey haze, I hate everything about my life." The best track on the album is actually the intro track, which is a short ambient, yet rather dark and menacing instrumental piece that gives one the false hope that "Cruelest Intentions" is going to be the "Music for a Slaughtering Tribe" for the next generation. However, this hope is fleeting as everything from the second track forward descends into a malaise of bland and uninspired EBM where every track sounds exactly the same. This is rather tragic given that it is very apparent that the members of Scrape seem know their way around the studio and are well versed in sequencing and programming.