Solar Powered People's peculiar name comes from the concern about global warming and the fact that, as explained from the band itself, there is the pro-global warming population VS the anti-global warming population. Cool. "Hibernation" is their debut album and can be described as a mixture of a slightly shoegaze and wave influenced dreampop. After the intro with a disquieting child voice and spooky sounds there's the first track called "They'll Never Know" with a guitarplay so cold and melanchonic that you'll hardly believe that the band comes from the sunny Central Valley - about an hour from San Fran - but the band states among the influencesThe Cure, Failure, Sunny Day Real Estate, Joy Division and Boards of Canada (argh...) among others. The third song is called "Commercial Flight" and it is a spacey track with a vocal line resembling the most inspired For Against - this is the standout track on "Hibernation": excellent pure rapture. The rest of the album is good but doesn't reach those heigths - contemporary dreampoppers of the new generation.

Robin Storey aka Rapoon is a former member of Zoviet France and currently part of The Reformed Faction (of ZF). The concept beyond this one is awesome - Storey infected and manipulated Johann Strauss' "Blue Danube" to describe Europe under a new ice age, with all the culture buried deep beneath the ice sheet. He used a 1968 vinyl edition of Kubrick's "2001 A Space Odissey" soundtrack to obtain the loops for the five compositions of "Time Frost" and you can hear even some vinyl crackles here & there and not one of them exists out of context. Basically all the compositions are short and have lots of textures and subtle movements except for "Ice Whispers" that clocks in at 35 minutes. Storey has been developing his solo material for approx. 15 years covering many styles with some highlights like his 1996 classic "Darker By Light" or the awesome and criminally underrated collaboration with Nocturnal Emission's Nigel Ayers under the name Hank & Slim - and some disappointing episodes like the experiments with clubby stuff on Klanggalerie. I'd say that "Time Frost" is probably his best effort in the ambient field so far. Out on the Italian label Glacial Movements, "Time Frost" comes packaged in a great digipack with a remarkable artwork created by Alessandra Clini on a picture by Bjarne Riesto.

"Si muove e ride" is the new album on Eibon records by Colloquio - the musical alter ego of singer Gianni Pedretti - with 2 guest musicians from Act Noir, Sergio Calzoni at guitars and Stefano Nieri with a great sound design. Gianni Pedretti gained a cult status in Italy with his first
works and his collaboration with Canaan with whom he plays in the project called Neronoia. The album's 10 tracks are soaked in a pitch-black atmosphere with some introspective lyrics in Italian language dealing mostly with the author's ghosts and unsolved problems. Musically I found some similarities with Andy Wilder's Recoil - they share the same new wave background, they deal with introspective music with a slightly experimental edge (the term post-wave sucks but it isn't wrong in this case). Another good record from Eibon.

New York's Loudest Band says the sticker on the cd - A Place To Bury Strangers are a trio hailing from Brooklyn, born on the ashes of the brilliant Skywave. Musically it is a perfectly blended mix of Jesus & Mary Chain psychedelia with echoes of UK wave and a Big Black-esque view of rock'n'roll. Oliver's vocals sound great and in each track there are many asymmetrical layers of distorted guitars delivering a divine flurry of violence and the result is not so far from Swervedriver's almighty "Raise". As written above, the most pervasive elements are guitars filtered through Oliver's own Death By Audio pedals. That creates an incredible tension between the trippy pop melodies and the powerful rhythms. "To Fix A Gash In My Head" has a high speed straight drum machine and some mind-blowing repetitions. "The Falling Sun" is a slower track and adds layers and layers of thick distortions to the amazing vocal lines. "I Know I'll see you" seems like a twisted version of the early New-Order - outstanding track, my favourite here. Despite the use of so many comparisons to describe their sound, all the ten songs here are awesome and fiercely original. Prepare to bleed with a grin on your face because violence has never sounded so lovely. Essential album.

AUN is Martin Dumais (also playing with Les Jardiniers ) - one of the prime movers of the experimental music scene in Montreal - a scene that spawned many talented performers. The music that AUN creates is released via Oral Records, a Canadian label home to projects such as CM Von Hausswolf, Joe Colley and the two superb Monoton re-issues. "Mule" is the first of his works to be published and it can be described as post-ambient with an experimental edge. There's melodies in there too and the canvas is different for every track. This music might be largely reprocessed by a computer but it's paradoxically "authentic" as played on a guitar or a piano and this makes Mule a particularly intense and emotional experience.