ASYLUM is an Italian project headed by Dario Sisto and RATTUS IN SANGUINE is his third demo after 1999's "Ploratus" and 2000's "Vox Silenti". By listening the eleven tracks of this CDr the first thing that comes to my mind is that Dario recorded these tracks impulsively caring most about the effect than thinking about the final effect. It seems that he did these tracks being fascinated by early S.P.K., nowadays e.b.m. and industrial music but he forgot to give a form to his project. What I mean is that it's difficult for me to understand what's going on with him by reading only titles like "Barbie Trip", "Everybody's Dead" or "Lesbo Sado Dance". In this way there's a lack of communication and even if some atmospheres and sounds of his instrumental tracks are quite interesting (tracks like "Everybody's Dead", "Dead Stars Light" or the electronic "Human Model"), the listener can find hard to approach Asylum's work and it's a shame because Dario, in my opinion, could give a shape to his ideas and create something really interesting. A particularity of this demo is that it seems to be a split between two different bands. This because the first six tracks are totally different from the other five which show the influence of bands like Kraftwerk (see also the industrial version of "The Model" that closes the CD).

Greek label Capp-Glaufx (CAPP stands for Creepy Awesome Predacious Prelacy) presents this new CD which unfortunately comes with confusing liner notes and not much information, so basically I am unsure whether it is a split between two bands called Dark Runner and Master Save Us or if it's jus the one band Dark Runner. Anyway, what we are dealing with here is an uncompromising mixture of power electronics, ebm and industrial noise. Almost no trace of melody is to be found so you will just have to cope with four aggressive power-ebm compositions and four more dark-industrial pieces. The music is intense and there is this ritual and earthly vibe to it and to the CD's graphics. Interestingly the band very carefully lists the bands they sampled and the lyrics are by Poe. This CD comes with a 24x24 cm poster which pretty much is an enlargement of the front cover.

It LOOKS like a Johnny Cash meets record Willie Nelson, it SOUNDS more like a Merzbow meets Dive record, Big Tex (ex Mumble) has put together 74 minutes of harsh noise music with a funny "big-ould" texas looking art work (including background info about cowboy's life) and divided into 28 tracks with funny totally ranch-lifestyle-like titles ("Fancy Boy's Fancy Horse", "Saloon", "Saddle Up", "Midnight Cattle Drive", "Digging a Latrine", "Can of Beans, Bag of Nuts", "Campfire Stories on the Prairie", "Sleeping on Dirt" and so on...). I am usually not a huge fan of stuff that can hurt my ears but this record has more to offer than just plain noizzzzzz... Big Tex has a lot of power electronics / power noise influences and even occasional harsh dark ambient tracks that really widen the spectrum of the available moods. Even though the sound palette pretty much sticks to the glitchy mid/high frequency distorted brutality, Tex has been able to play his cards (probably in the mixing saloon with his buddies and some whiskey) with an open minded and creative approach and has therefore generated something that is a little easier to approach and a little more pleasing to listen to than just uncompromising harsh industrial noise that many others produce. My (cowboy) hat goes off to that; and that did even rhyme! Holy cow!!!

Surely this project created by Konstantin Myzireb (sampling) and Vlad Buben (voice, programming, keys) will make the happiness of everyone who loves industrial music for it's coldness and hypnotic power. "Le Cauchemar" is a good trip between monolithic wheels and swirling loop sounds, sustained by filtered voices and some melodic lines.The first track "Porto"will introduce you in a synthetic nightmare with church choirs under decomposed patterns of noise. "Cointreau" and "Chartreuse" are mourning laments of dying ruined gears, but the best track maybe is the five one, "Play for it", where upon a trip-hop rithmic basement mount up obsessives keyboards, that remind me some good songs of the early Coil, very gloomy and threatening. However all the six tracks sounds dark and full of decadent spirit, ideal soundtrack for a slow descent into deep restlesness.

This release is an independent release not for sale anywhere that I know of and is a collection of 83 unnamed tracks ranging between nine seconds to over six minutes in length. The music is composed by Kevin Schlueter and this solo project was started in 1999 when he was fifteen. From the outset it is an interesting collection of works combining ambient, atmospheric and noise elements. All electronic in origin and ranging from ambient beats and dark and moody atmospheres to heavy industrial pounding grinds, this proves to be some truly interesting pieces. Thoroughly experimental this is not for the timid or conservative type. The nine second tracks seem to be simple spacers (beginning at track 19) for a ?hidden’ track only a minute and a half in length (track 66). The remaining tracks are also spacers. All in all there is only about 35 minutes or so of actual audio on this CD-R release. There are no actual compositions per se as all the works seem to be completely experimental noise and ambience in nature. I’d like to see this artist create longer pieces to see where his creative mind would take him and I wonder why most of these are so short. In fact my only real gripe about this is that the pieces are too short and thus to not elaborate on their theme or have time for more variance. If the artist decided to put out more and longer pieces I think they would have an easier time getting people to listen to them as what he has done thus far is actually rather creative and would highly appeal to the eclectic and noise genre fans. According to the information sent with this CR-R Vehemence 6.2 will be releasing a ?split CD’ titled Maybrick soon so we’ll see what develops. This particular release will also be available as a limited tape edition with new material through Christcrusher Productions.