Ten years after the first edition of their debut album "Wake up", Kitbuilders are back with a new album titled YOU TRASHED MY MIND. Available on CD and double vinyl it will be released the next month on the Cologne duo personal label Vertical Records. The album contains fifteen tracks where they give life to electronic dance extravaganzas where disco, techno and electro play a big role. As a musical counterpart to the club oriented sounds you can also find different tunes influenced by 80s electronic music (see Chris And Cosey) and synth wave music ("Shoot you", "Bodies" or "Spellbound" recalled me of Pink Industry for the warm sound and the feeling of uneasiness). I'd like also to underline that Kitbuilders put a big effort into sound programming: by using mainly analog synthesizers they improved the roughness and the impact of of their music thanks to fat bass lines and warm oscillators. Obsessive arpeggios and fast hard beats find their nemesis into the passionate female vocals of Cordula, which alternate mysterious atmospheres to detached ones. If you are in the mood for dancing or in the mood for a good rich electronic album, YOU TRASHED MY MIND fits them both.

Truth be told, I almost entirely overlooked this album as it was packaged with another I received from Electroschock that I already reviewed a short while ago. When I popped this into the CD player, I couldn't believe my ears! WTF was this??? Surely this band couldn't be on the Electroshock roster. Everything I've ever heard on this label has either been avant-garde, ambient hybrid or cutting-edge electronic music. So, uh'¦what is a progressive art rock cum metal band doing on the Electroshock label? Frankly, I don't know. Maybe Orgia Pravednikov (Orgy of the Righteous) is very big in Russia and Electroshock needs a major rock act to bolster sales. However, this band isn't just your typical prog-metal band. Orgia Pravednikov are the most bizarrely pretentious band in the world that I know of, and that's why I'm even taking the time and space to give them a review, because this music is just too, too, weird to ignore.

My reaction on first listening to 'For Those Who See Dreams' ranged from puzzlement to jaw-dropping incredulity as this outlandish odyssey unfolded. I have to admit that although I've heard the many influences of what's going on here before, I've never heard anything that even remotely resembles Orgia Pravednikov's 'For Those Who See Dreams'. To begin with, the entire album is sung entirely in Russian by Sergey Kalugin, who I assume is the leader of this outfit. I suppose that would be normal for a Russian rock band whose market must be primarily Russian, but Sergey's baritone vocals are so overtly ostentatious and melodramatic that Rammstein and Laibach combined would be hard pressed to compete with them in their sheer audacity. Yet, unlike the consistently dark and heavy music of those two bands, Orgia Pravednikov employs a progressive rock style that harkens back to Jethro Tull, Queen, Marillion, Styx, and bands of that ilk, with florid arrangements that often include baroque brass sections, flutes, strings, acoustic guitars, etc.

In order to really understand what's going on here, some context is in order. Generally speaking, in contrast to Western rock, Russian rock often is characterized by different rhythms, instruments and more involved lyrics. Considering its poetic roots of Russian literature and bard music, it is not surprising that lyrics play a far larger role in Russian rock than Western rock, and there is a pervasive Russian classical music influence as well. If you've ever heard Russian bands artists such as Aria, Aquarium, Splean, Pytor Nalitch, Alisa, Kipelov, etc. you know there is an element of overwrought romanticism and touch of sadness to the music. If you consider how long these people have been oppressed and downtrodden throughout history, it makes sense. Orgia Pravednikov take their Russian heritage very seriously. Many songs come off sounding like fiercely patriotic anthems, while others sound like modified drinking songs and folk dances. In fact, on their MySpace site, they even have a track titled 'Our Motherland is USSR!' (Not on this album.)

I will give the band credit for their musicianship, which is impressive to say the least. I will even give them credit for preserving their (Russian) music heritage. However, there is no doubt that the bulk of the material on For Those Who See Dreams' comes across as cringingly pretentious, at least to these Western ears. One possible exception is track 9 (with a title in Russian that might be untranslatable) based on the 'Song of Solomon' from the Bible. The sorrowful solo cello opening is quite a contrast to what follows. Band member Artemiy Bondarenko (bass, keyboard, guitar, etc.) contributes deep demonic lead vocals over a nearly Black Metal musical backdrop, while the cello weaves melodically throughout. It is all very proggy and frenetically paced, and even Sergey's rapid recitation that begins mid-tune seems appropriate. Unfortunately, this atypical track is the only one on the album along these lines.

Maybe, just maybe if you have deep Russian roots, this album could grow on you. I'm still not exactly sure what the album concept is about, even after reading the translated lyrics a couple of times. It seems a bit like a personal quest'¦truth, love beauty'¦that sort of thing. Don't let my low rating put you off from checking them out though. You just might find this music so odd, that you'll be compelled to share it with your friends. A fifth of vodka might not hurt either.

I'll try to be concise:

1) Concise is the musical project born from the concomitant lambing of an out-of-time musical style standing on the borders between crispy techno-ambient, idm and electro-pop from Christian Grass' uterine creativity and the knitting of tidy vocalization and meaningful lyrics of the singer Katrin Segert aka Yrea, both of them assisted by the obstetrical talented drumming of Sebastain Bode (12systems) and incubated as well as lovely nursed by warm electronic patterns by Robert Helms (eqt, umami) and genetically empowered by the precious contribution of Florian Ziller aka Flaque, propelling with his gloomy dilutions the last six tracks of this issue in order to initiate and guide this brand newborn freaky creature during its first steps (...we're not sure about its sex...arguably it's androgynous !) amidt the intricate webs of sensorial and intellective envinronment and embossing the auroral insight of this project...it's really moving the "logical" and musical progression ending with the track "sentience [suffering]", presumably marking the end of naïvety of the creature I imagined, but not the delicate candour of Concise's music.

2) Their music looks like a grandiloquent narration of the creative process, far from being a boring or pretentious makeshift of some wisdom writings, whose airy harmonics, hypnotic movements, soft melodies of the first part, nicely highlighted by crispy beats and dry sound whose cleaving result and rhythmical crackings, more heightned in the second part of the record whereas Flaque reaches steps close drum'n'bass and broken beats, which could evoke the breaking of the pod or better the gradual cleft of the egg-shell while colliding against the smoothed frequencies. In between, Yrea's voice flows and levitate reaching tones which could stand as some convolutions by a sort of new Miss Kittin, an association maybe justified by the fact Concise grew in the brilliant Berlin hatchery...

3) I warmly reccomend to listen it!

I cannot say these funny lads are not intellectually fair after I approached to their new album provocatively asking if there's a diod in someone's head as THE Dark Unspoken seem totally conscious of developmental limits of the genre they tried to play as well of the fact that it's not easy to satisfy different stylistical palates without rediscovering some clichÃés. Tying the knot without doing your block is a possible mission just for writers of essays for halfwit dummies as well! Their trustful declaration of honesty could be sensed in the track Ich Mache Die Maschinen (I make the machine), in their own words, a statement against the increasing lack of interest in the meaning of texts, as theirs are intended to act as passphrases to damage that diode, a small electronic component which The Dark Unspoken considered as a fitted metaphor for the so called unilateral thinking, often the cognitive cause of intolerance, due to its function to allow current pass in one direction. If you consider just the stylistical viewpoint, don't expect anything particularly revolutionary, as even if Diode In Your Head? sounds more refined than their previous album Rotten Memories, the listener could experience deja-vu listening experiences here and there. Basically they unearths some mid 90ies electro-pop to relive with magical future-pop powders mixed with grated metal guitars - especially in tracks such as Abandon Thrill or Abnormis, one of my favorite track of the whole record in spite of the oldness of its sounds -, they arguably gormandized with 80ies wave, but their "tidiness" should not be necesserily regarded as a defect. Straightforward "Denglish" lyrics dealing with "real" life shouted by the hoarse ugola of Darkun are maybe the most relevant aspect of this record and covering a wide range of matters such economical critical situation, nearly an existential variable at this point, contaminating those rare certitudes of anyone cultivating the myth of self-made man (Wild Life) withered with the bad fertilizer of the so-called competitive spirit (Growing Paintre, Abnormis, Won't Sell Your Will). But it's funny to notice that sometimes the approach to contemporary disfigured electromechanical version of human being is almost friendly anf if your soul has almost been annihilated by some balance sheets or greedy intentions, you'll almost perceive a friendly slap on your shoulders when listening to tracks such as Diode In Your Head? - one of best crafted song definitively... - or the enlighting revelation of a guru on Painful Heaven, even if Darkun's gruff (but hearty) voice will gently whisper a plenty of oaths in your ears!

Formed in 1982 in Ferrara, Italy, Intelligence Dept released only two demos ("Sleeping city" 1984 and "The big trouble" 1985) and participated in 1984 to an LP compilation titled "A white chance", along with Go Flamingo! (I still dig a lot their song "Come closer") and Plastic Trash. Intelligence Dept included three tracks picked up from their first demo: "Anger", "Too late to love" and "Sleeping city". One of the main characteristics of their music was to mix a bouncing wave bass guitar, synth pads and leads, drum machine beats, sax solos and the female voice of Susanna Zaghi. No guitars involved. Their choice to use instruments producing low/mid frequencies affected their sound making it sound smooth and sometimes sensual, Deeply influenced by new wave and with a good dose of pop melodies (I don't know why but listening to their tracks I thought about Altered Images, even if the latter were so pop) The four original tracks of their first demo (the fifth was a nice version of Psychedelic Furs' "Sister Europe", track that originally already a sax solo line which fit really well the band's sound) are capable to show a band in balance from sunny pop wave with dancey attitude (like the main track) to synth wave upbeat tempos with mysterious atmospheres (like "Anger). Their second demo tape showed a band that changed a bit their sound, shifting toward a kind of electro wave that sometimes recalls me of Propaganda (like on "Chains" and "Where are you"). Intelligence Dept played live mostly on their region if I'm not wrong and here (on the CD) you can check four live tracks recorded live in 1985 from the mixing board at the Arena Nuovo, Ferrara. Along with "Too late to love" and "Sleeping city" you can check two unreleased songs, "Nine faces" (an atmospheric mid tempo) and "Black widow" (an upbeat synth wave song with funk bass lines). These are nice songs for fans but I'd stick more on their first demo which is really deserving a proper distribution, even 27 years later. Thanks to Anna Logue Records and to Mannequin, now this is possible and you can choose the format that fits you best from CD and vinyl.