69 minutes, 33 seconds

Aïboforcen
Elixir Lytique

Half of this Belgian duo is Séba Dolimont, who also publishes Side-Line magazine. Otherwise, I don't have much to say about this album, which I'd characterize as mid-'90s euro-industrial-pop.

Much more exciting: I got word that my copy of Aux Volontaires Croix de Sang, the new disc from Les Joyaux de la Princesse, shipped today. Ain't no crypto-fascist music like French crypto-fascist music!

Also today:

69:31 Heimstatt Yipotash, Storegga Effect
69:30 Harold Budd, As Long As I Can Hold My Breath
69:30 Mnemonic, Monokultur
69:30 Omnicore, Mass Murderer
69:28 Klinik & Vidna Obmana, Greed
69:26 Remain Silent, TID
69:22 The Unquiet Void, Scorpio

69 minutes, 47 seconds

Caul
The Sound of Faith

I'm not really sure what role religion plays in Brett Smith's music. I'm not even sure whether the religion in question is Christianity, Buddhism, some combination of the two, or something else entirely. Lyrics are exceedingly rare in Caul's discography, so all we really have to go by are titles. And sure, it's not hard to find song titles that seem to point to some sort of Christian theology: "Thine Is the Day, Thine Is the Night," "At Midnight I Arise to Give Thanks to Thee," "Crux Est Mundi Medicina," "Christ Altogether Lovely," "The Spirit of Man Is the Lamp of the Lord," and so on.

But like the rest of his music, these are mostly ambient-industrial instrumental tracks. So what do the titles really point to? Some sort of Current 93-like apocalyptic Christianity? A wrestling with one's faith?

It's a bit of a mystery, and that's part of Caul's appeal. It's all about the opaque quality of the music--sometimes quietly tuneful, sometimes angrily atonal--and the evocative titles and artwork. The listener completes the work by bringing his or her own interpretation to it. And isn't that what all great art should do?

OK, now that I've used up my earnestness quota for the week, I'm off to do some real work.

Also today:

69:46 Sleepwalk, Black Diagnose
69:43 ESA, Devotion, Discipline, and Denial
69:42 Allerseelen, Neuschwabenland
69:41 Velvet Acid Christ, Between the Eyes, Vol. 4
69:38 In the Nursery, Asphalt
69:38 Velvet Acid Christ, Lust for Blood
69:36 Andraculoid, Observations in Human Error
69:35 Anhedonia, Destructive Forces
69:35 Revolting Cocks, Big Sexy Land
69:35 Steve Roach, The Magnificent Void

70 minutes, 9 seconds

Front 242
Front by Front

Hard to believe these recordings are close to 20 years old. I remember when I was a kid (ahem, in the '80s) and would listen to the Beatles on the radio. In many cases (songs from, say, Abbey Road or Let It Be) the material was barely 10 or 15 years old, and yet that music felt incredibly distant. As though it had been made a century ago.

And here we are with Front 242 at their heyday. Sure, some of the songs sound goofy and haven't held up ("Im Rhythmus Bleiben," "Never Stop"), but others, like "Headhunter" and "Work," still sound fresh and exciting. To this old man's ears, at least. Wonder what 20-somethings would say.

Also today:

70:09 His Divine Grace, Le Grand Secret
70:09 O Quam Tristis, Funérailles des Petits Enfants
70:08 Die Form, Confessions
70:03 Nostalgia, The House on the Borderland
70:02 Sleepwalk, Retrospect 94-96
New arrival! 74:07 Displacer, Cage Fighter's Lullaby
69:57 Synaesthesia, Desideratum (CD 2 of 2)
69:56 Antigen Shift, Implicit Structures

70 minutes, 13 seconds

Hammock
Kenotic

Hammock sounds like Cocteau Twins without the vocals. Yeah, I know that's a pretty facile description, and it's not quite accurate. For one thing, there are some vocals in this and other Hammock releases. And for another, the only thing that really sounds like Cocteau Twins without the vocals is...Cocteau Twins when Liz isn't singing. (Check out Robin Guthrie's solo albums too.)

But the ambient wash of fuzzed-out guitars (as if the shoegazers of the '90s had taken too many Quaaludes) is kind of nice. Perfect on a morning after too much alcohol the night before. (I swear I only had...six drinks.) Anyway, it's rare you get serendipity when you listen to music in an artificially rigid order, but, hey, it happens.

Also today:

70:11 Autoclav 1.1, You Are My All and More

70 minutes, 28 seconds

Vidna Obmana
Near the Flogging Landscape

Can a landscape flog? Maybe in Belgium, where Dirk Serries (a.k.a. Vidna Obmana) is from. Good thing he doesn't write lyrics.

This is the first disc from the Memories Compiled 2 set, an archival release from Obmana's early days as a composer of floating ambient soundscapes. It's very soothing, but in a dark and melancholy way. Glumbient music, if you will. Blue Age. OK, I'll stop now.

Also today:

70:26 The Unquiet Void, Poisoned Dreams
70:22 Various artists, Letters from the Front
70:20 Death in June, Nada!
70:19 Negative Format, Result of a New Culture
70:19 Wiener Aktivisten, Chapter I & II
70:17 Allerseelen, Venezia
70:17 Controlled Fusion, Patient Zero

70 minutes, 45 seconds

Data-Bank-A
Continental Drift & Birth of Tragedy

The cover image you see at left doesn't reflect the version I own, but it's the only image of the CD I could find online. The Subtronic/SPV edition (released in 1995) is much darker in color and is dominated by the relief map of Europe that you can see on the left-hand side of the cover image I used here. Yeah, I suppose I could have dragged out the camera and photographed my copy for accuracy's sake, but you know what? I'm too damn lazy. And I don't love you people enough.

I do love Andrew Szava-Kovats's voice, though. I even love his funny, retro analog-synth music. The lyrics are sort of phoned in, with very repetitive tropes, but it hardly matters. That doomy, commanding voice could recite the ingredients in toothpaste, and I'd still listen. If you're not familiar with Szava-Kovats, he records under a bunch of different aliases (if your last name were Szava-Kovats, wouldn't you?): Data-Bank-A, Dominion, Compound, ASK, etc. His best work was probably in the mid to late '80s, which is when the material on this disc was originally recorded. Some other recommended titles from this one-man dynamo:

• Compound, Cinema Verité
  
• Data-Bank-A, Access Denied & Isolation
  
• Data-Bank-A, Empty
  
• Data-Bank-A, Salad Days
  
• Dominion, Lost
  
• Dominion, Manhunt
  

You can order most everything he's released from his Web site, in most cases as CDRs but occasionally in their original import-CD format.

OK, now that I've shilled for Andy, I have to go shill for my real job. Happy Friday.

Also today:

70:45 In the Nursery, Scatter
70:40 Abscess, Punishment and Crippled Reality
70:35 Data-Bank-A, Nuclear Winter
70:35 Steve Roach, Quiet Music (CD 2 of 2)
70:34 Numina, Trancension (CD 2 of 2)
70:33 yelworC, Collection 1988-94 (CD 2 of 2)
70:31 Ghosts of Breslau, Peste

71 minutes, 1 second

Mentallo and the Fixer
No Rest for the Wicked (CD 2 of 2)

What the hell kind of name is "Mentallo and the Fixer" anyway? I used to wonder, but thanks to the magic of the Internet, my thirst for knowledge has been slaked. Turns out Mentallo is some sort of comic-book character, and the Fixer is a scientist who provides him with...stuff.

Come to think of it, I liked it better when I didn't know the answer. Damn you, Wikipedia! You ruin everything.

Truth is, I gave up on Mentallo (the band, not the comic-book dude) after 1997's Burnt Beyond Recognition. I'd always liked the dense and layered percussion tracks on the Dassing brothers' early material, but sometime around the release of Algorythum, in 1999, things changed. For one thing, Dwayne Dassing left the band, and suddenly it was just Mentallo. Or the Fixer. Or whichever Gary Dassing was supposed to be. And for another, the music started to suck. Badly. Especially the vocals.

So I haven't really kept up with the band lately, apart from listening to the occasional sound sample to confirm that my opinion of the post-Dwayne M&TF hadn't changed.

But lo and behold, Dwayne is apparently now back in the brotherly fold! The new disc is called Vengeance Is Mine.

And?

Sounds like things have gotten so bad that not even the Fixer can fix them. Mentallo still sucks.

Also today:

70:57 Die Form, Ad Infinitum
70:56 Death in June, Abandon Tracks!
70:56 Qntal, III: Tristan und Isolde
70:54 Electro Synthetic Rebellion, Distorted Visions
70:54 Manufactura, Precognitive Dissonance
70:52 Geneviève Pasquier, Virgin Pulses
70:48 Numina, Solace
70:48 Skinny Puppy, B-Sides Collect

71 minutes, 19 seconds

Steve Roach & Vidna Obmana
Somewhere Else

Strikes me as funny that a lot of ambient CDs tend to cluster at the long end of the total-time spectrum. CDs max out at 80 minutes, and it's no stretch to say that upwards of 75% of the ambient discs I own are longer than 70 minutes. Steve Roach is a key culprit here.

And there's nothing wrong with giving people their money's worth on a CD. But if any genre might benefit from some editing, it's ambient music. I understand the sustained mood and texture they're going for, but does every album have to stretch tracks to the 10-minute mark and beyond? (In fact, several Roach CDs are one single, long-playing track, including this collaboration with fellow sound stretcher Vidna Obmana.)

Some ambient composers seem to understand this. And I don't feel like an asshole when I say that Harold Budd usually managed to communicate more in three minutes than Roach can in 20. Maybe that's unfair, considering how different their music is. But come on--70-minute CDs are OK once in a while, but all the time?

Also today:

71:18 Terence Fixmer, Muscle Collection
71:15 Dernière Volonté, Obeir et Mourir (CD 2 of 2)
71:03 Benestrophe, Auric Fires
71:03 Infekktion, Suffering Spirits
71:02 Die Form, Suspiria de Profundis
71:01 Eden, Gateway to the Mysteries
New arrival! 76:14 Displacer, Moon_Phase
New arrival! 74:00 Dither, Amek
New arrival! 73:16 Dither, Summit

71 minutes, 29 seconds

E-Craft
Status (CD 1 of 2)

Yesterday I made a flippant comment about the music I listen to--namely, that it's something I probably should have outgrown a long time ago. Because by age 36, shouldn't I be bopping along to Norah Jones, Sting, and other assorted Grammy®-winning artists? Or, if I were one of those cool, alternative 30-somethings (you know, the kind with ripped skinny jeans and dyed hair pushing around a baby stroller with their pierced wives), shouldn't Radiohead, the Shins, and TV on the Radio be on my iPod as I ignore my baby's insistent crying?

Well, no baby. No dyed hair. No Shins. Instead, still listening to Skinny Puppy, Front Line Assembly, and Front 242. Still going to Laibach shows and getting jostled by goth kids half my age. Still trolling for news about the new Der Blutharsch CD.

But I love this music, and I'm not sure why I feel even slightly ashamed to say so. Or why I'm flippant about it when people ask me what I listen to. (Stock response: "You don't want to know. I have very bad taste in music." or, if pressed, "Electronic music from Europe, mostly." "Oh, like Erasure and Depeche Mode!" "Uh, well, no...") One friend I made the mistake of opening up to about music now constantly asks me, "Bought any new Nazi folk music lately?"

But that's OK. This has always been a private passion for me, and it probably always will be. I just wish people who listen to Sting felt the same way.

Also today:

71:26 Tactical Sekt, Burn Process
71:24 Dead Can Dance, 1981-1998 (CD 3 of 3)
71:24 Dense Vision Shrine, Die My Illusion
71:23 Helium Vola, Liod
71:21 Skinny Puppy, Back and Forth, Series 2
71:20 Front 242, 05:22:09:12 Off

71 minutes, 40 seconds

Xorcist
Nomad

Every time I listen to this album, I'm reminded of just how good it is, and what a tremendous leap it is from Xorcist's early days. What started as a--let's face it--pretty cheesy, paint-by-numbers industrial-dance band (circa Damned Souls) had by this album become a confident artist with a knack for mixing different styles of music into his repertoire: tribal, ambient, ethnic, musique concrète. It's rare for me to like bands whose sound changes so much, but Xorcist, um, exorcised the dull parts and refined what remained to create a more interesting sound.

Speaking of dull, welcome to Monday. Another week of excruciating boredom at work, no doubt. I tell people that being able to work from home (and blog without fear of being caught, unlike this poor soul) is a worthwhile trade-off in exchange for the crushing tedium of the job itself. But it feels like I'm really just trying to convince myself. And that's not working anymore. I'm getting wise to my ruses.

I've always thought work should be at least a little boring. You should, after all, want to leave it at the end of the day and look forward to going home and spending time with your significant other, your kids, your pet, your television, your neuroses, whatever. I've always wondered whether workaholics are truly passionate about their jobs or just use that excuse not to deal with other people and issues in their lives. And maybe I say that because it's been a long time since I've been truly passionate about my job, but maybe there's some truth to it too. I mean, do we want to be defined by what we do for a living, or by who we are as people? (Cue the MLK "Content of Their Character" speech.)

Then again, who am I as a person? Some guy who has a weird and inflexible way of listening to music he probably should have outgrown long ago. That's who.

Also today:

71:39 Skinny Puppy, Mind: The Perpetual Intercourse
71:39 TH Industry, Scream
71:37 Tyske Ludder, Creutzfeldt
71:36 Current 93, Christ and the Pale Queens Mighty in Sorrow
71:35 Assemblage 23, Contempt
71:32 Mentallo and the Fixer, Revelations 23
New arrival! 73:10 FGFC820, Urban Audio Warfare
71:31 Allerseelen, Abenteuerliches Herz

71 minutes, 52 seconds

Cdatakill
Paradise

Too much caffeine during the day yesterday, followed by too much alcohol at dinner last night. So not exactly a restful night's sleep. Kept waking up, trying to think of a funny caption for this week's New Yorker cartoon contest. Couldn't come up with one. Or if I did come up with one, I must have dreamed it, and now I can't remember it. Damn. I just had to have that post-meal cognac.

Anyway, we were talking about Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama last night. Lately I've been informally polling friends to ask them which is likelier to happen first: that our president will be black and male or white and female? I've been getting different responses, which I hadn't really expected. I guess I thought the overwhelming majority would say white female. After all, women are at least half the population, compared with blacks, who make up about 10%. But those who think a black male has a better chance point to the sexism still prevalent across America and, when talk rolls around to Hillary, at least, the extreme hatred many Republicans and even swing voters still have for her--a leftover from her days as a lightning-rod first lady during her husband's administration.

Maybe. I actually think neither Clinton nor Obama has any real chance at all. One of them could get the Democratic nomination, but I can't see the nation at large voting for one of them over, say, McCain. I wish I could, but I can't. It really makes me wish Gore would run again, under some sort of "The president we should have had all along" banner.

Regardless. There's still two more years of President Monkey-Boy to slog through, which should make anyone who succeeds him look good.

Also today:

71:46 Mentallo and the Fixer, No Rest for the Wicked (CD 1 of 2)
71:45 Symbiont, Broken Silence
71:45 Westwind, The Bunker

71 minutes, 56 seconds

Noise Unit
Decoder

So starting with today's post, I've decided to change how I approach writing this blog. I'm still going to list out everything I listen to on a given day, but the focus of the content will no longer be music. At least not exclusively.

I guess after about a month of doing this, I was getting bored, and readership wasn't exactly skyrocketing. (It's been more like slithering close to the ground...) So I'm more interested now in writing about whatever I want to write about on a given day. With apologies to Lesley Gore, it's my blog, and I'll blather on and on if I want to.

So what will I write about, exactly? I'm not sure. I might comment on things I find interesting and funny. I might carp on things I find annoying and distasteful. I might get personal. I might link to places far and wide. I might be boring. I might be thrilling. I might be both in the same post.

Anyway, it's early on a Saturday morning as I write this, and I'm still sleepy from the alcohol-fueled (yet still dull) dinner party I attended last night. One of my wife's coworkers hosted, and about 15 people, mostly people who work at my wife's museum and their significant others, crowded around a large table piled high with crab, salad, and bread, listening to one "charismatic" guy (a visiting curator from a museum in San Francisco) pontificate about everything from how "brave" it is to live on the West Coast to who the hot new Bay Area artists are.

I was listening to him (you couldn't not), but half my attention was focused on cracking crab legs and getting at the meat inside.

And surreptitiously smelling my fingers.

Crab leaves an odd smell--it's pleasant and repulsive at the same time. Only last night the crab smelled sort of stale, as though it had been left out in the fridge too long and absorbed the odors of all the other stale food the hosts keep in there. Wet newspaper, in fact, is what the aroma called to mind. Of course, that didn't stop me from doggedly working my way through a good six or eight crab legs before being disgusted by myself and calling it quits.

As of this morning, despite several hand-washings, my fingers still smell faintly of wet newspaper. I'm not hungry for breakfast.

Also today:

71:54 Die Form, L'Âme Électrique
71:53 Laibach, Krst Pod Triglavom--Baptism
New arrival! 74:38 Synta[xe]rror, Final

72 minutes, 19 seconds

SEM;I
Among the Ruins

I was all set to peg SEM;I as a one-album-and-out band. But lo and behold, a quick visit to their Web site reveals that they're still active. Not only that--they apparently released a raft of CDs prior to this one, and they have two (two!) freakin' side projects. Of course, good luck finding all this stuff to purchase.

The music on Among the Ruins is a curious blend of dark subject matter and often playful industrial/IDM electronics. It's not especially memorable, but it's interesting enough while you're listening to it. (I could probably say that about half my collection...)

By the way, the eBay sale is over, and I've shipped most everything out. Not a bad haul, but I was hoping to get more dough for some of the items--and was surprised no one bid on the His Divine Grace CDs. I thought for sure those would sell. Maybe next time.

Also today:

72:16 Vinterriket, ...Und die Nacht Kam Schweren Schrittes
72:10 In Strict Confidence, Holy
72:07 Numina, Sanctum Sanctorum
72:06 Aurora, The Dimension Gate
72:06 VNV Nation, Advance and Follow
72:03 Plastic Noise Experience, Noised
72:03 Uruk-Hai, A Night in the Forest
72:02 Black Lung, The Depopulation Bomb

72 minutes, 33 seconds

Lassigue Bendthaus
Cloned

Argh. Wish I had more time to write about this disc, a pleasantly confusing mix of ambient material and downright frightening and pounding beats. I also love the band's name. But alas, work is keeping me crazy-busy, so can't really blog today. Hopefully back at it tomorrow.

Also today:

72:31 Funker Vogt, Execution Tracks
72:29 Westwind, Tourmente II
72:28 Flint Glass, Nyarlathotep
72:25 Samhain, Violent Identity
72:24 Holocaust Theory, Inception of Eradication
72:21 Aktivate Sin, Psychology of the Hateful Mind

72 minutes, 44 seconds

Covenant
Sequencer

A very transitional album for Covenant, taking some steps away from their harder-edged debut, Dreams of a Cryotank, and into more-tuneful territory. I think this might be my favorite Covenant disc, if only because the songs here all seem to be sung with conviction and urgency, and the (English) lyrics are sharper than those of your typical European "industrial" band.

Covenant would go on to do more work in this vein, ramping up the melodic elements in their music, but to my mind nothing that quite matches the power of Sequencer. And I'm not saying that out of a sense of nostalgia--at least, I hope I'm not. But maybe it's hard for us to follow bands that go in new directions once we've attached ourselves to what we loved about the first music they made. Or maybe I'm just a grump who should learn to go with the flow.

Also today:

72:44 Vidna Obmana, Anthology 1984-2004
72:43 In the Nursery, An Ambush of Ghosts
72:43 Rajna, The Heady Wine of Praise
72:39 Abscess, Journey
72:39 yelworC, Collection 1988-94 (CD 1 of 2)
72:38 Front 242, Geography (CD 2 of 2)
72:38 Misericordia, The Olde Daunce
72:35 Caul, Light from Many Lamps

72 minutes, 52 seconds

Arbre Noir
Serpent

Beware of Germans bearing didjeridoos. Actually, I like Arbre Noir and generally have no issue with artists poaching music from other cultures (unless it's Paul Simon or Sting). And it's not like these guys are doing anything terribly revolutionary--I could put on one of the Synaesthesia discs Bill Leeb and Rhys Fulber recorded, and you'd be hard-pressed to tell the difference on many tracks.

No matter--this is great and relaxing music to listen to, and I'm not here to quibble about originality or authenticity. I also like the fact that European musicians who look inward to their own cultures (Corvus Corax, Estampie, Hedningarna, and even some of the neofolk bands) share a large portion of their audience with those who look outward to other cultures (Arbre Noir, Rajna, Dead Can Dance).

It's all one big, happy world, no matter what that Death in June frowny-pants guy says!

Also today:

72:50 Dark Sanctuary, De Lumière et d'Obscurité
72:49 Empusae, Error 404: Metaphorical Loss
72:46 Caul, Crucible
72:45 Bio-Mechanical Degeneration, Exoskeleton
72:45 Caustic, Unicorns, Kittens, and Shit
72:45 The Smiths, Louder Than Bombs

72 minutes, 58 seconds

Boundless
Perpetual

Not much time to blog today, what with crap to do at work and a bunch of eBay sales to ship off to the auction winners. (Fortunately, this isn't a CD worth blogging about anyway.) Hopefully there'll be something more tasty tomorrow. Try to contain your excitement until then.

Also today:

72:56 Skinny Puppy, Bites
72:54 Lassigue Bendthaus, Matter
72:54 Liar's Rosebush & Scrap.edx, Collect: Erase
72:53 Velvet Acid Christ, Between the Eyes, Vol. 2

73 minutes

Current 93
Emblems: The Menstrual Years (CD 2 of 2)

I wrote a bit about Emblems in a previous post. The only bit I'll add here is that "They Return to Their Earth" is one of my favorite C93 songs, and it's kind of nice to be able to hear it twice--here and on the second disc of the Thunder Perfect Mind rerelease. David Tibet wears his emotions on his vocal cords on this song--as he does on practically every C93 song--but I think it's Joolie Wood's plaintive violin that makes this track what it is. It's sad and uplifting at the same time, and it matches the urgency in Tibet's voice without competing with it.

Anyway, after years of playing on other people's albums, Wood has recently embarked on a solo career, apparently. And not just as a violinist--she sings too. Her debut EP, Tales of Colour and White, didn't do much for me (mostly because of the vocals), but maybe other C93 fans will bite? Check it out and let me know what you think.

Also today:

72:59 Project Pitchfork, Collector: Lost and Found (CD 1 of 2)

73 minutes, 3 seconds

This Morn' Omina
Taiu

I'm a recent convert to the tribal industrialism of TMO, and I regret waiting so long to discover them. For one thing, it meant a long search and a willingness to wildly overpay for the CDs that comprise their Hegira trilogy. Taiu is the third and final installment, and I also own the first one, Nezeru Enti Sebauem Neterxertet. However, I'm missing the second one, Em Sauf Haa-Heru. (What the hell do these titles mean, anyway?)

So I troll eBay, GEMM, and other purveyors of rare, overpriced CDs in the dim hope that a copy will turn up. It's my holy grail, and joins a long list of prior titles I searched long and hard for--sometimes successfully (Les Joyaux de la Princesse's Paris 1937) and sometimes not (Ah Cama-Sotz's Epithaphe). Make that not yet. I'll find them someday. Oh, yes, I will.

Also today:

73:01 Electro Synthetic Rebellion, A Passage in Time, Vol. 1
73:00 Aïboforcen, Kafarnaüm

73 minutes, 14 seconds

Prayer Tower
Halo

Regular readers of this blog (ha! I crack myself up sometimes) will recall that I wrote about Prayer Tower in an earlier post about Angels & Agony. I was trying (straining?) to make the point that Futurepop and its modern-day practitioners might owe a debt to bands like Prayer Tower, who were doing something similar almost a decade earlier. So it was interesting to get to listen to PT again in that light and see if I still felt that way. (The trouble with listening to CDs the way I do is that you really only get to hear a given album once a year. Such is the price of mild OCD.)

Anyway, Robert Weston's vocal style is more distorted than I remember--not Agonoize-distorted, but more like Bill Leeb's vocals on some of the softer songs from Front Line Assembly's Tactical Neural Implant. So was I too hasty in my original comments? I think it depends how rigid your definition of Futurepop is. I hear a vast difference between, say, Apoptygma Berzerk and Lost Signal. Or between Assemblage 23 and Seabound. The vocals and musical styles are so varied. The one common denominator seems to be that these bands take a harder-edged "industrial" sound and marry it to synthpop-inflected vocals.

By that definition, and despite the slight distortion in their vocals, I think PT showed--much earlier than those other bands--proof of concept. They probably weren't the only ones, either--remember Manufacture? And there were probably at least a dozen others.

So what makes something "Futurepop"? Is there another element I'm omitting--something in the lyrics? Why is it considered a distinct movement? What is (or was) truly "new" about it? Comments welcome.

Also: What ever happened to Weston? This was PT's one and only CD release, and then they seemed to disappear. Anyone know?

Also today:

73:13 Steve Roach, Midnight Moon
73:12 Electro Synthetic Rebellion, Corroded Fragments
73:12 Steve Roach, Atmospheric Conditions
73:11 Seelenkrank, Engelsschrei
73:08 Mentallo and the Fixer, Continuum
73:07 Klinik, Time
73:06 Allerseelen, Gotos=Kalanda
73:06 Dark Sanctuary, L'Être Las--l'Envers du Miroir
73:05 Vidna Obmana, Refined on Gentle Clouds

73 minutes, 21 seconds

Tumor
Neues Fleisch: Operation 2

I think this is my favorite Chris Pohl project (maybe because there are minimal, if any, vocals?). Pohl, as you'll recall, is the German dude dripping in goth bling who also fronts BlutEngel and Terminal Choice. Tumor is his sample-heavy, more-abstract industrial side project--the Siechtum to his L'Âme Immortelle, if you will.

The whole side-project thing is amusing. Did it start with Front Line Assembly (Delerium, Noise Unit, etc.)? Or earlier? I was thinking of starting my own side project. It'll be a better-looking, smarter, and wealthier project. And it'll live somewhere warm, in a house that isn't falling apart. It'll also have a blog--one that's read by more than three people. And it won't have to work for a living. Hmm. Release date TBA.

Also today:

73:19 Asseptic Room, Morbid Visions
73:17 Electro Synthetic Rebellion, Wounds and Scars
73:17 In Strict Confidence, Zauberschloss & Kiss Your Shadow
73:16 Ah Cama-Sotz, La Procesión de la Sangre
73:16 Funker Vogt, Always and Forever, Vol. 2 (CD 1 of 2)
New arrival! 77:12 Arbre Noir, Roam
73:16 Numina, Sanctuary of Dreams
73:16 Steve Roach, Immersion: One

73 minutes, 29 seconds

UV
Codebreaker

UV were a one-album wonder on the BLC label. Now the three former members are off making music individually, most notably Pat Berdysz, who records futurepop industrial under the Encoder moniker. I guess what rescues UV from the mediocrity heap, if anything, is the conviction with which the lyrics are sung. It put me in mind of the early work of Informätik--distorted vocals that you could nevertheless make sense of. (Although maybe you could put that down to the fact that in both cases, the songwriters and singers are all native English speakers.)

Otherwise what we have here is a pretty generic industrial CD. I own a lot of these, and I've started to wonder whether I need to own more. But I can't seem to stop myself from buying them. Maybe I need to hire a quality control assistant?

Also today:

73:27 Manufactura, We're Set Silently on Fire
73:27 Ministry, Early Trax
73:27 Second Disease, Dogma
73:26 Kaltesglas, Repetition and Texture
73:25 Black Lung, Silent Weapons for Quiet Wars
73:24 This Morn' Omina, Nezeru Enti Sebauem Neterxertet

73 minutes, 35 seconds

Numina
Evolving Visions

Numina is one Jesse Sola, and apart from having collaborated with Caul on 2004's Inside the Hollow Realm, he's managed to fly under the ambient radar. But as they say at Amazon.com, if you like Steve Roach and Vidna Obmana, you'll like Numina.

If that sounds like a backhanded compliment, it's not; I don't mean to reduce Sola to a clone of his more famous peers. For one thing, he works with a different sound palette, one at times more aggressive and at others more soothing than either Obmana's or Roach's. The tracks on this album veer from choral prettiness (think John Foxx) to clanking insistence (think Raison d'Être) and back again, all while retaining their individual timbre.

I also like how Sola gets away with incorporating percussive elements without making them sound explicitly "tribal." In other words, he's not out to remake Dreamtime Return, as so many other ambient musicians seem tempted to do. (And thank God for that--I can't stand Dreamtime Return.)

And now, dear readers (or should that be singular?), a question for you: If you listen to industrial music, are you also a fan of ambient music? And if so, which artists? I wonder how much crossover there is. Please comment!

Also today:

73:34 Allerseelen, Edelweiss
73:34 :Wumpscut:, Preferential Legacy
73:33 Funker Vogt, Navigator
73:33 Raison d'Être, Collective Archives (CD 1 of 2)
73:32 Dead Jump, Immortal
73:32 Steve Roach, Texture Maps
73:32 Virtual Space Industrial, Gehenna
73:31 Steve Roach, Immersion: Two
73:30 Dark Sanctuary, Les Mémoires Blessées

73 minutes, 45 seconds

THD
Under a Statik Sky

I was all set to ask the whole "What ever happened to...?" question about THD, but then I decided (uncharacteristically) not to be lazy and look them up on the information superhighway. You know, that thing Al Gore invented. Anyway, THD was Shawn Rudiman and Ed Vargo, and they released four albums that ranged from typical industrial/EBM (1994's Mechanical Advantage) to something approaching IDM (this album, from 1999, their swan song).

Rudiman apparently went on to have a solo career (who knew?) releasing various kinds of techno, and Vargo, as far as I can tell, most recently showed up behind the boards for Assemblage 23's Contempt, which was a great album. But that was eight years ago. Is he done making music entirely? Anyone know?

Regardless, I like the direction THD were going in on this CD. You can hear how their approach is informed by the harder sounds they'd used early on in their career, but they weave in other elements to give the songs a lighter touch. Something a little more melodic and varied than even your typical industrial/IDM band would do.

And now for an announcement (and a bit of shameless salesmanship): I'm auctioning off about 85 items on eBay this week--including lots of rarities. Current 93, Death in June, Les Joyaux de la Princesse, His Divine Grace, Darkwood, Dies Natalis, Luftwaffe, Implant...the list goes on and on. These are priced to move, and they're all in great condition. So please take a look and see if anything blows your skirt up. (In case that link doesn't work for you, my eBay seller ID is slandau6.)

Also today:

73:44 Penitent, Reflections of Past Memories
73:44 Various artists, Heavenly Grooves
73:43 Some More Crime, Another Domestic Drama in a Suburban Hell
73:42 Raison d'Être, Collective Archives (CD 2 of 2)
73:40 Scrap.edx, The Latitude Zero Project (CD 1 of 2)
New arrival! 75:10 Tyske Ludder, Dalmarnock
New arrival! 74:56 Tyske Ludder, Bombt die Mörder?
73:39 Funker Vogt, Always and Forever, Vol. 1 (CD 2 of 2)
73:39 Infekktion, Toxical Colours

73 minutes, 48 seconds

Disharmony
Zoomer

Slovakians, apparently. With a sound somewhere between early Gridlock (floating ambient sounds underpinned by violent, crashing beats) and Hocico (hoarse, whispered vocals). This is mostly a remix disc, with a handful of new tracks that make it worth owning. That's all I can be motivated to write on a gray Seattle Sunday. Wonder what Bratislava's like this time of year?

Also today:

73:48 Steve Roach, Piece of Infinity
73:46 Mentallo and the Fixer, Burnt Beyond Recognition

73 minutes, 50 seconds

Kub
Entre 2 Mondes

"Between two worlds"? Which ones? Drum and bass and industrial? Ambient and electronica? Seems like a lot of genres that used to be distinct are now melting into one another, and, as Martha Stewart would say, that's a good thing.

I don't know much about Kub. According to the bio on the label's Web site, the artist was some sort of DJ in France, and this is his debut album. It was released in 2003, and I don't think he's released anything since--at least not that I could find. Oh, well. While we wait for Kub to come out of hibernation again, we can at least enjoy this disc. It's got crisp, clean beats and cool, angular synth blips and bleeps. It risks sounding a little antiseptic, but it moves well. It's even kind of funky in parts, in that jumpy D&B way.

It's another solid release from the French label Axess Code, who also give us Christopher Kah and Remain Silent, two other practitioners of abstract electronica/IDM. Est-ce que il y en a encore?

Also today:

73:50 Steve Roach, Labyrinth
73:49 In Strict Confidence, Mistrust the Angels
73:49 Skoyz, Hologram
73:48 Controlled Fusion, Incubation Time

73 minutes, 57 seconds

Steve Roach
Streams & Currents

"Prolific" is hardly the word to descibe Steve Roach. I think he released seven albums in 2006 alone, and something approaching 100 total since he began his career, in the late '70s. I can't get into his tribal-ambient stuff, for some reason, but I appreciate the quieter, more purely ambient discs in the vein of his earlier works like Structures from Silence and Quiet Music. Streams & Currents is in this category, but the twist here is that he uses guitar to create the languid atmospheres and long, drawn-out tones. It's a neat trick, and at times it sounds like a way-slowed-down Robin Guthrie--on Quaaludes.

But back to Roach's prodigious output: If an artist can release seven albums in a year, does that make him extraordinarily hardworking and focused? Or does it betray how easy it is to make this kind of ambient electronic music? And if the latter is the case, are we fools for continuing to buy it and encouraging him to make more of the same?

My next thought is, So what if it's easy to make? That doesn't necessarily take away anything from the quality of the music Roach creates. By the same token, it might have been similarly "easy" for Jackson Pollock to drip paint across a canvas. I'm not sure how many of his now-famous paintings he was able to complete in a given year, but even if it were 100, does that detract from the value of his work?

Or is the problem that we consider the artistic value of music differently from that of visual art?

Am I asking too many questions for a Friday?

Also today:

73:56 Imperative Reaction, Eulogy for the Sick Child
73:54 Bitcrush, Enarc
73:53 Steve Roach, Mystic Chords & Sacred Spaces
73:52 Steve Roach, Recent Future
73:52 Scrap.edx, Recoil the Void
New arrival! 75:54 Arbre Noir, Madurai
73:52 Silk Saw, Preparing Wars
73:52 Various artists, The Best of Cryogenic Studio (CD 1 of 2)

73 minutes, 59 seconds

Plastic Noise Experience
Maschinenmusik

Is Claus Kruse capable of recording something that doesn't sound retro? This was his comeback album, of sorts, recorded in 2004 after a seven-year hiatus. But it sounds like it could have been made 20 or 25 years ago. It's got the big, bouncy, squelchy synths and tinny rhythms not heard since the last PNE album...or perhaps since Front 242's Geography.

And I mean that as a compliment.

Also today:

73:59 Terrorfakt, Teethgrinder
73:58 This Morn' Omina, 7 Years of Famine
73:57 Displacer, Arroyo
73:57 Electro Synthetic Rebellion, Persistence
73:57 Numina, Eye of the Nautilus

74 minutes, 7 seconds

Uruk-Hai
Dragons of War

What's with the recent proliferation of CDs being packaged in DVD cases? I know there's not a lot of love in the world for the jewel case, but at least it's relatively compact. (In my opinion, it beats the digipak, if only because if a jewel case breaks or cracks, you can simply remove all the inserts and transfer them to another jewel case. Try doing that with a digipak.)

Here's the thing: Some of us own a lot of CDs, and space is at a premium. The larger and more oddly shaped the packaging, the fewer we can fit in our shelves. And the fewer we can eventually buy. So unless it's a special box set that's going to contain all the rarities and B-sides your band has ever pooped out over its 15-year career, don't even think about packaging it in anything bigger than a standard jewel case. (And if your band hasn't been around for 15 years, don't even think about putting out a box set.)

Think of the environment. Think of the children.

Also today:

74:06 ECM, Ambivalence
74:04 Numina, Dreamsleep
74:03 C17H19NO3, Terra Damnata
74:01 Steve Roach, Quiet Music (CD 1 of 2)
74:00 Steve Roach, Darkest Before Dawn
73:59 Rena Jones, Driftwood
73:59 Lycia, Compilation Appearances, Vol. 1
73:59 Negative Format, Distant Pulses

74 minutes, 24 seconds

Soma
Hollow Earth

You may know Soma less as a whole than as the sum of its parts--namely Pieter Bourke (who worked on the Duality album with Dead Can Dance's Lisa Gerrard as well as on the Eden project with Seán Bowley) and David Thrussell (the man behind Snog and Black Lung).

I don't think Soma has released anything since the My Ancient Vihmaana EP a number of years ago, which is a shame. Bourke's hand percussion fits nicely within Thrussell's propulsive electronic rhythms, and there's even some spaghetti-Western guitar twang on a few tracks. It's an unusual mix, but very satisfying to listen to. It's as if Blade Runner had been filmed on horseback in the dusty Arizona desert instead of the rainy megalopolis of L.A.

One other thing: Now that I've been doing this for a few weeks (and not exactly raking in the eyeballs), I added an "About" section at the top right. If you read this blog (and you're not related to me), please tell your friends! I'd love more readers, more links, more (well, any) comments, etc. How can this blog be better? More interesting? Help.

Also today:

74:21 Plastic Assault, We Score
74:14 Regenerator, War
74:09 BlutEngel, Child of Glass
74:08 Velvet Acid Christ, Fun with Knives
74:07 Christopher Kah, A Wonderful Darkworld

74 minutes, 36 seconds

Front Line Assembly
Explosion

No real reason to own this compilation disc if you already have the singles from the Hard Wired and [FLA]vour of the Weak albums, but it does at least collect the B-sides in a tidy package. Which makes me think it's long past due for Bill Leeb to release a coherent box set of some sort that gathers all the rarities and unreleased material from over the (now 20 some-odd) years of Front Line's existence.

Or is that more difficult than it sounds? Do the various labels that have released his music have rights to it that would prevent a worthwhile box set from being produced? All I know is, I don't have "Virus" and would like to own it without (a) having to buy the CD single for just one song and (b) having to fish around for it on eBay.

Oh, yeah, and happy new year.

Also today:

74:31 Obszön Geschöpf, Son of Evil