46 minutes, 49 seconds

Regenerator
Regenerator

The notion of a Christian industrial band is a little jarring, if only because most of the artists in the genre tend to lean in exactly the opposite direction, at least outwardly. But with songs like "Testify" and "Alpha Omega Man," Regenerator wear their Jesus hearts on their (fishnet-covered) sleeves. Albeit not in a heavy-handed way. The lyrics make few, if any, specific references to the deity, and so the songs occupy a broadly spiritual groove rather than a fire-and-brimstone biblical one.

I think this album, their debut, is still their best--maybe for reasons of nostalgia, sure, but "System of Conspiracy" and "Testify" are pretty strong and catchy tunes for an industrial band. I guess you could say I'm a convert.

Also today:

46:48 Calva y Nada, Días Felizes
46:48 Encryption, Nosferamor
46:48 Hedningarna, Kaksi!
46:48 Some More Crime, Fuzzysets
46:45 Vanvård, Liv i Vårdens Slutskede
46:44 Sylvain Chauveau, Nocturne Impalpable
46:43 Laibach, Jesus Christ Superstars

47 minutes, 8 seconds

Severe Illusion
Discipline Is Reward Enough

I'm not sure what a "severe" illusion is, nor am I certain how discipline qualifies as some sort of reward, but as is the case with so many European bands, you have to cut Sweden's Severe Illusion some slack in the English-language department. Really, though, half the time it seems like these bands have purchased some sort of industrial-music version of those magnetic poetry sets. They just slap the pieces ("cold," "torture," "synthetic," "mechanical") up on the fridge in random order, and presto! Band name, album title, track names, and lyrics--all without breaking a sweat, or cracking open a dictionary.

I'd like to see an American or British band do the same. Where's our version of Severe Illusion? Or Aghast View? Or my personal favorite, Construggle Test? We need a band to call themselves Sensuchtschatten or Panzerhösen or Dunkel Ewigkeit...wait a minute, I think those all might make legitimate sense in German...

Also today:

47:07 Any Questions?, Prey for Death
47:05 Painbastard, Storm of Impermanence
47:03 Digital Factor, On Demand
47:03 Neural Paralitic, Recollection Mind
47:03 Storm of Capricorn, Retours des Tranchées
47:03 Swallow, Blow
47:01 Covenant, Europa
47:01 Love Spirals Downwards, Flux
46:59 Die Form, InHuman
46:55 Lexincrypt, My Sepulture
46:54 Filament 38, Fractured

47 minutes, 14 seconds

Elijah's Mantle
Angels of Perversity

Elijah's Mantle: Truly brilliant, or just pretentious? I wrote about Mark St. John Ellis and his formidable project a while back, posing this very same question. Years of listening to his music (and his dramatic readings of Romantic poetry over said music) have brought me no closer to an answer, unfortunately. And maybe that speaks well of Elijah's Mantle. I love the ambiguity--as with Laibach, In the Nursery, and other practitioners of all things bombastic, you're not quite sure how seriously to take Elijah's Mantle. The "how" of listening to it is just as important as the pleasure (or pain) you might get from listening to it.

Angels of Perversity was their debut, and it's pretty different from the more recent efforts that focused on poetry. It's more musical, for one thing, and the lyrics are a lot more likely to be in French or even Latin than English. It has a more liturgical feel, although I wouldn't exactly call it worshipful. Like a lot of this sort of music, there's something very threatening lurking just under the surface, something that even comes up for air from time to time, as on the aggressive, rollicking "Es la Perdición," still the loopiest track Elijah's Mantle have ever recorded.

I don't know what to make of Elijah's Mantle, and I appreciate that about them.

Also today:

47:14 IC 434, Weathering Skies
47:12 The Days of the Trumpet Call, Purification
47:11 Xmal Deutschland, Tocsin
47:10 Manic P, God's Tears
47:10 Panzer Division, I Am Sinistar
47:08 Corvus Corax, Viator

47 minutes, 25 seconds

Lescure 13
Lescure 13

Lescure 13 was a collaboration between Suicide Commando's Johan van Roy and Stin Scatzor's Stefan Bens. And despite its rather primitive, vaguely '80s sound, this disc was recorded in 1997. Curiously, Bens refers to his involvement in the project on the Stin Scatzor Web site. But from van Roy? Not a peep. No acknowledgement whatsoever. Is he embarrassed about it?

I guess I would be. He did far better work both before and after this material. It may also be because, in the end, this sounds a lot more like a Stin Scatzor album than anything Suicide Commando would release. There was always something of Klinik's precise pounding in Suicide Commando's music, and this recording lacks that peculiar intensity. It tries to compensate with a raw, unfinished feel, but unfortunately the quality of the songwriting isn't quite there to support that approach.

I like Stin Scatzor enough, but I think this collaboration unintentionally reveals why Suicide Commando ended up being the more successful band.

Also today:

47:25 Sol Invictus, The Hill of Crosses
47:25 Xorcist, Soul Reflection
47:24 Stahlwerk 9, 1905
47:24 Stahlwerk 9, Der Tod Nagelt die Augen Zu...
47:23 Les Joyaux de la Princesse & Regard Extrême, Die Weiße Rose
47:21 Hooverphonic, A New Stereophonic Sound Spectacular
47:21 Von Thronstahl & The Days of the Trumpet Call, Pessoa/Cioran
New arrival! 56:01 Ulrich Schnauss, Goodbye
47:19 Amateur God, Xenofeelia
47:18 Stiff Miners, Giselle
47:16 Apoptygma Berzerk, Soli Deo Gloria
47:15 Arcana, Cantar de Procella
47:15 Placebo Effect, Past...Present

47 minutes, 39 seconds

Harold Budd & Zeitgeist
She Is a Phantom

I got a couple of new Harold Budd CDs in the mail last week. Not unexpected--I ordered them, after all--but surprising to see that Budd is still active, not long after he'd announced his retirement (after the release of the 2004 double-disc set Avalon Sutra.) Then I read this bit in the Wikipedia entry on Budd: "Samadhisound released a podcast of Harold Budd in conversation with Akira Rabelais in April 2007. In this (Samadhisound Podcast #2), Harold said although he had believed at the time of recording Avalon Sutra that it would be his last album, he no longer felt that way."

Hence the CDs I got in the mail, two collaborations (Budd-y records?) with former Cocteau Twins guitarist Robin Guthrie, with whom Budd also worked on the Mysterious Skin soundtrack as well as the '80s Cocteau Twins-Harold Budd collaboration The Moon and the Melodies.

Viva Budd. Long may he pound out sustained piano chords.

Also today:

47:38 Hedningarna, Trä
47:37 SnowW.Wwhite, Wonderland
47:37 Trobar de Morte, Reverie
47:37 The Wardrobe, A Sandwich Short
47:35 Harold Budd, Lovely Thunder
47:32 Bel Canto, Birds of Passage
47:30 Iambia, Prometheus
47:29 Lunascape, Reflecting Seyelence
47:28 Calva y Nada, ¡Palpita, Corazón, Palpita!
47:27 Life Cried, Drawn & Quartered
47:27 Various artists, Scontrum, Act V

47 minutes, 43 seconds

Bel Canto
Shimmering, Warm & Bright

This is the last Bel Canto album I bought. I recall listening to Magic Box and Rush, their two subsequent full-lengths, and thinking the band had decided to go in a poppier direction. The special quality of Anneli Drecker's voice had been processed out. Hers was always a warm voice, but the early recordings had a Northern European coolness to them--a certain aloofness and mystery that added a deeper layer of attractiveness to the vocals.

That was gone on Magic Box. Well, not entirely. Some songs seemed to have kept the band's original essence, but for the most part that album went on a globalist hunt for "funky" sounds and what to me sounds like R&B-manqué production.

It's all a far cry from Birds of Passage, their 1990 masterwork, and the album they released just before Shimmering, Warm & Bright. I still think Birds of Passage (made when Geir Jenssen was with the band, before he left to found Biosphere) is one of the best albums ever made, by anyone. If you haven't heard it, you're missing out.

Also today:

47:42 Dargaard, Eternity Rites
47:41 Cleen, Designed Memories
47:41 Gaë Bolg, Aucassin et Nicolette
47:41 Genetic Selection, Orbital Ground Attack
47:40 Harold Budd, The Pavilion of Dreams
47:40 In Slaughter Natives, Enter Now the World

47 minutes, 49 seconds

Sol Invictus
Lex Talionis

I doubt many Sol Invictus fans feel the same way, but the first few recordings they made, including this one...uh, what's the word I'm looking for here...uh...suck. (Apologies to Jon Stewart.) I don't think they found a proper footing until the Trees in Winter album, their third, depending on how you count. Part of it is the plodding songwriting--say what you will about the lyrics to "Abbatoirs of Love," but it's otherwise a tuneless, dreary mess. And I don't share the love of Ian Read's voice that others seem to. Not that Tony Wakeford is such a smashing vocalist either, but Read makes Wakeford sound like Liz freakin' Fraser.

Also today:

47:47 Pieter Nooten & Michael Brook, Sleeps with the Fishes
47:47 Tactical Sekt, Syncope (CD 2 of 2)
47:47 Vomito Negro, Human
47:46 John Foxx & Harold Budd, Translucence
47:45 Michael Cashmore, Sleep England

47 minutes, 52 seconds

The Protagonist
À Rebours

I rarely tell friends about this blog. And when I do, I don't tell them the URL, what it's called, or give them any other information that might help them find it. I'm not sure why--I think some of it has to do with my being a little shy about the whole project. It's one thing to announce your obsessive-compulsiveness to strangers on the Internet, but quite another to be open about it to your friends.

And the other issue is that none of my friends shares my taste in music. They're into indie rock or alternative country or jazz. You know, um, music normal adults like. So talking about this blog to them would mean having to explain this music. And, let's face it, some of this stuff is hard to describe. "Experimental electronic music" is the faintly glib response I usually give when people ask me, but it doesn't begin to cover everything. I mean, how do you approach the whole apocalyptic-neofolk-martial thing? "Oh, yes, I listen to acoustic-guitar music with morose lyrics cut in with samples from fascist leaders from the '30s and '40s."

No thanks. I'll stick with "experimental electronic music."

Also today:

47:51 John Foxx, Tiny Colour Movies
47:50 L'Orchestre Noir, Cantos
47:49 Faun, Zaubersprüche
47:49 Neuroactive, Phonic Trace

48 minutes, 1 second

DavaNtage
Remnant

What the hell does "DavaNtage" mean, anyway? (Sure, the band creates pretty serviceable electro-industrial music, but as usual, I'm interested in the minutiae.) At first I thought it was an anagram of some sort for "advantage." But then a few years later a band calling themselves Wynardtage appeared, and all of a sudden the "-tage" ending on both band names started sounding more German. "Tag" is the German word for "day," and "Tage" would be the plural form. But I'm not sure what the complete word or name might mean, if anything. And what's with the capital "N" in DavaNtage?

If anyone has more insight, please comment.

Also today:

48:01 Dubstar, Make It Better
48:01 Matt Howden & Tony Wakeford, Wormwood
48:01 Kayno Yesno Slonce, Elohim Neva Senzu
48:01 Ophir, Eiserne Ernte (CD 1 of 2)
48:01 Schwadron, Operation Gomorrha
47:59 Einstürzende Neubauten, Haus der Lüge
47:56 Front Line Assembly, The Blade
47:54 Arditi & Toroidh, United in Blood
47:54 Morrissey, Southpaw Grammar
47:53 Liholesie, Vast Homeland

48 minutes, 19 seconds

God Module
Empath

I mentioned a few days ago that I'd attempt to add content to the blog that might eventually be repurposed as an FAQ--or rather an IAQ (infrequently asked questions). So here's the first installment. If you're a regular reader of this blog (ha! that joke never fails to crack me up), you've likely figured out by now that somewhere I must have a master list of all my CDs, arranged in order of total time. Well, you're right, I do. It's an approximately 25-page-long Excel spreadsheet. Three columns: total time, band name, album title. I simply work off the list, six discs at a time (the number my main stereo CD player will hold in one of its cartridges).

Friends who are aware of my, ahem, unusual proclivities often ask me whether I ever deviate from the list. "What happens if a CD comes up and you just don't feel like listening to that one at that particular time?" Or they'll ask a variant of the same question: "What if you really feel like listening to a particular CD, but it's not due up for, like, two months?"

The whole reason I originally came up with this system--aside from the fact that it satisfies the OCD part of my brain--was to remove things like "mood" or "choice" from the equation. Once I reached a collection of about 200 CDs (less than a tenth of what I own now), it became difficult to decide what to listen to at any given moment. I'd spend 10 or 15 minutes gazing at the CD spines, trying to figure out whether I felt like Cocteau Twins or Front 242. It was agonizing, and a waste of time.

Plus, there was the phenomenon everyone's probably experienced: You buy a new CD and you like it so much you play it over and over again for the next five days. Then you get burned out and never want to listen to it again. I needed to figure out a way to avoid that too.

My first approach was to listen to everything in alphabetical order, by band name. But that quickly grew tiresome. Especially when you have, say, six or seven albums from the same band. I love Front 242, but listening to six discs in a row risks the burnout phenomenon I mentioned above.

I needed something more random. That's when I began to use total time as a means of deciding what to listen to. Every CD has a total time, and artists release CDs with different total times--full-lengths, EPs, singles. It's random enough, easy to catalog, and removes entirely the decision-making process from my music listening. I simply have to consult the list to know what to play next. Neat. Clean. Simple. And, yes, anal-retentive.

Also today:

48:17 Stahlschlag, Acousticophobie
48:10 DavaNtage, Virus: Hate
48:08 Cyborg Attack, Blutgeld
48:07 Garmarna, Vittrad
48:06 Elijah's Mantle, Legacy of Corruption
48:05 HERR, The Winter of Constantinople
48:05 Jóhann Jóhannsson, Englabörn
48:04 Proceed, Neusprache
48:02 Current 93, Swastikas for Goddy
48:02 The Days of the Trumpet Call, Heroes & Traitors
48:02 Einstürzende Neubauten, Fünf auf der Nach Oben Offenen Richterskala

48 minutes, 34 seconds

Phallus Dei
Osmose

This is pretty much a remix of Phallus Dei's notorious 1991 album Pontifex Maximus, with a couple of new tracks thrown in. The older material has been prettified a bit, with some more digital-sounding elements (such as bolstered percussion and some synth) thrown in. The result, to my ears, is a defanged version of the original, a mostly unnecessary exercise in revisiting material that was better in its rawer, more feral form.

Why do musicians love the remix so much? I mean, it's not like Picasso decided to paint another Guernica a year later, this time with brighter colors and a puppy in the corner of the canvas.

Also today:

48:32 In the Nursery, Stormhorse
48:31 Seven Pines, Nympholept (CD 1 of 2)
48:30 Müllér of Death!, The Book of Sacrifice
48:29 Gaïta, O Dulcis Scotia
48:29 IWR, Ground Zero
New arrival! 52:40 Kom-Intern, Soviet Alien
48:29 Lush, Spooky
48:26 Punto Omega, Punto Omega
48:23 Implant, Unidentified Flying Frequencies
48:22 Morticians, Mutilation Recreation
48:20 Angeltheory, Black and Blue
48:20 Nebula-H, H

48 minutes, 46 seconds

Clock DVA
Sign

What ever happened to Clock DVA? Sign, released in 1993, was the last we heard from them. Is Adi Newton still making music? On the Clock DVA Wikipedia entry, there's a vague reference to his continuing to work on "music and film," but if that's the case, why haven't we heard or seen any of it? It's a shame. Although Clock DVA's history streches back to the early '80s and intersects with bands at the dawn of the synth/industrial era (including Throbbing Gristle and Human League), it's their later-period stuff (Buried Dreams and the three subsequent albums) that I found most interesting.

And kind of scary, to tell the truth. Try listening to Buried Dreams alone in a pitch-black room. Now try it again with the knowledge that it's allegedly what Jeffrey Dahmer was playing on his stereo when the police came to arrest him.

Also today:

48:45 Autopsia, Kristallmacht
48:44 Tor Lundvall & Tony Wakeford, Autumn Calls
48:42 Penitent, As Life Fades Away
48:42 Sephiroth, Draconian Poetry
48:41 Skinny Puppy, The Greater Wrong of the Right
48:39 C-Tec, Darker
48:39 In the Nursery, Twins
48:35 Autour de Lucie, Immobile
48:34 Eco, Entfesselt
48:34 Brian Eno, Music for Airports

48 minutes, 56 seconds

Land
Opuscule

I've been thinking about adding an FAQ to the blog. You know, just to flesh out the description and give the one or two people who stumble onto this site a bit more background information on the what, the why, and the how. What's funny about the idea is that it assumes there are actually "frequently asked questions" that demand to be answered. Which, of course, there aren't. There aren't even infrequently asked questions. (Hey! That's a good name for the new section: "IAQ.")

For similar reasons, it always amuses me when sites launch with an FAQ. If you've just launched, how can you have any frequently asked questions? I guess it shows that the term "FAQ" can't be taken literally anymore. It's really become more of a generic initialism that means, "Here are the questions we anticipate you may have, along with answers we feel address those questions." (And by the way, I say "initialism" because "FAQ" is pronounced "eff ay cue," and not "fak." If it were the latter, I'd have used "acronym." Sheesh, this is rapidly degenerating into one of William Safire's "On Language" columns in The New York Times Magazine. Minus the wit and style.)

Anyway, it seems to me that if you launch with an FAQ, it means you were unable to explain your product or service or content adequately on the page itself, so you felt compelled to stick that info on another page. Maybe it means your product or service or content is too complicated. Or just lame.

Look for my own lame FAQ--make that "IAQ"--in the coming days or weeks.

Also today:

48:53 Estampie, Ondas
48:50 Bio-Tek, Punishment for Decadence
48:50 NVMPH, Diod Man
48:49 Ignis Fatuus, The Futility Goddess
New arrival! 76:46 Kom-Intern, UKUSA
New arrival! 57:29 Anima Mundi, Somnium
New arrival! 56:23 Kom-Intern, Funkspiel
New arrival! 55:35 Photophob, Circadian Rhythms
48:48 Der Blutharsch, Fire Danger Season (CD 1 of 4)

New arrival! 54 minutes, 54 seconds

Noisuf-X
The Beauty of Destruction

Just last week, as part of a series on weird things artists do with the total time of their CDs, I posted the results of my conversation with Jan from X-Fusion/Noisuf-X. In that post, I queried Jan on why nearly all his releases are mastered to an exact round number of minutes, with zero seconds. He gave a (seemingly) earnest response about his being a perfectionist and very exacting in his work.

Well, lo and behold, the new Noisuf-X CD arrives in yesterday's mail...and it's not 55:00, not 54:00, but 54:54! Did he take a page from Albin Julius of Der Blutharsch and decide to master this album to the same number of minutes as seconds?

Or is he just mocking me?

Also today:

49:02 Siechtum, Diagnose:Zeit
49:01 Construggle Test, Welfare Waste
49:01 Neural Network, Kinesthetics
49:01 Skinny Puppy, Mythmaker
48:58 Cesium 137, Advanced/Decay

49 minutes, 5 seconds

Data-Bank-A
Cover Story

Try as I did to find a cover image of this album, I came up empty. In fact, it appears as if any record (no pun intended) of this CD ever having been released has been expunged from the True Age Records/Data-Bank-A Web site. Which is a shame, but understandable. My guess is that DBA frontman Andrew Szava-Kovats never bothered to secure the rights to release the songs on this album (all cover versions, you see--hence the title), and he had to, um, cease and desist, as they say in the fancy lawyer letters.

I guess that makes my copy of the CD rare and valuable! Uh, except it's only a CDR, because Szava-Kovats was too cheap to press his later releases on CD. Or couldn't generate interest from a record label. Not sure which is the kinder thing to say.

Anyway, it's a fun disc. Szava-Kovats applies his fat analog keyboards and doomy vocal delivery to songs we know (Depeche Mode's "Never Let Me Down Again," Kraftwerk's "Radioactivity") and those just on the periphery of our collective listening experience (Soft Cell's "The Girl with the Patent Leather Face," the Psychedelic Furs' "Sister Europe"). I think my favorite is his nervous-sounding version of Joy Division's "Isolation," which also appears, appropriately enough, on the Isolation EP Data-Bank-A released back in the '80s.

Too bad Cover Story was eighty-sixed from the DBA catalog, but I'm glad I got my copy before the lawyers arrived.

Also today:

49:05 In Strict Confidence, Collapse
49:05 Noise Unit, Strategy of Violence
New arrival! 59:37 Amnistia, Neophyte

49 minutes, 23 seconds

Sol Invictus
The Death of the West

The Death of the West catches Sol Invictus's Tony Wakeford in typical mid-period cranky mode. See, he's upset that globalization (read: America) and its obsession with money is destroying "The West" and any traditional notion of life in Europe. At least, that's my reading of his mood at this stage in his career. And I'm not entirely unsympathetic--no fan of globalization, I. But I've always felt Wakeford's material was strongest when he stayed away from complaining about broad political issues and trained his wobbly yet affecting voice on other things: his curious fixation on Love vs. Death, for example (as on his solo album Cupid & Death), or his periodic delving into history for inspiration (as on "Sawney Bean").

That said, there are a few songs I really like here, particularly "Our Lady of the Wild Flowers" and "Come, Join the Dance." Hell, even the title track (a really old song of Wakeford's that dates back to his days with Death in June) is kind of catchy, and I love that in its lyrics he cites the '80s movie Fame as being one more nail in the coffin of the West. Oh, Tony. If only you knew then that Fame was the very top of the hill and that the greased pig has quickened his sliding but is still nowhere near the bottom.

Also today:

49:21 C-Drone-Defect, Neural Dysorder Syndrome
49:18 Picatrix, Quaestio Prima
49:15 Ohgr, SunnyPsyOp
49:15 Putrefy Factor 7, Decay Station
49:14 Mediæval Bæbes, Mistletoe & Wine
49:11 Image Transmission, HLC
New arrival! 67:14 Pecadores, 10% for Jesus
New arrival! 66:55 Anima Mundi, Another World II
49:09 Collection d'Arnell-Andréa, Cirses des Champs
49:08 Attrition, The Jeopardy Maze
49:07 Front 242, Geography (CD 1 of 2)
49:07 Stellamara, Star of the Sea

49 minutes, 31 seconds

Der Arbeiter
Reflejos del Sol

I'm not sure what you'd call this kind of music--midtempo ambient? It's got a slight military-pop feel, à la later-period Allerseelen, but I wouldn't say the two projects' sound is at all similar. Acoustic guitar appears in some places, along with voice samples, bells, and assorted noises, unperpinned by electronic beats. It's calming, but there's just enough menace near the surface that demands a closer listen.

The first thing that struck me about this CD was the odd juxtaposition of the band and album names. "Der Arbeiter" primes you for some sort of harsh, militaristic noise music, perhaps along the lines of Feindflug or Panzer Division. But instead you get "Reflejos del Sol," which sounds like the title of an Enrique Iglesias song. Maybe it's just how German and Spanish sound to American ears, but the harshness of the band's name followed by the soft, flowing album title...well, it's a little funny.

I mean, imagine if Front Line Assembly had released an album titled Oops, I Did It Again. Actually, I heard that was supposed to be the original title for Tactical Neural Implant, but Rhys successfully changed Bill's mind just before the artwork went to press.

Also today:

49:30 Aidan Baker & Matt Borghi, Undercurrents
49:29 Love Spirals Downwards, Idylls
49:29 Monolith, Tribal Globe
49:27 Cawatana & Storm of Capricorn, Cawatana & Storm of Capricorn
49:25 Rajna, Yahili
49:24 Les Jumeaux, Feathercut
49:23 Aux Milieu des Arbres, Aux Milieu des Arbres

49 minutes, 43 seconds

Société Anonyme
SA 123

Apologies to Philippe Fichot, but Société Anonyme has to be the ugly duckling of all Die Form side projects. Dull and unimaginative, this CD just seems to plod along using the same tinny drum-machine rhythm for each track. It's worth noting that this is the only album he's recorded under this moniker. Never again, Philippe. Never again. Je vous en prie.

Anyway, today brings Part 3 of my series on artists who use total time in a creative (or, like me, anal-retentive) way on their CD releases. Yesterday I posted the contents of my e-mail conversation with Jan from X-Fusion, and Monday I published comments by Der Blutharsch mastermind Albin Julius. Today I bring you Joep Smaling, the man behind the Dutch ambient-industrial-neoclassical project Foundation Hope, whose most recent release, The Faded Reveries, came out late last year on the Cold Meat Industry label.

"I've noticed a time-related curiosity in both CDs released by Foundation Hope," I began, "and I was wondering if I might ask you about it and post your response on my blog. It seems that both A Call to All Redeemers and The Faded Reveries are mastered to exactly the same total time--51 minutes, 42 seconds. Can you tell me, was this by design, or just by coincidence? If by design, what is the significance of this running time? Should listeners read something important and meaningful in it?"

Alas, an answer proved elusive. "Remarkable site!" Joep responded. "In a perfect world everybody is owning and comparing my two releases. I suggest you puzzle a little further. What's the point in telling you? That's no fun."

Hmm.

Dear readers, it's a testament to my love for you--even though you're merely figments of my imagination, and I have the Web site traffic data to prove it--that I pored over Foundation Hope's Web sites and CD inserts to find the answer to Joep's "puzzle." However, I came up empty. Zip. Zilch. Nada.

I wrote back to Joep: "Thanks for your response--and for the kind words about the site. To answer your question, yes, the site is a testament of sorts to my obsessive-compulsive tendencies. Music rules my life in many ways, and so the site is also a tribute to the artists whose works I've collected and enjoyed over the years. I must admit, I'm clueless about the 51:42. I notice that the A Call to All Redeemers CD is cataloged as DC042, but surely that can't be the connection. Can it? I've looked at your Web site, your MySpace page, and the artwork on both CDs, and I can't find anything that would indicate the significance of 51:42. Perhaps you can offer me a small hint? I'm looking forward to your next release. Will Tunes for the Wounded also be mastered to the same total time?"

I'm still waiting for his response, but it's been several days now, and hope is waning. If I get one, I'll post it. In the meantime, anyone have any ideas on how to solve the puzzle?

Also today:

49:41 Koda, Movements
49:41 Monolith, Sub-System
49:39 Nurzery [Rhymes], Injection
49:38 Kayno Yesno Slonce, Chakruk
49:36 Mediavolo, Soleil Sans Retour
49:35 Snow in China, Electromensch
New arrival! 71:48 Panzer Division, From Normandy and Beyond
49:33 Darkwood & Chaos As Shelter, Lapis
49:32 Prager Handgriff, Maschinensturm

49 minutes, 51 seconds

Single Gun Theory
The Monkey's Mask

Yesterday I began Part 1 of a three-part series on bands that do curious things with the total time of their CD releases. Today brings Part 2--my e-mail conversation with Jan from the German electro-industrial outfit X-Fusion and its alternate personality, Noisuf-X. It's worth mentioning that despite the demonic sound of his music, Jan seems like an awfully nice guy. (Maybe there's an inverse relationship between personality and musical style? If that's true, then James Taylor is probably a raging asshole.)

Anyway, on to the brief interview, conducted last week via e-mail. "I've noticed that nearly all X-Fusion and Noisuf-X releases are mastered to the exact minute," I began. "In other words, their total time amounts to a certain number of minutes, with zero seconds. For example, Beyond the Pale is 68 minutes, zero seconds; Demons of Hate is 67:00 (first disc) and 69:00 (second disc); Dial D for Demons is 66:00; and so on. What significance does this have? Should we read something into the total time of each CD? Or is it just an inside joke?"

Responded Jan: "I bet you're the first one who noticed the thing with the total time of my CDs. I'm really a perfectionist in all areas of my music and try to do my best to get a perfect result. And it's my aim do to everything by myself: music, mixing, mastering, Web sites, cover, lyrics, etc. Sure, you can't be perfect in all areas, but I try to be. And I think a CD in a CD player looks better with an exact time. So there's not really a deeper sense. I only love to work on the details of my releases."

I have to admit that my first reaction to Jan's answer was one of disappointment. As with Albin from Der Blutharsch, I was looking for a more symbolic, allegorical answer. But as my increasingly Buddhist wife would say, by having these expectations I created my own suffering. And anyway, now I see Jan's answer as explaining something very akin to what I'm doing here--taking a certain obsessive-compulsive impulse and putting it in the service of something (hopefully) creative. He's exacting. I can understand that.

I next asked him about the future of the CD as a medium for music: "Are you concerned that downloadable music (with its emphasis on songs, not necessarily albums) will soon make the CD obsolete?"

"Downloads for money aren't as popular as you might think," he said. "In the mainstream it's way more popular. Only illegal downloads are popular in our scene. So if an underground band wants to survive or make a little money with it, they have to produce more commercial music: danceable, 125-140 BPM, silly techno melodies, standard arrangements, etc. And a lot of bands are doing this nowadays. That's why we have so many bad and same-sounding releases with uninspired, soulless music. So if no one can stop these illegal downloads, our scene is lost and the underground music will be razed in the future."

Tomorrow: Part 3 in the series, a cryptic chat with Joep from the Dutch ambient-industrial project Foundation Hope.

Also today:

49:51 Various artists, Sturmgewitter Ziehn Durchs Land
49:50 8kHz Mono, Monochromator
49:49 Der Blutharsch, When All Else Fails!
49:48 Death in June, The Guilty Have No Past
New arrival! 64:50 Dolls of Pain, Slavehunter
49:48 Photophob, Digitalis
49:43 Current 93, Of Ruine or Some Blazing Starre
49:43 FDH, Disseminare

50 minutes, 5 seconds

Pow[d]er Pussy
Six Ways from Sunday

A few weeks ago, I wrote about some curiosities I'd noticed regarding the total time of certain artists' CDs. I mentioned three bands: Der Blutharsch, almost all of whose CDs are mastered to the same number of minutes as seconds; Foundation Hope, whose only two CD releases are both mastered to exactly 51 minutes and 42 seconds; and X-Fusion, whose CDs are cut to the minute--that is to say, each one contains zero seconds, just a nice round number of minutes.

So last week I wrote to each of these artists to query them on their quirks. It's an odd question to pester them about, but they were all kind enough to respond, some more in-depth than others. In a couple of cases, I also asked them about their opinions regarding CDs versus downloaded music, another topic I have some interest in.

This week, I'll post their responses to my questions. Today, let's begin with Albin Julius from Der Blutharsch.

"I've noticed that nearly all your CDs are mastered such that the number of minutes equals the number of seconds," I wrote to Albin. "For example, the first album is 38 minutes, 38 seconds; The Pleasures Received in Pain is 51:51, When All Else Fails! is 49:49, and so on. Should we read something significant in this? Why do you do it?"

"It became a tradition since the very first album," Albin responded. "We now call it 'magic number.' "

A pretty cryptic answer--but it indicates that perhaps the symmetrical total time of their first CD release was a happy accident. And they simply decided to continue observing the "magic number" after that serendipitous event.

Albin had a more thorough answer for my follow-up question: "What do you think is the future of the CD as a means of delivering music?" I asked him. "Are you concerned that downloadable music (with its emphasis on songs, not necessarily albums) will soon make the CD obsolete?"

"Unfortunately, yes," he responded. "I think younger people already don't have the relation to CDs or vinyl as we older people have. This is sad, because with downloading music, people are more song-oriented and have no feeling for a complete album with all its flows, and they have no idea about the package, etc. But I think if bands do nice artwork and take care to package it well, some people will always buy CDs or whatever format exists in the future. As well, I notice that vinyl is coming back more and more. I think more dangerous is that many people do not buy music but think it should be free."

Tomorrow: the results of my e-mail conversation with Jan from X-Fusion.

Also today:

50:03 This Morn' Omina, The Future Has Taken Root in the Present
50:02 Raison d'Être, Requiem for Abandoned Souls
50:00 UnterArt, Noise & Grace
49:57 Desiderii Marginis, Strife
49:57 Suicide Commando, Mindstrip
New arrival! 73:49 Allerseelen, Hallstatt
49:56 Anchorage, Tranquilly the Maelstrom Starts
49:55 E-Craft, Electrocution
49:53 Leæther Strip, Fit for Flogging
49:52 Vomito Negro, The New Drug
49:51 Nebelkorona, Reminiszenzen an das Morgenrot/Relikte des Abendrotes
49:51 Nerve Filter, Linear

50 minutes, 9 seconds

Negative Format
Static

I'm taking care of a friend's house while he's on vacation--you know, checking for packages left by the front door, watering plants, that sort of thing. I stop by once a day. To fool burglars, he's left lights on, and set the radio on a timer so that it turns on at different points during the day. (Are burglars fooled by this? Any burglars reading this blog? If so, please comment!)

Anyway, when I stopped by the place yesterday, the radio was on and apparently tuned to a Christian-rock station. As soon as I breached the threshold, I was greeted with a loud chorus of "Our god is an awesome god."

I didn't bother to water the plants. I just retraced my steps out of the house, got back in my car, and resumed listening to Tyske Ludder.

Also today:

50:08 Forseti, Erde
50:08 Skinny Puppy, Brap (CD 1 of 2)
50:07 Collection d'Arnell-Andréa, Villers-aux-Vents
50:07 Werkraum, Unsere Feuer Brennen!
50:06 Ab Ovo, Empreintes
50:05 Morrissey, Ringleader of the Tormentors

50 minutes, 25 seconds

Painbastard
Skin on Fire

It's funny--Painbastard seemed like such an upstart band a few years ago, and before you knew it, they'd put out four releases. Weird. I guess I can remember feeling that way about :Wumpscut: and Velvet Acid Christ too. By the time you'd absorbed their debuts, they'd already produced another two CDs. Prolific? Or is this music just easier to make than, say, your typical indie rock?

I've asked this question before here; it's something I often wonder about. But it might be the wrong question. It's equating "difficult to make" with "quality," and that's ridiculous. By that criterion, a Turner landscape would be considered "better" than a Pollock drip painting. And I don't think any serious person in the visual arts looks at those works that way.

By the same token, I'm loath to begin comparing the process by which, say, Steve Roach creates his ambient albums with the one Sting (yuck, by the way) uses to schlep out the music he wants to release. It's irrelevant to the art. (Or the schlock, in Sting's case.)

Wow, a lot of Sting hostility this morning. I think it must be because a bunch of my coworkers--almost all of them, I think--at the World's Most Boring Software Company® went to see the Police reunion show the other night. If I somehow ever get mixed up in international terrorism and the CIA puts me in Gitmo, all they have to do is play Sting or the Police, and I'll tell them whatever they want to know. Just stop the music, for the love of God.

Also today:

50:24 Rajna, Ishati
50:20 :Wumpscut:, Embryodead
50:19 Stahlfrequenz, Erstschlag
50:18 Autour de Lucie, Faux Mouvement
50:17 Dargaard, Rise and Fall
50:15 Desiderii Marginis, Deadbeat
New arrival! 67:12 Prometheus Burning, Influenza
50:12 Tyske Ludder, Sojus
50:12 Xmal Deutschland, Viva

50 minutes, 33 seconds

Estampie
Crusaders

Following up from yesterday's post, I'm still waiting to hear back from Foundation Hope. If I don't hear by Monday, I'll go ahead without their response. By that time, I'll have lost hope in Foundation Hope. I'll have no further foundation of hope that I'll hear from Foundation Hope. OK, I'll stop now.

I really like the version of "Palästinalied" that Estampie perform on this album, by the way. I think it's my favorite version of the song. Maybe it was meant to be sung with deep male vocals, and not by an ethereal-operatic female singer, as Qntal performs it. Then again, even on this version, the burly voices give way to a (male?) falsetto voice in the second verse, and that doesn't bother me at all.

I guess I just fucking love this song.

Also today:

50:32 Suicide Commando, Stored Images
50:31 Combichrist, What the F**k Is Wrong with You People? (CD 2 of 2)
50:31 First Human Ferro, Guernica Macrocosmica
50:30 Parzival, Deus Nobiscum
50:29 A Challenge of Honour, Seven Samurai
50:29 Miriam, Scents
50:29 Pulse Legion, Evolve
New arrival! 64:28 ReAdjust, Statement
New arrival! 60:29 Wavefall, Huge Frustration
50:27 Wai Pi Wai, Wai Pi Wai

50 minutes, 39 seconds

Dargaard
In Nomine Aeternitatis

A while back I promised I'd get in touch with a few bands who do curious things with the total running times on their CDs. I thought it'd be interesting to ask them about it and post their responses here. Well, I'm pleased to report that that day draws nearer. I've written to three bands--Der Blutharsch, Foundation Hope, and X-Fusion--and I've heard back from two of them. Once I get the third response, I'll reveal what they all told me.

Can you feel the excitement?

Also today:

50:39 Ginormous, The Endless Procession
50:37 Controlled Collapse, Injection
50:35 Regard Extrême, Vague à l'Âme
50:35 X Marks the Pedwalk, Human Desolation
50:34 Chineseblack, Monstersushi

50 minutes, 46 seconds

Westwind
Harvests of Steel

I have to admit, it's a little disheartening to realize that I've been working on this project for nearly six months, and I'm still only in the 50-minute range of my CD collection. Shouldn't I be much farther along? I'm listening to music nearly every minute I can--in car trips (even short ones), while I get dressed in the morning, while I work, while I read--and yet I'm not making the kind of progress I thought I would have by now.

Of course, when you receive new CDs in the mail each week, the collection tends to, uh, grow. Maybe the solution is for me to ask all the artists I listen to to put a moratorium on releasing any new music until I'm finished with this project?

Also today:

50:45 Dense Vision Shrine, Magic & Mystery
50:45 Estampie, Fin Amor
50:42 Siva Six, Rise New Flesh
50:41 Attrition, 3 Arms and a Dead Cert
50:41 Un Défi d'Honneur, Verdun 1916
50:41 Sol Invictus, In a Garden Green
50:40 Data-Bank-A, Empty

50 minutes, 59 seconds

Violent Entity
Mechanized Division

I was reading the other day somewhere that music retailers are sounding the alarm that this Christmas season may be the last hurrah for the CD. After that, market forces will compel the industry to abandon the format and focus its sales efforts on downloadable music. Now, this could be merely crying wolf too early, but there's probably a hint of truth to the prediction.

And yet I continue to invest in CDs. Which, to tell you the truth, is starting to give me anxiety. Is it the modern-day equivalent of hoarding typewriter ribbons at the dawn of the PC age? No, probably not. At least you can feed CDs into your computer and rip the music into MP3 files; you couldn't exactly reuse the typewriter ribbons on anything except another typewriter.

But still, the CDs take up a lot of space--I'm on the verge of having to buy another six-foot-tall CD shelf, my fifth--and once they're no longer the coin of the realm, so to speak, what will I do with them? Rip the music, then sell them? Who will buy them?

The CD is dead! Long live the CD.

Also today:

50:57 Kill Memory Crash, American Automatic
50:55 In the Nursery, Lingua
50:55 Letum, The Entrance to Salvation
50:54 Schyzzo.com, Interfear's Network
50:53 Null Factor, Purity
50:52 Kattoo, Megrim
50:51 Raison d'Être, In Sadness, Silence, and Solitude
50:50 In Strict Confidence, Herzattacke
New arrival! 73:37 Steve Roach, Still
New arrival! 73:31 Steve Roach, First Light
New arrival! 73:14 Steve Roach, Sleep Chamber
50:50 Schattenschlag, Twisted Mind of Perversion
50:49 Thanacid, Morphine Soda
50:47 Laharis, Unpolitical Alchemy
50:47 Selaxon Lutberg, Cold House of Love

51 minutes, 9 seconds

Dead Can Dance
Dead Can Dance

It's worth noting that the 4AD label's roster back in the '80s, when this album was released, was incredibly diverse. Much more so, I think, than many other so-called indie labels, either back then or now. It's hard to even categorize Dead Can Dance's music, much less match it up with the driving alt-rock of the Pixies, the shimmering beauty of Cocteau Twins, or the warped soul music of Wolfgang Press and Colourbox. And how about the fusion-jazz of Dif Juz? Where does that fit in?

I suppose a lot of 4AD bands shared a kind of nervous postpunk energy, and you can certainly hear some of that on Dead Can Dance's first album, but the label's output in the '80s was really a reflection of Ivo Watts-Russell's varied tastes. Clearly, he heard something interesting in each of these bands, and even though they sounded almost nothing alike, it somehow felt right that they should be on the same label. Watts-Russell wasn't so much a label head as a curator, and 4AD in the '80s wasn't so much a label as an exhibit, a proposal for a new way of thinking about what popular music could be, both sonically and aesthetically.

I know the label is still active, but the '80s were really its salad days, and I always love going back to those recordings and cocooning myself in that world, those sounds. Different, yet together.

Also today:

51:09 Sol Invictus, The Angel
51:09 Stahlwerk 9, Oradour
51:08 Plastic Noise Experience, Transmitted Memory (CD 2 of 2)
51:07 Corvus Corax, Seikilos
51:02 Apoptose, Blutopfer
51:02 Vinterriket, Lichtschleier
51:02 VNV Nation, Empires
51:01 Faun, Renaissance
New arrival! 62:19 Apoptose, Schattenmädchen
New arrival! 56:06 Desiderii Marginis, Seven Sorrows
51:01 Love Spirals Downwards, Ardor
51:01 Schattenschlag, Gefühlskalt
50:59 Inure, Subversive
50:59 Rajna, Otherwise

51 minutes, 11 seconds

Pressure Control
Vamp

Remember me? I'm that dude who blogs here. You could be forgiven if you forgot. It has been over a week, after all. I was with the lovely Mrs. Total Time, in decidedly unlovely New York, with a detour to Connecticut to see my wife's sister graduate from nursing school. So that meant I had to deal with not only my own family but also my wife's. Oh, and 90-degree weather, with 95% humidity.

One thing made it all bearable: pizza. And going to a Mets game. And seeing my 1-year-old nephew. OK, so that's three things.

Anyway, it wasn't a terrible trip--certainly not as bad as I'm making it out to be--and we did get to do some fun stuff on our own. But I missed listening to music. So it's kind of good to be back, even if it also means vacation is over.

Also today:

51:10 Sol Invictus, King & Queen