Aphex Twin – Druqks (Warp/Sire): Richard James is one of electronic music most successful chameleons. His work has ranged from the most lush of ambient soundscapes to the cheesiest dancefloors to the most experimental breakbeats around. “Drukqs” visits these three places as well as many others. Almost 30 tracks are packed into the 2 CDs in this set. The music is as schizophrenic as Aphex Twin gets, and the track listings and order back this up. You can go from an almost silence ambient track into some Squarepusher-style breakbeats is just two tracks! The song titles are mostly jumbles of letters and words, so don’t look at them for insight. Add in some cheesy vocorder stuff and you got a very strange but intriguing album.
Final Grade: B+
Atlas Strategic – Rapture, Ye Minions! (Global Symphonic): Sounding like the offspring of DEVO and Tom Waits, Atlas Strategic are a truly strange and innovative band. Seeing as they come out of Victoria (home of NoMeansNo), this should come as no surprise. “Rapture, Ye Minions!” has moments of balls-out rock, Moog heavy new wave, pure soul belting and mind-rending R&B angst, sometimes all in the same song. Add in some spy-theme style surf rock, and you got one tasty musical melange. Music to pull wings off of flies by.
Final Grade: B
The Blue Pine – S/T (Global Symphonic): Oddball slacker rock is a given in this strange musical continuum that we call college radio. Vancouver’s Blue Pine add their own distinct and dissonant stamp to the ever growing oddness. With song titles like “Finger Food with Dink Hand”, “The Milkmaid Queen” and “Baboon that Ate the Railroad”, you know you are in for a strange ride. The howl and sparse guitar of Carey Mercer are alternately touching and highly annoying. The band definitely puts a smile on your face, but after a few listens, that smile often becomes a grimace. If you dig the eels, Mayor McCA or even Beck, you will like The Blue Pine. Their form of sonic sugar is definitely an acquired taste…
Final Grade: C
Creon – Build Your Own Thanatron (Independent): Dark creepy proto-industrial from the Maritimes. Corey Graves is the man behind Creon, a sound I haven’t heard since I first tuned into Frontline Assembly. Filled with obscure samples and droning, ominous electronics, Creon’s influences are clearly from the earliest days of industrial music. The feel of Cabaret Voltaire, Einstruzende Neubauten and early Front 242 is all over this disk. I love this stuff! This reminds me of how powerful industrial music can be, or was, before Trent Reznor butchered it seven years ago. Another great Canadian indy act, get this if you can! (C. S. Graves, www.angelfire.com/creon/disc.htm)
Final Grade: B+
Flanagan, Gary – Dressed in Black (Independent): Gary Flanagan, creator of the Nightwaves ‘zine, has no shortage of talent. “Dressed in Black” is a disk of “experimental” material, but I’m not sure exactly what that label is supposed to mean. This disk is full of straight-on, mostly minimal electronics, drawing influences from all over the board. Flanagan is a synth-pop artist with a strong passion for the classic late-70s and 80s stuff, and there is no shortage of that material here. He does so bang on OMD tunes (“January Jones”), Kraftwerk (“Transcontinental”) and Zoviet France style drone-noodling (“Shortwave”). A lot of the material stays upbeat and poppy. In fact, the darker numbers just don’t work. “The Slaughtered Calf” sounds like something Bauhaus left on the cutting room floor. If you like your electronics filtered through a truly gifted pop sensibility, then this disk is for you. Hell, this is better than his first disk. Grab it and buy it! (Gary Flanagan, 23 4th St., Rothesay, NB, Canada, E2G 1W7, [email protected])
Final Grade: B+
Pariah Project – Desolation (Skeptic): Yet another Canadian band taking a decidedly un-Canadian approach to music. The Pariah Project are a Vancouver duo who sound like they should be coming from the middle of England. This 3-song EP is dripping in British-style trip-hop, the likes of Massive Attack and Portishead are capable of producing. At to that a disturbing gothic undertone and you have some really interesting music. The vocalist Taryn Laronge has a wonderful range. Her voice is slightly tinny though, hard to say if that’s a result of production or natural. Regardless, this is not a polished effort, but interesting music rarely is. Check em out if you can. ([email protected])
Final Grade: B
Various Artists – Compound (Sulphur): Sulphur, the record label headed by Robin Rimbaud aka Scanner, has put together a really neat compilation of its artists here. The label is home to some great funky electronics as well as some nice minimalist/jazz stuff too. Most of the bands here are unknown, but there are some better known names (2 Lone Swordsmen, DJ Spookey, Future Pilot AKA). It’s the funkier stuff that stands out here. Dstar’s “Mirror Image” and Future Pilot AKA vs. Kim Fowley’s “Night Flight to Memphis” show off what music can be if rap and funk electronics are mixed. Scanner himself shows up on two tracks, with DJ Spooky on the jazzy “Guanxi” and as his more accessible and sampleless alias Scannerfunk. Most comps of this type are hit and miss, but there are more hits than misses here.
Final Grade: A-