COLLECTION

Jester (courtesy of the Sonic Boom website)

SENTRAX have established themselves as a patron of the Art of Weird over the years, but, due to the esoteric nature of the music they released, things looked grim, and the end was practically nigh. Then a chance meeting with PIGFACE's MARTIN ATKINS led to them being given a new lease of life, with the promise of about three albums released a month. This compilation is therefore both the State Of The Art As It Is, and a taster for those who wish to investigate further. And, if the artists on the album ARE a more diverse bunch than ever before, then the quality just seems to resonate. TRENT REZNOR's favourite group COIL open the album, under one of their alternative guises as ELpH. A quality piece of madness if ever there was - rhythmic attitude clashes with bizarre composition with this piece. They've lost none of their skill at throwing the listener curves. PROJECT DARK take the concept of Drum 'n' Bass into a whole direction with this full on tribal thrash. What throws it into a new and exciting direction is the full-on firework display halfway through, all explosions and whistles. Very long and very tasty. MICK HARRIS takes a rare step towards full frontal experimentation, leaving the LULL tranquility and SCORN beats behind for a naive and minimal sonic dub full of ddl'd percussion and filtered high pitches. A sonic smorgasbord. Very abstract and not really comparable with anything else the man is or was involved in. SCREWTAPE play a smooth, warm music which kind of spreads itself somewhere between Dub, Drum 'n' Bass and easy listening Lounge music while being not exactly any of these. TACTILE experiment, as ever, in the ocean of tonal waves. Along the lines of ANOTHER HEADACHE, but far more advanced and darkly moody, they constantly change a simplistic unstructured sonic journey. Not unlike LULL in many ways, but far more raw and unhoned. GOLD WATER unashamedly steal the style SCORN used for the slower pieces on the "Evanescence" album, a medium paced, kinda slowed HipHop Dub with dark danceability. An excellent track which does follow in another's footsteps, but who can blame them - SCORN did redefine Ambient Dub! Next up comes a track by yours truly - where again on a dark theme one is taken through a "tunnel" of sound, occasionally being able to touch the sides with vibrating resonance (it needs to be played loud enough to experience this). Of course this is my wife's view and she may be a little biased - she would never say that it needs to be shorter. CREATURE BOX's impending (now gathering dust) album, we can only pray sees light of day. This track, more than any of the others shows that even an odd collaboration like EYELESS IN GAZA and TACTILE can create something wonderful. TACTILE's tones were always rich and varied, and hence a wonder to work with (I know - I submitted a few remixes for the album "Recurrence & Intervention". This piece, noisy and comparable with no-one I can think of, is probably for me the highlight of the album. Weird, wonderful, full of passion. Campaign for the full album's release! MIKA VAINIO, taking noises far more angry than early PAN(A)SONIC and creating a low level mass of busy distortion and fx which hangs in the air like a complex knot of varied noise, looping and weaving around one another. SPACEMARKER nod towards early rhythmic CABARET VOLTAIRE, Dubby and alive with reflections of percussion around a stumpy, four-square drum rhythm. COH is apparently the project of a Russian sound artist called IVAN PAVLOV. A metamorphic tonal mood piece, it throbs and warps in waves, something like a cross between TACTILE and early SUICIDE. Finally, the human voice is heard for the first time since the yells of the PROJECT DARK album, this time in the form of LITTLE ANNIE (formerly ANNIE ANXIETY) who orates about thirteen things she did today. Short, truncated and in many ways a perfect end to this varied grab-bag album.Every artist here was supposed to have released material through SENTRAX / INVISIBLE - it never came to be. So a bit of a dead end really, but still an album worth seeking out. Antony Burnham & Liz Burnham (courtesy of Metamorphic Journeyman website)

A certain branch of invertebrate Electronica never went big on structure in the first place. Acid has eroded the bones of the music of "Interiors", where beats dissolve in expanding pools of time and the clock on the studio wall melts before musician's eyes. COIL alter egos ELpH set the tone, generating a dark, rich primal ooze teeming with life, even if it is not life as we know it. Other twitchers o note include MICK HARRIS, again (here in self-deprecatory mode? - "No Stoic Dub"), TACTILE, MIKA VANIO and big-hearted songstress LITTLE ANNIE.

Reviewed in THE WIRE 175