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Issue 25 . July 2001
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Industrial, Ambient, Gothic/Ethereal, Experimental by eEL •
An unstoppable, lost lapse in time can occur at any point. In my case it was last month. My end of the technology ring was broken like an everlasting gobstopper that's smashed to pieces when you open the pack... I had been shut down as if I were the first one to be visited by the computer repo man. At any rate, I'm willing to start anew, or at least where I left off. All I ask for is your undivided, sitting-in-front-of-the-TV-on-Saturday-morning-when-you-were-kids attention. This will be brief—but it should get the seed planted in your head to gestate and grow into the purchase of this blooming music. Place the NoiSe in your brain:: Mira / 'Apart' A second full length release for Mira hit the shelves on June 5th. Seated on the Philadelphia-based darkwave/ambient record label, Projekt, the band brings us to another realm of modern music. With soothing female vocals, the singer invokes an undying desire to find the light when all seems to be dismal—like a calming wave of emotion. 'Apart' can bring the light to anyone. Endanger / 'Motion' Dancing Ferret Discs brings to us a new release from the duo that is Endanger. The CD 'Motion' is an onslaught of precision programming by Marc Pollmann and deep, vocals by Rouven Walterowicz. Slick Idiot / 'DickNity' After the critically acclaimed band KMFDM split in 1999, En Esch and Guenter Schultz didn't want to call it quits. Forming Slick Idiot, they continued the ideals which were one of industrial music's all-time great sounds. Behind The Scenes / 'Homeless' This new band brings us electronics with harmonious relishing and grooving guitars. Released in the states by Dancing Ferret Discs, their album 'Homeless' includes three extra remixed tracks by the likes of the Crüshadows and SHOK. Uncle Vito / 'Tao Of Vito' Listening to the wandering spirit of an improv jazz/groove set is like watching a rubber ball bounce down a flight of stairs—it never takes the same path. This brings us to the world of Uncle Vito. The art of the album is in its composition: all 17 tracks were basically discussed, then recorded as if the band were in your living room playing live, the way music was meant to be, raw. No compression, overdubs or production effects were added, only the raw untouched art. Lowsunday / 'Elesgiem' Soon-to-be-giants, darkwave band Lowsunday’s sound is an ethereal forest of guitars and lyrics alongside beats of a waterfall of drums, their latest recording an enligthening journey which can sometimes calm the body. Riff and rhythm combinations break the clouds, and vocals stream down like sunbeams from the heavens. This four-piece could very well be the band that gives the music world a push into the realm of darkwave. <<Show Off Your dARk Side>> dARkBRAiN design & illustration No Gimmicks, No Rip Offs!! Every order comes with a free 'NoiSe' bumper |
by Slave •
laughing colors
If you’ve been reading Unsung Hero, you know that Baltimore’s Laughing Colors are at the heart of the heart of the mid-Atlantic scene, and you know they’ve sold a ton of records for an indie band. And if you check out ‘Nothing But Sky’—and believe me, you want to—you’ll immediately realize something else: with their new release, no matter how many discs they’ve sold to date, that number’s about to double and triple. If you watch MTV in between checking out regional music, you probably think of your favorite local band and think that there’s no good reason they’re not signed. Laughing Colors have a great reason: they’re just not interested in it. Music by Laughing Colors, lyrics by David Tieff: On “I am the Rain” (among others) Tieff shows that he could sing like David Lee Roth if he wanted to, but LC have created an original sound to back up Tieff’s poetry: “I’m always feeling like I’m dealing with my past/I hope the future holds a monumental contrast/When all those people who’ve been ripping at my dream/will gather under me and be my trampoline.” “Roll into the Light” might sound just a little like studio experimentation, but it’s a live band, and the non-stop rock disc suggests that, in the future and present, Laughing Colors may know no bounds. Pristinely and flawlessly produced, any cut from this disc would blend perfectly into any halfway progressive rock station. JULIAN FIST Handling production duties on Julian Fist’s sophomore disc, ‘Pushing Audio Platinum’, Central-PA veterans Bret Alexander and Paul Smith of Badlees fame help keep the flame alive for the next generation, lending a hand as the group craft respectable melodies on a foundation of solid rock. The songs range from energetic riffs to hard ballads, lyricist Scott Michajluk writing his way through personal loss. Drummer Kyle Taylor keeps things moving, guitarist Mitch Taylor and bassist Troy Lehman contributing their share to the not-too-heavy metal accounts of frustration, escape, and release. But the story doesn’t end there. “How Do I” sees the crew experimenting with new sounds, incorporating drum loops to back a soaring theme of emotional ambiguity: “Can you see me crying/ crying over you/ Can you see me laughing at what I once knew/ and I sit and wonder/ wonder just what I’m going to do.” Area fan favorites are growing into something bigger than a rock band. Check it out. Spine
The title ‘Non-Violent Offender’ is a blatant lie, and if you haven’t heard of DC’s Spine, it’s because they’re illegal in four states, with legislation pending in two more—which is part of the reason the brute-funk-metal four-piece from this great nation’s capitol found distribution through West-Coast Revo Records. Everybody and their mom lists Run-DMC and Biohazard as musical influences, but few of them pull it off like this. Female bassist Lady J hammers out one bass line after another. Fred Durst and Jonathan Davis have taken to talking about their feelings, but Spine’s Johnny 3 Legs isn’t likely to talk about his feelings unless he wants to punch you in the face. They may have the same influences as every other new metal band, but they just do it better. Like their crossover forefathers and unlike many of their peers who get airplay, Spine understand how to take an overdone form in a progressive direction, with tracks including “Reminder (Just When I Think),” “Muñquita,” and “Econoline.” Give it a listen, but guard your grill. >>guilty parties:: Fidel Feel-good funk from Maryland’s Fidel, gear-shifting multi-tempo high-harmonic seguing signatures. You wouldn’t think the East Coast could produce anything to compete with 311 & Sublime reggae-style-y, but you’d be wrong. Their sound even goes back further, echoing energetic early Police at times. The self-titled eight-song CD is 25 minutes of lip-rolling, fast-talking ferocity that reads as good as it sounds, like “Talkin’”: “Patience is a virtue/Sex they say is a sin/I’ve been waiting around so patiently/but she still won’t let me in.” Or “Paper Moon”: “I’ve been looking at a paper moon/for so long now/I’ve been eating off a plastic spoon/for so long now.” Smooth words, funny lyrics, hot licks, DJ action. In “Talkin’,” lyricist Hill worries that nobody’s listening. That won’t be the case with ‘Fidel’. And if they can improve on it live, you’re gonna want to see it. >>fidel brought to you by:
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edited by d.x. ferris •
buck 65
Serious students of art know that one of the better ways to add depth and resonance to their work is to tap into mythology. Hip hop is full is practicioners who just work on their flow and brag about the size of their cock. Canada’s Buck 65 did all three on “Centaur” from last year’s 'Vertex' LP, the only rap song to address the mixed blessings of being half man, half horse. This year, the prolific alt.hip-hop veteran comes at us again with 70 minutes of 'Man Overboard'. Forget Eminem’s Grammy; this is Nobel Peace Prize for Hip Hop material. • Ferris TOOL
From Maynard’s first extraterrestrial vocals to the final Tool-trademark psychotic final cut, there’s something scary about the disc. Steeped in numerology and occult, 'Lateralus' plays like a tantric orgasm, one go after another, CD-opening seven-minute “The Grudge” climaxing in one of rock history’s great guttral growls, possibly equal parts pain, ecstasy, and frustration. Through performance and production, the disc is like something not of this world, from another planet or dimension. Maynard described his successful side project as the sensitive, female yang to tool’s yin, and much of 'Lateralus' sounds as if the singer left much of his humanity in A Perfect Circle, here a black-magic borg in perfect harmony with the cold, mathematic, rhythm-driven prog rock. • Jay Chosser WALDECK
Austria’s Waldeck Dubby, atmospheric small-beat trip-hop triangulated between latter-day Massive Attack, Pole and the half of Moby’s 'Play' that doesn’t get radio play. Austrian international electronica figure teams with British vocalists siren Joy Malcolm (ex Incognito) and Brian Amos (Pressure Drop, Liquid) for a focused boutique soundtrack that whirls from one cut to another. Accessible highlights include sampled Chet Baker vocals on “This Isn’t Maybe,” and a cover of King Crimson’s “I Talk to the Wind.” Says the artist in the album’s press material: “The true stage presence of electronic music should be like a doctor’s waiting room— but it is not a doctor you are waiting for. It is yourself.” • Ferris RUBY She’s back, and she’s not so pissed
The five years between Weezer and Tool discs were tense at times but not interminable; there was always light at the end of the tunnel. The six years since Ruby’s 'Salt Peter' were more awkard for fans of the ex-Silverfish siren who helped establish trip hop as a distinct if amorphous genre: the possibility of a sequel was never clear. We can finally stop holding our breaths. Ruby's back, and remains in top form. The return is markedly less bitter than her last report from the trenches of the battle between the sexes, more groove, less slow hypno. Ruby keeps paces with everything that’s happened since 1995. Now closer to Cocteua Twins and Sade than to Tricky, Ruby sings sultry, mellow Amp grooves, reporting a second installment of intimacy, tension, bliss, and contempt. UK mixers including Christian Vogel, TM Schneider, and Mekon provide backing tracks that span the electronica spectrum. Look for a remix EP, 'Altered and Proud', later this month. So much better than no Ruby at all. • James Gatz WEEZER
Apparently, Weezer’s 1996 sophomore effort, ‘Pinkerton’, the followup to 1994’s multiplatinum smash ‘Weezer’, was a flop. Nobody told me. When the disc dropped, I was sharing a house with six fellow twenty-somethings, successfully extending the college lifestyle a few years after graduation. And when Weezer set off their second disc, pounding out “Tired of Sex,” Rivers Cuomo next effortlessly weaving Public Enemy lyrics into the slowly noodling “El Scorcho,” we all fell in love with the album. None of us got out much then, and it never occured to us that ‘Pinkerton’ was far from perfect. • DXF JOURNEY A sequel to 1980’s ‘Depature’? Not exactly, but a perfectly calibrated return to 80s power rock. Arguably that era’s greatest pure rock band, Journey return with a new lead singer Steve Augeri, the band’s third. At times, Augeri’s a dead ringer for Steve Perry (“Higher Place”), at times his own man (“All the Way “) and sometimes both (“Kiss Me Softly”).
“All the Way” is closer to Bad English than it is to “Don’t Stop Believin’,” but the disc is full of servicable arena numbers, romance in the place of 70s cocksure swaggering. The guys look a litle old for black leather pants, but they play as well as ever, turning in long-overdue wailing electric-guitar licks, pianesuqe keyboards, bombasting drums. ‘Arrival’ won’t disappoint anyone inclined to shell out their hard-earned entertainment dollar for a new Journey disc. It falls short of the band’s best material— but not by much. • Mitch Kramer SOPRANOS:
The prestige of the soundtrack has greatly declined since Pulp Fiction and Reality Bites, and it’s been years since anybody looked to a soundtrack as a pre-made mix-tape. 'The Sopranos: Peppers and Eggs' might not have been as eagerly anticipated as the series it accompanies, but now that the final shots are fading, the two-disc collection will keep the Sunday-night feel alive during the long wait until 2002’s season IV. Volume II is another electic mix of dark, moody rock, opera, and trip-hop. The classy compilation presents obscurities (Kasey Chambers, Vue), classics (Van Morrison, the Stones, Dylan), and tasteful experimentation (The Police mixed with Henry Mancini’s “Peter Gunn” theme) that, when all is said and done, don’t pale beside Frank Sinatra. Not listed but present is the A3 show theme, “Woke Up This Morning,” relegated to the end of disc 2, after four minutes of solid one-liners that alone are worth the price of admission. • DXF |
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