Weird Shit...



Kevin Drumm - Sheer Hellish Miasma

It's worth noting that Miasma is defined as: A noxious atmosphere or influence; If you start listening in the middle of one the two main 20 minute long tracks by table top experimental guitar player, Kevin Drumm, that is exactly how you would describe the 'music', pure hell! But give it time, once your ears stop bleeding, it sort of makes sense - definitely not for the fainthearted. Top Comedy moments: the 'crank it!' instruction in the liner notes, and the fact that someone is credited with playing trumpet on 'Inferno', sure - there's a trumpet in there.



OVe-NaXx - Bullets From Habikino City HxCx

Pretty obvious DJ /rupture feel to proceedings here, it's easy to see why Mr /rupture picked this album as the first release for his record label - they both enjoy a bit of noise in there music, and they both use a ragga-esque dance hall beat to structure there songs. OVe-NaXx (I have a feeling the capitalisation is important) seems to also love a bit of grandieur in his music, whether it's chopping up heavy metal riffs or spicing a bit of classical music into proceedings. I like this, makes me want to listen to DJ /rupture more though, which probably isn't quite the intention of this CD... Anyway, if you haven't heard of OVe-NaXx or DJ /rupture, but you have heard of Squarepusher, say, you'll be on fairly safe (all be it a bit noisy) ground.



Urban Renewal Program Supplement 1.5

A little break from the weird shit with some hip-hop. Urban Renewal Program was an excellent compilation, released about 2 years ago, of modern hip hip from the likes of Defniitive Jux and Themselves interspersed with tunes from more instrumental producers like DJ Food and Tortoise. Now Chocolate Industries have followed it up with a mini sequel, the title describes it's intentions perfectly. Top tunes: the bhangra-esque remix (Note to self: I really need to own more Bhangra) of Mos Def & Diverse's Wylin Out, Aesop Rock doing a fine remix of one of his own tunes again, and the lovely gentle 'folktronica?' from The Timeout Drawer.



Fennesz - Venice

I'm a bit self concious of the fact that I occasionaly go a bit 'aging hippy' over music, the way I sound like I'm constantly fawning over some of it with cries of "it's fucking beautiful maaaaaaan". But seriously this is! There's a fantastic term for what Christian Fennesz does on the Pitchforkmedia review: neo-shoegaze laprock, pretty much spot on: heavily processed guitar, glitches of electronic noise, but somehow very emotional and uplifting unlike many other examples of electronica. A truly beautiful album.



Good Night Music To Sleep By

New (well, sort of new, it was scheduled to come out about 3 years ago!) compilation from tigerbeat6, this one has a bit of a twist though - rather than the usual label/tour showcase this one has a theme: basically it's music specifically designed to fall asleep to. So, no copyright infringing pop-music sampling, no insane beats, very few glitches - it's just warm, gentle, pulsating drones. The trouble is it's difficult to review this properly as it's designed to be listened to whilst semi-concious, however to the slightly more concious frame of mind that I'm in at the moment it sounds rather nice.