cancer_soul

texts

read cancer_soul's texts:

Black Lung

[ review of: Black Lung ]

Black Lung/�Profound and Sentimental Journey� (mcd)
Ant-Zen/Lowlands
This one�s scanning the lost horizon. With the Black Lung moniker as an instrumental outing of David Thrussell�s activist mind, �Fucking The Monsterous Music� as well as �The Universal Impasse� bend and distort their sound bits in a quite anarchistic way, yet manage to keep a fascinatingly natural (yet not always peaceful) feel. Wherever David Thrussell may go, darkness follows. But still there�s a light that never goes out, by �The Dawn of Love�. ***

Posted by cancer_soul at 15:21, 22 Jun 2004

Geogaddi by Boards of Canada (WarpCD101)

[ review of: Geogaddi by Boards of Canada (WarpCD101) ]

Boards of Canada/'Geogaddi' (cd/2lp)
Warp-Music 70/Zomba
Sometimes it just isn't what you'd expect it is. Sometimes it's more, sometimes it's less. More or less, 'Geogaddi' fails to meet those expectations. Even if the only valuable reason for this is not 'Geogaddi' itself but their candy-coated classic 'Music Has The Right To Children'. I mean, ask your dollies or your yellow bear and they'll confirm still preferring that album to fill the bedroom while you're out. Of course 'Geogaddi' is about the same kind of psychoacoustics as that magnum opus, but there's a slight darker and moodier touch throughout somehow. It's that strange and frightening undercurrent and a clear rhythmic development as well illustrating the production's grown more mature for sure. Some tracks even seem to be developed as musical palindromes with lots of reversed samples ('Beware The Friendly Stranger', 'Sunshine Recorder') or got a tongue-in-cheeky humour caught in subliminal messages like an empty track 23 completing a 66' 6"" album or the repeated referring to 1969 (a milestone year in that subculture of psychedelica). Of course there's numerous other elements somehow persisting on most of the BoC material, like the odd children singing, or references to the unconsciousness (like 'The Devil Is In The Details' explicitly does). Major (yet minor) drawback of the album is that such a lot of productions are too much like interludes, with 'Opening The Mouth' or 'Over The Horizon Radar' not drawing more than mere miniature sketches. As if Sandison and Eoin are understating their Art themselves. ****

Posted by cancer_soul at 15:16, 22 Jun 2004

Phonem

[ review of: Phonem ]

Phonem/'Ilisu' (cd)
Morr/Lowlands
'Ilisu' not only is about the politics of dancing but also focusses on the contested 'Ilisu' project of Turkey. With the building of a hydroelectric project flooding a vast Kurdish area, major ecologic as well as political and cultural impact would be imposed in the Tigris Valley while strategic control will be gained over the Kurdish guerilla. It's a theme only adding to the already uncomfortable and inquieting feel dominating Phonem's musical heritage - as 'Ilisu' also completes the triptych along with 'Phonetik' and 'Hydro Electric' and brings Elliot Perkin's Phonem alter ego to an end. In a final attempt to frame what Phonem was all about, the album's mainline is again about laptop wizardry, sculpturing tracks with winding melodies trying to beat down interfering rhythms. However, unless through the melodic distraction of 'Displacement' and the symbolic dramatic feel of 'War By Other Means', most of the material is a further abstraction of this restrained laphop formula. Freezeframing a unique initiative in something almost near to a glitch�. ***

Posted by cancer_soul at 15:13, 22 Jun 2004

more texts by cancer_soul