Various Artists, Mandala, Volume 1: A Chinese Whisper of Drone Music (3

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After launching their new label in a big way, with the gigantic full-length compilation CD "I, Mute Hummings" and its complement "Mute Scribbles", Tobias Fischer and Mirko Uhlig launch another big project in a more demure manner.

"Chinese whispers" is a children´s game which where I grew up, we called "broken telephone" - all the kids sit in a circle and one whispers a phrase into the ear of another, who repeats it to the next child, and so on round the circle. Normally, by the time the last child has uttered what has made it to him, the words have become totally transformed into a new, and hopefully hilariously absurd, phrase.

Here, the aim is the creation of a new artist and a piece greater than the sum of the four parts, because who can say for certain where one´s work ends and the next begins? Call it an "almost differentiated mass" - a string of discrete voices each identifiable as its own smeared into one clearly collective effort. Uhlig, Fischer (identified as Feu Follet on the front of the tiny cover, by his proper name on the back), Keith Berry and guitarist Jörg Eger all contribute, and the piece drifts serenely above a widely varied and colourful landscape before ending by bending a few suggestive twangs on acoustic guitar, these cowboys riding off into the sunset. Until next time, pardners. And I do mean that sincerely; I´m certainly looking forward to the next volumes in the series.

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