Sheen

It's been some time since I posted some music from KK Records, so here's a classic compilation - full of techno, harsh industrial beats and dark atmos.

Highlights include legendary Test Dept.'s excursions in electronics, plus classic stuff from artists already presented in this blog, like Uwe Schmidt's Lassigue Bendthaus project, PWOG, Riou, etc. The first CD focuses on technoid beats, the second one is more abstract and experimental in its sound.

VA - 1995 Sheen. Kk Records Compilation
CD1 - CD2
Info here.

Kraftwork @ Nu Skool Elektro 2

It's been a while since I did a solid electro post, so here's a compilation of robo breaks and nervous basslines with acid tweeks from all over Europe.

Contributions include a few tracks already posted before (by Scan X and A1 People), others by established artists like Scanner (*), Luke Slater, Carl Finlow (*), Stanny Franssen, Zzino, etc.; and a host of less known names of whom Ultradyne and Prozack are the only ones I knew and most of whom have disappeared ages ago.

Bad artwork and ridiculous titles are long-standing traditions for generic compilations like this one, solid soundwise but full of less known names - and we shouldn't like it otherwise. Awful covers scare away the hasty customers that don't reach the tracklist at all, leaving the CDs stored in dusty shelves, waiting for us to pick them up.

There was a Vol.1 (obviously...) that sounds promising, which I never managed to track down anyway.

VA - 1998 Kraftwork @ Nu Skool Elektro 2
CD1 - CD2
Info here.

Putting The Morr Back In Morrissey

I realized that the title's wordplay is lost on most ears nowdays. Anyway, I won't go on about that label that redefined contemporary electronic listening music by combining experimental sounds and techniques with indie pop and aesthetics, blah blah blah. I'm talking about Morr Music and similar stuff, of course - a scene mentioned many times before in this blog anyway (*,*,*,*,*,*).

The first CD mostly contains unreleased stuff, the second one remixes between label artists. Simply one of the best listening compilations I own - still sounds good as gold. Enjoy.

VA - 2000 Putting The Morr Back In Morrissey
CD1 - CD2
Info here.

I Don't Like Music

A tribute to Telex, the late '70s futuristic electro disco pop band from Belgium, from the likes of Carl Craig, Matthew Herbert, I:Cube, Ian O'Brien, Glenn Underground, Antony 'Shake' Shakir, etc. More or less a housey affair, contains some interesting covers and a few gems.


Telex - 1998 I Don't Like Music
Info here.

Thanks to Musicus, here's Vol.2 as well:

Telex - 1999 I (Still) Don't Like Music. Remixes Vol.2
Info here.

Thanx man.

P.S. First post 2010-04-21

10% File Under Burroughs

A tribute to William S. Burroughs, the most famous junkie ever. Or one of the most influencing contemporary artists, who incidentally left his mark on almost every aspect of expression concerning art in the second half of the 20th century; take you pick.

Unsurprisingly, a Sub Rosa release (also see the 'Hashisheen' post). CD1, named 'Beats', focuses on electronic works influenced by his work; heavy and dubby experimentations, mostly illbient-like stuff. CD2 ('Beat') captures the sound he and his buddies enjoyed, created and/or promoted; expect a lot of archival material, ancient chants, poetry reading and similar stuff.

VA - 1996 10% File Under Burroughs
CD1 - CD2
Info here.

I found out that a WSB documentary is on its way...

Survival's Our Mission

I know a lot of people dished this one out since it didn't contained a new 'Acid Trax'-like epic. Still for me it was a sincere album, a testimony of where our music came from and where it was going (at the time).
PHuture 303 are the legendary Phuture of course, here releasing on the infamous Music Man Records. Expect relentless rhythmic, fast Chicago house tracks and techno tools with subtle 303s handled carefully to provide the appropriate hallucinogenic effect.

PHuture303 - 2001 Survival's Our Mission
Info here.

Hashisheen: The End Of Law

The other night I watched a documentary (named 'Holy Warriors'...) on the Saladin/ Richard I conflict for the control of Jerusalem and the 'Holy Lands' territories. You know how the mind travels, one thing led to another and I ended up listening to this one which I decided to share. Seems a fitting couple to 'The Fire This Time'.

A Sub Rosa soundwork, focusing on the (Persian) Ismaelian sect of the Hashisheen, known to many as Assassins, and their most famous leader Hassan-i Sabbah. More info later on...

All text compiled by Peter Lamborn Wilson, soundtrack compiled by Bill Laswell, as usual with participations of narrators and artists too numerous to mention (check the info link).

Bill Laswell & VA - 1999 Hashisheen: The End Of Law
Part 1 - Part 2
Info here.

Exhibition Of The Samples

Do you like minimal techno? The '90s? Brinkmann-like grooves? Post-industrial minimalism? Japanese experimentations? B/W artwork? Well, you're lucky.
This is Riou Tomita's world. This album, recorded in his bedroom, reached the world through Belgium's legendary KK Records. It's a solid, repetitive, spacious techno affair with eerie interludes, tainted by the isolationist mentality that often characterizes artists from Japan. The outcome is somewhere close to late PWOG's mini-grooves and Plastikman' s 'Artifacts' era, only a bit edgier and darker (...).
Two or three tracks I was playing constantly back then and for some time. They mix well with Detroit minimal. Sadly I don't have any other releases from him.
KK Records are an incredible source of weird and beautiful music, and maybe the best example of how experimentation and dancefloor aesthetics can be combined without compromising either one's principles.

Riou - 1995 Exhibition Of The Samples
Info here.

Konztruktivizm

This is Növö, a project of Lauren Boudic, also known by his Genetik System alias.

True child of the '80s and the Belgian tradition of electronics, he treats us a mix of electro embedded in EBM aesthetics, industrial vocal samples, electrofunk plus a dirty cover of 'Nagasaki (Mon Amour)' by Polyphonic Size, Belgian rather poppy minimal synth band (in their site you can find the original). Out on Antony Rother's Psi49net (with whom I gather from his site he split up violently).

Industrial aesthetics and political speech, multi-cultural harsh signals from the underground, 'Konztruktivizm' is a difficult album for a dance label, even for Psi49net. Mostly dancefloor oriented, sometimes just electro-industrial noise, it's compact, it has vision and a point of view. Not for everyone.

Növö - 2003, Konztruktivizm
Part 1 - Part 2
Info here.

Record Of Breaks

I promised on an earlier post I'll upload this. Check the 18 min. long 'Some Kind Of Prayer' which is exactly what it says to be, the techno classic 'Kraak' and the occasional weirdness of the 'Revelations' (the sound of their computer breaking down, if I remember correctly). 'True' and 'Sheap?' are for those moody Sunday afternoon hours.

PWOG - 1995 Record Of Breaks
Part 1 - Part 2
Info here

The Key

Psychick Warriors Ov Gaia has always been one of my favorite electronic acts. Exit 23 was a blast. People always associated them with the Temple Ov Psychick Youth whose symbols, spelling and beliefs they shared. The connection is indisputable. although at some point they seemingly felt trapped by this and after some internal turmoil and member departures they buried the double cross and re-invented themselves as PWOG.

I think it's best to see them as a crossover act, a trance band gone weird. As some musicians with a different mindset concerning ways of communicating through art. Their low profile, no-ego, sometimes introvert sometimes fun approach to life and the holy and the ritualistic was an immense relief for me compared to the dark blood dripping death electronics of the '80s or the space cake mysticism of Goa trance of the time.

Most of their tracks are dronish loop-based landscapes, sounding like improvisations (although very well structured to be such, in my opinion) borrowing from the industrial school. Their dance tracks range from deep and jazzy house songs to trancey epics to mono-minimal clicky dub, 1995 style. They lived and moved in relative obscurity, you won't find many interviews or photos. They covered a huge range of emotions, they influenced a lot of people nowdays well-known and they disappeared in silence.

This 2CD collection is a compilation of rarities (all but two are unreleased mixes) but it's also a good introduction to the clubbier side of PWOG. It was released at 2002 on Terminal Antwerp, a sublabel of the mighty KK Records which hosted most of the PWOG releases and was accompanied by a 12'' with a Michael Mayer remix to 'A Kind Of Prayer' (you can hear it on 'Friends' mixed by Triple R [Kompakt CD 21] ). That temporarily draw some fresh attention to the name of PWOG, as the 'Maenad' remix by Alter Ego would do later and the Plastikman and Drum Club remixes had done in the '90s.

Psychick Warriors Ov Gaia - 2002, The Key, 2CD
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3








Here's also a PWOG remix of the 'Lush' track by Orbital.
Orbital - Lush 3-4 (Warriors Drift remix)

I admit it, I hate to see labels and bands like these only in reference articles or in oldschool DJs' playlists, when all the new European 'minimal' techno sound was more or less envisioned and developed by them. Although I can't rip vinyl yet, I'll upload some more stuff like this soon.