Reviews by markjazz

Like other Plastikman releases there's some tracks I love on the album and others I don't like as much. This album is no exception. I absolutely love tracks #1, #8, #9 and #10. They melt my brain completely and it's some of the scariest music to listen to when your surrounded by pitch black darkness. I've done this. I was outside at a farm with nothing but this hugh blanket of stars and you couldn't even see your hand infront of your own face at times. I played this album and was actually scared. I think I tripped out too and I wasn't on drugs of any kind. The ambient atmosphere on this album is some of the best I've heard. Plastikman doesn't just make minimal techno. We mixes in some very dark sounds and ambient keys with it. The track Disconnect is pretty good too but the lyrics are kind of cheesy. Not enough to make me skip this track though. The ones I don't care for on here are the ones that kind of go nowhere; like Headcase and Ping Pong. They're ok but they're just too long for their own good. Overall this wouldn't be my first pick if your new to this artist, that album would be Consumed. Also, there's these clear sheets with various pictures and words displayed on them for the inserts. Pretty neat to look at and they even smell good.

This was an interesting buy. I got it for $5 at a United Way Book/DVD sale. I grabbed it rightaway because it was a DVD/CD set. The CD has just the two tracks and the DVD has a live performance/Audio/Visual thing for each track. There's interviews with Mick Jagger, Michael Caine, etc. There's also some video showing what London was like in the 60's. It's a pretty neat DVD. There are so much hippies around your jaw drops. The two performances on the video were at the UFO Club in late 1966 and at the 14 Hour Technicolor Dream Festival on April 29, 1967.

Getting to the music now. The earliest music from this band I had heard before I got this EP was from The Dark Side of the Moon so I was hoping this would be good because there isn't much I don't like from this group. I was surprised at how much I did like it! It's all instrumental and there's only two tracks, but they're epic. Interstellar Overdrive has this awesome organ that plays in and out of the entire track that I just love. At times it's a very dark creepy drone, which gives me chills. To me, this is almost jazzy in a way. Like the stuff Coltrane was doing in the 60's too. Just jamming away and seeing what comes out. I love that kind of music and this track is no exception. It's a pretty chill track but it picks up at the 10 minute mark and gets faster, and it's at this point were the track goes up and down. Fast, slow, fast, slow. Messes your head up. Nick's Boogie was titled after the drummer Nick Mason and his use of Tom-Toms in the track. I wouldn't say one could boogie to this track but I can see the hippies with their eyes closed moving their hips and swaying their arms. This track isn't as good as the first one but it features echo in the guitar and a couple other effects. This one is more experimental for sure, but it's still good. This track was never released but parts of it were featured on the track A Saucerful of Secrets from A Saucerful of Secrets.

I don't own much Pink Floyd at all but this EP has me wanting to explore the bands earlier material for sure.

I can't believe I'm the only one on here that owns this album. It's not exactly a mind blowing album and there isn't any 10/10 tracks but I found there were no tracks I felt like skipping and I almost want to give this a 4/5 for that part alone. The whole album is filled with some pretty ok songs and the vocals have a Mentallo & the Fixer style to them that I love. Good music and I bought this sealed for $10 so I'm uber pleased about that too. I feel like it's worth more than that and I think it is as I couldn't find anyone selling this online, not even Metropolis Records is selling it!

This is the only album I own by Laibach and I like it a lot. There's some other stuff I've heard by them but I think this was their strongest album, from what I've heard. I only bought this because I saw it for $15 and I loved the song Tanz mit Laibach so I thought I'd give it a shot and it worked well in my favour.

The thing I like about this style of industrial is some of the songs almost have a minimal techno feel to it and, to me, that's pretty damn unique and makes this album stand out even more. Like I said before I love the track Tanz mit Laibach. It's one of those great anti-Nazi type marching songs. Good heavy beat with a kick ass bass line. I won't do a track by track review but the opening track, B Mashina is a great choral-industrial number that this group has been so great at doing before. The vocals kinda sound like he's reading from a que card but I can look past that and enjoy the music. My favourite track on this album is Du bist unser. It's fucking chill and yet not, if that makes sense. It's also very minimal techno sounding and I don't know what it is about it but as soon as this track hits I almost wanna get up and dance, which is not me at all!!!

Now You Will Pay is a pretty awesome track and I love the backing vocals tons. Seems to 50's sounding to me and I wish there was more of it on this album. The horns that come in at the end are nice too and creep the hell out of me. The last track on this album, Anti-Semitism, was mixed by two DJ's I never heard of and I love it though! Of all the songs this one is the most minimal techno sounding, yet it still keeps the industrial flavor in it, and I'm glad it's on this album. The looped string sample is beautiful! It ends the album with a lighter note and gets me off my ass to flip the record over and play it the album again.

This vinyl comes with a bonus track, Reject or Breed, and it's a pretty damn good track. It has a very Kraftwerkian feel to it. It sounds like it's a song about the band so the lyrics kinda suck. While listening to this album to do this review I noticed a lot of the songs have breathing samples in them and I have no idea why. Doesn't take away from anything but it might have been a bit over done.

Not one of my favorite Kraftwerk albums but still good none-the-less. Like Man Machine, I find the title track being one of the weakest on the album. My personal favorite is "The Telephone Call". It has a electro-comedic feel to it and I bought the 12" single as well cause I loved it so much. Great sampling and synth lines. "Sex Object" follows the same line but the first 3 tracks on the album flow just as nice as the "Trans-Europe Express" ones, expect that I don't find them as pleasing. As with other albums of Kraftwerk they kept up the pace of being 'ahead of thier time'. Everywhere I look there's an Electric Cafe!

Of the three solo albums cEvin Key has released so far this one is still my favourite. It helped me get into experimental music while I was still in high school and it gave me something new to listen to when I wasn't listening to straight forward industrial music. There's a lot of guests that are featured on this album that, to me, it seems like it was just a jam session of him and his friends, which is cool if it works. There's some great tracks on here, like the fast paced Jamacian dub track Herbalist Rule, the ambient crazy noise track Go Go Boots and the classical IDM track Wind on Small Paws. Most of the tracks I like on here but there's a couple ones that don't do much for me, like Meteorite, which is just a mess and way to long. Overall it's a great debut album that mixes a few different styles of electronic music and twists it with that good ole cEvin Key brain of his.

Featured Guest Artists:
Genesis P-Orridge, Philth, D.R. Goettel (aDuck), Mark Spybey.

The master of structured sound and always pushing new ground with his style of minimal ambient creations. Entropy is an album that is now currently out of print but is such a good example of how noise and dub can work together.

The eleven tracks that make up the disc all work together as if it is one long 1-track live recording. Each track moves gracefully into the next and there is no breaks, save for the 2 short seconds between track 10 and 11. The track times are listed in seconds, which are rounded off to 3 decimal points and range from 352.392 second to 432.261 seconds long. A very scientific method, speaking of which, the track titles go from words like; Enthalpy, Isothermal, Adiabatic and Cyclic to name a few. A sound scientist he is.

Each track pretty much has the same feel to them. Minimal dub sounding beats and bass hits with splashing clicks muttered throughout that are just barely audible. Tonal horns plummet rhythmically throughout most of the tracks and there also occurs the random swoosh here and there. A magical and melodic, yet reactive listen. My senses told me to dance.

The artwork is a three-page fold out paper sleeve with sewn, yes sewn stitches across the front to slip the cover into and close. A very nice and dark picture and deep forest is shown to mark this release. The only negative I can say about this disc is that each track seems about 1 minute to long and they can get a little repetitive, but most dub techno is anyway.

I found Hovhaness's Symphony No.22 to be very similar to Celestial Gate. Both are wonderful and contain bookends, sort-of-speak, with very slow movements in the middle. The Cello Concerto is a great piece as well and wasn't released for over 65 years, until 2003. It's just as good as City of Light and I recommend any fan of American Classical Moderism to check this out. Hovhaness knows how to touch the heart!

Sometimes, when listening to older albums, I try and place myself in the time that it was released and also try to think about what else was being released at that time in the World. This is some pretty ground breaking material and some tracks are pretty amazing, even by experimental standards.

I like the fact that Einstürzende Neubauten pull off a very well done muscial track too, called Sand. Blixa Bargeld actually doesn't have that bad of a voice and he proves it in that track.
The remix of Yü-Gung isn't a whole lot different from the original but it's good to have on here. It's more of a dub version than anything else.
All-in-all I love this disc a lot and although it's not my favorite style I still find myself playing this disc all the time.

This is one of my favourite CD's by a genre that I hardly own anything from and I just love this disc. The opening track La femme d’argent is a perfect opener and is even jazzy with it's organ keys. It's an ambient track as well that picks up a bit. Very spacey and very jazzy. After this awesome track we get another great one, Sexy Boy. I just love the vocals in this and it's such a cute track too, if that makes sense. It also has that "Let's be happy and kill ourselves" feel to it too. The piano solo is great too. Everyone knows this one and most people love it. All I Need is a good little number and is a track that was also done by [re:jazz] in 2005, which is pretty similar. It's a cool track to listen to. Another jazzy type piece. I don't love it but I don't skip it either. Kelly Watch the Stars is an average track. I actually prefer the video version better. Good baseline but a bit to repedative. Talisman is another great organ piece, which would have been a good album ending track as well. It picks up a bit but for the most part it's a real chill track. The cello and violins that come in later gives me chills sometimes still. Remember is another great track. It has some voxcoder vocals and pretty cool drum beat as well. There's also some strings in this track and this song was actually my favourite from the album for a long while. It also has this kinda of ghostly sounding key hidden in the track a few times. I love this one! You Make It Easy is another female sung vocal track and I love the course tons in this one, gives me chills too, and the bass is awesome too. This was another track I replayed a lot as well. Also features some light acoustic guitar. Ce matin là is an ok piece but a bit too slow and it doesn't really develop or move me in any special way. The horns are nice though and it's still good enough for me not to ever skip it. New Star in the Sky is a really friggn' chill track and probably my least favourite track on here. It's kinda sleepy and doesn't progress anywhere. The album ends with Le voyage de Pénélope and it's a pretty good track. Has a bit of some experimentation going on at times too.

Overall this is one of my favourite albums because I never need to skip a single track. The last three are the one's I don't like as much but I still listen to them and, to me, this is AIRs best album still.

I will say just one thing about Disc Two. All the remixes suck, except for Becks, and live versions and demo's don't really add anything interesting.

Disc Three is a few videos and a great sort of "Making Of" video for this album. A nice little treat to watch.