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... OUT NOW! ... * Special Collector Edition is automatically given to the first 100 pre-orders.
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2010-10-20 | English review by "Stephen Fruitman @ Sonomu.net" Various Artists, Wired Thoughts (3 CD Entropy Records) Gargantuan genre compilations featuring mostly unknown artists are risky propositions. They leave themselves open to accusations of being vanity projects or acts of foolish charity: so big and sprawling that they include too many tracks that really should have been left on the cutting floor, editing down the set to a lean one or two discs; or as expressions of well-meaning but misguided altruism, seeking exposure for as many new, independent artists as possible, planting such a big forest it´s impossible to see the trees. Both risk making the compilers appear to suffer from delusions of grandeur. There is of course a third alternative and that is that the compilers are right. To provide a fair overview of the state of a particular art, as is the case with Entropy´s triple-disc set Wired Thoughts, a wide variety of artists deserve to be showcased and furthermore, given the nature of the genre in question, ambient dub/dub techno, each deserves to be heard at length, as the average piece usually stretches out for six or seven minutes. One litmus test for proving whether a compilation works is whether the listener notices jarring switches from track to track, or whether the compilers have smoothly programmed the running order so that, just like the genre, changes happen slowly over time and in small increments. Lo and David Ya have succeeded brilliantly. They have selected thirty-three racks by thirty-three artists, only four or five of whom your reviewer has even heard of before. The geographic spread is impressive, stretching from Russia, the Baltics and Turkey across most of the European Union and overseas to Canada – no Americans, interestingly. The Third World is represented by Lo, who is from the island of Réunion in the Indian Ocean, though he resides in Perpignan in southern France. The small detail is the big strength of this kind of dub, the slight variation and sneaky transformation. Niklas Nummelin of Sweden is subtly funky. Atheus´ ”Rhythm and Chords” is either a total rip-off of the Burial Mix sound or a loving tribute. Either way, both segue seamlessly into the mix. Area´s ”Moire” is brutally, beautifully stripped down, nothing but spine. Despite its airy nomenclature, Skyscraper´s ”Skyshapes” sounds curiously – and tantalizingly – enclosed. Zzzzra´s pneumatic dub is peculiarly and delightfully sloppy, wobbly and slow-footed; he may prove to be the break-out artist of this assemblage. The Marx Trukker from Germany, on the other hand, is clean and clinical. Madutec is somewhere in-between, with reverberating stabs of keyboard setting his percussion a-shakin´ while a swath of looped voices in the background give eerie texture. This over–saturated track is followed up by Lo´s ”Black Cape”, a brilliantly-restained sliver of dub with a sweet guitar skank playing off an almost atonal rhythmic bass. It is the most ”Jamaican” moment on all three discs while actually pointing in a post-Jamaican, and even post-Berlin direction. ”Softly” is the leitmotif – it is the foremost characteristic of ambient music, and in a dubbed context, the beats themselves may be hardly discernable or the very centre of attention. Regardless, they must bounce and reverberate softly against the eardrums, and it is indeed fascinating to hear thirty-three different ways of infusing rhythm – sometimes rubbery, sometimes tinny, sometimes like rubber bouncing off tin. Some artists – Basicnoise, to take just one example – are deft at creating a sense of tension and build-up with little more than a crafty beat. After a dark, misty tableau by Russia´s Killahertz, an almost clubby interlude emerges mid third-disc with the Turkish trio Subllime Porte, veteran producer Gabriel Le Mar and Italy´s Mr. Bizz, veering off into a more straightforward house direction. Yet we are not going to dance our way out, as Toni Latenz´ oddball space operatic spaghetti Western sits you down for a good giggle before Martin Schulte takes us out with an uncommonly clean and upbeat track. Everybody, quite simply, does an excellent job and nobody deserves to have been left on the cutting floor. Though the ”Special Collectors Edition” appears to have sold out, the ”Standard Limited Edition” is a handsome enough package itself. Posted by Stephen Fruitman at 00:40, 20 Oct 2010 |
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2011-11-01 | Revue de presse dans le magazine MCD (Musiques & Cultures Digitales) n° 61 - Page 36. 
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