Eric Alexandrakis is like a modern Sid Barret, l.s.d. included... I.V. CATATONIA is divided in two parts: "Treatments 1-6" and "Treatments 7-12" while the tracks are twentytwo. Each track is on its own because here you can find deranging piano or guitar based songs as well as tracks like "The Big Church Theory" which is completely a no sense collage of tv, answering machine and God knows what else, samples. Eric will to experimenting with melodies and particular solutions made him releasing an eclectic album full of irony and weird songs. I have also to admint that someway the album is catchy and songs like "Hooligan Hotline (You Walk Away)" are immediate and remember also some old Sonic Youth tunes mixed with alternative pop melodies. If you need something that is able to surprise you and you ain't afraid of odd solutions try this album.

Printed in 50 copies as a CDr (as all the Verato Project releases) this is the second album by sound-experimentalist Mr. Bernd Spring, also known from his own Records Label Dhayna Records and his experimental bass-rock project DEEP. The CD contains one hour of floating/dreaming noises all in eight tracks. To be honest I prefer the other Verato CDs Claudius sent me because here the tracks tend to be long and a little static (even if the sounds are different for each track) and I lose attention and this kind of sounds in such a situation become like a buzz in my ear...

First of all, this cd-r has a brilliant packaging: a cloth (hemp?) bag with hand-printed titles, containing the cd-r with a photocopied cover and an A4 sheet with poems and information. Quite simple but elegant and effective. S'agitarecordings is run by Logoplasm, who have some interesting releases out, check out their site for more information. AAL is the solo project of Davide Valecchi, a young musician cultivating both abstract ambient with a Cosmic/Kraut slant (he self-released two cdr's I'll review soon) and electroacoustic compositions. This cd-r belongs to the latter, with really sporadic incursions in the former (see the long final track "Il giorno non è ancora spento"). While it actually features tracks with instruments like synths, guitar and piano, they're used in an expressionistic, unorthodox way (mainly through minimal repetitions and interactions), and perfectly merge with the field recordings. Sounds come from a country environment, but the general feeling – now I talk about personal impressions, but the poems sort of back me up – is not exactly bucolic tranquility. There's a shifting mood between melancholy and a kind of abstract suspension. Possibly some latent anguish, some sense of decay or transformation (ashes, dead leaves, organic combustion). Living in the country, I feel these sounds and atmospheres very close. The work is fairly long (65') and not all the tracks manage to create that mood, but again, it's more something you have to experience and relate to rather than simply "enjoy". After all, this is "cosmic ambient" too – just more bound to the earth than to the sky.

And the swiss folks are back ladies and gentlemen, with an even more radical experimental record. Teleform, aka Bernd Schurer, releases his second CD on Domizil and takes one step further in the un-linear explotation of noise, the un-establishment of traditional song composition and the most uncompromising deconstructivism. Balancing on the thin line between soft experimental and harsh noise, "cosine f" runs over you for 37 sharp minutes with 35 anonymous tracks (playable in shuffle mode, if you please) made up of buzzes, digital distortion, jitter, crackles and other random hardcore noise. And talk about being true to continuing experimentalism, check out their flickering website, if you dare!