This is simply a label sampler, but with a nice twist. You can get it from Beta-lactam Ring Records for one cent. I will refrain from doing too much with the individual tracks because all except one of the Earthmonkey tracks have already been released and several of these albums have been likely already been reviewed in Chain DLK. I have personally reviewed the discs of Aidan Baker, Sand Snowman, and Seven That Spells ' all of which were quite good. If you are interested in Beta-lactam Ring Records and want to get a taste of what they have been putting out, this is a very good opportunity to find out. If nothing else, you certainly get your money's worth. This sampler weighs in at about 79 minutes.

Here is the tracklisting:

1. Sand Snowman 'Hemlock Garden' from Nostalgia Ever After
2. Pepe Wismeer 'A Lie In Heckleness' Between Sheep & Pigs
3. Aidan Baker 'Feed Me Yr Kiss' Songs Of Flowers & Skin
4. Earthmonkey 'New Cheese' from Alms of Morpheus
5. Edward Ka-Spel 'The Beast With Six Fingers (edit)' from The Minus Touch
6. Sand Snowman 'Wide Awake' from Sleepers Hide and Seek
7. Pepe Wismeer 'Devilame (edit)' from Between Sheep & Pigs
8. Edward Ka-Spel 'Lines (edit)' from Chyekk, China Doll
9. Earthmonkey 'Ahmet Another' unreleased track from Alms of Morpheus sessions
10. Seven That Spells 'Terminus Est' from Future Retro Spasm
11. Ilitch 'La Quantique des Cantiques' from La Maïeutique de la Quantique
12. Nadja 'Skywriting (edit)' from Transmit Acoustique Abstraction One
13. Expo '70 'The Gathering' from Sonic Messenger
14. The Silverman 'This Side Of The Door (edit)' from Time On Thin Ice
15. Tecumseh 'Apophis (edit)' from Return To Everything
16. Else Teicher 'Near Dead Pachycephalosaurid on I-75 (edit)' from Whored

As is often the case when I get a package to review for ChainDLK, I had not heard of these artists. Here's what Borstlap had to say about the disc: 'In Quasi Quasi we slowly build something through improvisation, but then we let that building collapse and start to build again on its remains. And so on. In this project we can experiment and improvise without boundaries and without resorting to traditional modes of rock and jazz.' Fair enough. This disc is all over the place while still remaining rooted in the idea that music should not only be constructed, but deconstructed. The first three tracks throw down some nice guitar noise while still remaining listenable and engaging. 'Sensitive Sayings' and 'There Is No Obstacles,' on the other hand, are a bit more minimalist providing a nice counterpoint to the earlier tracks. 'Boat to Bristol' changes it up bringing in a pulsing, pounding wall of sawtooth waves. Overall, the disc shifts back and forth between noise and almost peaceful guitars ('Why Not Doing it Again'). If you are looking for guitar improvisation that doesn't quite cross the line into straight noise, this would be up your alley. I would definitely recommend this for fans of Nels Cline and the like. At any rate, you can download it for free at the label's website, so it is certainly worth checking out if all of this sounds even remotely interesting. This disc weighs in at around 36 minutes.

Out of all of these artists, the only one I had heard of was Ernesto Diaz-Infante, but you never quite know what you will get, as he tends to vary his approach. But you know it's going to be an interesting ride when one of the artists, Gino Robair, is credited with the instrument 'Energized Surfaces / Voltage Made Audible.' The others are credited with steel string acoustic guitar (Diaz-Infante), electric guitar (Mota), and viola (Rodrigues). Put it all together and you have an interesting improvisation-fest. At times it is minimalist, at times it is noisy, and at times it is reminiscent of Cage's experiments with treated piano, but for the most part this is engaging, interesting stuff. Maybe it's me, but I got a whimsical sense in the music. The only drawback is that at times it seemed to blend together and become a bit repetitive. I get the sense that it would have been a lot of fun to watch these improvisations live. This disc weighs in at around 49 minutes.

After going out of Limbo (that's the name of the forerunning electronic darkwave project he conceived when he was younger in the fertile cultural ground of Florence in the glorious 80ies, which excepting its esoteric ecchymosis can be considered one of the most stylish and innovative Italian act of that scene), it seems Gianluca Becuzzi made a pact with ethereal beings in need of musical voice, an agreement kept by the Italian sound forger through the exploration of really interesting experimental forms. Under the moniker Kinetix, whose excerpts I already heard here and there, he signs some good DSP sculptures and on this occasion he scrutinizes his filling cabinet full of recordings to let them issue to Silentes' imprint, one of the truly minimal record label, being the adjective "minimal" inappropriately used to label camouflages of trance music nowadays.

Final Archives can be ideally split into three parts: the first track Absolute Grey was made for one of Gianluca's sound installation, helded at the sound art festival PX2_Piombino_eXperimenta_2006 - the festival he successfully organised amidst the clouds of iron powders of Piombino in Tuscany -, whose set was made up of ten grey scale serigraphies on white PVC forex sheets and amplified from two loud speakers and one woofer covered with grey powder on the top of a white cube, a sometimes frightening microsound sculpture with interesting examples of outstreched sine wave manipulation whose tense atmosphere has been highlighted by a male modified voice - saying something I've not really understood... -, which seems to come out from the sink! In the middle of this release, you could appreciate some noisy splinters and raw stuff recorded between 1999 and 2002 among which there're some appreciable exercises of DSP with some really scary and catchy moments (I don't know why some of theme loaded some releases by Francisco Lopez from my listening memory...), whose only flaw is the decision to preserve some harsh excerpts...I admit I cursed against Becuzzi when he fired my ears by the typical annoying noises you can ear when you wrongly try to listen a CD-Rom track on your hi-fi...! The final 20-minutes track, Resounding Sculptures, concerns with the concept of "compositionfor blocks of sound", introduced in the 50ies and 60ies by Iannis Xenakis, and act as a dedication to the Greek composer's genius, sampled by Kinetix. A really interesting collection of tracks for fans and for electronic music scholar, not intended for those ones easily suffering from claustrophobia, paranoia or schizophrenia...they could be excessively impressed by such a record, especially if they unfortunately listen to it in a dark room!!!

Hailing from Brooklyn, Post Abortion Stress are one of those bands not-so-easy-to-be-described cause despite their many references to music from the pas, they're not exactly old fashioned and at the same time they are reinterpreting influences quite personally and that's good. I've read sometimes they've been described as a "dark ambient" combo, but honestly I find they're thousand times more freaky then the average band playing this style of music, by some means they reminded me a lot Nurse With Wound and also Faust, but also Popol Vuh and Gong updated to the current millennium. Being from Brooklyn I happened to think even if considerably different they reminded me a lot of when I first listened to Aa from New York, they are equally as freaky even if more odd, with less vocal and above all without the drum, but the sound aesthetic is not so different. Synths, a massive use of echoes, loops and delays, sometimes the mixing of different sound-layers creates that trip through the canyon effect from the seventies, just think to Michelangelo Antonioni and you get the picture. As I've said I would speak more about new psychedelia rather than dark music, above all if you consider some of the melodies are not exactly obscure or heavy digestible (8, 11,15). I've seen they've collaborated and they keep collaborating with Philippe Petit and played at the Faust festival which itself says a lot to know more about their activities. Not all of the tracks are completely focused, but after all it's an interesting listening.