With Bill Laswell's discography of almost 100 records in his name plus over 500 where he appeared on as producer/musician and with Kamiyama's discography of about 200 CDs, and with a combined presence in the music industry totaling over 50 years, I think this CD qualifies as an epic collaboration, doesn't it? Kanapi records must be proud to have released such a record, a record where Laswell's throbbing bass playing encounters Kamiyama digital mastery and is aided by Kiyohiko Semba's enchanting percussion/drumming, a record that obviously comes with an astonishing production and a humongously spatial sound, a record that appears on top of many others and disappears within the atmospheres and the soundscapes that it actually autonomously creates, a record that is polished, sophisticated, rapturing, immersive, self-contained and yet out-reaching, a record that blends a magmatic and magnetic orgy of subtle and deep low-end sub-harmonics with a brilliant and vivid visionary nirvana of vibrating harmonies, a record who delivers the grand and majestic apex of zeros and ones in their warmest form and pushes them through a tunnel of liberating and glorifying outboard's and plug-ins' summit knob tweaking, a record I could just ramble about on and on, for how beautiful and masterfully executed it is. If you are looking for new frontiers to bend the empty spaces between electronica, jazz, dub, you've found your trip-taking, space-bending, barrier-breaking, beyond-passing ally.

Back to their tribal origins, The Creatures created this new chapter of their duo adventure in a particular way. During a pause of the last dates of their Siouxsie & The Banshees' Seven Year Itch Tour, they achieved the plan they prepared some time before: doing a recording session with Leonard Eto, composer and principal player with the Japanese Taiko drum troupe called Koto. The link has been the Ex Girl's producer, Hoppy Kamiyama, who knew Eto and knew that he welcomed collaborations with other musicians. On August 19 2002, in Tokio, Budgie and his new friends recorded a session into the GOK studios using the traditional taiko drums and a western drum set. The session took about ninety minutes (you can find it into the dvd of the HAI! special edition) and when he went back home in France, Budgie started to work to those sounds while Siouxie wrote some lyrics. HAI! is the result of those recordings with the addition of Siouxsie's vocals and of some few melodic tracks added here and there: marimbas, few synths sounds and something else. The nine tracks are sort of magical and bring The Creatures back to the days of "Feast" or to their first E.P. "Wild Things". Improvisation had a big part on the whole process and the result is amazing as all the work has got a special atmosphere. Listen to "Seven Years", the single "Godzilla" or "Imagoro"and you'll be convinced that this is one of their finest moments! Along with the CD comes a second CD (and a dvd into the special edition, as I already mentioned) where you can find eight out of nine instrumental version of the album tracks and where you'll appreciate even more these recordings!

72, 80, 53, 28: these are the figures; respectively minutes, fragments, tracks and artists. Monia De Laurentis, one of the ever-busy key characters of Italy's underground noise scene has been leading her cool small-print-no-spacing-diy-'zine Itself for years and has now apparently decided to put out a CD compilation and call it after her publication, plus some other unpronounceable words. I don't know any of the bands but in case you do here's the list: The Saboten, Yuko Nexus, Ex Girl, Acid Mothers Temple & the Melting Paraiso U.F.O., Aki Onda, Astro, Calculated, Love Furniture Lounge Bears, Gaji, Sakamoto Hiromiti, Thermo, Tipographica, Yoshio Machida, Sawai Kazue, Hadiot, Kangaroo Paw, Matsumoto Tadashi, Thermo, Pugs, Animo Computer, Hoppy Kamiyama, Phnonpenh Model, Kirihito, Aki Onda, Cherry & Co., Kazutoki Umezu, Droptone, Freak from Ocean, Lion Merry. Obviously most of these folks are asian and another thing they all have in common is that they play some crazy-ass freaky noise cut-ups mixing fusion, free-jazz, muzak, no-wave, musique-concrete, avantgarde, experimental, bricolant, exotic and other uncured insanity. If you are into any or all of the above this gotta be right up your alley. Addresses included.