Echo US self titled album is the second full lenght of Ethan Matthews. Even though Ethan is only 25 the tracks mix typical melodies of '80s music (his pop taste recalled me a lot bands like Japan, A Flock Of Seagulls and Frankie Goes To Hollywood) with trance, ambient and modern electronic arrangements. For example "Her heart's army/White wednesday" has got elements of dance electronic along with vocals a la Holly Johnson on the first part while the second part is an ambient track just to form an 11 minutes long song full of good moments. Production and sounds are kinda amatorial but they don't ruin the goodness of the tracks (I appreciated most of them and liked at least half of them). There are also powerful guitar arrangements on "I radiate I" but sometimes the mix creates a little of confusion and this is a pity. Just a little more of sound production and Echo Us would be ready to spread its mix of pop dark melodies to a wider audience.

BETA is a one-man project hailing from Anaheim, CA, consisting of Ian Velasquez and he presents us here his first official CD out on BLC Productions. We have here an album full of hard and almost danceable Dark Techno/Electro music but surprisingly without any vocals. I personally expected that this would be the biggest flaw at all, to release a 78:00 min long intrumental album, but my judgement was wrong. Really true, this is Dark Electro full of refreshing ideas, innovative programming and a huge amount of uncountable noises, effects and samples. This is somewhat innovative and I haven't heard this before for a long time. If I should give you a hint how it sounds, I would take DISMANTLED combined with later NOISE UNIT for a comparison. Outstanding tracks can be rich found here, "Heretic", "Vengeance" or "Splintered" will give you enough food to set fire on the dancefloors, while tracks like "Absolution", "Fait Accompli" and "Escape" are slower and designed for your mind. Adding to this ten original tracks four remix works by well known bands like SCHATTENSCHLAG, AGONOIZE, IMPLANT and SKOYZ. Another outstanding point is the excellent graphically manipulation done by no one else than Wilhelm Steiner, the Deaddreamer (www.deadreamer.com). This is a marvelous release which should be purchased immediately.

I didn't really like Ilios' recent remix cd (see archive), but this new full length work is quite good. Recorded "using electricity + electric signals", which is a both blunt and cryptic statement, "Vento elektra" ("electric wind" in esperanto) is a black hole of subdued frequencies and low drones, occasionally short-circuiting in brief bursts of white noise or high-end cracklings. As minimal as a sonata for distant shortwave signals, it is also pretty menacing and engaging, if listened to in nearly absolute silence and concentration. Nothing that hasn't been explored before over the last decade (by López, Günther, Duncan, Colley, etc.), but the composition is strong and severe enough to make this a very worthwhile listen.

A sort of experimental ep for Beyond, who usually plays straight dark ambient drones (see the review of "Shadeworld" in the archive). "Blightsrider" is actually a very obscure industrial-ambient track, with bass-heavy synths, ghostly voices buried within the mix, and metallic clankings. Pretty well done, and truly oppressive - if you like Nordvargr and the likes, you'll probably dig this one. The other two tracks (one being a remix of Stijn van Cauter's "In pain", the other of Beyond's own "Torn") are less appealing to my taste, being overloaded noise versions of droning tracks - they're probably ok for what they are, but they're not atmospheric nor rabid enough to make them stand out. I definitely prefer Beyond in his dark ambient vein.

Vultures are back with their mixture of industrial metal/electro anger but too bad this isn't their full lenght album. Even if the CD contains ten songs, only three are new studio tracks. The other seven are remixed versions of songs coming from their first MCD ("Internal plea" and "Vulture's splendor"), remixes of new tracks ("Horrible weather" and "Live a message"), remixes of unreleased tracks ("Systematic") and a live track ("Snow"). First of all I have to admit that the new tracks ("Easy does it", "Live a message" and "Horrible weather") rock! Their mixture of power and melody will make the NIN fans question if the Vultures will become their next favorite band. The remixed tracks (treated by PTYL, K-Nitrate, 21st Century Jesus, PTSMC and Such) are good (K-nitrate version of "Horrible weather" differs totally from the original one and he makes out of it a really nice dance/ambient/e.b.m.) but sometimes (specially for the unreleased tracks) you feel that something is missing: you never heard the original track and a blend of distorted samples, like in the case of "Systematic", isn't enough. This CD is a good follow up to "Vultures EP" but I wish they will release their real first album sometimes soon.