From Birmingham Alabama comes self-styled electronic music producer Donovan Tate, not to be confused with the minor league baseball player or a couple of club DJs by the same name, or actor Tate Donovan. Apparently he's had a few projects or bands over the years including Donovan 2525, Echoes in the Dark, Code Bleu, Dawn Chorus, Wave Nouveau and currently, Xi-Vox. Unfortunately, none of them seem to have had much exposure outside of the odd message board posting, or the occasional submission reviewed here at Chain D. L. K. over the years. Tate's 'Scrapbook' is an album of 23 tracks of his aforementioned projects with some new tracks mixed in as well. Tate handles all the synth/keyboard work, sampling, and drum programming, as well as lyrics and vocals with occasional vocals from Carolyn Reid. His litany of influences reads like an English/Euro electro-pop record/CD collection straight out of the 1980s/ early 1990s ' Depeche Mode, Human League, Flock of Seagulls, Bananrama, Alphaville, Culture Club, Propaganda, New Order, OMD, etc. etc. you get the picture. Tate's 'Sheffield Sound' obsession seems to permeate a goodly portion of 'Scrapbook'; retro in nearly every way. This wouldn't be a bad thing if there was enough quality to back it up, but unfortunately, there isn't.

First track 'London,' feigns English hipness ala Human League/Heaven 17 and St. Etienne. Beginning with a British Airways voiceover and jet-sonics over a clubby beat, with a Berlin ' 'Sex (I'm a )' synth string pad, and a generic synth riff with pizzicato counter-melody, Carolyn Reid coos 'Ooooh, baby, we (or word that rhymes with it) maybe, you can go to London,' while Tate interjects a spoken 'London' for emphasis. A tad jejune, but passable retro synth pop, except the hazy production diminishes the song's potential. As a harbinger of what's to come, you quickly realize Donovan Tate loves to use a lot of echo and reverb, a common mistake of amateur music producers.

The slower second track, 'Tonya' features processed vocals over minimal synth and drum machine, but even with the vocal processing you realize that Tate has a problem; his singing isn't very good. Third track, 'Evermore' confirms this as he attempts a soulful-turned-mournful piano-based ballad that goes on way, way too long. It's a clichéd progression that in spite of bringing in other instrumental elements gets tiring quickly. The odd 'E=MC2' shows a bit of experimental flair but the repetition intended to be hypnotic comes off as irritating. The vocals swathed in reverb and echo (yet again) just don't sound very compelling. Nowhere are the vocals more painful than on 'Strange,' a minimal Tuxedo Moon style track. Winston Tong's voice may be suited for this overwrought emotional style, but Donovan Tate's pipes surely are not.

There are way too many tracks on this album to keep commenting on individually, and many of them are guilty of the same flaws of the aforementioned. As for electronica diversity, Donovan employs an 'everything but the kitchen sink,' aw fuck-it, let's throw in the kitchen sink too' approach, so some things are momentarily amusing, but nothing particularly compelling. By track #11 ('Wake Up!') he's sounding like a lo-fi Kid606 but getting that far in the CD is an endurance test. Tracks that follow are scattershot hodge-podge collage of feats of sampling, wacky rhythms, semi-realized ideas, and unfocused and under-developed sonic meanderings. His version of the 'Dr. Who Theme' which closes the album is symptomatic of all that's gone before; steeped in the past, and not taken to the future very well.

I really hate to come down hard on virtually unknown indie artists because they're the ones who need nurturing and encouragement the most. Sometime though, tough-love is called for if an artist is ever going to improve. It's really a shame too because I can tell this guy has some talent; it's just a bad mistake to not distill the best of what one is capable of into a few well-composed and well-recorded tracks, and leave the rest on the cutting-room floor. Few are going to want to turn all the pages of this 'Scrapbook'. It may be time to get a new 'Playbook'.

This release is a split betwenn JGRUU (two track), an industrial outfit from Peru with psychedelic influence and Grassa Dato (one track), an experimental band from Spain.
The first Jgruu track, "Tierra Muerta" is a, loop based, almost noist track reminding a manga like battle while "Communication fallida" is a noise drone in the vein of the previous track. "Humanos y otros insectos", the track from Grassa Dato, is a twenty minutes fully noise track that has no mercy for the (poor?) listener.
Even if not recommanded to everyone, this could be a good listen to noise fans searching nothing new to listen but quite funny to hear.

This split release is by Herman Hamann (Hamann), a kraut rock influenced musician from Peru, and Hiroshi Hasegawa (Astro), a noise artist influenced by seminal bands like C.C.C.C.
The first two track by Haman are a sort of spacey, with the use of sci-fi movie sounds, dark ambient while the third is a slow atmospheric tune wounderfully sustained by synth. The track from Astro is, instead, a noisy ambient assault above a dark drone; it has not much musical development, especially in dynamics but it's typical to japan outfits, but has a good sonic architecture.
This work has nothing new to offer but this could be a good pick to noise fans, not searching for pure assault but also interested to some sonic research. Nice.

Incubico is an artistic movement created by Diego Arandojo and Sebastián Zurutuza aiming to join esthetic, philosophical and sociocultural elements that are related to a wide theoretical baggage. The result is multimedia release where images, made by Diego Arandojo, and sounds, made by Flor, search symbols to convey an almost esoteric message.
This release is formed by tree medium length movie: "Ciclo de Thule" is a 35 minute movie where words are used as punctuation to image distorted and juxtaposed. Using magick as theme, it seems to lack a proper plot looking more a video clip than a movie. Its soundtrack is the already reviewed album of the same name made by Flor, and largely better than this movie. "El panòptico del ìncubo" is a 23 minutes more evocative movie based, in his first part, on words and almost static images using noise as the medium for atmosphere and meaning. The apparently calmer second part lead to a third part where the influence of more abstracted visual experiments are paired with the narration of the story of incubus and succubus. The movie ends with the repetition of the initial visual theme. "Opus 23" is a reflection on discord, portrayed as a dark young girl, using pictures and words. Of course, the number 23 is widely displayed in various forms.
This could be a fine release as they have ideas but, as a movie, has a clear limit: the video part leave to the audio part the responsibility of conveying the meaning of the work. The votes are, in starts, 1.5 for the first movie, 4 for the second and 3 for the third so the result is an almost perfect three.

Any panel of greyest or smoke-blackened new wave's followers will easily acknowledge the intrinsic value, the exact arrangement as well as the talent of this Belgian formation as Der Klinke shows fusionist skills off through a modern sonorous renovation of some almost godforsaken musical buildings, erected by many legendary Belgian predecessors, such as Front 242, The Neon Judgement, Vomito Negro or Poesie Noire, so that they ideally lenghten the so-called Cold Electro Wave, pierced by some plain rhythmical schemes belonging to EBM, which used to flood mainly European underground disco clubs and headphones between the end of the 80ies and the beginning of the 90ies, through a nowadays adaptation. The result is really interesting and could cause some problems to those reviewers obsessed by labelling of genres, especially when the band bridges the above-mentioned marching sounds with more danceable beats. Even if it's not plagiarist, they manage to hit nostalgic hearts, especially in tracks such as Clear Mind (featuring some drum sequences close to those voodoo techno beats by Vomito Negro or 808 State) or Square Moon, but they could also seduce many gas-masked and leather-blended dancers with tracks such as the foggy 3AM, the obscure "matsurized" techno march of Where It Ends (a track where they grabbed the gnashed voice by Gerd Van Geel aka CUVG, singer for the Belgian band The Arch) or those ones featuring the appearance of a former member of Der Klinke, the jazz singer Melissa Vanderville, who flushes her vocal chords for You, The Voice and Surrender. It seems like lyrics speak about personal stories or poetized pages of a diary, but there's some provokative hook here and there - I personally underwrite the one against cultural uniformation promoted by mass media in the song Radio ("The Radio/Is Your companion/towards an empty life...Go to concerts/go to parties/Meet musicians/Buy their records/But never/No never/Download music" , so Chesko Geert Vankerkhof sings about!) - as well as a nicely gloomy sort of lullaby for insomniacs, At Night, at the end of the record, my personal favorite track together with the above-mentioned Where It Ends, the misty-eyed title-track (I'd like to argue it's a love song by unwearing it from any possible esoteric meaning!) and the chronicly prosaic castle In The Dark. Go in for a dip before the (cold) wave ebbs!