I should admit in advance that I received a self-produced copy of this album from the band leader Michael Renfield more than a year before. So somehow I’m a bit familiar with the content of this new and second full-length album of NOISE PROCESS. After their remarkable debut release "Neural Code" and the follow-up Remix-EP "Synapse (The Dead World EP)", both out around 2002/2003 on the German Wire Records, there was a long time gap in between.
This happened due to the fact, that Wire Records has held back the recordings for "Groundzer0" and has left the band in unclear conditions. Finally and after almost three endless years it happened, what rumors out of the scene have expected before, Wire Records stopped all business activities in 2K6. What a shameful behavior of this label to sit out of childish reasons on a ready done recording until a band gets almost forgotten – this has had a damaging effect on the band evolution and I also guess that Michael Renfield has created his Harsh-EBM side-project R010R only "thanks" to the fact that "Groundzer0" was laying on ice and that the whole existence of the band NOISE PROCESS was quite questionable.
Luckily (...and with the help of some loud voices out of a forum... well, TEH FORMU...lol) Tommy T of the DSBP has paid attention and - as usual – he washes his ears from time to time. It would have been a real disaster if this top-notch Electro/Industrial album wouldn’t be released, so after E.S.R. NOISE PROCESS is the second previously-signed-to-Wire-Records act now collaborating with the NM-based label and mail order service.

"Goundzer0" has matured and evolved since the initial recording, with now 78 minutes playing time it fulfills the description "full-length" release. Also musically there are worlds between the now five years old debut "Neural Code" and "Goundzer0" – NOISE PROCESS have heavily worked on their sound and compositions through the years and could reach a modern and up-to-date sounding outcome. What has sounded as some easy-to-follow arrangements on "Neural Code" has grown to more complex structures and textures, "Half-Life" also featuring some cool vocoderized vocals is a fine example and proof for this. With "Desolation" they like to present an ultimate follow-up smasher for "Dying World", rather melodic with a clear verse-bridge-refrain arrangements.
No doubt - "Groundzer0" has to be named to be one of the best releases of this year for the hard Electro/EBM/Industrial scene so far. This is an aggressive and intense assault from the first to the last track which won’t leave any listener unimpressed. Last but not least the excellent abilities to create a dark, mechanical and futuristic looking artwork has to mentioned – "Neural Code" was already awesome, but "Groundzer0" is the masterpiece. I like to advise you to check out the special "art" folder on the NOICE PROCESS website, which features all relevant music projects and a tremendous designed look

Okay, I admit that the "noise" genre isn’t my favorite sonic art form. It takes a special connoisseur of this type of dementia to fully appreciate it. However, when done well, it can be an interesting audial experience. Fire In The Head, (henceforth to be known as F/I/T/H for brevity’s sake) put in the effort and do it very well. Currently consisting of Michael Page and Benny Nelson from somewhere in Europe, Germany most likely, the duos create an ominous pastiche of brutal but engaging madness and menace. A lot of "The Remedy Has Become The Affliction" sounds like a nightmare in an underground metro station. Psychotic voices occasionally break through the industrial miasma like crazed homeless people you could imagine living in subterranean city tunnels. Even though the first track seemed to come on a bit too strong with distorted vocals, the majority of this album shows a certain maturity and refinement that F/I/T/H must have developed over a number of previous releases. Don’t expect beats or regular rhythmic content on this grinding, grating outing; it’s not that kind of "music". There is enough variety in the compositions on "TRHBTA" that for true lovers of esoteric noise, it will stand up to repeated listenings. The use of (heavily processed) vocals and vocal samples is mercifully sparse, excepting the first and last tracks. By the time you get to the last track, you’ll be looking for someone to tear it up vocally anyway, so it all works out pretty well. I can’t really take into account F/I/T/H’s socio-political agenda- as they say "TRHBTA is the carrion we collectively accept and ingest as reality, a dirty needle in the neck of a complacent society and a further descent into the bowels of unmitigated psychosis." I’d prefer to leave it open and let it feed my own inner demons. If you’re into well-constructed noise projects, I’d definitely recommend this CD. I think it’s limited to 300 copies, so get yours while you can.

Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds and Birthday Party co-founder Mick Harvey is known by many for his great taste in arrangements and composition, trades that he has been cultivating on his own time for quite a while now and which some of you might have had an opportunity to savor in Andrew Dominik's 2000 film "Chopper", and more recently Paul Goldman's 2002 film "Australian Rules". I personally haven't seen these films yet (although I just added Chopper to my Netflix cue) but a lot of people must have, because Harvey won a Best Original Soundtrack for Film and Television Award from the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIAS). This CD is Harvey's second film music installment of short pieces, cues, background music and score music and it includes music from the flicks Lighting Fires, Chopper, Sparrow, Rien Ne Vas Plus, Frank Hurley - The Man Who Made History, Rosehill, Go For Gold.
Because the music comes from different scores it is not as easy to file this entire 27 piece CD away under one genre. Overall it is on the atmospheric side, but there are definitely wild differences in moods, ranging from grand, gorgeous and dramatic tension-making and tension-breaking orchestral arrangements (mostly from the Frank Hurley film, which I'd love to see but Netflix doesn't carry) to simple and minimalistic pieces with kalimba and guitar, from Ennio Morricone-inspired western desert image evoking passages to piano parts, subtle string parts, atmospheric post-industrial things or Tom Waits-like parts that might fit in a Tarantino or a Rodriguez picture... As in a movie, a lot of the parts are recurring and will make you feel almost as if you are actually watching a movie. And yes, in case you are wondering Cave does make an appearance as co-writer and singer on the last one of these 27 tunes, a remarkably strange and different piece that sounds almost Eastern European inspired.

Nohno is UK-based Dean Dennis, also known as Sector and previously member of Clock DVA and The Anti Group Collective. Obviously with that kind of experience it's pretty safe to assume that whatever Dennis will do is going to sound pretty damn good, or, at the least, it is going to be based on the knowledge and taste acquired in over 20 years of music making. However don't expect the Dennis of Sector. Nohno was created as an alternative to those techno sounds and an opportunity to explore a larger variety of sonic combinations, a more IDM album of sorts, if you will. Specifically, "Metropolis", as the title suggests, intends to evoke the multifaceted atmosphere of a big city, its ocean of lights and it's patterns of revolving sounds and throbbing beats. Voices, thick layers of sounds, incessant and driving beats symbolizing the rhythms of the city, ethereal Mills-like piano parts... Think of it as standing in the middle of a busy Tokyo intersection in the middle of a lively Saturday night, looking up to the skyscrapers and the billboard-lit sky, while fast moving cards leave slow-motion yellow and red light rays all around you in all four directions and you experience the symbiotic relationship between lights and darkness, between slow and fast, between outside world chaos and innermost quiet, between swift terrestrial movements and a still sky.

If Beside The Cage brings forward some typical elements of impro-combos, Sabine Vogel can be better qualified as many solo performers on Creative Sources and on similar labels. Does what I wrote stands for "here’s you have you're average anonymous release"? Absolutely no, with those words I simply meant if there's a modus operandi with which you can distinguish the work of a band as much as that of a soloist like in this case. But given that the world is full of contradictions, let's say if we'd not consider this one as an only acoustic/instrument cd, this should be a big mistake since the fifty percent of this whole effort is made out of field recordings. Believe it or not, the fact is that miss Vogel mixed really well some solo performances with some silent/non intrusive field soundscapes and I dare you to recognize the different sections without the liner-notes accompanying every track. The recording is superb and Sabine mixed the different elements so well it all sounds as a unique continuative trip that passes from a soft half choked blowing to a silent audio-scape. This minimal work is brilliantly engineered and conceived well enough to offer a enjoyable listening even in terms of time length.