Sistol is one of the projects (along with Luomo, Uusitalo, Conoco, Vladislav Delay, etc) of Sasu Ripatti and ON THE BRIGHT SIDE is his newest release under this moniker. The eight tracks of the CD show Sasu focusing on upbeat sincopated rhythms, anxious atmospheres (check also the cover which shows a gun made out of medicinal blisters and syringes) and minimal techno structures. Also melody has a big part on the Sistol's musical scheme and even if repetition and sounds alternation is its core. In this way ON THE BRIGHT SIDE sounds more dj friendly (more than Sistol's first album which has just been reissued always by Halo Cyan/Phthalo) and multifaceted.

Aref Durvesh is one of the most active tabla players in the UK and has previously collaborated with the likes of Sting and Susheela Raman. On "Rational Exuberance" he joined hands with bass player and producer Felix Xfile Macintosh from Xkollective and V.U. and the two long-time collaborators created a soothing six track EP of world music downtempo electronica. Needless to say the focus is on tabla patterns (from steady and relaxing to fast and exciting) and deep bass lines, but the addition of vocals (by Aref himself as well as a female guest vocalist), guitar, bansuri and live drums on a few tracks make it a sexy fusion of styles and musical etymology that fans of Suphala, Tabla Beat Science, Karsh Kale and others will surely enjoy. Although it isn't, this stuff (especially come track 6) somehow reminded me of the '90s underground NY drum'n'bass scene and the long jam sessions with dancehall MCs and eccentric guests (that was the first time I saw Kale play), and I suppose that is still very much alive in the UK. I shall go and check it out for myself soon...

Marc Houle grew up in Windsor, Canada, with a Commodore 64 in front of him, new wave music in his ears and Detroit on the other side of Lake Erie. Now, living from Berlin to New York and playing under his own name as well as with the monikers 2VM and Run Stop Restore, he's about to deliver at end of September probably his most personal album. An album titled DRIFT. Born with the aim to give sound to Berlin's winter, the album finds Marc mixing minimal synth techno sounds with an experimental form of New Wave where he gathers layers of delayed clean guitars turning the atmospheres of a snowy sightseeing into sounds using the dance language. Analog synth sounds, drum beats and looping melodies are his tools and I don't know if this is the sound of winter or not, but for sure is a nice way of warming the body and the soul of the listener.

I still haven't reviewed a release that Petit is back with a new one, it says a lot about the prolificacy of this French guy, but on the other hand I invite you to avoid thinking this over-abundance of works get worse release after release. I think the French artist fills the rank of musician like Aidan Baker who's average production has been quite good so far. On this new work Petit keeps following the route of contemporary neoclassic music processed through a laptop, nothing close to Fennez or Sakamato plus Alva Noto or Murcof, just harps, cello, violin, horn, trumpet. All of the instrumentalists involved in the recording have not been processed heavily, the majority of the effects used are reverb, delay and what I think has been a cut and paste re-assemblage of the tracks. As you can imagine there's some soft crackling, some other soft noises to color the final shape of every single suite, but everything has been done with a really gentle touch. If compared to the previous cd of Petit and friends, this one is way more abstract and cold in a spacey way, if Roger Eno and Lanois would assemble a new sonorization for the documentary on "Apollo. Atmospheres and Soundtracks" this could be really close to the result, even if it's much colder if compared to the atmosphere create on that album. Despite its dark profile this work somehow brings in a gentle overdose-experience, according to this comment it partially reminded me of some soft Nurse With Wound hybridized with a more neoclassic aesthetic, but that "floating ashore-feel" is still present and quite strong. The global listening is quite uniform and trippy and even thought not all of the tracks are on the same level the average result undoubtedly goes from interesting to catchy.

One half of the harsh industrial band Snog, the provocative Australian musician David Thrussel finally comes back with another of his shrubby and scathing releases by which he's able to shrivel the most raving aspects of contemporary human history, most humans sometimes ignore, as well as to have a squint behind controller's curtains through the use of musical language inheriting elements both from EBM, techno and scattershot electronica, a plenty of references running on the razor-sharpened edge of conspiracy theories and political matters and by which he manages to move the listener's mind up without using any lyrics. The plot standing behind this new release entitled Full Spectrum Dominance ' issued by Ant-Zen in collaboration with the seminal Tympanik Audio -, like the ludicrous military doctrine inspiring the American Department of Defense according to which a joint military structure should achieve control over all elements, including not only the classical air, land and maritime warfare, but also information space (the so-called Cyberwarfare) and electromagnetic spectrum and what is known as Joint Vision 2020, the famous plan for world hegemony developed by Joint Chiefs of Staff and supported by DARPA, acronym for the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency, a funding body of the US Government and the Pentagon, mentioned as the fake client of this release, intended according to the fictitious words of a DARPA's officer 'to deliver to the men and the women working in some of the Pentagon's most challenging fields as inspiring soundtrack to their daily working life, but also to present to the general public information and a view hitherto unconsidered of some of the lesser known branches of our military' and the booklet included with this record explains the references of each track, alternatively quoting some Chomsky inspired anti-capitalist issues, the Hostmen of Newcastle upon Tyne ' being maybe the first example in human history of energy cartels controlling resources and inventing shortages in order to appeal to the unmerciful market rules, inspiring according Thrussel's words the nowadays cartels'¦ -, the manipulations of world bankers in order to generate illusions and hypnotize markets (The Wonderful Wizard of Ounce is definitively the funniest and most bitter title David could choose for 'affording' this theme!!!), neocolonialism, the inner mechanism of the so called 'free market', contemporary fears about forthcoming future and other actual more or less paranoid arguments.

His provocative joke seems consisting of wearing the mask of the controllers, spreading messages to the bovine masses in a witty and almost dramatic way, by using sounds as theatrical gesture and creating implicitly a possible soundtrack of our dark ages. From the musical viewpoint, Full Spectrum Dominance looks like an exhaustive summary of the previous breathings by the Black Lung, but I mostly prefer those tracks showing some ambience and atmospheric gears, such as the thoughtful and disquieting worried whispers of The Great Unconscious, an evocative collage of synthetic melodies standing as one of the best piece Thrussel had ever composed and which perfectly rendered the most buzzing divergence and the implicit imperfectness of any ordering supreme will, the disquieting beauty of the already mentioned The Wonderful Wizard of Ounce, the swarming concinnity of the bass intertwining some bizarre sounds in The Hostmen of Tyne, the dark sound granules of The Feminine Void which is going to carry your mind in the outer dumb spaces (!) and the gentle martial core as well as the stirred sounds on a disassembled march of The Neuroses of Nostalgia (another great immersive track!), but the most ominous techno crunched sounds you're going to hear in other appreciable tracks ' more easy to recognize by all those listeners which already tasted Black Lung's previous records ' should be considered just as parts of a whole. Maybe Full Spectrum Dominance is not so epic as other releases, but in my modest opinion it's the definitive proof that Thrussel's sound forging skills as well as its provocative grip reached some interesting peak indeed!