Active since 1991, after releasing music (most black metal music) with the Inquisitor, Funeral Fog and Maldoror monickers, the Thee Maldoror Kollective produced one live MCD and two albums. Since the change of band name also the music changed and it turned into a mix of technological metal influenced by occult theories. 23 MILES BACK ON THE CLOCKWORK HIGHWAY is a remixed version of their latest album "A Clockwork Highway". The men called to the hard work of giving a new life to the Thee Maldoror Kollective tracks are: Mick Harris, CTRLer, Nordvargr, Cdatakill, Eraldo Bernocchi, Jeye, Bad Sector and Euro Satan 3000 / Mikrikilla. The tracks have been reworked hardly and of the original guitar sound only few things are left: most of the tracks are now sounding more ambient industrial / dub industrial. I don't know how the original versions were but I've got to say that the remixers did a good job by building a new sound structure that has got it's personality. The tracks aren't a collage of metal sounds into an "electronic sauce". There isn't a better version of a track, each one is a good one and you should check this out!

A bizarre album, only partially true to its title, from Björgúlfsson (ex-Stilluppsteypa and Vacuum Boys) and Ohlsson, plus some guest collaborators like Gunnhildur Hauksdóttir on vocals and B. J. Nilsen (aka Hazard) on keyboards and vocals. "King Glitch" is a raw and boorish record, which would be no problem if the music was actually good and convincing. Unfortunately, it mostly sounds like a bunch of unfinished sketches, with some shimmering idea here and there rapidly wasted away. It has plenty of fat beats which could lead to good techno/funk/hip hop tracks if really developed, but they're quite haphazardly broken up into digital noise pieces (which on the other hand are not remarkable themselves) or just all-around nonsense. I'm surely missing a lot of its post-modern irony, but this sounds just like a bad record to me.

The world is just too big and there are too many records, labels, bands or just names I'm not able to remember, but right when I hear somebody complains for the millionth time about the lack of good bands/projects and blah, blah, bah...here it is: a sampler with a bunch of good electronic musicians I've never heard before. "IDM": Intelligent Dance Music, can you remember? Once it was Warp records, later some other interesting labels like Rephlex, Hefty...Funkwelten could be the next one, why not?!. Ok IDM means a lot and nothing in particular at the same time, let's say that the most of the songs contained in the sampler have a beat (that doesn't mean a strong beat "Detroit-techno-style"), but the interesting thing is that the tracks have a sort of "trait d'union" that's represented by the "dreamy-trance-post-wave" atmosphere. Piano loops, sad melodies, keyboards/strings symphonies and bass loops, does it sound like something that could be on K7! or Compost? Sure! But it could a selection of the best artists on both of the labels. Reminiscences of Carl Craig's "piano works", emotions a-la-Peace Orchestra, nordic touch not unlike Gus Gus, Bjork or early Biosphere. I think it could be a great record to relax yourself after work and at the same time something they could dance to in a club up there in the deep North. The most of the tracks have a really high standard but For A Space, Satsuma and Echorausch (probably the most introspective artist of the whole lot) deserve a particular mention. In your cd collection it could be the cd next to Warp records' "Artificial Intelligence".

Hip Hop, acid house, techno, gabba, hardcore and various improvised craziness. This are the first terms that popped out in my mind when I listened to Hellfish's ONE MAN SONIC ATTACK FORCE. The album basically is a compilation of recent 12"s and remixes and gives an idea of Hellfish's way of dealing with rhythms. Having no problems into blending reggae moments with gabber and soul music, Julian Cobb (which is also the owner of Deathchant records) sometimes surprise the audience: like on "Iron hand - Steelfinger remix" where he taskes the original Speed Freak theme and mix the 70's soul beginning with sprays of rage or like on "Rampage@218" where he creates an intriguing ambient track which little by little turns into an experimental track based on rhythms and noise. Remixes seem to me to be more experimental, because the rhythmical section and the changes of sounds are more radical respect the original tracks. On his tracks Hellfish tend to develop an idea (even if you've got to think that each track is based on different influences and sounds) while on remixes he use all his creativity tending to give an anarchic printing to the track structure.

Cocosolidciti records is a perculiar record label and the people at Cocosolidciti like to think about peculiar releases. -40 for sure is one of them. Composed by a set of a CD plus a DVD, -40 is a compilation which gathers modern digital manipulators of the likes of Akufen, Deadbeat, Venetian Snares, Knifehandchop, Secret Mommy, Lowfish, and DMC World Champion DJ Dopey, etc. They were called to do some treatement to some old Canadian Propaganda Films from the '40s. The whole project is divided into treated audio tracks and visual treated works with original audio. The visual sources have been treated by David Lemieux, Josh Raskin, Shawn Chappelle, Nadia, Duguay, Creatix, etc. The video treatements gave to the original sources a sense of uneasiness: it's like the video artists, with their work, underlined the alienation and the horrors of war. The ten tracks of the audio CD sound particular because you can hear the soundtracks of those propaganda films along with jungle beats and various rhythm based solutions (with also some ambient atmospheres like on the Prhizzm track "Ordeal by ice"). The video DVD, to be honest, contains a lot more respect the video reworks, as it contains also the whole CD audio tracklist with the original scores that were used as sample source. The remixers did a great work and I suggest you to check this release as you won't be disappointed!