Some wholesome stuff for misanthropist is coming from Finnish label Some Place Else, who decided to issue a collection of cheeky sketches of a mad sound tumbler, who's going to delight both Tigerbeat-like stuff and psychotropic sonic stimulations close to 8-bit diggers' soups with the habit of hooking that kind of musical jolts normally associated to notorious names such as the one of Venetian Snares. To be honest, Aprox, nome de plume of the young Finnish composer Julius Valve also known as MR:HC or just Human Chocolate, pierces the listener's space by bringing his prick punch to a red hot on different furnaces. The ferocious introduction, a frenzied From Avanto With Love remix (!) of a track entitled Elbow Knock you're going to hear later, acts (more properly than the original version) as the title suggests through a boiling caldron whereas electromechanical compressed samples, electronic convulsive hiccough (close to the one you can extract when recording the buzzes while short-circuiting the board of a drum machine!), precedes Tissues and Candles, a sort of morbid lullaby built on pitch adjusting of a carillon-like sequence, while the following track, Responsability, walks on the impassable path of industrial and breakcore, slightly alter its own course in the scratching industrial hip-hop in the following Skincrawler (featuring Pedigree, a young and very interesting band by Holden Laamann and Taavi Aavik, armouring the sound of this EP with a course provokative and appreciated tone who could remind the sound of bands such as Swamp Terrorists), letting appear on the surface the sound of many innovative beat-makers. After the banque of noisy jumps on 3-tone sequence of the above-mentioned Elbow Track (a sort of ideal sonic rendez-vous between Autechre, Ab ovo and Negativland I enjoyed a lot), wheres a sort of melody resurface in a more audible way than the initial remix, Julius proposes a plain lulling rockish track, Darkest Days, featuring Roy Boswell, Emily Boswell and a sampled hen, turned into chicken into the recording studio! As the cover artwork by Bon Jarno seems to suggest, it's like Aprox puts a finger into your pavilion before licking it!

With shameful guilt, it took me a while to review this new release by Nimh, but for what it's worth this' one of those record that I listened repeatedly before the review and not for a matter of indecision, but for it's so easy to be listened. In my opinion Giuseppe Verticchio reaches his personal best when dealing with quasi ethnic music, sure it's not pure tribal music and not even anything like Peter Gabriel's Real World, it has a lot of the personal taste of this musician. If you take this "Krungthep Archives" cd in some way its the ideal following to his "Forgotten Tapes" release, but at the same time its quite different from the afore mentioned work. Beside his usual amount of field recordings, Nimh has played a lot of traditional instruments and worked on a sort of quasi-ethnic ambient music that mixed with field-sounds, indirectly it may give the idea of an aural documentary. Everything has been meticulously shaped by Verticchio during the mixing process that means even the most lo-fi sounds and the instrumental insertions have been married harmoniously. Verticchio's freaky taste may bring the listen into a sort of hypnotic dimension and when this musician works on this kind of releases displays a certain amount of security. One of my favourite Nimh releases so far.

I'm getting to the bottom of the pile of this batch of releases I had review, so Hot Club's 'Straight outta Begnolet' is better late than never, I suppose. This is French Avant-Garde at its Avant-Gardiest; a combination of spoken word, free instrumental improvisation and turntables (some playing of old records, some sound manipulation), in a way I suppose only the French can do, and get away with. Hot Club is comprised of Alexander Bellenger (turntables); Jac Berrocal (trumpet, voice); Francois Fuchs (bass) and Dan Warburton (violin).

There are only 3 tracks on this album ' 'Satan Sous La Pluie' (19:35); 'Lorsque Yvonne Descends' (4:31); and 'Danse Avec Les Poules' (23:21). How to describe? In a word- Weird, with a capital W. 'Satan Sous La Pluie' begins with some plucks and plinks while an old chanson plays in the background and then along comes some trumpet burbling, squeaky violin strings, stray percussion sounds, and bass rumblings. It sounds like an LSD inspired jam to a vintage music program on the radio circa 1920. A little past the half-way mark, Berrocal begins an impassioned free-form recitation in French (well, maybe it's free-form, maybe he's reading something, I don't know), as only a Frenchman can do. Like me, if you don't understand French, you'll be lost as far as comprehension goes, but it sounds'Ãæexotic and dramatic building to a climax of sorts; especially underscored by the violin and bass droning.

'Lorsque Yvonne Descends' employs the sound of a very old Japanese (?) pop record (maybe sung in French) slowed down with the addition of little bellish tones and plucked strings 'n things. Strange; just strange. 'Danse Avec Les Poules' is no less strange beginning with a cavalcade of curious, carnivalesque old jazz recordings with only sparse sonic interjections from other instruments. Things change approaching the 3 minute mark when the free improvisation takes over in a melancholy, eerie ambience, highlighted by mournful trumpet and underscored by a low, oscillating drone. It has the effect of an odyssey through a demented carnival sideshow, and then the recording of some 1970s French femme pop singer emerges, and I can only assume that's Berrocal attempting to sing along with it. Oh boy! It turns into this disco thing while the other musicians in Hot Club play around it eventually ending in a repeating loop which fades as the Hot Club improvisation continues with another record looping a rhythm in the background. Other chansons are introduced via turntable and still the improvisation continues. Berrocal's trumpet is a cross between a fly and an elephant; a combination of skittering annoyance and bellicose bellowing. Warburton's busy violin noises and Fuchs's furious bass turn up the heat in the kitchen. Who know what the hell is coming out of Bellenger's turntables by now. It's a madly insane dance to the finish; frenetic, bizarre, and out of control. Whew! That was really something else. I'm not sure I even know how to adequately describe this let alone rate it.

This release is limited to 250 LPs (30 with T-shirt & Badge, if you're interested) and I don't know about CD or digital download; I tend to think not. Unless you can get your friendly local underground Record Shop to order it for you, you'll have go through a European distributor. I find it strange that Hot Club seems not to have a website. The closest I could find was Jac Berrocal's MySpace site, so that will have to suffice. You are probably better off visiting the Monotype records site for samples of the music though, which I would recommend, for the truly adventurous only.

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.

There's a precise and very interesting conceptual framing about this amazing release co-signed by Gunter Christmann (cello, trombone), Alexander Frangenheim (double bass) and the surprising vocalist Elke Schipper: every tracks have been entitled RAC, a protein isolated in fruit flies which appears to regulate some mnemonic processes - according to some American and Chinese researchers, it seems that when activated, RAC causes the fast fading of newly formed memories, allowing new ones to come in and solidify, a sort of turn-over into human "ram memory" arguably very important for good functioning of brain. This talented improvisational performers were maybe trying to switch RAC on during this recording occured on the end of January 2010 at Studio Borne in Berlin. It's quite clear that Elke's vocal extended techniques are ear-catching and I'm saying so not to behave with gallantry: altough cello, trombone and double bass play such an important role in the rehearsal performative stage that they can be perceived as "very close" elements to Core's dramatics and sometimes even stand-alone elements (as you can experience in Rac 11 or Rac 12), most of listeners will presumably focus on amazingly gorgeous versatility and swiftness in changing compass as well as the dramatic power by Elke Schipper, whose vocal skills sometimes sound able to cause the eruption of some subcutaneous strong energies while stammeringly muttering, humming, crying, yodelling, trilling, retching, gasping, screaming and distorting in many different ways her vocal chords in order to render emotions in a so vivid way that you could physically and emotionally react when for instance it seems some cruel dentist is trying to extract her painful tooth without anaesthesia or when she sounds falling prey to atrocious spasms provoking some vocal gasping convulsions, strangulated shouts, silent snurls or excruciating yells. Really amazzzzzziiiiiing stu...uh..uh...uh...shhhhhhhhhh...uff! B...p...p...p...ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh... (sorry for this sort of onomatope-like induction!)