Tom di Muzio has been keeping him self busy since the late eighties, so it is almost normal that after twenty years of releases from long-time noise label RRR, the Legendary House of Misanthropy and ReR Megacorp records, he would come up with some sort of an all-star game of experimental players. Asphodel and Gench Music (sadly, I believe, a BMI branch) could not let the opportunity to release such collaborative effort pass by, so now we have a double CD, where the first disc ("Mono") is diMuzio just by himself, while the second one (dah, "Poly"!) is him with all of the following: his partner Chris Cutler (ex-Henry Cow drummer and owner of ReR Megacorp) , Nick Didkovsky, Dj Qbert, the great Fred Frith, Anna Homler, the quasi-historical Illusion of Safety, Scot Jenerik, Kadet Kuhne, Yasuhiro Otani, Radiosonde, Solid Eye, Atau Tanaka, the challenging Wobbly, the Jet Black Hair People and Zipperspy. Most songs have been recorded in different locations of the states of California and New York, which is something you might expect from the "Poly" disc but which is also true for the "Mono" disc. No matter what they might tell you, this is a record of pure experimental audio material, yes electro-acoustic, yes noise, yes avantgarde, yes musique concrete, yes ambient, yes electronic, but mainly experimental, like, for example, most of Staaplaat or Soleilmoon releases, only here just instruments (no vocals) creating aleatory soundscapes, extensive auditory illusions, screeching ethereal climaxes, droning and rumbling ambient music and floors of textures and stretching sounds.

Oops, Architect Thomas Mcintosh and sound artist, composer, multi-media person Emmanuel Madan did it again! After the Montreal duo took over an old grain elevator last year, mic-ed it and broadcasted its sounds creating a buzz in the international press and critics, they are back with another by-product of their fervid creative imagination. "Symphony #1 for Dot Matrix Printers", [The User]'s 3" on Staalplaat recordings, was reviewed by Chain D.L.K.'s contributor Fabrizio "Fa" Cristallo about two years ago (maybe less), but now "Symphony #2 for Dot Matrix Printers" sees the light as a full lenght CD released by Staalplaat in Europe and by Asphodel in North America. The genius idea behind this project was to feed fourteen old crappy dot-matrix printers (Juki, Epson, Panasonic, Raven, Star Micronics Gemini, Fujitsu and Citizen) some ASCII code that would make them produce different sounds, and coordinate those sounds via custom written ASCII files transmitted through a custom serial protocol to early nineties personal computers orchestrated by a similarly obsolete file server. The genius of course is also to be found in the political statement of re-appropriating office machinery for purposes of cultural production, or of taking a modern-day ruin and turning it into an instrument of sound, like they did with the above-mentioned "Silophone" project. Not to mention the political statement that their name alone is, remarking how today's technocratic society employs the term 'user' to objectify and 咬educe individuality to an abstract and generic ideal. This reduction is employed wherever abstract rational methodology is applied to situations involving real people. Once this reduction is made, it becomes much easier to treat the faceless, formless 'user' in an inhuman fashion. In our society we employ the impersonal term 'user' to justify the infliction of neon lighting, plastic cutlery and Muzak on a huge majority of our population? How about that? The CD (at least when bought from Staalplaat, I am not sure about Asphodel) comes inside an old 5-1/4" disc and does not contain any sound sources other than the actual printers, whose execution is partly automated, partly improvised live. The sound is great in its variety and its complexity, unveiling multiple shades of sounds ranging from the classical rhythmical dot-matrix moving head printing (whose movement is intelligently and trustfully recorded with two mics to preserve the great hi-fidelity stereo image, going from one side to the other) that serves as a beat, to the hum of the machines (serving as a background), to other low drones (that I personally have never heard my old printer do), to shorter sounds (acting like punctuating ambient experimental textures and sophisticated musical apparel). For those of you who just don't get it and want to pretend to forget your narrow-minded stupidity with booty-shaking music, or for those of you who do indeed get it but wouldn't mind some of that booty-shaking stuff yourself, you may wanna check out the LP version of this, as it does come with [the User]'s very own interpretation of booty-shaking edits. Unfortunately I myself haven't had the pleasure to hear their version of booty-shaking, but I trust it to be interesting and challenging enough, and won't comment any further. These are the new minds that music needs to get out of the stagnating and molding situation. These experiments are the true essence of experimental music. I don't have a problem with noise, but my day would be a lot more exciting if more people would go beyond pointless noise and use their creativity to challenge themselves and others, break boundaries and push the envelope! This is fantastic stuff!

This two track 7" translucent vinyl release features songs from Rosewater. This electro industrial debut comes from darkest heart of concrete voids of Riga's industrial suburbs.They are quite a bit more harsh than the some of the other Mindwerk label artists and also more quick-paced, Noise oriented and modernized. "Condomat" is heavy Power Noise with an EBM rhythm, awesome! Vocally it reminds me of some of those gothic/industrial bands but with heavier distortion. "Perpetual Dream State" begins with a more ambient tone but soon becomes a quick-paced hard metallic pound.

Amateur God is listed by Wampus Multimedia as an ambient techno artist from Slovenia as in compared to a possible soundtrack should David Lynch have directed a postmodern remake of Frankenstein. The artist himself lists several Goth, Rock, Electronic, and Industrial influences and calls his music dark-qausi-gothic-semi-vocal-ambient. The artist claims his project is sort of about closing your eyes, imagining the worst possible things you can, and mocking them. What Amateur God has produced is a type of industrial ambient similar to the Industrial equivalent of what Ethereal music is to the Goth scene. Standard hard metallic beats, droning ambience, mild vocal sampling, mellow acoustic guitar rhythms, piano, ambient electronica, and other eclectic elements combine to create something that might be like a softer Godflesh, darker Neubauten, harsher versions of Ethereal and even New Age elements - all combining to create an eclectic blend of dark mood music. It has the effect of what would probably make good horror film music and is sort of a milder version with a more industrial flavor of the type of mood you would get from Midnight Syndicate only not nearly as 'produced' and much harsher sounding. It's not a bad release but there is still plenty of room for improvement. Interesting musical concept but still in the amateur stages. I guess even gods can begin as amateurs huh. Maybe when this god is a bit more matured we will shiver in his presence - but not yet. Until then we will listen with anticipation.

Mindwerk Records, a still young dark industrial label that has not quite gotten the attention it deserves yet. This two track 7" translucent vinyl release features songs from the Danish ambient/drum-n-bass band Parkinson. The first song "Eden Hell" which appeared on the first demo disc by the label is a sort of dark industrial drum-n-bass with sampled metal guitar and darkly distorted vocals. I think this is a different mix from the other though as I don't remember parts of it but that could just be me. "Sch.Merz Vs Manson" has some hard driving guitar samples and beats much in the vein of KMFDM's Angst but darker and way more 'metal'. The vocals are a sort of deep grovelly distorted demonic sounding thing. This would make a great backing track for a hard driving action video sequence.