45.18 is a truly radical release aiming to portrait nine free interpretations of what perhaps is the most controversial composition of all times: John Cage's "4.33", consisting of opening the piano lid and closing it after the given time, without playing a single note. The closest to silence as a form of music is AMM member Keith Rowe's opening track. Other performers also experiment with industrial and electronic noise, hardcore, various noises and include Artificial Memory Trace, Sonic Youth's guitar player Thurston Moore, Pauline Oliveros Deep Listening Band and guests, Jio Shimizu (WRK), Voice Crack, Clive Graham (Morphogenesis), Toshiya Tsunoda, Alignment and Frans De Waard himself, who also provided the CD with very extensive and interesting liner notes (co-written by Alignment's member Mark Poysden). If there was an award for most experimental label of the present time, I think I would definitely award it to Staalplaat and its various sub-labels and branches (such us in this case, Korm Plastics). Get ready, here it comes: silence...

The three Chicago dudes behind Aerospace Soundwise, Black Dot Corporation and Wheaton Research joined to give birth to a laptop trio called TV Pow. Together they explore small bits of sounds, hi frequency hisses that a 70 year old man would probably not even hear, microscopic audio data streams, occasional string instrument string picks, outside field noises and other sounds and noises from mechanical and natural origin. 15 tracks on a cute little 20 minutes 3" disc. Pretty damn twisted stuff. I wouldn't know about fresh and innovative (unless of course you consider everything in this category of music fresh and innovative just for the fact of plain being in this fresh and innovative category) but definitely something weird ;-).
Recent releases include Staalplaat's "Mort Aux Vaches" (cmp this section for review) and Erstwhile's "We Are Everyone in the Room" with Iceland's Stilluppsteypa.

Recorded April 18th 2000 for the dutch VPRO radio this 4 piece full lenght instrumental CD presents a band that makes extensive use of guitars and other traditional instruments such as bass and drum... Although their info sheet presents them as a band playing "rock music of the more spacious kinds" there are not many rock traces to be found here... More like some slow almost psychedelic wave eventually escalating into a nearly psychotic repetitive burst of energetic riffs... It's actually pretty relaxing at times.. Yes occasionally, throughout the long run of these four compositions a couple of guitars (tremolo, distorted, clean, noisy) plays over a repeating bass riff and a smooth drum beat with muted snare (like in track no.3).
The cover is made of a silver plastic sleeve designed by Cyan in Berlin.

As stated by the title, this is a Clawfinger compilation. If you don t known them, here s a little history: The Scandinavian heavy metal four-piece Clawfinger formed in 1988 when Jocke Skog and Zak Tell met while working together at the Rosenlunds Hospital in nearby Stockholm. Bard Torstensson and Erlend Ottem joined them in 1990. By the mid-'90s, Clawfinger self-released their debut Deaf Dumb Blind and their unique blend of metal and hip-hop was critically acclaimed in Swedish press, not to mention the album having sold over 600,000 copies worldwide. They've played at several European festivals including Holland's Dynamo Festival, Roskilde in Denmark, and Rock in Reim in Germany, and achieved different awards. Clawfinger took home two Grammies at the Swedish Grammy Awards in 1994 for Best Hardrock Band and Best Video. In 1995, the band recorded a sophomore effort, Use Your Brain, and maintained momentum with constant touring, notably participating in Ozzy Osbourne's Monsters of Rock Festival in South America and rocking alongside American metal counterparts like Megadeth, Faith No More, and Alice Cooper. Two years later, Clawfinger released their third self named album . I think at this point you know what to expect from this CD: twelve of the best tracks of their three albums packed with energy, distorted guitars, great tunes and echoes of the best Ministry along with hip hop breaks.

This is the strangest album recorded by Myer to date. At this point you re wondering why, well, it s simple to explain and you d realise it immediately by listening the opening track of DECEPTION. "American Dreaming", this is the title of the track, has got the usual atmospheres used by the man, but at a certain point there s an acoustic guitar and a clear voice that makes you think that something happened. In fact, even if that track is the only one with an acoustic instrument, the whole album has got a different taste from the previous releases which he released under the name of Cleen, Cleaner or Haujobb. The tracks are more dancey than before and generally you can listen a sort of techno influence on them. The result is not that bad, but sometimes it seems that Myer itself was not convinced by the result and it seems that his main target was to do something different to avoid to repeat himself. In this way seventy two minutes of minutes are too much to handle also because for tracks like "The Call", where his voice seems almost annoyed. This could be because the first songs has been recorded at one of his friend s bedroom and the whole album has been recorded when he was on vacation but some songs don t convince me completely. Good but not enough and it s terrible to listen to tracks like "Pillowtalk" because it seems something like a synthpop trick.