jackhammer

I have listened through a couple of the links you sent but want to give them another go before responding with comments. Both were very very good though. This journal needs more love dammit!

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Zarko

No problem really... Nor rush...

I was quite annoyed... I thought I had gotten to another 10 reviews and even had my compilation folder all ready except I then realised I only had 9 songs, then reminded myself of the gig replacement.

Always tomorrow I guess

If people had the albums they would more readily comment, but with such odd albums I am not surprised more people don't post until they get access via a compilation or something.

And the general lack of prog rock probably ain't helping my cause either

Zarko

Zatracenie – Matryoshka (2007)


GENRES – Electronic, Ambient, Post Rock

Sink Into the Sin – 6:32
Slowsnow – 4:39
Evening Gleam Between Cloud – 5:33
Viridian – 5:23
My Funeral Rehearsal – 5:46
Tyrant's Miniature Garden – 7:20
Anesthetic – 4:35
Ezekiel – 5:31
Beyond – 4:20
February Lifesaver – 4:40

From the first listen of ‘Zatracenie’ I heard some eerie similarities to other electronic post rock groups, particularly the likes of World’s End Girlfriend (One of my favourite groups in the genre) and Sigur Ros, however, this album is layered with light otherworldly vocals from the female vocalist known as Calu (Who draws quite the similarity to the Cocteau Twins), with the programming being done by a bloke known as Sen. These similarities aren’t always a bad thing, with enough good songs that make it worth listening to, not to mention the beautiful vocals and composition. The album cover is also quite peculiar, a fine face decaying into the darkness.

‘Sink Into The Sin’ starts off as you would expect many of these electronic post rock/shoe gaze songs would… Some light synth and organ work with some glitching sounds breaking up the melody every now and them. At just over the first minute mark, Calu begins her performance, and we find the aspect that might actually make this album special. She doesn’t push herself to any high pitched level, but instead remains in a low key angelic falsetto level. The backing beat and electronics don’t change much, but they aren’t the main attraction. If anything the whole song is an exploration between the two forces, who don’t always sound like they belong in the same world. One containing hard and fast glitching noises, the other an ethereal voice from above. With about 2 minutes left, most of the aspects disappear, other than a piano for only a few moments before everything joins in once again. This seems almost pointless, and the track would have been happy finishing two minutes earlier.

‘Slowsnow’ is driven by muffled and distorted piano sounds, and it captures a beautiful flash of ambience. Nothing is confronting, the vocals are once again heavenly, and in better form than the previous track, and the electronics are used in conjunction with the other elements here. It reminds me of a particular track in Final Fantasy X, I can’t quite put my finger on it though (Apologies for the flashback ). It’s nothing overly fancy, but it does what the album set out to be, and is probably closer to Sigur Ros than World’s End. ‘Evening Gleam Between Clouds’ begins with the sound of rain striking the pavement road, and the electronics hint at something special. Calu has carried over the form from the last track to produce her best work on the album, it’s quite obvious. Her words are indiscernible, though at times they hint at being Japanese, English and another language at times.

The late electronics of Evening carry to the next song, ‘Viridian’, which is a synth and electronic heavy track. It is a very good change up from the post rock that has been out-standing elsewhere. Calu still performs, but the base of the piece is more hard edged electronic sounds and mixes, as well as some backing keyboard. It still isn’t anything special, but we needed a break from all the fluffy stuff anyway. ‘My Funeral Rehearsal’ is a fairly boring shoe gaze piece. The vocals are nothing spectacular, annoying at times if anything and the duo don’t attempt to push any boundaries with their work, and it is definitely one of the most forgettable tracks on the album. It even has the ripping distorted guitar sound late, which just tells you the track is a bore.

‘Tyran’ts Miniature Garden’ is a slightly more interesting turn, with some screeching string instruments being at the start of the piece, before returning to once again to the post rock sound, however it is a return of a better vocal performance by Calu. It seems a bit lost overall, the elements don’t quite match up (With the drumming being particularly ‘interrupting’ to the overall mood) but it’s still nice. At about two thirds, if you don’t have the player window open, it goes so quiet and the upcoming instrumentation is so bare, that you would swear it had changed songs. This ISN’T a good thing for me personally. I thought the song had changed, but low and behold it hadn’t. This sort of suggests that there is a repetitive boring nature to it. Maybe it was just me though…

‘Anesthetic’ is probably the biggest ‘blending pot’ with a lot of small elements being fairly easy to stop out, whether it is the louder piano than previous, the constant electronic fuzz and sounds emanating from below, the vocals as well as the string section. It’s all gathered into a stream of calmness and tranquility, despite not being a special track for any reason. ‘Ezekiel’ is the fastest track on the album (Still doesn’t mean its fast ), and it isn’t surprising then that most of the work is done behind the computer screen. In my opinion it is easily the most interesting purely because it is different. It has a trip hop sound and vibe to it, even if it might not carry many hip hop style beats. It also becomes fairly deep with noise, and for these reasons I ended up quite liking the track. It’s the change the album needed, even if it doesn’t make much sense.

‘Beyond’ is another chilled, mainly vocal performance that sounds a bit more spacey than anything else, whilst ‘February Lifesaver’ is a nice way to send off the album, offering up some more interesting sampling and a nice tone of finality to the whole thing.

If you couldn’t tell, a lot of this album made me nonchalant. The voice aspects are nice to begin with but on the whole the album just begins to feel same-ish. I hate to use the word considering the stigma Urban put on it, but overall it is simply mediocre. Not because they tried to sound as mainstream as possible or anything, but on a personal level it wasn’t special, it wasn’t bad it was just itself. There are some great tracks but by the end I just found myself trudging through the gunk. With post rock and shoe gaze sounds especially, you need things to sound suspenseful or epic. Everything here is fairly similar in length and structure, and none of the songs really hit that high note after rising from the depths that makes a lot of post rock awesome.

TOTAL SCORE

6.2/10

– Sink Into The Sin

(My net is capped so I won’t be uploading any videos for a few days… I will see how long the compilation takes to upload, but I will only do one)

Zarko

Time for another comp. This compilation just ‘feels’ different, perhaps because the overall sounds and tones are less harsh than those in the first. Anyway, without further ado…

Best Of Slowly Goes the Night Volume II

Check Life by Bachi Da Pietra

Evening Gleam Between Clouds by Matryoshka

Hard To Face The Music by Idris Muhammad

Heaven by Bim Sherman

Interference by Blackfilm

Sinners by Little Axe

Sunny Safari by Sir

The Butcher’s Hook by Sand Snowman

Volkssturm II by Truart

X-Ray by Matthew Shipp

Best Of Slowly Goes The Night Volume II

Obombration

Do you do requests you big hunk of man you

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Facts are meaningless. You could use facts to prove anything that's even remotely true.

Zarko

Black Rubber Exotica – Macelleria Mobile di Mezzanotte (2004)


GENRES – Electronic, Experimental, Jazz

Sexxxy – 5:27
Via Veneto Strip Tease – 3:42
She Stirs My Cocktail – 3:40
Katia (Piazzola Di Vicchio) – 3:13
Hot Heels – 3:27
From Las Vegas To Hell – 6:45
Black Rubber Exotica – 4:12
Black Dalia – 5:23
Martini Girl – 4:27
Deathorama – 5:59
Miss Exotique Tana Luise – 4:26
My Sweet Betty – 2:45
Mature Is Better – 3:39
Dancing Mistress – 4:30
Adesso È Buio – 7:22

Sometimes I really don’t know why I bother with some of these albums… I know that 99.9% of Music Banter will hate them, so it all seems a bit pointless. To make it blunt, this is the ‘snuff film’ of my music collection. It isn’t just random samples of people having sex, but the subject matter, the sounds; it just fits into that category. I have introduced many of you to Macelleria Mobile di Mezzanotte before, through the compilation where I submitted a soft tune of theirs. A few of you liked it; however, this is the polar opposite of that song. That was simply darker neoclassical, this is depraved electronics and jazz to the fullest extent. I don’t even know if I like the bloody thing after 5-6 listens, it’s just that sort of album I guess.

The album opens with ‘Sexxxy’, which warily begins with what sounds like glasses being *****ed together and some background light electronics, as we enter the dark and seedy underground. The tone is set, as we are in this world by our own freewill, thinking we fully understanding the nature of this place before it hits us like a brick wall. This brick wall is of course made up of power electronic sounds, as sonic pulses and waves of feedback attack the senses. There is no leeway, and the once ‘pleasant’ backing noise is a distorted mutation of itself. A heavily distorted voice enters the scene, so ****ed up that we can’t understand what it is saying to us, but it is carrying a sinister, maniacal quality.

‘Via Veneto Strip Tease’ captures the sound of feedback, a female screaming and what sounds like a pounding, and turns these sinister sound into an almost ‘sinister latin’ drum beat. It’s almost scary as the drum beats, which are construed as fun is made to symbolise violence with the female screaming continuing. It is again covered in power electronic sounds; however they are much ‘quieter’, and is accompanied with a sordid vocalist whom turns into some odd preacher. ‘She Stirs My Cocktail’ is the introduction to the jazz I suggested was on the album. To match the tone, the group resembles the tine jazz quartet, packed into a corner, pretty much playing to themselves as everyone else is preoccupied. They play a smooth-swing jazz in a smoke packed area with poor instruments, microphones and amps, the whole lot. The melancholic vocals return from the previous two tracks but they carry a more miserable hatred rather than a maniacal feature.

‘Katia’ picks up the pace quite quickly, which is an odd turnaround for the album on the whole. The piece is constructed by electronics and some xylophone sounding work, and to me it represents the increase in blood pressure and the speed of the heart when you lay your eyes on a beautiful woman. It almost makes you forget the squalid world that is present in every other song on the album, and it is almost ingenious the way he has implemented this feeling before we are interrupted again by the dirty underbelly. ‘Hot Heels’ carries a jazz-pop sound, and reminds me of the film noir down tempo jazz from the 40’s and 50’s. The piece is driven by a monotonous drum line with some obvious but not prominent brass instrumentation. This song is almost the ‘coming down’ period after the voracious highs experienced in the last track. For a while it is the ‘purest’ sounding track on the album, before the polluted electronics send off the song.

‘From Las Vegas To Hell’ offers exactly what the name suggests. Entering the intensity of ‘The Strip’, with colours, lights and sounds attacking you from all sides, only send it down to hell for a bit, and notch up the noise elements ten fold. It sometimes feels like you are getting accustomed to the hostility, but when you lull into a sense of security, it hits you again. The title track, ‘Black Rubber Exotica’ is full of the seedy jazz you would expect from such a world. It just carries that suggestive, lustful tone that I guess the title points to.

‘Black Dalia’ draws upon its name sake (The murders obviously) with a deep and down tempo resentment, as the early parts are dominated by some whispering and the intense screech of a rusty gate closing. The pulsating waves continue to increase in volume as some jazzy elements enter the piece. It is almost daunting, listening to the depressing jazz, as if someone’s murder is their fate, and they cannot avoid it. It is best described funeral jazz/electronic before the actual death. ‘Martini Girl’ is another weird amalgamation of styles, as a drawl New Orleans Jazz sound is mixed with jazz-lounge/smoking room vocals and electronic elements. The vocals are as seedy as ever, as the lyrics revolve around ‘owning’ your woman, to the point where it almost becomes a nonchalant bragging game between mates.

‘Deathorama’ is a pretty simple piece, consisting only of a small and repetitive drumming line as some overlaid electronics that initially sounds like horns from a ship, until their repetitive nature almost turns it into a very intense clock chiming. Unfortunately, it is the first song I felt ‘bored with’ across the album so far. Even if I didn’t love earlier tracks I found them quite interesting, but this one was just there. ‘Miss Exotique Tana Luise’ starts out a bit weird, as there is a rapid use of power electronics (Don’t know the name for the specific noise), and it continues on for a good minute before some other electronics and sounds start emanating from below, with some intensely distorted bass drum that interrupt and warps the other sounds. There is a hint of clarinet before it becomes more fluent, with the electronic elements slowly melting away until the clarinet becomes more out standing. It’s an odd track, I am not sure if I like it not either.

‘My Sweet Betty’ is full of an almost lounge jazz chilled nature that is heavily warped by the electronics, before it enters another bout of leisurely New Orleans sound that only gets more and more distorted as the track goes on. I don’t particularly know why, but I loved this track. Maybe it is the way the electronics and the background jazz interact, but the variety created is a treat. It doesn’t change much over time, but it doesn’t need to. It ends with a high frequency looping squeal, which is carried over to the next track, ‘Mature is Better’. The brunt of this track comes with the vocals, which are insanely aggressive along with some extreme electronic distortion. It is probably the one track that made me the most ‘uncomfortable’ with the album.

‘Dancing Mistress’ changes from a random loop to a minimal neoclassical sound, but for a moment I thought it could almost be a slow dancing classical track. However, the combination of sounds quickly overrides this possibility, as the pace and tone is carried over to the final track, ‘Adesso È Buio’, which begins as a random assortment of sounds coming from a fearful female, running away from something. She almost resigns herself to this horrible figure, realising she can never escape as his haunting and echoing voice surrounds everything, as he calls out ‘Adesso È Buio’. More electronics are layered to increase this feeling of being totally enveloped, until only they exist…

I still can’t decide just how much I enjoy this album… Towards the end it probably becomes a little too electronics intense, but this is used in conjunction with the overall change of theme, from sex to murder and death. However, in my opinion the best thing is that even if I didn’t like some aspects of the album, I almost always found it interesting, apart from a track or two. As I said though, most people won’t enjoy this album, and this review probably didn’t give you a good idea of what it is like, but it is different enough and experimental enough to at least be interesting. Also, apologies for the long review, but when something interests me or follows an interesting theme it is generally easier to write about, not to mention the 15 songs.

TOTAL SCORE

7.7/10

– She Stirs My Cocktail
– Black Dalia
– Martini Girl
– My Sweet Betty

Zarko

Of course I do... Just don't expect me to love it or anything

4ZZZ

Who is this riff raff! Ignore him Zarko.



Get onto that Trurart album Obom. Impressive in my not so humble opinion. So's Zarkos thread but don't tell him.

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jackhammer

Black Rubber Exotica – Macelleria Mobile di Mezzanotte. Sounds awesome. Like a fucked Film noir soundtrack. Some of the best and leftfield choices on MB in this thread. Keep it up mate.

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Zarko

You interested in an upload?