hogge@P.CS.UIUC.EDU (John Hogge) (11/18/86)
Some record reviews:
1. Scraping Foetus off The Wheel: "Nail"
Very good album; orchestrated industrial with raunchy vocals. Half the
cuts are mean dance, half are conceptual orchestral work. Personally
I prefer the latter...
2. Severed Heads: "Clifford Darling, Please Don't Live In the Past"
Very average industrial conceptual noise double album. It does have
interesting stuff here and there, but unfortunately way too much use of
tape loops, to the point of boredom. For my noise dollar, Nurse With Wound
and others do more interesting work.
3. Nocturnal Emmisions: "Songs of Love and Revolution"
Interesting vocals, weird minimal music with one-finger keyboard technique
and drum machines. I wouldn't pay a whole lot for it, though.
4. The Residents: "Fingerprince"
Side 1 su*cks, Side 2 makes it worthwhile with a side-long weird (of
course) percussion ensemble with occasional electronics and vocals.
[In case any of you aren't familiar with The Residents, go immediately
and buy "The Mark of The Mole." The Residents (at least on this album)
are sort of the Tomita of the underground, and the Mark of The Mole is a
brilliant story of epic struggle between conflicting cultures.]
5. Toto: "Hydra"
What a truely poor album. I think I'll record a Residents album over it.
6. Controlled Bleeding: "Headcrack"
Interesting (and *excellent*) combination of industrial noise with
meditative, melodic doodling.
7. The Ex "Pokkeherrie" LP
Excellent post-punk with tasteful vocals mixed real low in comparison to
the music (which is how I like it when the music is that good) and
strong, no b.s. lyrics. The music is intricate, structured noisy
guitar and good drums. Comes with a poster and nice lyric booklet.
Uh, oh forget the descriptions. Here are some other albums I've bought lately
that I like alot. You'll notice several "post punk" things--by this I mean
punk influenced rock with interesting instrumentals leaning towards
wall-of-noise and/or noisy guitar rifts, epitomized by say Sonic Youth. (Is
this a good description of post-punk? BTW, under this definition, what good
post-punk type things do you know of?)
Post Punk:
Uzi --Sleep Asylum EP
Ritual Tension --latest (only?) LP
Killing Joke --What's This For? LP
Rat A Rat R --their LP
Emma compilation --two sides of hardcore, two sides of post-punk.
From Holland, live recordings from a club there. Not all the cuts on
this are good, but much of it is. Nice booklet. (This compilation is
what got me interested in The Ex.)
Unclassified:
Cyan Review -- grey LP--I forget the name
Royal Family and the Poor -- We Love the Moon LP.
Venus in Furs -- Platonic Love
SPK -- latest LP with "Necropolis" on it. Great orchestra w/ industrial
influences and *no* dance cuts. (And by golly...)
Disliked:
Social Unrest --didn't like it; too political & boring instruments
So, buy all this and then tell me how you liked it.
--John