Dark Magus - Night Watchman (Alphaphone)

It's so frustrating when your favourite artist has years and years of silence between albums, only to eventually reappear with something that shows how they lost the plot somewhere along the line. That's why artists like Richard H. Kirk put others to shame. The fact that he returns as Dark Magus literally months after his last album ( as Sandoz) gives the listener the chance to track his thought process and experiments in real time. Despite the moody moniker (one of his many guises), this album is actually a lighter affair, less doomey than the previous album. If the obscura cover artwok (courtesy of Designers Republic) is anything to go by it would appear that Night Watchman is a conceptual soundtrack from sunset (21:00.07) to sunrise (5:00.09). It's true that as time moves on and the tracks progress the beats get heavier and phatter. By track three, 'Solid' the mood has shifted to a thriving urban groove that eventually sweetens but is curtailed to make way for 'Nothing Has Been Said', a post-midnight piece that begins to suggest that all is not as it seems.

In 'Mami Wata' - one of the highlights of the album - Kirk returns briefly to his industrial roots, but any atmosphere this creates is caught out on the tripwire that is 'Arma Gideon'. Although this track uses some classic vocal samples (which are noticeable by their absence across the rest of the LP) they're backed by a groove that oscillates between the annoying and the plain silly! But this seems to be just a temporary lapse in quality, followed as it is with 'Ocean Spray'. This one takes a simpler, sparser approach to vibe creation. But the best is saved till last, both the high speed drum & space of 'Funk 48' which leads into the closer 'Plastic Paradise' prove that different tracks from this album are equally DJable in all forward-thinking club environments. This is truly a cathartic album, and perfectly illustrates that which anyone who's often conscious from dusk will dawn will already know: confusing, dark, distorted passages can be framed either end with moments of wonder. 7/10


This review also published in: DJ magazine

Moby - I Like To Score (Mute)

What with Concrete Records' Sentialement Votre, David Arnold's Bondage epics and even Black Dog's Bullit reversions, recent months have certainly seen overkill on the dance/theme tune crossover. And now Moby's in on the act with his first new album in some time, consisting entirely of his movie soundtrack contributions from past and present. I Like To Score is certainly a mixed bag, not least because of the older tracks thrown in and the fact that Moby claims he rarely goes to see films and that most of his movie music have been performed just for the huge paycheques on offer!

The most recent tracks certainly stand out. 'Novio' from the new Joel Silver flick Double Tap is a seminal opener and leads perfectly into the mellow introduction of Moby's new take on the classic 'James Bond Theme'. But as soon as the intro's over it's downhill. This is one classic theme that can't stand to be beaten up into the big beat style, with additional production from Depeche Mode's Alan Moulder and Mute's Daniel Miller removing any original subtleties. With other new Bond themes floating around from Pulp and even Sheryl Crow, the producers are beginning to look desperate. What they should have done was go straight to Grantby, whose John Barry-esque 'Timber' was a chill out highlight of last year.

Of the older tracks on offer, 'Go' - the track that sampled David Lynch's Twin Peaks and launched Moby on the international platform - never fails to impress. Way back before the Saint and countless other recent films began mining the rich veins of electronica to sell their soundtracks, 1992's Brad Pitt film Cool World featured the likes of FSOL, My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult and two tracks from the man himself. But bizarrely, the Moby-defining 'Next Is The E' has been ignored for this compilation in favour of the frankly annoying 'Ah Ah'. It hasn't dated at all well (but then I never liked it much at the time). More recently recorded soundtrack excerpts don't suffer as much at the hands of time as, since then, Moby has moved away from full on contemporary sounds to use much rock and guitar thrashing. Hence the inclusion of the Spanish musings of 'Nash' and a cover of Joy Division's 'New Dawn Fades' from the Robert De Niro near-turkey 'Heat'.

I Like To Score is the perfect illustration of why I find a Moby album so infuriating. On one hand there's tracks I can't bear to listen to (the Mike Oldfield sound-alike yawnathon 'Love Theme', the hi-NRG 'Oil 1' and the aforementioned-mentioned 'Ah Ah'). But on the other hand there are brain-twistingly emotional anthems and ambient masterpieces ('God Moving Over The Face Of The Waters' from Heat 'Grace' from Space Water Onion and 'First Cool Hive' from Scream) that make me want to proclaim the genius of Moby from the rooftops. What's a reviewer to do? Maybe just ignore the bad bits rather than risk becoming schizophrenic? 9/10


This review also published in: DJ magazine

Negativland - IPSDESEPI (Seeland)

Listening to a Negativland album is something that everyone should experience at least once. Their best tracks are like listing to kids run riot in a candy store of media samples, where nothing is sacred. Taped conversations with corporate execs, the OJ Simpson trail, public service announcements and documentary TV are deftly mixed with MC Lyte, Ice-T and Burmese field recordings.

Negativland's little place in the musical history books is already assured, if only for having first coined the phrase "culture jamming" back in 1984 (when multimedia was a little known art-form) and later being sued by Island Records following a sampladelic art-prank on U2. But that was back in the days when U2 were sincere megalithic rock stars. Nowadays they're at pains to prove they listen to electronica, it's cool for everyone to use samples and the world has moved on. So where has that left Negativland?

The answer lies on this, their first LP for five years, a tongue-in-cheek exploration and full-blown degradation of one of the biggest threats to mankind. Not the bomb. Cola. IPSDESEPI is thirteen tracks of loops, snippets and snatches from multinational ad campaigns, all twisted and blended back into a concept album of cultural commentary. Even the title of the LP has a pseudo-dangerous air. IPSDESEPI is an anagram of the proper name of the album, which had to be held back due to copyright restrictions. To discover the true title, consumers are invited to call the band's 'Word Of Mouth' phone-line for the "correct spelling and pronunciation".

Although copyright liberation makes for intriguing (nay brilliant) packaging it's music that you pay for when you buy this disc. And musically this album alternates between the band's best and worst sides. Tracks such as 'Why Is This Commercial?' and 'A Most Successful Formula' succeeds on their key strength - taking vocal snippets and commercial blipverts and playing them like a furious percussive show-down. But unfortunately this is interspersed with second rate country-styled songs on the same themes of corporate monsters and consumer manipulation. 'The Greatest Taste Around', 'Happy Hero' and 'Drink It Up' are the worst offenders here. But the techno style far wins out and by the closing tracks this album is as addictive as the saccharine sweet world-wide brand that it sets out to lampoon. 8/10


This review also published in: DJ magazine

A Forest Mighty Black - Mellowdramatic (Compost)

This has certainly been a good year for Munich's Compost Records, with class freakbeat releases from Beanfield and the Future Sound of Jazz series. One of the bands you'll find on that series are Freiberg's A Forest Mighty Black, whose latest LP is perfect space age bachelor pad music. 'Duel With A So(u)l' and 'Tides' are typical of the band, pure Sunday afternoon funk for the beat(en) generation. It's drum and bass, but in most cases the bass comes courtesy of a jazzy double-bass sample and the drums are laid back smoky jazz room style and take second place to the thematic melodies. 'Everything' has a samba feel in places and spy-theme camp in others. A track that would be perfectly placed pouring out of some of the more switched on coffee bars around Europe.
AFMB's recent remix work for the likes of the Freakniks, Mindstore and the Far Out and 360degrees labels has poured more into their melting pot, like the analogue riff that underpins 'Duo Trippin'', a track which later ducks out into a sitar breakdown. Then there's the one-minute pure drum & bass burst of thought that is 'The 9 To 5 (Is Killing Me)'. How many of us can relate to that? In Mellowdramatic, A Forest Mighty Black serve up a rich, dark gateaux of texture and taste. And provide me with a pun I just couldn't help but put in print!
The closing tracks 'Rebirth' and 'Til The End' consolidate A Forest Mighty Black main-man Bern Kunz's vision of end-of millennium jazz. The future sound of jazz starts here. This is going to be a slightly difficult album to seek out but would be well worth the effort. 9/10


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alt.frequencies - Disco Moonlight (Worm Interface)

This is the latest in a series of compilations from the Worm Interface crew, a collective which spun off from London's one and only emporium of mellow vibes, Ambient Soho. Disco Moonlight consists of 11 tracks of quite variable minimalist electronica from the likes of Tom Jenkinson (a/k/a Squarepusher), Asphere and the ludicrously-monikered Farmers Manual. But despite the name of the shop, there's little for ambient traditionalists here. In places this compilation is more reminiscent of iLL Record's recent Spunk Jazz collection, if only for the intermittent gleeful use of heavily filtered drum loops, which distort time, beats and all left-side brain activity. In fact Milky Boy from Bovinyl records does put in an appearance on Disco Moonlight, his 'Toilet Seat' includes what sound like covert tapes of a friend talking about some very intriguing behaviour with the aforementioned piece of bathroom furniture! But 'System 4v.7' is that track that most people will head straight for as it's from Squarepusher, albeit under his less well-known name (to the public, anyway) of Tom Jenkinson. It's a dark, cinematic track with the vibe of a sequel to Passengers (Howie B/Eno/U2)'s Original Soundtracks Vol. 1 album.

Also worth a listen are 'Stochast' from San Francisco's Rook Valard - space music based around a pulse of ice-cool precision - and Baraki from Japan, who is featured here as a direct result of just dropping a tape off at Ambient Soho when he was visiting England on holiday. Baraki's 'Departure' is a fully-devolved industrial clonk epic that sounds more German than Japanese. But the pinnacle of Disco Moonlight is 'Stealth' by Survivors, about whom I know little - apart from the fact that this track was featured on an award-winning advert on Kiss TV. 'Stealth' is a potent mixture of eerie orchestricks across a pounding backbeat mixed with Chill Out-era KLF ambience. Definitely the highlight of the album. 7/10


This review also published in: DJ magazine