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WHERE DID THE ARCHIVE GO?

When your web software starts to bog and choke on a page when it loads due to the size of it--and when said page is nothing but a dense field of text--you know it's time to do something about it.

All of the archived reviews from the beginning of this site to early 2009 have been rolled up into a PDF file for (ahem) easy viewing.

If for some reason you really want to go digging around the musty leftovers of my reviewing career, you're welcome to it. Please be advised that I was surprised to find that, single spaced in a 12-point font with one return between paragraphs and two between reviews, the archive pigged out at a ridiculous 70 pages.

Happy reading! Get the archive HERE.

2009 Past Reviews (Alphabetical)

Matt Borghi, Huronic Minor

Originally issued in mp3 format back in 2000, Huronic Minor is a deeply lush and introspective work of long-form drones with a gentle, liquid feel. Borghi pours his love of the Michigan wilds and the chilly expanses of the lake into each piece, like a deep breath taken at water’s edge and let out slowly, a cloud of cold-morning breath drifting and changing in the wind. This is a disk that will comfortably play at low volume on endless repeat to just wrap the listener in its quiet narrative. Borghi’s palette of greys flecked with glimmers of light and the calm hues of his shifting drones makes for a perfectly executed blend. Huronic Minor is a Hypnagogue Highly Recommended CD.

Al Conti, Scheherazade

Al Conti takes a thematic-heavy risk on his disk, Scheherazade, and the payoff is not quite as well delivered as [Ian Teese’s...see review below--js]. This is a very New Age-style album in the Yanni/Tesh mode, wonderfully played and diverse in its instrumentation...but for me, the theme wears out its welcome quickly because the overall feel of the album doesn’t change from track to track. The Middle Eastern flavor overwhelms the listener like strong curry. Obviously, the intent of the disk is to capture in musical form the tales of Scheherazade, but it comes across—again, to these ears—as just a bit relentless. Could be simply that my tastes don’t run to an excess of Middle Eastern themes. After all, the disk’s PR blurb at CDBaby says it was the #1 disk on New Age Reporter's Top 100 chart in October, November & December of 2008. You be the judge. Find it at www.alconti.net

Creature, Distant Horizon

Circuit-bending guru Stephen Haunts. aka Creature, is back to eviscerating Speak 'n Spells and other childhood electronics to cobble together the samples and glitches that form his CD Distant Horizon. I've been meaning to drop him an e-mail to ask if part of the disk's focus was on reworking a recurring theme, as I keep hearing eerily similar phrasing--twisted and mutated wonderfully--throughout. I am a Creature fan, admittedly. Haunts has a solid hand when it comes to pairing his odd sounds with cool beats. Even as I type this, I'm deep in the infectious groove of "Carbon," which deserves a boatload of airplay in my opinion. And here's where I start to hear the repetiton...a phrase here gets re-created in the next track, "Tenger Misuser"--and by "re-created" I mean sprayed with acid and given electroshock therapy. Next, it gets crushed under a dense beat and stretched out for its appearance in "Metrified Outfielding." Clearly, Haunts is going for a "variations" thing, and it works. He keeps his tracks short and packed with maximum groove, moving quickly from one mad experiment to the next. This Distant Horizon is one you need to investigate for yourself.

Find it at the Creature web site or CDBaby.

CyberCHUMP, Our Wizards of Earth

CyberCHUMP kneels at the altar of prog for their lastest offering, Our Wizards of Earth. Of the three CC albums I've been privvy to, I have to say that this comes off the weakest for me. It certainly has moments that deserve my full attention--the track "Roughhouse" comes immediately to mind, charging in on buzzsaw guitar chords and a biker-bar-tough bassline. It's like the theme song to a post-apocalyptic Western. It may just be that I could do without the tracks with the wispy vocals that just don't work for me. (The one exception is the weirdly poetic, almost Bowie-esque voice on "Of Distance and Resonence.") Of course, CC has always been instrumentally strong, and in that regard, Wizards works. The potent crush of "Storm's a Comin'," riding on aggressive guitars, is another standout track, as is the hard-driving closer, "New Skin." This isn't one of those CDs I review and toss; there's good stuff here. It's just (for me) not as strong as "Sankhara" or "Scientists in the Trees." But decidedly worth a listen. I like the way the lads of cyberCHUMP redefine who and what they are with each new disk. Check 'em out at the cyberCHUMP web site.

Mike DIckson, Six Consequences

Mike Dickson is part the duo Systems Theory. But he’s also got a string of solo releases, including Six Consequences. This disk straddles the border between New Age, neo-classical and something that can only be described as soundtrack-worthy pieces. Dickson lays down an interesting format. Each piece on the disk is preceded by a “consequence”—sometimes thematically echoing the larger piece that follows, sometimes just a sort of musical noodling that made its way onto the disk. Then come the larger pieces, rich with drama and sonic narrative. They’re long works with ample time to tell their story and no bumps along the way, and Dickson shows a very pleasing attention to the little details that keep them interesting. “The Hammer Strikes Back” shows a strong tone-poem genealogy, and speaks its story clearly in drums and electronic burbles. “Stroke #2” is a short and slow-moving piece with far-arching choral voices that sends a little shiver down my spine when I listen to it. “Codetalking” blends those choral voices with drifting radio samples that mark changes of intent. Here, Dickson’s piano work, buffered by the chorus, is slow, pastoral and calmingly quiet. “Vulture,” a short piece featuring treated piano along with other instruments, drifts through its first half before grabbing hold of a sequencer groove and a little dash of Jarre and taking a short flight. The absolute highlight for me is the frenetic, exhilarating “Vortex,” which hurtles away from the dock at speed and never quite slows down. Picking up some thematic passengers from Planet Oldfield on the way, Dickson crams the throttle wide open, kicks the sequencers into overdrive and ramps it all up to light speed, at one point filtering in up Spanish guitar passages from a ST piece called “Green Miata Southbound.” (And let’s not forget the little “ding” of a bell that might be just a bit tubular to close out the track and the disk.) There aren’t any real mis-steps in Consequences, although I could do without Dickson’s very nice covers of Satie’s “Gymnopedies,” especially since he has an entire CD dedicated to same. But it’s not an intrusive inclusion in such a strong disk. If you like your music soundtrack-worthy with a bit of rock bombast thrown in for good (and well-used!) measure, have a listen to Six Consequences. Available at mikedickson.org.uk.

Carl Franke, First Berries After Hibernation

If Carl Franke's First Berries After Hibernation was a girlfriend, she'd be the one you weren't sure of at first, and then she turned out to be really good in bed, but a little crazy, and you kept breaking up but then you'd see her at a party and she'd smile a certain way from across the room and next thing you know there you were back in bed and talking about getting together and it would be cool for a while, but then the crazy would pop up again, and so on and so on. Franke, an artist who's decided to dabble in electronic music, offers up a set of interesting but often uneven pieces that always catch my attention if I'm on shuffle, but that (for me) don't hold up for a full-length listen. I like parts, but not the whole. Franke seems to lose his way and decent compositions suddenly get a burst of noise/weirdness. Standouts include the slow-shuffling cool of "Shinobi vs. Rastan," the drifting "Happy Touch" and the let's-get-funky, pop-infused and noise-annointed "Caddy." I'm interested to see what Franke offers next as he gets more comfortable. A decent first effort that I've kept coming back to--on shuffle.

Check out Carl's work, including his art, at his web site.

KK, Telescope

KK’s Telescope is one of those disks that rides along the edge of what I will and won’t review. It’s club music, really, with poppy beats wrapped around a spacey theme. I found myself tapping my foot to tracks like “Dust.” But then I’d get to a piece like “Sol 3” with its forced dramatic narrative that only served to put me in mind of something between Donovan’s “Atlantis” and Spinal Tap’s “Stonehenge,” and I had to reach for the fast-forward button. A mixed bag that really didn’t do it for me—and I was certainly hoping for more after I re-discovered it hiding in my car’s trunk. Decent in a mix, but nothing I’ve been hurrying back to get more of. Try it for yourself at kktelescopes.com.

Jeffrey Koepper, Sequentaria & Luminosity

Analog lovers will find plenty to enjoy in Jeffrey Koepper's 2008 and 2009 releases, Sequentaria and Luminosity. Seated in the cockpit behind his refurbished old-school synths, Koepper takes listeners on deep journeys that alternately cruise at warp speed and drift through quiet nebulae. Jeffrey has a way of bringing a very organic touch to the cybernetic precision of sequencer-based music. The punchy “Blue Sector” kicks off the disk by pulling gently awaty from the dock on long pads and then jamming the engines wide open in classic space-funk style. It docks neatly into “Astral Projection,” a trippy bit of knob-adjusting pleasure wherein wet, mutant sounds evolve into lush, falling pads and shivering synth-spirals under the watch of a slow-but-vigilant bass tremble. “Timeline” hypnotizes the listener with balanced sequencer lines in both ears that build to a dense cluster of sound and an invasive beat that Koepper builds with an invisible hand. It fades nicely into the broad washes and twiddle of the start of "Near Machinery"--another instance of Koepper lulling the listener for a few minutes before kicking it into overdrive. The wave-form drift, delayed-echo melodies and spacey twiddle of “Interphase” follows, a nice mid-speed cruiser. With the clockwork-precise weaving of sequencer lines in "Synchronous" Koepper returns to his dense-layering ways, one subtle enhancement at a time. “Parallel Being” follows, moving from a dramatic drone-based beginning to an easy-flowing piece with a subtle Asian flair as woodwind-synths trade melodic lines. "One Hundred Memories" is another exercise in layering paired with spacey chord runs. And then...

"Creation," the last track on Sequentaria, is Koepper at his funky finest, opening with a long drone that begins to morph under a rising beat before the whole thing just breaks loose, layer upon high-octane layer, for 10 glorious minutes of full-out spacegroove.

"Luminosity" seems, to these ears, to be a bit more hands-on, and certainly softer than Koepper's earlier works. Soft woodwind sounds abound. This one eases into the background more readily than other outings. There are, obviously, similarities--"Reflection" opens sounding very much like "Between Dreams" from the Etherea CD, "Transmission" will readily remind you of "Creation" once it gets cooking around the 4-minute mark, and "Dusk Til Dawn" is a close cousin to "Astral Projection" off Sequentaria.

But altogether, both disks are an excellent additon to the Koepper canon and go a long way toward keeping the analog torch lit. Find them at Koepper's web site or at the Steve Roach site.

Sense Project, The Sublime

A bunch of years ago there was a short animated film called “Closed Mondays” where a drunk stumbles into a museum after hours and all the artwork comes to life in little tableaux as he watches. I was reminded of this as I made my way through the 2-disk gallery that is Sense Project’s CD The Sublime, watching with my mind's eye as Robert Logan's compositions came to life. Logan brings together a broad array of sonic sculptures, tone paintings and electronic sketches, each with its own inner life and story. The pieces range from softly drifting landscapes to challenging, noise-based works of art. Like any good gallery, each offering deserves more than a cursory glance and yet—like any good ambient disk—it blends together richly to create an overall experience. Logan is also mindful of the layout of his gallery, the movement the listener undertakes going from one piece to the next. I’m particularly fond of the move from the ripsaw snarl that makes up the end of the 10-minute title track into the gentler, strings-flavored pastorale of “Garden” and on into “Isten” where he blends a reverent vocal chant over softly warbling drones and soaring chords. “Death and After” is another go-to track, gently crafted in slow-moving waves and accented with Frances Logan’s heart-touching violin work before it rises up like an affirmation.

And that's just the first disk. On the second, Logan strives to go darker, starting with the cave-wind growl and bestial cello snarl of "Erdo" and the chitinous static skitterings that crawl across the darkly dramatic washes of "Mantis Religiosa" and carry into "Prime Mover." The following track, "Shards," is by no means an easy listen at first, thick with glitchy bits of sound that feel like they were gently edited with a chainsaw--but as the pieces moves forward Logan smooths it out into longer pads that mark the beginning of a somewhat less grim tone to the disk. "The Lamb" enters on rising chords that shimmer slightly. They pare down as the listener enters a graceful piano passage--Logan's playing here is nothing short of elegant, hung with breathless pauses between notes. "Voice of Many Waters" moves from dark to light, complete with birdsong. "Cimbalom" comes in to challenge the listener once more, chugging like an uncertain machine and tinted with residual angst. Logan ends The Sublime with the aptly titled "The Beautiful," a cleansing 15-minute track of sustained and layered pads that closes the disk perfectly.

For its range and depth and seamless sonic narrative, The Sublime is also a Hypnagogue Highly Recommended CD.

Ian Teesce, A Traveler's Guide to Mars

I’m going to suggest that it’s not out of line for me to say that when I receive a disk that is openly the soundtrack to a planetarium show, there are certain things that I can reliably expect. Like tracks with titles such as “Passing Through the Comet’s Tail” or “Twenty Six and Two-Thirds Million Light Years from Earth”—and, along with them, some well-intentioned but not always effective musical interpretations of said themes. So it was with a fair amount of reservation that I sat down to give a deep critical listen to Ian Tescee’s A Traveler’s Guide to Mars. And while it does start off with the very Jarre-esque, head-bopping, “c’mon, kids, let’s take a ride in a spaceship!” funk of “The New World,” it’s actually a decent album of well-constructed and well-played pieces (and without too many obvious Red-Planet-derived titles). I could sit with this disk and play the pick-a-reference game all day (hmm, who does this guitar riff sound like?), but it’s easier just to say that ...Guide to Mars is a thematically-driven CD that never lets its theme run it over. It’s not a disk I’ve put into heavy iPod rotation, but it’s one of those that, while it was in my review queue, could pleasantly surprise me. I particularly like the cool-guitar ease of “Earthrise,” the gentle glide of “Beneath the Ice” and the pairing of the folksy, loping pace of “It’s Time to Go Back, Part 1” and the more aggressive rock guitar flair and Pink Floyd-ish vocals of its partner, Part 2. (Again, play “name that guitarist” while this one's on. ) “Billions and Billions of Stars” with dramatic piano and simple synth backup, is an excellent closing track. Discover Mars for yourself at www.iantescee.com.

Various, Message from a Subatomic World (Hypnos)

A Hypnos compilation, quite simply put, is a thing worth getting. Period. Hypnos head M. Griffin (and I have said this before) not only pulls forth the best from his contributors, but he then links each piece without so much as a speedbump between them and without ever disrupting the disk's overarching theme. Message from a Subatomic World offers up ten dark-edged, droning ambient works, each rich in individual character while cut from the same somber cloth. This is my advice regarding this CD: set it on repeat, put on the headphones or lay down somewhere dark and quiet, and take the time to just be in it. As the music pares down to long, soft-edged drones you’ll calm right along with it. On repeat, the effect becomes exponential with each pass. And almost like a meditation chime, the high-pitched vocal chant that ushers in the opening track, Austere’s haunting “Crystil,” gently announces that a new cycle has started. Following Austere's opener comes the appropriately reverential overtones of Even Bluetech's "Sacroanct," its church-like quietude broken by the shrill opening sounds of Relapxych.0's "Distant Radiance"--a passing disturbance that eases into its own meditative space. Numina offers up the gorgeously lush flow of "Nadir Ever Spirals," one of the disk's highlight tracks. Jason Sloan's "faded.forgotten[trace]" drifts through like a waking dream, Sloan twisting a slight trace of drama around his steady drones. From here, Message gets very minimalistic, and beautifully so, ushered in by Phaenon's brooding "Quantum Silence." Stephen Philips lightens the voyage slightly with "Down Deep," a genuinely relaxing drift where tones languidly nudge one another aside. The seemingly unwavering and decidedly hypnotic guitar-based drones of True Colour of Blood's "Choosing to Remain Blind" still manage to feel like they've got something to say. This piece catches my attention every time it rolls through and takes my mind even deeper. An apt chill runs through Svartsinn's "Cold But Strong," dense drone layers thickening and spreading across its 10 minutes. Message closes with "Icelight" from Oophoi. Here, phantom chimes clatter in the distance as a grim wind passes. There is a sense of acceptable loneliness here, and the endless expanse of an inner landscape. Motion and non-motion. It eases the disk to a close and prepares you for another journey through.

Message from a Subatomic World is a Hypnagogue Highly Recommended CD, especially for those who like their ambient droning, minimal and just a shade dark. Kudos to M. Griffin and his artists for three superb offerings.