National Wrecking Co - "The Sound of Music" (for igloomag)

Chicago is the home of many genres of music, but arguably its influence over industrial and electronic music holds the greatest sway. Well, maybe not. But remind yourself that Chicago was once the physical and is now the spiritual home of Wax Trax! Records, the beating heart of Industrial Dance in the eighties and early nineties. Look at the influence of the label – home to Ministry, Revolting Cocks, Meat Beat Manifesto, KMFDM, Thrill Kill Kult and countless others. These bands were the genesis of the current EBM/IDM scene. And their production and composition techniques form the staple elements of the genre: tough beats, samples (both musical and spoken), electronic atmospheres. Where would countless bedroom laptop twiddlers be without the influential sounds of Front 242’s “Endless Riddance” or the spaghetti western electro of Acid Horse’s “No Name No Slogan”? Well, honestly, they’d probably still be doing their thing, but it would sound very different. Chicago’s National Wrecking Company answers the question definitively.

National Wrecking Company has, after nearly a decade-long gestation period, released The Sound of Music, and the album lives up to the ambitions inherent in the name. Like a Zen koan, what is the sound of music? It is noise and silence, melody and atonality, rhythm and ambient. NWC tackle all types of sounds and do it with élan. “The Sound of Music” is split into three distinct parts, dispersed over the course of the album’s 57 minutes, and is presented out of order. Part II starts the album off with an electronic squeal, a drop-bass, and a haunting piano motif that loops, topped off with biting electronic percussive stabs and other melodic embellishments, both acoustic and electronic. It’s a nice taster for the rest of the album. Track three, “What Is The Colour Of your Kindness?” really shows the Chicago roots of the NWC. This is hard dance in the WaxTrax/Jack Dangers mode, with pounding drums, relentless bass, and those lovely 808 handclaps that were the hallmark of the genre for so long. Sounding like a forgotten Meat Beat b-side circa God O.D., it’s the highlight of the album.

“Thank You For Asking” is next, a collage of soothing, vaguely eastern melodies and abrasive, distorted sheets of noise that segues into the neo-ambient of “Dear Mr. Echo,” another highlight. Bringing to mind “O.O.B.E.” from The Orb’s “Blue Room” album, the track’s gentle synth washes slowly and subtly give way to a pulsing melody that rises and falls like waves crashing. Metallic percussion establishes itself, insinuating itself into the gestalt of the music, integrating with the melody in a manner so seamless as to appear both effortless and completely obsessed over.

And perhaps this is the ultimate summation of The Sound of Music. It appears so fully realized and satisfying that it both sounds like the ProTools windows were pored over for endless weeks and that it could have all come out in a single jam session. Truly interesting and utterly compelling, one would hope that National Wrecking Company is spearheading some kind of revival that would bring Chicago’s electronic glory back.

Lead Into Gold - "Chicks and Speed: Futurism"

This was submitted to allmusic.com, but for some unknown reason has not appeared there yet.



Paul Barker took some time for himself between 1988 and 1990 to work apart from his long-time Ministry cohort, Al Jourgenson, in Lead Into Gold, a more restrained and reflective unit than his regular gig. Eschewing the heavy metal guitars that would become Ministry’s signature sound, Barker here relies more on keyboards, programmed drums, and, for better or worse, his own voice. Chicks & Speed consists of his initial solo efforts, two twelve-inch singles, Faster Than Light and Idiot. ”Faster Than Light”, the opening track, remains a dance floor favorite, with its shout-along chorus (“Faster than light and harder!”) and anthemic power chords. “Idiot” is the highlight of the record, an industrial disco classic, with sampled horn-stabs, pounding drums and relentless keyboards. And while there are a few tracks that probably should not have made it out of the studio (such as ”Blackened Heart”, brought down by Barker’s whiny vocals), the remaining tracks are fairly executed pieces of down-tempo industrial, unlike anything else in the expansive discography of Ministry’s side projects. Barker would go on to more fully explore his muse on the full-length Age of Reason.

Lead Into Gold - "Age of Reason"

Note: This was submitted to allmusic.com, but for some unknown reason it has yet to appear there.



Produced during Ministry’s most fertile period (1988-1991), Lead Into Gold is the one side project that showcased Paul Barker’s compositions. His initial forays into solo work, the Faster Than Light and Idiot EPs had their moments of excellence but were weighted down by lazy songwriting. Age of Reason, Barker’s follow-up full length album, has the same problem. For every slice of greatness like “Faster Than Light” (which appears here in a differnet mix than on the EP), there is throwaway material like “13”, a go-nowhere pastiche of electro drums, samples of children laughing, and Moog keyboards. Throughout the album, all of the staples of the industrial genre are on display (clanging percussion, martial rhythms, harsh keyboards, etc.), but the material never rises above the sum of its parts. It is not known if these tracks were submitted as Ministry material and rejected, but “A Giant On Earth” (co-written with Al Jourgenson) sounds like an embryonic version of “Scarecrow”, which appeared on Ministry’s breakthrough album. Psalm 69. Barker handles all the instrumentation with the exception of guitar, provided by Stuart Bang Zechman, who would later join Stabbing Westward for a brief time, then Filter. Barker would work solo again, with similar results, as Pink Anvil.

Clock DVA - "Transitional Voices"

Transitional Voices is a quickie live album from Adi Newton's Clock DVA project. How much of the material is truly live is up for grabs with heavily sequenced music like this, but there are enough flourishes and frills that the essence of a live performance is almost assured. So then why a live album from Clock DVA, as the music they produce is so reliant on sequencing. Had Transitional Voices been released in a timely fashion after being recorded in May 1990, it could have provided a teaser of material that would surface on Man-Amplified and Buried Dreams. But with it being released after both of those albums had hit shelves, the value comes from the variations between these poorly recorded live versions and their completed, fully produced studio equivalents. "Sound Mirror" appears here in a nascent version of what would appear on Buried Dreams, with a vastly different bass line and different bridge to the final studio version. Others for the most part are very similar, especially the icy filter sweeps and unremitting electro-bass pulse of "N.Y.C. Overload". Probably the last release from Clock DVA to pick up, because the low fidelity of the recording at times masks the stunning electronic programming that this group is known for.

Hammock - "Stranded Under Endless Sky"

Clocking in at a mere twenty-five minutes, Stranded Under Endless Sky is a great introduction to the duo of Marc Byrd and Andrew Thompson and a perfect teaser of the next album for the fans. Consisting of just four tracks (three of which are five minutes or more), Hammock pack enough emotion and provocative instrumental storytelling to fully engage and satisfy even the most jaded listener. All that is required is patience, as these beautiful, shimmering homages to the Cocteau Twins and Bola unfold at their own pace, in their own time, revealing secrets upon repeated listening. Recalling the less ambient moments of Robert Fripp's soundscapes work and the gentler moments of Mirror-era Flying Saucer Attack, "An Empty Field", the closer, slowly gathers a sense of tension around itself using pastoral, fuzzed-out blurs of guitar noise set against a glistening ambient drone. Much like their previous work, Stranded Under Endless Sky is an excellent mini album from Hammock, who continue their ascent to godhead status among the drone-rock underground.

Hammock - "Kenotic"

Hammock's debut, Kenotic, is in every way a contender for classic status in the shoegazing genre. Expertly merging ambient guitar drone (think Bowery Electric), electronic beats (think Boards of Canada), and live instrumentation (the violin on "Blankets of Night"). Marc Byrd and Andrew Thompson craft a seventy-minute sound sculpture, a paean to the beauty inherent in the drone. By turns smooth and expansive, then chiming and circular, Kenotic has excellent sequencing, with moods of tension and relaxation blending together into a perfect evocation of an afternoon drifting in a vast ocean, looking skyward. The music flows in a manner evoking a slow-moving river on a winter day. A notable exception to this is the up-tempo (for Hammock) "Wish", falling at the mid-point of the album, which focuses your attention and re-energizes it. The album art and song titles, ("Overcast/Sorrow", "Stars in the Rearview Mirror", "The Silence"), along with the mood of the music suggest isolation in nature, but their message is not one of sadness, but timeless, serene joy. The few people that will find this record will cherish it as something special, similar to One Mile North's Glass Wars.

Ephel Duath - "Pain Necessary To Know"

Take the interesting parts of The Dillenger Escape Plan and cross them with the prog ambitions of The Mars Volta, then remove anything compelling or listenable, and you have this album from Ephel Duath. Pain Necessary to Know is a bland attempt at jazz-metal, containing no discernable songs in its thirty-eight minutes, but a grand number of distinct musical sections that are intended as songs, but don't cohere to one another in any discernibly meaningful fashion. Thrashing start/stop rhythms and quiet/loud dynamics characterize every piece, along with generic, indecipherable cookie-monster vocals. The three-part "Vector" (presented out of order) is a succinct example of the problems this record has as a whole. Mildly interesting melodic sections jut heads with dissonant jazz-thrash, sounding almost exactly like an emasculated Mr. Bungle or a toothless and drunk Naked City. Yes, its all intended to be a grand artistic statement, concept album or what have you, but Pain Necessary to Know most assuredly is not necessary in any way, except for perhaps the masochists who enjoyed System of a Down's Hypnotize.

Flying Saucer Attack / Main / White Winged Moth - "Mort Aux Vaches"

This edition of Mort Aux Vaches focuses on isolationist ambient/drone, collecting some shorter performances from like-minded artists Flying Saucer Attack, Main, and White Winged Moth. Running roughly fifteen minutes each, the three artists toe the musical equivalent of the Maginot Line, but never surpass the weighty expectations that their previous achievements bring to mind. Of the three, FSA's Dave Pearce comes the closest. At the time this was recorded (September 25th, 1997), FSA was recently returned from hiatus, entering what Pearce called its second phase. This was characterized by a greatly decreased focus on the distortion that FSA built their house on, and a greater emphasis on the neo-folk acoustica that blossomed on New Lands. Over four tracks, Pearce's pastoral guitar struggles for primacy over fuzzed-out musique-concrete backgrounds, evoking if nothing else a cloudy afternoon just after a thunderstorm. Main presents a soundscape that seems largely improvised (on a laptop?), with found sounds and other concrete elements such as droning bells, malfunctioning mixers, and other cliches of the genre. White Winged Moth, the solo project of Thela's Dean Roberts sounds similar to Main's track. Utilizing only electric guitars, Roberts scrapes and abuses his guitar in a manner similar in places to Derek Bailey's Aida, sounding like a person discovering that a guitar can make noises in ways that do not necessarily involve plucking or strumming. Roberts contributions are, on the whole, uncompelling. Special note should be made of the excellent packaging. A three panel cardboard foldout that forms a board game that appears to be similar to Battleship but with a Star Trek aesthetic. And of course, like all of the entries in the Mort Aux Vaches series, this one is limited to 1000 hand-numbered copies.

Coil - "Black Antlers"

Available only on dates of Coil's "Even An Evil Fatigue" tour in 2004, Black Antlers is a stopgap release that consists of early studio and live versions of songs that were being worked on for the next official studio album. Due to Jhonn Balance's accidental death, most of the tracks on Black Antlers would become final, yet unpolished versions. Sounding particularly unfinished is the opener, "The Gimp (Sometimes)", a ballad that never quite comes together over its eleven minutes, failing to mesh the dark ambient instrumentation with Balance's beautiful and haunting vocals. The second track, however, "Sex With Sun Ra (Part One: Saturnalia)" is a classic late-period Coil track. Balance intones a fictional tale of a conversation between himself and the free jazz legend over a pulsating backing track punctuated by bell tones and sparse industrial percussion. "Wraiths and Strays (from Montreal)" is the highlight of the album, a twisting, slithering, pulsating beast of a track that interleaves Thighpaulsandra's keyboards with Balance's cut-up vocals to hallucinatory effect. As the tempo of the piece increases, the percussion becomes more frenetic and varied, the background squiggles become more aggressive, and the song sounds like it is chasing the listener down a dark alley. It is worth noting for the budget-minded fan that Black Antlers shares all of its tracklisting with another Coil release, Selvaggina Go Back Into the Woods, and the live versions on that album are for the most part the superior. While there are some excellent songs on this album, on the whole, Black Antlers doesn't make and appropriate introduction for the uninitiated. For the faithful though, this is a near-great effort from the sorely missed group of alchemists that called themselves Coil. Note: Once the initial and second pressings of this album sold out, it was made available for digital download through the band's website, www.thresholdhouse.com.

Coil - "...And the Ambulance Died In His Arms"

And the Ambulance Died in His Arms is a live recording of Coil performing at the 2003 All Tomorrow's Parties festival at Camber Sands. On this date, Coil were Jhonn Balance on vocals, Peter Christopherson on sequencers, Thighpaulsandra on keyboards and Tom Edwards on marimba. This combination of musicians appeared on Live Two, recorded two years earlier. Where that set was abrasive and loud, this one is largely subdued, very different from the other recordings of Coil that appeared over the course of the Live series. Balance takes the mic to explain the subdued nature of the material, "We're doing a quiet set today. We've had too much shouting over the past year." Of the five lengthy tracks, four are completely new and one is a radical reworking of "The Dreamer Is Still Asleep" from Musick to Play In The Dark Volume One. Most of the set appears to be improvised, especially the glossolalic "Snow Falls On Military Temples' and "Triple Sons and the Ones You Bury", where Balance appears to be channeling his lyrics from another plane, suggesting phrases and then settling in on one which gets repeated and morphed into something totally new. Most of the song titles on this album are generated from those very phrases. Of all the live Coil albums that have been released, and there are a lot of them, And the Ambulance is one of the more satisfying. It is an excellent document of Coil's improvisatory nature, a side that was not displayed on their studio albums much, if at all.

Coil - "Selvaggina, Go Back Into The Woods"

Selvaggina is a limited edition live album, recorded on June 11th, 2004 in Jesi, Italy. This appears to be the full set of the concert, and contains a new version of every track from previous studio effort Black Antlers. As such, the question of which has more value to the listener is to be considered. Selvaggina is well recorded and excellently performed, and some of the kinks of Antler versions of the tracks have been ironed out. For example, opener "The Gimp (Sometimes)" is here a more vibrant and shorter version than its counterpart, but retains its aura of goofy menace. "Sex With Sun Ra" retains the vibe of the Antlers version, but with more urgent vocalizations from Jhonn Balance, and animated work from Tom Edwards on the marimba. There's a telling bit of stage banter from Balance about this concert: "We're truncating, we're making shorter the things tonight because we haven't got enough time unfortunately to do the long versions we wanted to do, so apologies for that, but maybe you're being saved from our indulgences, I don't know." The editing that the band does on the songs here is very noticeable, sounding refined and worked-on, improving on the studio versions in every way. Of all of the live albums that Coil released in the last few years of its existence, this is the best, hands-down. This may be one of the harder pieces of the Coil catalogue to track down (this was limited to a mere 230 copies), and it is undoubtedly one of the best. How perverse of them, to do that to their fans.

Growing - "Live"

This limited edition live album from drone duo Growing contains two complete sets from the band, one live in a club, the other live in a studio. The live set, recorded at NorthSix in Brooklyn, New York in July 2004, is the more sedate of the two. The set starts with a ringing guitar sounding hesitant tones before being joined by a magnificent organ drone that frees the guitarist (either Doria or Denardo -- the liner notes are maddeningly terse) to explore a musical trance-like state similar to what Spacemen 3 discovered on their Dreamweapon album. This segues into a similar but louder piece that ends abruptly by cutting the power to the instruments, and the resulting silence seems louder than the music that preceded it. Such is the power of the drone, and the heart of Growing's aesthetic -- the replacement of silence with an all-encompassing aural environment of beatific noise. The studio set, from January 2004, was recorded in the tiny confines of Free 103.9, also in Brooklyn. The claustrophobic nature of the studio is here reflected in a more aggressive (read: louder) set, running about fifty minutes. As in previous releases like The Sky's Run Into The Sea and The Soul of the Rainbow and the Harmony of Light, Growing focus more on setting a mood than performing a song, and each piece here seems to end almost arbitrarily, when they could go on indefinitely. Having been signed to the Kranky label, and toured with the likes of Khanate, one would assume that Growing has thrown their chips in with the neo-noiseniks and their ilk, but this is not entirely accurate. Whereas groups like Khanate or Sunn O))) explore the space between the sounds they make with their instruments, Growing sounds more interested in the sounds their instruments make without too much involvement from humans, almost answering the Zen koan question of what air sounds like. It sounds beautiful.