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New format of this blog!

As you can see, I reviewed a CD! This blog was originally intended to review cassettes that I owned. During the last year a lot of things have changed in my personal life. One of them was losing my interest in buying lots-and-lots of cassettes.
A couple of weeks ago I got the new CD by Shane Morris & Mystified and Thomas Park asked me to write a review for it. This gave me new inspiration for this site.

The small changes for this site will be:

-No more exclusive cassette reviews
-No more grading system


I you want to have something reviewed, drop me a line at jnederpel@gmail.com. This can be anything from Spoken Word to HNW. It can be digitally or physically released. As long as it is in the experimental realm, I'm open for almost anything. The only thing I would like in return is the release in its originally released medium (CD, FLAC download or even a cassette ;)).

Regards and my the blips hip you.

Shane Morris & Mystified - Epoch

The days people didn't exhaust the natural resources.

That is what Shane Morris and Mystified wanted to capture in this release on lotuspike.
During the last years Thomas Park laid hands on acoustic instruments to create really interesting drones.
As some of the drones created where already tracks on their own, Shane Morris used them to create this pre-manned earth epoch dreamland.

The first track really lets you swim with all the creatures who ruled the seas during the Cambrian Explosion.
Small little bells sounds create a nice under water tinkling feeling while the layered drones thicken the track for the miles-under-water feeling.

The second track marks the beginning of amphibians crawling on to land.
A couple of sea-like sounds combined with more open sounds that mark the beginning of the transfer from water to land.

The third track tells the story of the most severe extinction event yet to have ever occurred on this planet.
This track really brings up emotions of loss and despair. It almost brought tears too my eyes once.

The last track marks the beginning of the time when the large dinosaurs ruled this planet.
The drones are more layered and create a sound as if a hurdle of large Sauropods cross the vast landmasses.

This CD is best listened through a good set of headphones, as their are very ingenious but subtle changes in the drones and tones used for this outstanding CD.
As for me this release could easily be the score for the Walking with Dinosaurs TV series.

Clubs for Boardgames - IXTLI / Ollin (Tundra Dubs - 2011)

The strange thing with bandcamp pages, is that you allready have a digital copy of the music you've bought before the fysical medium is thrown into your real-life inbox.You can also stream the entire album if you are not obsessed with those nice little boxes with an 80's medium in them.

This tape is one that fits perfectly in the Witch House/Drag/Ghost Drone category. Nice slowed down samples, mixed with hip-hop beats and heavy layered baselines dragging along the tracks. The cover art uses the symbols mostly found within these genres.

'IXTLI' is mostly based around an 'Oh tell me why'-sample dragged town in tempo and layed within the baseline and the beats.

'Ollin' hangs more on the baselines than the former track. Just a sparse voice sample occasionaly passes by. The baseline itself does uses an 'Ooooooooh' synthesizer pad as the basis.

Overall, this is a nice tape and, if you prefer the digital format, playing it on repeat at least puts you in a trance for half an hour.

purchase/stream/download from: http://tundradub.bandcamp.com/

Zombie Zombie - Plays John Carpenter (Living Tapes - 2011)

Another tape that first was released on cd. On this one there are four interpretations of the music score works of John Carpenter by Zombie Zombie. Not to difficult to make up from the name of the release, is it?

It completely sounds like those soundtracks for 80's series and movies like Knight Rider, Miami Vice or Beverly Hills Cop. Real bass-driven tracks with a little cheesy sounding leads upon it and topped of with preset sounding drum rhythms.

All songs do have a great drive to them, which keeps you nodding your head. Especially 'Assault On Precinct 13' sounds better the original. Closely followed by the 'Halloween' and 'The Bank Robbery' theme. Only the original 'The Thing' theme is slightly better than the one made by Zombie Zombie.

All in all a great interpretation of the works of one of my favorite directors. Going to watch Christine again, i guess.......

4/5

ÐOSE - PLUNGE (Clan Destine Records - 2011)

This cassette is one of the small pearls in the sea of music. Slow darkwave-like guitar, bass and drum, depp slightly distorted vocals and despressing to complete it.


Not much to say about it actually, you just have to plunge right in yourself.

5/5 Blips!

P.S. Comes with a very nice poster!

Raison D'être - Prospectus I [re-mixed] (Ravenheart - 2005)

A vacation in 2005. Being in the South of South-Limburg, a place called Mesch (yep, almost the same as the synthpop band). Going through the new CD section in Orkus Magazine, I stumpled upon a CD from Sanctum on Cold Meat Industry. Reading the description, I realized I had to have this! The description was about the CD being one of the best industrial albums of that year.

How wrong could I have been! At that moment I thought Mesh was industrial :) And after listening to a sample of Let's Eat, I thought I would never ever buy horrible music like that. How could they call that Industrial? But slowly my musical taste changed: from synthpop to rhythmic industrial to industrial to noise etc. etc. etc.., Oops! Can't go any further than noise.

So along the way the review in Orkus came to mind again. I took my changes and bought the CD. This time I was overwhelmed by structures and singing in the release. I now think it is one of the best albums ever made! The era of Cold Meat Industry Collecting has begun.

That automatically brings you to Raison Dêtre (reason for existence), who has more than 10 releases on the label. The first one being Prospectus I. Here I have the cassette on Ravenheart of the re-mixed version.

The 9 tracks are mostly build around orchestral and vocal loops. This works very well for a time, but to the end of the cassette it is beginning to get a bit boring and predictable. The songs on themselves really stand out it is just a bit of the same everytime.

For having fond memories of that vacation, CMI and the other works of Peter is gets:

4/5 blips