µ-ziq - Lunatic Harness (1997)

1997: what a year for music! You had Radiohead’s barrier-blowing ‘OK Computer’, The Chemical Brothers’ rave defining ‘Dig Your Own Hole’, Spiritualized’s escapist’s dream ‘Ladies & Gentlemen, We Are Floating In Space’… the list goes on and on. Of course, amongst the lime-light hoggers, there were small masterpieces going un-noticed; albums like ‘Lunatic Harness’. µ-Ziq (pronounced “mu-ziq”) is the alias of Mike Paridinas, a Londoner and creator of some of the most original pieces of electronica I’ve heard in quite a while. In a way, it’s not entirely original, but it shoves different electronic sub-genres together into a bizarre, but deeply fascinating package which can be eerie, calm, frightening or beautiful or sometimes all four at once. The lush melodies that spring up recall the work of his friend and occasional collaborator Aphex Twin, while the beats are complex, fast and strangely natural-sounding. Together, they create pieces which conflict weirdly, making it sound half dangerous and half content. It varies seemlessly from the almost video-gamey opener ‘Brace Yourself Jason’ to the twisted and self-explanatory ‘Approaching Menace’. The highlight for me is definitely ‘Hasty Boom Alert’ which brings to mind a wonderfully other-worldly landscapes seen from the window of a speeding aircraft. (blueclax.wordpress.com)


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Danger Mouse - The Grey Album (2004)

The first album from DJ Dangermouse. Originally recorded for his friends until they encouraged him to release it.


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Mouse on Mars - Ideology (2001)

While their peers in the field of electronic music continued to either overshoot experimentally (resulting in radical, unlistenable work) or make the same records over and over again, German duo Mouse on Mars pumped out radical, intriguing work by the bucketful. Idiology, the duo's seventh full LP in as many years, is a more immediate album than its predecessor (Niun Niggung), not quite as reliant on the hyperprogramming and content to simply chug along with crunchy beats and the usual roster of push-the-envelope effects. The opener (and single), "Actionist Respoke," sets the agenda immediately, with a red-line vocal sample shimmying its way through a crunchy breakbeat production. It's probably the most traditional track on the album though, as the pair throws away the Mouse on Mars rule book for much of the rest of Idiology. "Subsequence" works its way around a dabbling piano line soon taken up by clarinet and strings as well, with all manner of effects/samples chirping away in the background. Tracks three and four comprise ten minutes of practically beatless, chaotic bliss, introduced by a fetchingly overenunciated vocal from drummer Dodo Nkishi. The next, "Catching Butterflies With Hands," lurches along like an obviously dysfunctional toy from some Disney cartoon, struggling to perform its duties and, in an odd way no one could've expected, succeeding. Hidden within Idiology are at least half-a-dozen mini-masterpieces of neo-electronic composition, and as many tracks of flat-out electro-funk. Most significant of all when considering Mouse on Mars is that, in the notoriously coattails-riding electronic scene, no one's been able to duplicate what Mouse on Mars does so often, so consistently, and so well. (allmusic.com)



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"He will make Cheney look like Ghandi"

Plaid - Spokes (2003)

This ten-track disc is an immediate pleaser, especially for those who like sounds that can be coy, conceptual and at the same time funky and salacious - like the bobbing happy-go-lucky flavor of "Get What You Gave". Some sort of calypso-driven disco meets jazz-hot meets the wild kingdom. "Buns" sounds at first to be something ala Trio's "Da, Da, Da" but soon blends arctic visions derivative of the tectonic era of John Foxx and Gary Numan. Plaid has basically reshaped the 80s on Spokes and its update should last longer than its potential 15 minutes. (igloomag.com)


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Slag Boom Van Loon - Slag Boom Van Loon (1998)

Combining the bed-sit beats of Mu-Ziq and the musical disobedience of Speedy J, for intelligent dance music observers this side project of the two experimentalists must read on paper much like a historical Beatles and Rolling Stones crossover. Hey, if equally mythological team-ups can happen in comic books, why not here? Even when you can point out each musician's superpowers on each track (accurately or not), Slag Boom Van Loon have gone and constructed an hour's worth of meticulously absurd electronic fizz. "Light of India" builds up a wall of sitars and Aziz-like transglobal percussion while other pieces like "Broccoli" sound like a Bjork instrumental forced to subsist on underground fungi for a month. Effortless and interesting, this is a collaboration that shows just how screwed in the head dance musicians can be when they get around to it. (Allmusic Guide)


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Notes on Breakcore (A Documentary)

part 1:



part 2:



part 3:

Andy Votel - Songs in the Key of Death (2005)

A mix of obscure psychedelic gems put together by Andy Votel.


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Andy Votel - All Ten Fingers (2002)

With fingers in design, production, label management, DJing and a whole bunch of other pies, Twisted Nerve honcho Votel has to have every single one at his wanton disposal. With such a busy lifestyle, it's no surprise that it's taken him so long to muster up his first full-length album. The result is as a 15-track album that borrows as much from his label's love of lo-fi acts as it does from their love of electronic noise-smiths like Mum and Dad or Sirconical. All in all, though, it's a dark album where water drips down the studio walls as moody, sullen beats interrupt themselves occasionally with churns of garage-rock guitars. Votel lets his fingers do the talking. (XLR8R)


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Selda - Selda (1976, reissue 2006)

The music you are about to hear defies categorisation. But for all intents and multi-purposes, this record is a folk album. Embodying all the aesthetic watermarks of a private press country LP, Selda's debut long player from 1976 has masqueraded as lamb dressed as mutton, throwing many a discerning wolf from the gourmet scent. Behold! Space age, Anatolian, electronic, progressive-protest, psych-folk-funk-rock from the Middle East. All of the above ingredients are presented immaculately with up-most authenticity and conviction to create a delectable hybrid concoction which has never been replicated or equalled in the 3 mutant decades since its recording. (Andy Votel)


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