Links:
Meg Lee Chin

Junkies and Snakes is a seven song EP containing some remixes from her highly acclaimed Piece and Love album along with some new material. Remixed are some of her finest moments from Piece and Love. "Thing," "Heavy Scene," "Bottle" and "Nutopia" get fuzzed and dubbed out facelifts. Nothing at all like the album cuts, these remixes are a must have for Meg fans waiting with bated breath for her much anticipated new album.

Which leads me to the new material. There is no stylistic change from what you would expect from Miss Chin, and thank God. Noise dub, razor guitar electronics and that unmistakable voice, Meg makes it all sound effortless as she remains one of a handful of women who have an understanding of the importance of uncompromising and challenging art. Her entire attitude is a fantastic reminder of the punk rock ethic.

-Jeff Ashley
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Links:
Mumble and Peg

Interestingly enough, it is the moodier numbers that stand out best here. The distant strum of acoustic alongside the tinker of piano on "Focal Point" draws you in softly until it you suddenly realize what Carter is singing about, at which point it's too late...you're trapped in the web of the music's deceptive poison. "Mirror Face" finds him sounding a bit too much (I hope unintentionally) like Uncle Fester (aka Billy Corgan) for my taste, but the song quickly moves on to the build and tension of "Paddock," whose horns give way under the distorted weight of guitar and the heavy swing of Matt Jenya Chernoff's drumming and Matt Lebofsky's bass lines.

All My Waking Moments in a Jar also contains a hidden track. And, as with the song at the end of Radical Noise's Plan-B that's reviewed elsewhere this issue, Mumble and Peg are forgiven for the wait because they give up an amazing version of Nick Drake's "Which Will," from his haunting final album, 1972's Pink Moon. The band have slowed down the original, a sparse yet beautifully shimmering acoustic number, and added a sullen dissonance and aching howl, giving you the feeling that you're suffocating under the weight of your own emotional wrangling.

Maybe it's because I'm an avid Drake fan, or maybe it's just that Mumble and Peg have tapped into the spaces between Drake's voice and music to find the unspoken heartache which draws us to him in the first place. In either case, the journey through All My Waking Moments in a Jar was well worth the trip, if just for this one gem.

-Craig Young
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Kosmik Kommando
Laptop Dancing
Rephlex

Jamie Lidell
Muddlin Gear
Warp

While Warp and Rephlex have been splattering us for several years with this type of fractured randomness, Schematic is the new kid fiddling with the electrons and, among these three records, has actually got the most outrageously convoluted release. Otto Von Schirach, a demented-looking Cuban-German lad whose press releases reads like a transcript of an interview with a fervent technologist suffering from glossolalia, is trying to cram so many divergent song ideas one session that the disc comes off as if he was the band leader running a rehearsal for sixty-five students who've been drinking Jolt Cola all afternoon. Otto drops a downbeat and these kids have all selected a song at random from their music folders and are trying to play their entire part within thirty seconds. On 8000 B.C. melodies are garbled, savaged, smacked with a hammer, tossed into a blender and patched back together with spit and spirit gum before being welded into place with a blowtorch. It's the mental overload of sixteen different E-ticket rides all compacted into one physical experience. The amazing discovery is that the ride isn't as nausea-inducing as one might initially expect. There is some portion of our little brains which are actually tickled by this sort of musical assault because after a few listens my head was actually nodding along and I even caught myself muttering along with Mr. Soundwave on "Tympanic Calcoolus." Of course my wife thought I was suffering from an epileptic seizure and rushed at me with a spoon, but everything turned out okay.

Mike Dred, whose Kosmik Kommando moniker helped found the Rephlex sound along with Aphex Twin, has been DJ-ing in this scene for about as long as it has existed and he brings a turntablist's ear to Laptop Dancing. The most plainly melodic of the three (and by plain I mean you can actually track the melody from a track's front to back), Laptop Dancing offers up ten tracks of programmed beats and scratches that will keep any party moving. Saddled with the secret mission of traveling and performing in four continents (the day-time premise) while covertly recording the ten tracks of Laptop Dancing (the secret agent man part of the trip), the Kommando unloads his arsenal of breaks and scratches over raved-up melodies and jumbled samples. There's no revolution here, just a solid hour of a master practicing his craft while the rest of us are snoozing in the airport lounge trying to remember what time zone we're in.

James Lidell makes my head hurt, but in a way that reminds me that I'm alive and that, if I were comatose or clinically dead, I wouldn't have the opportunity to puzzle over the fifty-eight minutes and five seconds of sonic transmissions that he's trying to beam into my head. He's reached out into deep, deep space somehow and gathered a whole lot of echoes from the spatially experimental and the deeply groovy music of the late '60s and early '70s, brought a headful of that back to earth and run the whole lot through his analog samplers while he overlays it with a ferocious attack of shredded, processed guitar and reverb effects. Elements of John Coltrane, Pharoah Sanders, Miles Davis, Sun Ra and Marvin Gaye just confuse you as you grasp at their elusive and transitory existence beneath the squiggling electronic beats. And then--as a reward for surviving the journey this far with him?--he unloads this tender and soulful ballad on you. I don't know whether to praise him or hurl the disc across the room. I've got this dichotomy in my chest now and tomorrow I won't be able to see things as starkly as I did yesterday. I will be, for the sake of a better word, slightly muddled. Lidell dissects music and tries to put it back together again. We were all this curious once. Who didn't take something apart to figure out how it worked and then discover they could never quite get all the pieces back together in quite the proper alignment? Lidell does the skewing on purpose, asking you to examine the underside and the inside of things which you previously had only seen (or heard) on the outside.

-Mark Teppo
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Pru Renfro continues this trend with her strong songwriting skills and innovative, jazzy vocal styling on her debut album Pru, offering up a musical taste of everything--latin, jazz and neo-soul. Her peotry and voice make her a worthy addition to the new generation of talented R&B singer/songwritters. The debut single "Candles" evoked obvious memories of Smokey Robinson's "Tracks of My Tears," but it was songs like "Prophecy of A Flower and "Sketches of My Pain" that made me stand up and take note. I'd say "You go girl," but something tells me she's already gone and I'm sure copies of her CD won't be too far behind.

-Cecil Beatty-Yasutake
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Links:
Raging Slab

1. Do you enjoy a wide variety of daily drug and alcohol abuse?
2. Do you think of the confederate flag as art?
3. Do you think of the Outlaws Motorcycle Club as role models? (As an aside, I think they saved their own skins when they used a modified piston shape as an Iron Cross logo. Had the pistons been a little rounder and in a crossbones they would be skinned alive at this point.)
4. Are you emotionally attached to your vehicle? As much as your bottle of whiskey?
5. Were you born below the Mason-Dixon Line or do you just long to be "Southern by the Grace of God"? (If you are planning to move southward, try Alabama. We don't need any more of you in Florida.)
6. Do you think Jim Dandy is the second coming of Christ? Hey, Raging Slab has a cover of Black Oak Arkansas' "When Electricity Came to Arkansas."
7. Do you think there's nothing wrong with sleeping with pre-teens (if they say "yes" or are passed out--y'know, consensual sex)? Incest is cool, especially with kissing cousins? If you say "yes," you are definitely a Jerry Lee Lewis fan and a real good candidate for the Slab.
8. Do you wish you were related to Jim Beam or Jack Daniels?
9. Can you hum any or all of Molly Hatchet's greatest hits and miss the "old" Lynyrd Skynyrd?
10. Do you have a Bocephus tattoo on your person?

If you answered "yes to a majority of these questions, you truly need to purchase Raging Slab's new disc and maybe even hunt down the old ones in the bins. But if answering yes would be blasphemous to your PC tenets, please don't even attempt to understand Raging Slab.

-Sabrina Haines
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Links:
Red Snapper

Why have I been such a greedy bastard? I've been asking myself the same question because it is always useful to have a smart-ass answer ready in order to distract the questioner enough to grab the disc and run for the door. Was it the scorching film-noir manner in which the disc began with "Keeping Pigs Together"? Was it the way the rhythm section of Richard Thair and Ali Friend kept that heady pulse going in "Some Kind of Kink" as MC Det laid down his fuzzed radio-box vocals? Or maybe it was just the laviscious swagger of "Shellback" and the giggling hedonism laid in your lap by "The Rough and the Quick." Perhaps the 4am empty street melancholy infusing "Don't Go Nowhere" is what captivated me so.

But that would down-play the sweaty room wiggle of "The Rake" as MC Det worked the mike and the ladies in the front row. And what about the roots-reggae throwback of "I Stole Your Car"? And my consternation is complete with the trio of instrumental tracks which close the album, rounding out Red Snapper's dark jazz excursion with a mini-soundtrack for the adventurous who stumble home after the last band in the last open bar has worked the last frenzied crowd into an exhausted lather. You find a cab and collapse in the cracked backseat with an equally worn friend, your clothes still sticking to your sweaty skin, your breathing still fresh and ragged. The city lights streak by the worn windows of the cab, yellow and red washes like paint across a black canvas. As Ali Friend's double bass quietly sashays around David Ayers' pining guitar in "Belladonna," you sneak a glance over at your friend and marvel at the play of light off their cheeks and lips. And, as Ayers' guitar goes from introspective to explosively mournful for the cinematic "They're Hanging Me Tonight," you reach out for your friend's hand, meeting their eager fingers in the darkness of the back seat of the cab.

Yeah, that's why I haven't been sharing Red Snapper's Our Aim to Satisfy. [cue SFX: rapid footsteps, door slamming]

-Mark Teppo
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Links:
West Memphis 3

For those unfamiliar with the case, in 1994 three West Memphis, Arkansas, teenagers were tried and found guilty of the brutal murders of three 8-year old area boys. The crime scene was corrupted, evidence was circumstantial and witness testimony possibly coerced by local law enforcement. However, in the midst of all that authorities found scapegoats in Jessie Misskelley, Jason Baldwin and Damien Echols: three boys whose only apparent guilt was that they wore dark clothing and had an ear for heavy metal music. For the police and prosecuting attorney, these three were an easy conviction and an easy answer to a difficult case. Not surprisingly, all three were found guilty with Misskelley and Baldwin given life sentences, while Echols, the group's purported mastermind, was sentenced to death by lethal injection.

Careful outside review of the facts and evidence--as well as two eye-opening and highly recommended documentaries, Paradise Lost and Revelations: Paradise Lost Revisited--have uncovered many gaping holes in the investigative work done by the authorities of this small Arkansas town, pointing the guilt towards John Mark Byers (the stepfather of one of the victims who is now under investigation for the murder of his wife, the boy's mother) and certainly away from Misskelley, Baldwin and Echols, who now have become known as the "West Memphis 3."

One such person who's taken an active interest in this case is Supersuckers frontman Eddie Spaghetti (who's been sporting a shaggy beard these days). Drawing upon the talents and interests of other artists, he has assembled a benefit CD to help draw attention to the gross need for a retrial. So how then, amidst all this, can I properly judge the music given its context? Thankfully, case aside, Free the West Memphis 3 stands well enough on its own. With contributions stretching from Steve Earle to The Murder City Devils, Mark Lanegan to Joe Strummer & The Long Beach Dub All-Stars, there's a bevy of sounds and styles to wrap your ears around. While many of the contributors turn in originals relevant to the album's cause, quite a few reprocess covers. The Supersuckers and Eddie Vedder do a cover of X's "Poor Child," Zeke make a take on "Wrathchild," the aforementioned Joe Strummer throws in a middle-of-the-road version of "The Harder They Come." The best here is Kelley Deal's remake of Pantera's "Fucking Hostile"--a brilliant reinterpretation that alone makes the CD worth your time and makes up for Nashville Pussy's wholly unnecessary, lacking contribution of "Highway to Hell."

The best cut here is "Our Last Goodbye," a new track by Killing Joke (which includes a reading by Fear Factory's Burton C. Bell including at the end of the review). Wait, wait... Did you say Killing Joke? I did indeed. After a five year hiatus, one of my all time fav's has returned from seclusion. The song--rumored to have been recorded with at least one other original track (word has it there might be four total)--finds Jaz, Geordie, Raven, with the mighty Chris Vrenna filling in on drums this go around, in top form--which, of course, has me in even more hysterics. Word has it straight from the Jaz man's mouth that, if he has his way, the band will hopefully release a new album sometime this year and plan a North American tour behind it. Life is looking good indeed.

However, life for the West Memphis 3 still is not. Pick up this album, rent the documentaries, log on to www.wm3.org and educate yourself. You can make a difference... And the music provided to help you do that ain't so bad for you either.

"Only five other countries are known to have executed juvenile offenders in the 1990s: Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Nigeria and Yemen. The U.S. has executed more juvenile criminals than all of them combined and is the only one known to have put any to death since 1997."

-Craig Young
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The sampling on this album is as beautiful in its simplicity as an Ansel Adams black and white photo. Each track is driven by massaging drum kicks while often times a single instrument provides the hook in the loop. This joint was so good I exhaled twice. I hope this is a sign of things to come in the 2001 because if it is, I'm going to have to adjust my music expense account; some serious spending could be on the horizon.

-Cecil Beatty-Yasutake
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Links:
Bloodshed Dawn
Kult ov Azazel

America is catching on and Visionaries of the Macabre more than illustrates the glory that awaits. Not all of these bands will rock your world, but they are indisputable proof that hate is festering in the promised land. All the road rage, hatred and serial killings have finally set up entrance into the next dimension. If a few of the greater bands can bust through into the next stage, America will finally be able to proudly boast of one or two quality black metal triumphs. Most likely to cross Lethe are Abysmal Fall, Noctuary (the best on this sampler), Bloodshed Divine, Cryptic Winds, Kult ov Azazel (recently signed to Pavement), Thornspawn (on Baphomet), Corvus Corax (slow but smart band on Dark Symphonies) and Krieg. Other bands are almost there and perhaps they have other material that would appeal a bit more than the tracks represented here, but I'll withhold judgment for the time being. For a measly, stinking five dollars, you can get this sampler of destruction from Lost Disciple.

-Sabrina Haines
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Links:
Zyklon

"Hammer Revelation" leads off World ov Worms and demonstrates Zyklon's straightforward deathly guitar destruction perfect. "Hammer Revelation" fuses death and black metal with just a dab of Limbonic Art's industrial nature. Other highlights are "Deduced to Overkill," "Zycloned" and "Storm Detonation". World ov Worms is an utter neccessity for any metalhead. Even my husband agrees: this rocks. I can foresee this on my best of list at the end of the year. I don't think I will let it leave the disc player for months. All hail the mighty Zyklon. Don't forget to catch them on tour if you're in Europe (lucky dogs).

If I still haven't convinced you to pick up World ov Worms, then just a taste of the mighty Zyklon is on the ridiculously cheap sampler Candlelight Collection Volume 4 which should grace stores mid-March. It also has tracks from Failed Humanity, Extreme Noise Terror, Christian Death, Peccatum (another Emperor side-project), Daeonia and Killing Machine. You should have to fork over a soul for a collection this excellent.

-Sabrina Haines
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