| #455 |
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1999 |
Perilous 455 It seems that Winter this year is looking like the time when everything dies down in the clubs and people start releasing their own tunes. Firstly the long awaited No Strings album from Tooth has hit the shelves. Epic, dub-influenced, psychedelic and full of quirky layers of loops and samples complemented by Purdy’s subtle slide guitar, there’s a remix of Dreamland alongside a stack of new tracks . With the closing track Andy’s Rocks already generating a great deal of ‘corporate’ interest its time you grabbed yourself a copy. Elsewhere Clan Analogue have two new albums out. The first is a concept album – Twenty Disco Greats (of which there are only 14) – which sees Clan members reveal a lighter side to their music. Despite the gimmick of retro styling and a fantastic sleeve, Twenty Disco Greats is a solid compilation of some very funky tunes – particularly the opening slab of tracks including top tracks from Boo Boo & Mace, B(if)tek and Jasper Van Patterntangle. The other Clan release is from Disco Stu called Adult Themes. Disco Stu has also released drum’n’bass tracks as Hypnoblob and has been a longtime member of Video Subvertigo and Organarchy. As a result there is a long history of creative and cheeky sampling is Disco Stu’s work and on Adult Themes samples are flanged and filtered over beats that range from minimal to almost 1993-styled acid. Even harder still is the long awaited Bloody Fist double CD compilation NCL Trax v1.0. Whilst Mark N continually complains that ‘if you want something done properly you have to do it yourself” it is clear that he and Nasenbluten have built up a very strong and proud hardcore community in Newcastle. NCL Trax brings together almost five years of recordings on a label that is better known overseas than at home and its thirty tracks feature Newcastle’s finest. Noisy, angry, gritty and sounding like a mouth full of gravel, the beats are fast and diverge from gabber into distorted drum’n’bass, dark scratched up hip hop, and white noise. Whilst it seems that half of Sydney now thinks Alec Empire and Digital Hardcore is the next cool thing, they might do better looking to Newcastle than (again) to Europe. Finally there is another release helped by Elefant Trax this time from local crew Ubin. An excellent blending of drum’n’bass patterns and samples and structures taken from South East Asian music reflecting the diverse musical training of Ubin’s two members Ollie Chang and Joe Lamont. Frigid has two big ones on the 20th and 27th. The 20th is a Newcastle night with Mark N bringing down a carload of his fellow Novocastrians to terrorise Frigid. There’ll be a extremely rare live set from Fraughman whose recent 12” on Bloody Fist is almost pure noise not unlike Merzbow, plus Hedonist live and DJ sets from Mark N and his flatmate Subsonic. Downstairs Sub Bass Snarl finally pull their finger out to do another live movie soundtrack this time for The Hills Have Eyes alongside Vaughan and Sir Robbo. The 27th is a drum’n’bass special with a swag of local drum’n’bass crews – V-Tek, Ronin System and Spinwarp live plus DJs Mechwarrior, Crucial and the regulars. Also by the 27th Frigid will have released two limited edition mini-CD compilations which you can order direct from Frigid or via www.snarl.org. The first also contains all ten issues of Cyclic Defrost so far too as data for your hungry computers. Yellow Peril  Goto
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