...My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult...Jeff Muller...No Knife...All Over Me (Soundtrack)...TV POW & Liminal...Vladimir Denissenkov...
My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult / A Crime for All Seasons / Red Ant (CD)
For my money, MLWTTKK peaked with 1993's 13 Above the Night.
That was the point when their mixture of late-eighties industrial music
and satanic disco stopped showing any real growth, resulting in songs
that were technically interesting and well-produced, but lacked the
immediacy of a "Kooler than Jesus". A Crime For All Seasons is
an enjoyable album, and those looking for the group's trademark B-Movie
scandalous titles, evil-whisper vocals and kitsch-culty lyrics will be
well-sated. There are some great tracks -- "Sexy Sucker" and "The
Twilight Web" come to mind -- and the effects of touring with Lords of
Acid back in '95 are showing, but Crime... remains disturbingly
formulaic. And on top of that, they're now labelmates with Cheap Trick,
which means the apocalypse is a-comin'. -- gz
Jeff Muller / Jes Grew / Catscan (CD)
Jeff Muller has constructed a diverse musical hodgepodge centered around, but
not
limited to, New Orleans. The disc plays more like a theater soundtrack, with
each successive tune displaying a completely different musical style. Many genres are incorporated; from New Orleans style R&B gospel ("Groove is the
Healer", "The Docks"), to sultry nightclub jazz ("Carolina Whisper"), to Paul
Simon-esque world-beat ("Man in the Rain"), to R&B funk ("Love Doctor"), to a
primal, eerie, Voodoo Queen tribute ("Maman Marie") that includes a classical
string arrangement. There's also a page-and-a-half list of musicians who
contributed to this two year project. Highly recommended for the comteporary
adult looking for a red-hot injection of New Orleans soul. --df
No Knife / "Jack Boots" b/w "Communist China" / Time Bomb (7")
No Knife describes its music as
Audio Karate. I think that pretty well describes the deft, focused
musicianship displayed on this 7". Tight, clean guitar riffs and
well-crafted hooks make for quality listening. And Knife's particular
brand of low-volume-impaired post-punk seems quite at home on Time Bomb
Records, a label with Social Distortion (among other groups) in its
lineup. Both "Jack Boots", with its incessant single-note ostinato
patterns and the flip-side, "Communist China," with its contrasting
powerchord/pizzicato guitar duality hit more than hard enough to compete
with the big sluggers. --nw
Various Artists / All Over Me (Soundtrack) / TVT (CD)
This spring's girl-meets-girl indie film boasts a soundtrack that's kind
of a who's who of the last few years of angry women in rock. Luckily,
the film had too much street cred to include Alanis, so we get Ani
DiFranco, Sleater-Kinney, Tuscadero, the Amps and, as elder stateswoman,
Patti Smith (and her Group). Cornershop's "6 a.m. Jullander Shere"
sticks out something awful (though it's a good song). Whether you
consider this to be the first fairly authentic teen angst soundtrack, or
simply the work of cannier-than-average marketers, it's arguably one of
the best compilations on the market. -- gz
TV POW & Liminal / A brief history of flashing light b/w Atoms are not
things / Gentle Giant Records (7")
Here's a tasty little avant/ambient/noise single. Side A offers TV Pow, and
it's worth quoting the press clip, "...When I was a kid there was a five minute
game show where kids would shoot spaceships on TV over the phone to win prizes.
POW! POW!... Kids would actually sit and watch this. I did..." The music
provides a nice soundtrack to this scenario with ambient, wavering, bass drones
underneath random static, and barely audible TV or radio noise. Side B gives
us Liminal. This is a powerful piece of music, capable of inducing strange
emotions. Staged in a cathedral-esque echo chamber, weird, distant, metallic
tinkering plays throughout, while an underwater ambient undercurrent takes the
mood of the song through different phases. Gentle Giant Records continues to
please those with open ears. --df
Vladimir Denissenkov / Bajan / Dunya (CD)
Hypothetically, if you were on a
quest to find a recorded collection of Eastern European folk songs
performed on the Bajan (Russian accordion), your quest would be over once
you got your hands on a copy of Vladimir Denissenkov's latest record. I'll
admit that I don't know much about Eastern European folk music, but I can
truly say that there is an unquestionable energy transferred by this CD to
its listener. It's the energy of everyday life and love -- an energy that
can only come from real people's music. It doesn't appear that Mr.
Denissenkov is of the radical authenticity camp -- I'm sure that the songs he
interprets were not all intended for accordion! But he does manage to
capture some primal element of humanity in his music that stinks of real
life far more than a stale attempt at reproducing what is in the end
unreproducable. --nw