| Jester1973 | Add Friend |
Name: Jester aka Chris Christian
Home Page: http://www.sonic-boom.com/dfx/
Member Since: Dec 14, 2003
Rank: 12,564
Average Vote Received: Correct (4.06, 2877 votes)
last 10 days: Correct (3.97, 30 votes)
Rated 3242 releases, average: 3.27
Location: Portland, Oregon
Profile: My real first foray into the musical realms was when I acquired a copy of a cassette compilation called Oxygen Denial back in college. I enjoyed the tape so much that I wrote all of the bands and imagine my surprise when some of them sent me back free music. I immediately felt the need to pay them back by writing reviews of the material and placing them online. Mind you this was back in 1992 when the Internet was still stuck using Gopher, Archie and FTP to get around.
This music review process morphed itself into a mailing list, USEnet postings, FTP site and eventually a web-zine in 1994 under the title Sonic Boom. It ran until 1999 when I finally acquired both writers block and total burn out from thousands of album reviews and hundreds of band interviews.
Somewhere along the way, I had started my own record label; Doppler Effect. We put out ten albums in five years between 1997 & 2003 before closing doors due to a excessive financial black hole. I several years DJing at KPSU with a weekly one-two hour format AM program called Wired For Sound. I dabbled with a cable access video programmer in the Portland, OR metro area called Trinity By Night. I promoted shows, I toured with band as a roadie, I traveled to Europe to take part in large musical festivals. Bascially, I did just about everything you could do in music, except write it.
As of 2003, I stopped doing everything except being audience member and a regular purchaser of music. Part of this was financial based and the rest was the desire to let someone else have a chance at the process for once. Now that this site is around, I suddenly find myself spending every waking moment doing data entry from my extensive back catalogue of purchases and promos from bands across the world. I think that the addiction is back, so who knows where I will go from here.
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Seller Rating:  100.0% positive (16 ratings)Buyer Rating: 100.0% positive (3 ratings)Jester1973's groups (6)
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Reviews & Discussion:
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Been listening to this one on various web podcasts and finally picked it up. Quite surprised to hear the Pink Floyd-esque Prog Rock title track which sets the mood for this concept album revolving around events occurring all at the same time: 10:23pm. The rest of the release is on the lighter side of Future-Pop with the accent on Pop, but not quite classic 80's New Wave Synth-Pop.
When a band names itself after the legendary leader of a magick cult and creator of a legendary mythos, one should not be surprised when it sounds like Cthulhu swallowing narcotics and swaying to the drunken beats of its own drunk metatron. Tribal influences and the occasional acoustic instrument grace a dizzying array of electronics conjoined with cryptic lyrics about the end of the world and the beginning of a new way of thinking.
Voltaire returns with his usual array of sarcasm and irony laced Gothic silliness. Unfortunately, the whole self-deprecation schtick is starting to wear thin with me. While a Star Wars parody track would usually garner a good chuckle, it is the duet with Amanda Palmer of the Dresden Dolls that ultimately redeems this album.
More aggressive crunchy laced tech-noize from the artist that has tried to change his musical styles over the years to maintain his own personal 'edge'. No real surprises or stand out tracks, but then again this is what you have come to expect from this genre. So drop the bass bin and get your booty shaking when this appears on your local club DJ's set rotation.
Curiously absent from this release was the Joy Division cover song that was prominently featured on the original versions. One would have to surmise that the German label releasing this collection simply did not to have to deal with the legal ramifications and paperwork necessary to process a mechanical royalty claim with Harry Fox Agency. Alternately and more likely, the track simply did not functionally fit within the overall theme of the album both stylistically and musically. The album manages to execute itself well without the track and should be considered a cohesive album cataloging the entirety of the Signal to Noise and Epoch material into a single release on a digital format.