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Buyer Rating: 100.0% positive (75 ratings)

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• Summer Sound System - Glasgow - 29th August 2009

Morbid Angel - Blessed Are The Sick - 18-Aug-07 08:03 AM
Somewhat hyped up by Morbid Angel on their own website, this is nevertheless genuinely considered to be something of a classic in death metal history. I bought it shortly before making a sudden and swift transition from listening mostly to brutal guitar based music to hypnotic electronic music, and at the time never really listened to it. 10 years later, retrieving it along with other old metal stuff from a box back at my mum's house, I sold it along with a few other releases that didn't hold significant memories for me.

Some years later still, I've now revisited the album. It has, as stated on the band's website, "retained the venomous energy of its predecessor" - the excellent "Altars Of Madness". The highly effective Morbid Angel technique of layering furiously fast drums over (what seems like) slower, grinding guitars is here in abundance, creating a veritable onslaught of sound that evokes visions of dark armies marching. Here too are plenty of the wild, frenetic guitar leads that come from nowhere and end in the same place. The improved clarity in the production does the music plenty of favours, especially for the bass guitar. Although I remember being disappointed that David Vincent's vocals appeared to have dropped an octave (do growls have octaves?) when I first heard it, my better trained ears can now hear that it was more something missing in the mix of "Altars..." rather than something that had happened to his larynx between albums.

All that said, I can't help feeling this album and its reputation is something of a fraud. It's a collection of recycled ideas – to the point of actually having riffs and progressions I clearly recognise from other releases, from M.A. and others. Most shocking of all is a repeated verse in "Thy Kingdom Come", where Vincent's vocals match exactly the form and rhythm of a verse from "Maze Of Torment" on "Altars...".

It's a fairly unusual rhythm so it stands out clearly, and it's so similar I wonder why they didn't spot it and think "hey, we've done this before haven't we?". Then again, that's a question that should have been ask often, and long ago, in the sadly stuck-in-a-rut world of death metal. Like so many bands it seems Morbid Angel's most highly praised album is lacking the originality of their earlier work.

Marrow - 15-Mar-07 08:41 PM
An artist with no discernible style, simply pouring his imagination into these limited CDr runs that he distributes largely by "stealth tactics" rather than any conventional means, his music is often harsh, noisy and difficult. At other times it makes me laugh with its absurdity, bizarre vocal punk nonsense within avant-garde divscapes. Then an almost ambient piece like "P.T.S.D." on "Camp Macho" comes along, and the Marrow is undoubtedly beautiful and peaceful.

I must have had "Forever Growing Troubles" and "Sweet Cigarettes" for a good year and a half before I ever listened to them, while having a clearout of CDs I never played. These certainly did not get thrown out! I was knocked sideways by what I heard, as I realised I'd ignored these excellent releases for too long. So inventive, and so in tune with the more experimental, random natured music I was listening to at the time. Racking my brains I vaguely recollected being handed the discs when giving my bag in to a cloakroom at a club. So fascinated was I by the bizarre, unpredictable, mental compositions on these CDs, that I felt compelled to track the artist down to find more. The internet bore no results, so I phoned the club I'd been at and fortunately the person who answered the phone knew who I was talking about and was able to put me in touch with Joff, the mastermind behind this ongoing experiment.

Seemingly devoid of any desire to actually promote his music, he prefers to freak unsuspecting people out as he did to me. If you're lucky enough to be handed one of these while out and about in London, or find one in your pocket with no memory of how it got there…don’t wait 18 months to listen to it. If it does nothing else for you, it'll scare away any unwanted house guests in minutes.

Wicked Wipe - Rok Da House - 02-Mar-07 10:47 AM
The "Ian Pooley Mix" of "Rok Da House" is the track that Jeff Mills immortalised on his amazing "Live At The Liquid Room" mix CD of 1995. It's testament to Mills' abilities at the time to shock a crowd into disbelief with his rapid-fire, hectic mixing style, that people have actually gone out and acquired this record off the back of that CD. Few other DJs could make such a boring track sound so good.

In truth, the few seconds that Mills forced into his set on that night in Tokyo are the only few worth listening to. The build up from the start of the track to the moment when the "raaaak da haaaaouse" vocal sample comes in is pretty nifty. But it's all downhill from there....and by that stage only 15% or so of the track has played!! After that it gets repetitive and annoying, with an awful breakdown and some bog standard "techno chords"....the same sounds over and over. BORING. Most DJs would probably end up playing too much of this track while preparing their next record. Mills made it exciting by keeping it short and sweet and focusing right on the small section that creates energy rather than the majority which drains it away.

The other two mixes are even worse. Some kind of hi-energy trance versions. Yuk.

Kenny Larkin - Art Of Dance Sampler - 07-Dec-06 04:05 AM
A disappointing release, this.

OK...so the version of "Track" was the harder to find 12" version, but in my opinion it's not a patch on the version that was squeezed on the end of side A of the "Azimuth" album. The floating bleeps that accompanied the rushing Detroit techno chords made that version far superior, and it would have benefited from a nice loud 12" cut. Neither is "Chasers" one of Larkin's better tracks - although it's certainly not bad. If you've got those tracks already then unfortunately the exclusive track, "Dark Disco", is not worth buying the record for. It's a slow paced, very simple filtered-loop track that really could have been made by any dance music producer and shows none of the magical creativity that Larkin has been capable of.

I'm very glad for the series of Larkin represses that Rush Hour has gifted us with, but this particular instalment is far from being the pick of the bunch.

Monolake - Plumbicon Versions II - 17-Jul-06 01:29 AM
A fine pair of remixes here. The Rebreather version is a very spacious ambient interpretation of Monolake's original. That original was a jerky, mechanical sounding techno track that had an unusually (for Monolake) positive feel to it, almost even melodic at one point. Here it gains a melancholy and introspective vibe which peaks early with strings that follow the same melody that appeared towards the end of the original version. This could be the soundtrack to the experience of standing on top of a mountain, watching the clouds fly past underneath and around you. It develops more of a rhythmic feel in the second half but still retains that celestial feeling throughout. This is the track which really suffered from the pressing fault on the original run. I had bought a copy of the first pressing so was delighted when the Monolake office sent me a replacement copy free of charge.

On the flip, one of Robert Henke's occasional collaborative partners, Deadbeat, offers up a refreshingly different interpretation. The space is still there, but what carries this track along is the dynamic rhythm section rather than the atmospherics. Soft double-timed bass drums and understated dancehall style rhythms combine with some sub bass lines and the more mechanical and glitchy mid range. Once again that chord sequence from the original appears and carries the track on to a very well thought out peak, before fading back into space.

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