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Various - Veromon - 06-Sep-07 01:02 AM
The second in the Ant-Zen official compilations, Veromen is taking a step away from the street-status artwise, it seems. The ominous cover of a powerbox-looking device, which holds the inspiration for all of these artists, drives the point across that you're not dealing with normal experimented sounds.

Artists like PAL, Stin Scatzor, Fellatio Et Cunniligus, Telepherique, and Contagious Orgasm started knowing exactly which areas of experimentation they wanted to cover, and they did a great job on their tracks which appear here. Telepherique does a great live track to their song "Reaktion." Stin Scatzor talk about the abuses of power in "Chemical Warfare." For a change, KW plays the part of the band Normal, and comes out with an interesting construction of "Pflichtwicht," a da-da-like track which makes the vocals heard sound like lambs. Very weird.

The odd addition of epic-theme and celtic dance-composers The Thieves of Impressions makes me a little misguided on this compilation, but to each, his own, right? This was a great compilation to hear the variety that Ant-Zen artists have to offer, too. There are some great underground artists who haven't made very many tracks other than what tracks are on here and maybe a few albums of strangeness.

I liked this compilation for what it was trying to do: spotlight some of the artists in an experimental light and let the audience have some release that allowed such to happen. It combined some rare artists and their even rarer sounds to come out, and for some of the more widely-known ones, this comp has some of their better tracks displayed alongside the lesser-known.

Music For Flagellants - Scourge - 06-Sep-07 12:09 AM
As far as experimentation is concerned, it is a great release by concept alone. As far as music is concerned, it's some of the worst music to leave on, as far as tracks go.

The two tracks fill entire sides of the cassette it was released on. The two tracks have no official names that I know of. The cassette sleeve is simple and true to the old nature of a lot of the early Ant-Zen releases; a simple title followed by odd notes about some treatment and recommendations to be played at high volume, which, in my opinion, doesn't change the quality of the tracks available. A short dedication note is displayed to martyrs who gave their bodies for their love of Jesus. Strange. There are plenty of pictures representing the giving of bodies for love, as well.

The tracks are very odd. The first side's track is a 29-minute track in which whistling sine waves and a slight beat are randomly interlaced with a spoken-word sampled track, speaking incoherently as the track gets brighter about halfway through the track. The next track on side two is nothing more than a 29-minute track with a poppy 80's, minimalist drum machine beat infected with a wash of samples, which doesn't inspire me to do anything more than fastforward through it.

I would place this in a "collector's only" bin and randomly pull it out only to check out the album sleeve.

Various - Men-An-Tol - 05-Sep-07 11:13 PM
After listening to this release for the first time, I have to remind myself about what the origins of rhythmic noise were doing for the standard club beats we hear in underground culture now in 2007. 14 years after the creation of these mutilated beats and washy sampling, you will be hard pressed to find artists who never took anything from the performers on this compilation.

The greatest and more well-known artists in the Ant-Zen label scene got their names established from this compilation: PAL, Salt, Mondblut, :Wumpscut:, Stin Scatzor, and Contagious Orgasm (to name some notable artists on here).

As a compilation, it does very well to combine the various stylings of extreme post-industrial vocals, horrifying dark ambient music, and repetitious war beats for the insane. The experimental mindset of Ant-Zen is what impresses me so much about this release and the future of their releases to come. It was as if "no-holds-barred production" was the guideline for most of its artists.

I missed out on hearing the official cassette-only release of this compilation, but I'm sure that it would've made this compilation all the more better since Salt oversees the creation of all things visual for the time this was released. It would've made these dark tracks all the more muddled and sexy to the experimental-lovers' ears.

My favorite tracks on this compilation are somewhat easy to pick out if you like a particular-styled artist on Ant-Zen (I first heard PAL around 1999, so I missed out on great artistic pieces by little known groups today). I loved "Shiftwork" by PAL, "Injury" by Stin Scatzor, and "The Love of Christ" by Mondblut probably the best, but the various feeling of each track makes for a wonderful meditation session on the different creative sides of sound.

If you get a chance to hear it, you will not be disappointed.

Gerogerigegege, The - Night - 04-Sep-07 01:59 AM
If ever there was art for the ears, this 7" would be standing alone like an angry-looking installation piece. A curious album for any collector, this release is a puzzler. Am I listening to someone rustling amongst leaves? Am I listening to primal, zoological creeatures eating prey? Am I just listening to some guy masturbating?

That's the odd thing about this release. And because it is so odd, it suffers by not grasping my attention for the full 8 or 9 minutes.

Ab Ovo - Mouvements - 04-Sep-07 01:16 AM
Ab Ovo has blown me away by their release of Mouvements. They've put together great albums such as this but never in this way of creating old classical movements out of ambient programming. I really was taken away while listening to this album to some weird world of empty existence and scrambled drums with hazy, dirty environments to play in while taking it all in. I'm interested from a label point-of-view as to why this album was chosen to be released on Ant-Zen and not Hymen, Ant-Zen's predominant IDM-style sister label. In any case, tracks like "You Are Very Far Now" and "Inlandsis" are very deep and travel very wide in sound exploration, all of which begin roughly the same, but take you to a new place everytime you hear them. A must-hear track is "L'écume D'un Soir" with its hellish haze of sound placed over optimistic-sounding piano notes as the crackling static tries to regain control of the song. Awesome. A must buy.

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