Various – Water

Obviously there must have been an agenda suggested to the artists & groups involved in this project to represent the element of water - the title kinda gives that away. But it's only MULTICIDE's opening track which utilises water as a sound source (and, given the finite nature of the sounds you can actually create with water, they create something both atmospheric & fascinating - it's inspiring stuff & brings the hrase 'neccessity being the mother of invention' to mind). Their other track is an edit from the album (which is reviewed in full deep within the ARCHIVE section of the Internet version of thhis magazine). Since this time JOHN EVERALL, the guy behind MULTICIDE (and SENTRAX, for the Internet subscribers among you) has gone on to create throbbing soundscapes as TACTILE - another project worth seeking out. The second and seventh tracks come from MICK HARRIS's solo project LULL. LULL have around five albums of this atmospheric material, all of which is worth seeking out. The first track offered is unique to this album - a strange, disquieting journey through an alien dreamscape, as ever gravid with mortal danger at any turn. He's joined on this track by a didgeridoo player, adding drone to the floating chill air. The seventh track is taken from "Dreamt About Dreaming", the first LULL album, and is one of the few LULL tracks with almost rhythmic form & structure. And for those of you who don't know, these two tracks were used for the original BATES / HARRIS demo for "Murder Ballads" (the demos being "Long Lankin" & "Banks Of Fordie" respectively). K.K.NULL & JAMES PLOTKIN, both guitarists of some repute, create in the third track an amazingly subtle, almost film-soundtrack, almost Classical mood piece which totally destroys the idea that guitar is an instrument with finite applications. Every it as chilingly evocative as LULL, but with a central, musical theme to it. CHEMICAL PLANT have been labouring away for some years now, mostly unseen by the wider public as most of their early material was released on cassette. Nice to see them here, among the more widely known, and nice to see, also that their roots (doesn't the name hint "Industrial") are still full to the front. Not as atmospheric as many of the pieces here, CHEMICAL PLANT favour location recordings, found sounds and improvised instruments for their music. The fourth track utilises what sounds like bowed metal to accompany echoing deep drum (machine?). Over this a GENESIS P ORRIDGE-esque voice rises and falls in gyrating agonies. Track nine harkens back to the thrill-potential days of square-shouldered Metal-Bashin', a more stark yet fascinatingly dense piece like a more naive TEST DEPT before they disappeared up their own posteriors. Huge and angular, noisy yet compelling, its nice to see someone still bearing the torch of brash, abrasive Industrial and actually managing to colour it with a certain beauty. CABLE REGIME come next, changing the atmosphere totally with a machine-led grizzling Prog Rock which seems to borrow off both GODFLESH (unsurprisingly, although this is lighter & faster) and early SPLINTERED. A short, bright track which should please fans & whet appetites among others. Structure, fast pace & bright noise follow with the next track. I know nothing about EC NOISE MOUNTAIN, but the variety of form & sound in this Industrial Dance Adrenalin-Pumper begs further investigation. I'd place them in the CARGO RECORDS Torture Tech category, although they have as many ideas in one short track as most TT groups have on an entire album. A little like AUTECHRE on speed with all VUs pressed deep into the red. Which leaves us with Mr. BROADRICK's FINAL project. His track would make an interesting theme for a Sci Fi film, a sort of cross between JOHN CARPENTER's earlier, moodier era, and the slower incidental music from a Terminator-type film. Human yet somehow a fanfare for the end of mankind. FINAL create films without images, much the same way ENO did a couple of decades ago. But where ENO used subtlety, BROADRICK bludgeons the listener with rolling tones and sharp, piercing punctations. Many of the tracks here are taken from albums, so if you're into this area of music, you may have heard some of this materal before. But the cover says pay no more than £6/$8, which is a meagre amount to pay for the music which appears here. Whether volume two will see light of day remains to be seen, but I certainly hope so, if the quality is anything like vol.1.

Originally reviewed for Soft Watch.