Scorn – Ellipsis

Derision, mockery & ridicule might equate with scorn, but last year's full length recording 'evanescence' was hailed as an indispensable non-temporary accomplishment: an album in keeping with this decade's macabre fascinations & exploring the darker terrain of the post-ambient map. Mick Harris & Nick Bullen have now collated a richly expressive assembly of revisions & reinterpretations. The incredible itinerary of 'ellipsis' includes Meat Beat Manifesto, Coil, Bill Laswell, Autechre, Scanner, PCM, Germ & Scorn themselves, whose revocation of 'exodus' is loaded with latent menace. Whatever qualms people might possess in relation to dark ambience, the practitioners of this black art are weaving complex spells of audio ingenuity. In two parts, looping film scores, Coil, the black suns of Industrial records build immense aurascapes into 'shadow vs. executioner'. Laswell's horrifying nocturnal immersion into 'night ash black' has to be heard to be believed. Autechre's whirlpooling automation catches 'falling' within interlocking textures of hyperkinetic narratives. A sequence of gradient tones interlaced with shuttling percussion & trademark conversational fragments are combined in Scanner's 'flaneur electronique' mix of 'night tide'. An initial passivity dilutes into complex percussion with germ's intricate introspective approach to 'automata', endlessly reforming to provoke one of the boldest tracks on the album. If ever there was a sound that marks the present moment, the triumphs of this album bear witness that this is it.

(written and published 1995)

This is an album of alternative mixes of the classic "Evanescence" album exploring new avenues, damping down, spicing up & re-inventing tracks. A Hall Of Mirrors reflection on one of the best albums of the past decade.
MEAT BEAT have a certain reverence to the album's blistering opener - the heavyweight drum barrage is still there as insistant as ever, but they mostly replace PLOTKIN's guitar with synthetics and ample amounts of sampler. What remains of the guitar is lightweight and benign, but they add tons of great stuff to it, taking very little away. The sheer magnitude of the original is untouchable, but here they manage to explore new areas of equal brilliance. SCORN choose to remix their own track for the second piece here. It's very much the same piece - perhaps lighter, with the jungle rhythm more obvious and various internal samples moved around and repositioned. COIL try their hand at the next piece, opening like BIOSPHERE's "Novelty Wave". It's curious how the samples - untreated in the most - almost have the same slightly chilling drama of COIL's own music. While it lacks the insistent 'oomph' of the original, the sheer variety they put into it makes it an individual triumph - hell, COIL never let us down, do they? MICK HARRIS's PAINKILLER partner BILL LASWELL continues his atonement for inflicting WHITNEY HOUSTON on us with a deep, dark remix which transforms the original into something almost completely new. He uses a lot of licence here, but the end result is probably the most transformed piece here (bar AUTECHRE's) - with BULLEN's voice to the forefront - and effective it is too! SCANNER throws some of his voyeurism into the remix before creating a darker, creepier version of "Night Tide", stripped down and effective. The actual rhythm is more wallpaper than dance beat (but hey! it's wonderful!). AUTECHRE's apparent polyrhythmic approach appears next, almost totally transmuting the original into a totally different song - more the remixer's sound than SCORN's. P.C.M. take us into Junglist territory with the drums totally left behind with only the mood samples left behind. Enough variety to push it away from the shores of genre cliché. GERM seem to squeeze a whole new atmosphere out of the original sounds with a clever and intelligent reinterpretation, winning the award for most radical change without resorting to your own 'house' sound. Mutant, fragmented and mutilated, threatening to form into a rhythm but never giving in to the overwhelming urge. And finally SCORN get to have a second crack at remixing their own track. And as you might imagine, their approach is far closer to the original, although here it has a less hurried and quite warm ambience to it.

About half of the tracks here pay tribute to a great original album - they seem to have a feel for the sounds and make a good coda to "Evanescence"'s brilliance. The other half - well, they play their own music and tuck a few SCORN samples inside for good measure. Judged on it's own merits, this music is fine, with an eclectic approach throughout covering a whole bunch of genres. But if you have the money to just buy one of the two, go for the original - it's a classic - this is just very good!

Originally reviewed for Soft Watch.