Archive for August 2008
Inspired by the live DVD on Steinklang I reopened my search for Thorofon material. I had some older material (Final Movement, apparently recently rereleased) which contains old-style and not my kind of noise, but I ran into the New Heroes 2lp of 2005 and this release has a nice balance between industrial, noise and the more progressive sounds of This Summer Suicide and Dogpop.
About a year and a half ago I got the debut mcd of this Italian project. Impressive and very dark ambient. Later I got two compilations featuring this project (Incendium II and The Old Europa Café box) with also very interesting tracks. Apparently I missed a 12″ on Power and Steel. It is not surprising that CMI picked up this project, even though (like I wrote in my previous review), Vestigial is darker than most of the CMI dark ambient projects. Vestigial is heavier, more industrial and has a nice noisy touch here and there; heavier with many very low frequencies, the way I like it! The music is quite ‘soundscapish’, but nowhere too monotous. Actually, this is a dark ambient album the way dark ambient should sound. The package is also very well done. A highly recommended album!
Links: Vestigial, Cold Meat Industry
Murpey’s Law caused some delay to this release, but I finally got my copy yesterday. In the series of DVDs with reports of the shows at the October 2004 Steinklang festival in Vienna/Wien, this is the second. Here we have to rhythmical industrial/noise projects. Tormentum is not too great, only a few nice tracks in their 41 minutes. The sound-quality is not too good either, the right speaker sounds really flat and no, that is not caused by my equipment. Thorofon is more interesting in every way. The sound quality is much better (fortunately), the visuals are more interesting (two persons on stage and they even walk around, plus they include a woman and that helps too), the music is more interesting. It is no This Summer Suicide, but Thorofon showed both their old fashioned noise side and the more rhythmical sound. 52 minutes, not such a bad deal!
Links: Thorofon, Steinklang
