Gangleri – music reviews

It has been five years since the interesting debut of this Romenian duo. “Dialogue” mixed different kinds of music into an interesting style. On “Divine Skinny” there is again a mix of styles, but the result differs from the previous album. After hearing the Myspace tracks I got myself a copy of the new album, but I must say that I am disappointed by it. The cd opens interestingly with a mix between folk and industrial, but most of the tracks are rather bluesy, minimalistic, slow tracks, mixed with electropop and other poppy sounds. Especially the female vocals are not my thing (I prefer the photos of the very skinny Julie in the booklet) and the music is quite boring at times. I do like the fact that the bands presents something very uncommon and perhaps some more (than four) listenings will make the album grow a bit, but I can currently not give too much praise to it.
Links: Divine Muzak, Punch Records

Well well, D-Passion released a cd! Looking at the cover, I see quite a typical gabber face. D-Passion is one of the classic Third Movement artists enlightening their compilations with great industrial techno. D-Passion balances on the border between gabber and tekno, but does not lean towards the wrong direction. His style is fairly dark, pretty agressive, has a lot of samples and loud beats; not the the-faster-the-better ideology of the gabber or speedcore style, but always in a nice danceble pace. The music is minimalistic enough and does not have too many breaks and changes in speed, which makes it very enjoyable. Great heavy techno!
Links: D-Passion, The Third Movement

I mostly know Peaky Pounder from his label’s compilations, but I also heard some of his vinyls. Peaky often makes the quite popular techno (minimalistic, regular beats and with minimal sound on the background), but then in a heavy, industrial fashion. Great stuff. Now there is a cd. I like the fact that within a DJ culture vinyls are still released to play at parties, but I personally prefer to buy cds to play at home, so I was happy to hear about a Peaky cd. Our Dutchman thinks that things to not have to be too dark and wanted to create something lighter with disco samples and stuff like that. However the tracks presented are obviously Peaky, most tracks are not as hard as I like them, but there sure are nice tracks here too. Here and there I find the tone a bit too light though and it seems that the speed has gone a bit down too. Overall the album is not as good as I hoped and it seems that Peaky gets about as crazy as for example Kid 606 here and there. At least the sound is not very typical (not even for Peaky Pounder) and some tracks are still good.
Links: Peaky Pounder, The Third Movement

The Dutch label The Third Movement releases what I call “post-gabber”. “Gabber” was the biggest Dutch subculture a decade or two ago, but it got too big and exploded and some of the people from that scene continued a bit more underground and with a heavier sound. In 2004 I discovered the superb compilation “Audio Output 3“. Where the first “Audio Output” (2002) proved to be mostly a gabber compilation (hardstyle techno, but too cheerfull for me), part 2 (2004) containing both gabber and “tekno” and therefor much more interesting, part 3 was a complete tekno / industrial techno compilation with some great extreme dance music. Still waiting for “Audio Output 4″, I now discover that another compilation series is put out by The Third Movement, a series that started between the first and second “Audio Output”! In any case, “Demolition part 10″ is a 10 euro double cd with great Third Movement artists such as Promo, Peaky Pounder, N-Vitral, D-Passion and The DJ Producer, but also my favourite extreme techno artist Hellfish. Promising! To my big disappointment I hear a step back to the times of “Audio Output 2″ with horrible gabber tracks with those awfull ravy melodies and cheesy samples. Other tracks are great industrial tekno, but the Hellfish tracks are not all that good (neither is his last 12″), the highlights are definately the two DJ Producer tracks. It is funny how thin the line between good tekno and awfull gabber is. There are two tracks of “3 Steps Ahead” that start of in a promising way, but after an ‘announcement’ of gabber elements both tracks because simply horrific, awfull enough to give me a bad temper! I am afraid that the same ‘gabbery feeling’ is to be found in tracks of projects that I normally do enjoy, so do we witness a step back to the times in which hard techno sounded like shit? I hope not and there sure are great tracks here, but I guess I should make my own compilation out of this compilation…
Link: The Third Movement

Last year Roma Amor released a nice untitled debut album. They describe their style as “folk / neo-cabaret” which is a good description. Slightly reminding of Edith Piaff, Roma Amor has an enigmatic singer and nice, smooth music which is also very nice to see/hear live. This second album is quite the same as the debut, just as good, no change in style or really new elements. So, again nice and I guess you should get it when you liked the debut.
Links: Roma Amor, Old Europa Café

Time flies. It has already been a week and a half since I saw The Prodigy live in the Heineken Music Hall in Amsterdam. I have known The Prodigy since their very first album, but back then I was still a metalhead and it was of course uncool to listen to The Prodigy. Since they release an album only once every five years, they have been easy to keep up with and I got all of their albums and each album proved to be better than the last one, the same goes for “Invaders Must Die“. I never really had the intention of attending a show, but I always said I would not mind to see them some time and then after a missed date in De Melkweg, they were announced to play in the Netherlands’ largest popstage, the Heineken Music Hall at 23 November. It was not particularly easy to get tickets, but we managed to do so, so the three of us (me and my girlfriend and a friend that I never go to concerts with) drove to Amsterdam where we entered the gigantic hall way before the horrid opening act Enter Shikari. 5500 People divided over the pit and seats in the back (including a massive balcony where we were) going insane over the old-and-ugly electropunk veterans. Conclusion: the show was a bit short, but definately the largest, the most energetic and one of the best I have attended to far. Nothing of the static industrial and neofolk concerts that I usually visit but a massive crowd of dancing people, a balcony that swung from high to low since everybody knew when the beats started, and music from “Outer Space” (a singalong) to “Omen”. Damn, that was great. I have visited concerts with these numbers of people, but that is usually at festivals and not so many people for the same band, I must say, I might want to do that more often, but of course, there are actually no bands that I like with such a big audience.
Sidenote, the same friend went to see Rammstein last Monday. I remember an announcement of them playing in the Willemeen, a 300 people venue in Arnhem, probably 15 years or so ago. The day before yesterday they played for 35.000 people and they will be back for the Pinkpop festival who hope to sell 70.000 tickets for that opening evening. Amazing how much bigger Rammstein is then The Prodigy…

Most Of The Taciturn is a Chinese dark ambient project and they release this mcd (5 tracks, 20 minutes) on the Chinese label that also released the newest Dead Man’s Hill and l’Effet c’est Moi albums. It comes in a very nice digipack, but the soundscapes are a bit too monotous for me. So there is a market for this kind of music in China too? And they manage to get their limited releases here too, since these albums are not very hard to get here.
Links: Midnight Productions, M.O.T.T.