If you've not already caught these reviews from Sweden's Stephen Fruitman (who occasionally posts to Hyperreal's Ambient Mailing List), here are his latest. Stephen's attentive ears and expressive thoughts are appreciated by many, and I'm glad to offer this forum to my e-friend. Bucolic: Dzyan Blood (BSI) Post-industrial dub executed according to Plan Nine from outer space. A bizarre mix of garish, cartoony science-fiction dashes of colours and the grays and browns of rusting, earthbound machinery disintegrating before our very ears, stretched and twisted by some very original ambient dub sensibilities. Apparently built up around unreleased jams from the San Francisco underground, Bucolic's first CD release is dub as nightmare, a satellite photograph of the global village's desperate millennial party taken from some malfunctioning space station. Hovering uneasily above us on a shifting but relentless cloud of beats, it swerves through funky jams, noise collages, late-night radio hosts, odd African rites, and calls to prayer from the last minaret left standing in Kosovo. Totally unexpected and genre defying. The future of dub? Only if the future takes place after the final big meltdown, fusing everything into grotesque, writhing shapes. Mark Dresser & Frances-Marie Uitti: Sonomondo (Cryptogramophone) Two veterans of the low-end avantgarde dredge the possibilities of ambient string improvisation. Mark Dresser is a contrabass player whose curriculum vitae stretches from jazz recordings with John Zorn and Dave Douglas to creating new soundtracks for silent movie classics like The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and Un Chien Andalou. Frances-Marie Uitti is a pioneer of the two-bowed approach to her instrument, the cello. This suite of seven pieces was recorded during two meetings in 1996 and 1997 but have only recently been released by the Californian label Cryptogramophone. Eerie, brooding, and elegant, this unlikely duet makes a strong statement in admirably understated terms. Roger Eno: The Long Walk (La Cooka Ratcha) Unlike brother Brian, who gives the impression of being the very first man to colonize cyberspace, Roger Eno seems to dwell in a pastoral Albion redolent of 19th-century English novels and the more elegiac moments of 1970s British progressive rock. After serving an apprenticeship under Brian during the early 1980s along with Michael Brook and Daniel Lanois, he struck out on a solo career in 1985 with the absolutely perfect ambient piano collection Voices, a series of vignettes reminiscent of Satie. Since then, however, he has pursued a programme of chamber music which has never quite captured the imagination with the same force as his debut. The Long Walk certainly does not lack lovely passages, such as "Someone You Once Loved", which hearkens back to Voices and showcases his skill for the sublime, and the latter half of the album features a handful of achingly beautiful piano and violin duets. The album is a leisurely saunter over the heaths and through the leafy alleyways of the countryside and as such is hardly an artistic failure. Cameo appearances by harmonica, accordian, lap steel and banjo provide further pleasant diversion along the way, but on the whole the nostalgic tone of the album has a tendency to sound retrospective rather than refreshing. A bonus CD offers four additional tracks in the same mode. Kim Gordon, Ikue Mori & DJ Olive: SYR5 (Smells Like Records) An improv trio boasting the likes of Ikue Mori on drum programming, DJ Olive on turntables and samples and Sonic Youth's bassist Kim Gordon (here featured on guitar) ought to bode well for some riveting 21st-century soundscaping. Unfortunately, aside from the ocassional stellar pattern by Mori and some yeoman work by Olive, the overall impression is one of noisy collective naval gazing and a misplaced interest in free vocalization on Gordon's behalf. Neither her quivering reed of a voice nor her lyrics (including a paean to chewing gum and an exhortation to Donald Duck to "Kill Minnie!") succeed in raising any hairs, with the possible exception of the introspective "What Do You Want?", where she pensively strums her guitar over a gorgeous bed of sound laid out by Olive. An exhilarating dash of reggae skank interrupting an implosion of feedback at the very end of the set gives an all-too-brief indication of what might have been. Mixed by Jim O'Rourke and featuring Cibo Matto's Yuka Honda on one track, SYR5 bears all the signifiers of pathbreaking avantgardism without delivering the actual goods. Twilight Circus Dub Sound System: Dub Voyage (M Records) Mad scientist Ryan Moore, Nijmegen by way of Vancouver, continues to churn out bone-rattling dub that is strictly essential. Driven wheezingly onward by organ and piano, this music hacks its way through the jungle underbrush while sure-footedly following the path trodden by studio geniuses of the Jamaican past. Melodically perhaps not quite as distinctive as last year's Horsie, Dub Voyage nevertheless delights with tunes like "Wareika", featuring a ghostly now-you-hear-it, now-you-don't melodica. Another solid showcase of deep serious rhythms and rubbery space manipulation. Stephen Fruitman's Reviews were posted here on July 29, 2000.

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