Of course you know by now that the AmbiEntrance Overviews section is the audio-equivalent of a flea market... with good things from all over the place. Never know what you'll find, so check it out... Koji Asano: The End of August   (Solstice - 2001) (8.1) Another long-form excursion from Barcelona's Koji Asano... as always, the packaging is decorated by Koji's interesting camera art... The almost-68-minute The End of August is a peculiar (though sorta-prettily twisted) soundscape... off-kilter notes try to chime but only warble drunkenly into a blurred din with hissy overtones. Seems to me like a dream of a particularly boozy Christmas on a busy city street, but everything is rendered in too-big pillowy puffs. The muted chaos simply continues (and continues) to unfurl, sometimes lightening a bit. Occasionally, I think I hear old movie music (bells, saxophones and/or choir-like vocals) within the clangorous soundclouds, but can't be sure. About midway through, the essence of tolling bells seems surer, and the piece locks into a dreamily swaying groove of its own... still odd, but less aggressively so. This mode expands into shapeless drifts then is followed by an introspecitve zone of faraway piano meanderings (slightly degenerated, but nothing compared to that first half-hour). Another prolonged round of stronger soft-yet-grungy deformations soon follow though... If your idea of semi-musical immersion includes filling your listening space with such esoteric listening, then visit the Solstice website for much more. Leitmotiv: la révérence   (FTR - 2001) (8.5) Italian pianist Frédéric Truong breaks a five year silence with 15 ivory-laden instrumentals; he plays it relatively "straight" most of the time with often-lively piano creations which are nonetheless steeped in bittersweet nostalgia. A seemingly-"live" opener marks the rise of the curtain (0:45) which leads into the adept finger frolics of le diable au corps (part I), spritely yet moody and seeming to originate from some forgotten European bordello (well, that's what I'm envisioning...); interspersed by moody monotone staccatos, (part II) incorporates chugging percussion into the energetic main theme. Sorta like a speeded-up Love Story soundtrack (or is it Dr. Zhivago? One of those tearjerkers that was big when I was but a tot...) , the "a capella" voice of au parc sainte-marie's piano sings a song of sadness. Grand sorrow is churned up by the left- and right-hand acrobatics of sordide sentimental (part I). Chimes add a change of pace to short entr'acte but the real shift occurs when dazzling sordide sentimental (part II) is injected with more-modern rhythms. The final minutes (of 39) occur after la révérence (the end of the show) when an unidentified "hidden" track (3:50) swirls on strings and e-beats like dance music for the monster's ball. Do visit the official leitmotiv website for more. This dark charmer is distributed by the purveyors of eclectic listening at Dutch-East India and E.D.T.. M.A.J.O.R.: Master and Juggernaut of Rhymes   (In Da Lab - 2001) (8.2) Sure, I've wandered off-topic a time or two... but never have I felt dangerously out of place... until heading onto the darkened city streets of M.A.J.O.R.'s 'hood. Producer Lyle Muse told me this was a rap project, but in my naivete, I was unprepared for the gritty (though admittedly grooving) underworld of "niggaz" and "bitches". Though a little muffled, the moody musical vibes are intoxicating, but the nonstop lyrical content frankly scares me despite some clever wordplay amongst the rough talk and other not-in-my-vocabulary phrases... I mean, I don't even know what a Creme Fiend is... A little gangsta-style socioeconomic commentary surfaces in piano/bass/drum-powered Revenue (4:59), followed by seriously lo-fi rap-it-yourself passages. A little feminine (but unladylike) accompaniment comes with Tiffany J's nasty, rapid-fire multi-tracked interjections in Ain't Doin' It Right. Brimming with self-declaration, catchy I mixes hard attitudes with soft chimes and cool rhythms. The 19th track, an eight-second outro concludes the disc with not one, but two "thank you"s, so it seems there's some graciousness even on the mean backstreets of Chicago. The rawness of these recordings only adds to the harsh realities (guns, drugs, poverty, sex/violence) of which M.A.J.O.R. and friends rap. If you're more street-savvy than myself, check out In Da Lab. niobe: radioersatz   (tomlab - 2001) (8.1) It only takes a few seconds of the first track kaspartransport mit einmischung des herrn cowboy to realize radioersatz is going to be an especially eclectic (oh, just say it... a strange!) listen... a weird babyspeak voice helium-talks into slice-and-dice symphonics and loud blurting noises... bizarre! Appreciably gentler slurs of dreamy musicality and whispery vocals drift through sweet eccentricity everybody shares a lounge. Sampled bits of music and noise are plopped into a crazy collage as just night tonight a last talk (5:02) explores 50's style songstress croons, slow strings and animalistic cries of pain, etc. etc. Rough blurs and mutant femmetones are part of less-intensely-weird lalu lalu (1:27). Acoustic strums and theremin-like bowed strands play a round in kurz bevor ich von himmel fiel, a comparatively "straight" instrumental. Overall, maybe too quirky... Radiowave: Journey Thru OZ!   (Space For Music - 2001) (8.4) This D.A.M. CD features the spacey textures you'd expect from Space For Music artists, though in this outing it's all Greg Paugh and his usually-unrecognizable processed guitar sounds. The spaciously expanding electronic chorus-and-chimes of Worm Hole (4:14) presages similarly celestial things to come. Often, broodingly bottom-heavy drones are topped with lighter strands, synthetic winds or, as in Lost In Time, lightly strummed strings and flutes which traipse through the blurting lows toward a surprising bit of upheaval at the peaceful floe's end. Hmmm... in some new D.A.M.-CD related weirdness, I get a moment of silence while the track numbers jump around before the bass-and-starsheen of Water Of Life finally begins to play. That pulsing piece is followed by even-bassier Singularity whose stand-up-styled wanderings add a certain jazzy flair to the pinwheeling galaxies which surround. Despite a faux arena-rock intro, The Other Side Of Reality (14:17) features sinuous and very electric guitar antics. Fluidly-fingered strings warp and wail as organ-like drifts rise and fall in vaporous waves. All in all, quite a nice listen... Posted November 4, 2001 | 1999/2000 Overviews Index

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