Various Artists: no_compression festival 01 Various Artists: no_compression festival 01 (Little Fury Things - 2001) Another example of the Internet's power to congeal like-minded individuals into cohesive units no matter how geographically far-flung they may be... Various Artists responded to chat-room conversations, contributing their very various examples of electronic sounds. Except maybe for the "concise" part, I can't say it better than in the press sheet... "no_compression offers a concise overview of the current state of underground electronic music in all its leftfield glory". Entries range from enigmatic electromechanical entities (the puttering "fwd: re: output input" by n.kra) to caustic glitchcraft (the ear-damaging "hagenbeck zoo" (1:23) by holzkopf) to more-subtle sonic oddities (the pleasantly woozy drift of "bertram's room" by eM) to microscopically atmoized dance ("botox" by La Plage)... and beyond. Especially sweet (and comparatively unkinked) are the twinkling tones and flows of Ivar's "lag", stippled by light beats and only-slightly-odd accents. Whether you dig their slow-beat ooze-music ("wind-up beast (edit)"), you gotta love the name of Christian Science Minotaur. Mutant swirlies fizzle up (and down) through the alien dancetrack of Fon's big, beaty "sdong" (11:24). 6 "song" The resulting overviews of no_compression give a feel for many different directions (and hybrids thereof) into which electronic/experimental music is evolving. Unlike the blind guys and the elephant, you're getting alot of different parts instead of just one, even if in the end you're still a little confused as to what this beast is. An 8.3 where DIY spunk sometimes overrides listenability. See what else the folks at Little Fury Things are up to... This review posted July 31, 2001 AmbiEntrance © 2001-1997 by David J Opdyke (except CD cover art, rights retained by original owners).