Clockwork Death (CDR demo 7 tracks)

It's unbelievable how many musical projects there are today, which are done at home. We might think that everybody records its own existential fears on a CD nowadays, and this is particularly true for industrial music.
It's also true that it became far less expensive to record, mix and market a CDR. And this is certainly how this demo I received has been realised.

Clockwork Death is a solo project from the North of Italy which has already been pushing back the limits of electronic industrial music since 1995. Simoneh, the man behind the project, finds his inspiration in the European culture, its history and social life in general, and especially in the German culture. His music is not that far to The Blutharsch's apocalyptic sounds, with symphonic harshed samples, martial and powerful rythms. These characteristics are especially brought out in the two best tracks of the album, "Ach Gott" and " In Your Head". The first one is a fierce hymn in the same vein as Albin Julius's compositions, with a distorted voice creeping on dark samples, fairly reworked and looped (close to sounds of "Did you miss me" of our national heroes The Young Gods), and in the background deep and powerful military drums and percussions creating a martial rythm. The second one is an excellent electronic instrumental track, with cuts and loops, broken up according to the beat, as cold as the moonlight, as if Autechre was falling into chilly nightmares.

The whole album is strongely related to Germany and is directly inspired by authors such as Johann Christian
Günther, Hans W. Richter and even Paul Celan. "Time has no Mercy" is very close to the atmosphere found on the first Novy Svet album, "Faccia a Faccia", slow, dark and tormented, like a waltz ticking over. The throwing out of religious conformism takes its whole extensiveness in "Gott soll gestorben sein"; the electronic soundtrack is very interesting but the repetition of the lyrics might get boring after some time - (…Gott ist tot, wir sind frei…). "Der Tod ist ein Meister aus Deutschland" has a brilliant beginning but then should be reworked with other soundscapes and loops, unfortunately it sounds too close to the original sample, which consists of speeches with flourish coming from the german nazi period. "Stickstoff Fabrik" is a rather good track that could be described as power-electronics and the final song, "Uranium", is in fact the repetition of the word uranium chanted in different tones, this is rather irritating but as the name of the track suggests, here was the exact purpose…

Anyway this is a rather good album with three or four excellent tracks and a few weaker ones. Let's hope Simoneh will carry on in the direction of tracks like "Ach Gott" and " In Your Head" - two brilliant songs - and with a better sound quality, I'm sure Clockwork Death will be an important name in the European electronic industrial scene in the near future. There are so many good bands in Italy now so be sure to find Clockwork Death amongst them, and in your CD-player soon…

Heiliges Leben, heilige Zukunft !

Stéphane Fivaz
April 2000

Contacts :

Simoneh Valcauda
Via Pietrino Belli 65
10145 Torino
Italie
Tél. : 011 / 747454
e-mail : maelstromlightning@yahoo.com
Website : fade.to/clockworkdeath