Two titles recorded in June and August 2002 by Gerhard are present on this new Allerseelen 7". 'knistern' and its melancholic, almost weary, melody combined with the crackling of fire and of vynil... 'Löwin' and its wintry Mediterranean atmosphere, with some sonorities close to 'Bist du die nacht' present on the 'Venezia' album...
A nice alchemy between music, erotism and charm suggested by the painting of the English Symbolist L.W. Hawkins reproduced on the record's cover... This 7" is limited to 800 copies.

After some obscure releases on vinyl and CD-R, ID Battery, an American experimental project associating the talents of Loren Chasse and Brandon LaBelle, are back with a 7" released in August 2002 on the excellent German label Drone Records.
This is the first edition limited to 250 copies. The yellow and black speckled vinyl comes in an original cover, handmade by Loren Chase and Jim Haynes.
The two tracks present on this 7" were recorded during their performance at the 'Activating the medium' festival held in San Luis Obispo in 1998, then edited for the needs of this release.
'The foot' is a crafty mixture of drones, raw sound recordings, various repetitive noises, like scrapings, humming sounds… a music that could easily be qualified as organic and microscopic because of the richness of the diverse sounds used and because of the impression of life contained within...

The first album from this Dutch neoclassical project presents ten untitled instrumental tracks that encompass a variety of styles. The music is based on strong military percussions, keyboards, strings and a variety of judiciously chosen classical samples. Powerful bombastic tracks alternate with calm yet sinister passages to confer a dramatic operatic feeling to the album. Technically flawless, this album shows the maturity of this project's compositions that put them on par with the more established bands in the genre such as Sophia or Puissance.

New opus from this Italian formation, 'Twin A Tin Tin Towers' comes as a 3-track CD jointly produced by Runes And Men and Misty Circles.
The title track 'Twin A Tin Tin Towers' opens the ball on a calypso air... Simone Salvatori's voice (if his gothic timbre does not make you grind your teeth) is draped in a perfect nonchalance...
Follows a second track in the Novo Homo style, entirely turned towards electronic end hypnotic sonorities... made for the 'dance floor'...
The last track 'Lola Of Cayenne' evolves in a perky electronic register overlaid with voices and guitar sounds.

TBC is the project of Thomas Beck, a veteran sound activist, based in Hamburg. This 7" released in August 2002 on the German label Drone Records completes an already imposing discography on tape, LP, CD-ROM compilation... This is the first edition of this 7" limited to 250 copies on pink vinyl, presented in a black and white cover, printed in the old style.
Each track, in its own register, participates to the set-up of a strange sonic environment. Thus, 'Gute Luft' offers a long strange and mysterious soundscape, rhythmed by drones that indubitably evoke a natural element, through the use of recognisable insect noises... One easily lets the mind float whilst listening to this track on the contrary to 'Muskel 5', that integrates a deformed human voice marked by a tension that keeps coming and going, to the point of being almost physically palpable...
An excellent final track that majestically closes a total immersion in the heart of music that is propitious to inner travel.

This compilation is an overview of the current gothic/dark scene in Serbia. Although I gave up listening to gothic music a long time ago, Intus still manage to catch my ear with a Meccano sounding 'Sudden Death'. This old fashioned (or classic should I say) sound is shared by the majority of the bands on this compilation and some of them will more than likely appeal to purists of the genre. However, the interest of this compilation lies elsewhere... two rough gems, Kinovia and Kalynda. Kinovia play a sort of 'classic' style neofolk that draws its influences from traditional Serbian folk music with long passages of melancholic wordless male vocals. Kalynda's songs are a mixture of ethereal neoclassic and neofolk music with pleasant female vocals and the two tracks present on this CD show that the band has the potential to appeal to a wider audience.