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HOLLOWPHONIC
Hollowphonic (Sweet Tooth)
Talk about wearing your influences on your sleeve! This disc from Canadian cosmic-rockers Hollowphonic is packaged in the same faux-pharmaceutical style as the last LP from leading space cadets Spriritualized. To be fair, the 'Phonics are hardly straight copyists of that band, preferring the less up-front, more surreptitious route to the stars favoured by My Bloody Valentine. This itself is hardly an unexplored trajectory, given the amount of shoegazers currently favouring it, but Hollowphonic are relatively near the front of the pack. The opener "Introphonic" is a beatless piece reminiscent of Stars of the Lid but whereas that band thrives on incremental shifts in texture, this is more like a sustained slow-burn of adrenaline. Not surprising then that later tracks use the sort of slo-mo beats favoured by Bowrie Electric. At points things even get quite rocky in a manner that recalls Jane's Addiction and Loop. These constant comparisons to other obscure groups may seem lazy but they reaffirm the original point: here we have a band almost painfully indebted to its influences. This is a real problem when the mask of post-rock cool slips to reveal predilections for The Verve, The Stone Roses and gothic gloom. Moreover, the incessant recycling of others' ideas wears very thin after a while. Still, it's an accomplished, pleasurable album in its own right and recommended for fans of the genre. More reviews THE MODERNIST Explosion (Matador) Jorg Burger hails from electronic music's spiritual home, Germany - the country that brought us Stockhausen, Kraftwerk and so much more. His background on the fringes of teutonic techno and the chosen moniker for this project suggest uncompromising avant gardism, while the album's title hints at uproar and untamed energy. In fact, this is a collection of polite, clean-cut tech-house. The overall sound is reminiscent of the sort of lithe, swinging techno pioneered by the awesome Super_Collider. Only without the pioneering: whereas the English duo tear up the dancefloor with all manner of off-kilter glitches and mutating sound morphs, Burger doesn't let anything disrupt the flow of his liquid grooves. Nothing wrong with that if it's well done, and Jorg's programmes are immaculately tasteful and groovy. The best stuff here sounds like an urbane version of Richie Hawtin's most bloody-minded kicks'n'loops. The tracks are built on insistent repetition of delicate synth figures atop light-footed four-to-the-floor beats. And yet they never build up enough steam to suggest much in they way of danceability . Which leaves the question of where exactly this fits into the pantheon of contemporary electronic dance music. Want tearing, infectious beats? Try Aphrodite. Need cutting edge digital innovations? Check out The Third Eye Foundation. Bit of both? Basement Jaxx. Got some trendy "electronica" snobs coming 'round for a dinner party? Hey, I've got just the record for you! Kidding aside, Explosion is a very pleasant sound to have in your room. It perhaps qualifies for Brian Eno's original definition of ambient: background music which isn't bland or one-dimensional. More reviews THE THIRD EYE FOUNDATION Little Lost Soul (Merge) Matt Elliot is an alumnus of English guitar-scapers Flying Saucer Attack. As  The
Third Eye Foundation he has, over the course of five albums, moved away
from six strings towards a state-of-the art sample-based sound. Throughout
he has maintained his idiosyncratic and affecting aesthetic characterized
by a disconcerting marriage of garishness and murk.TEF's debut Semtex simulated the sort of drum'n'bass-influenced work My Bloody Valentine had alledgedly been recording - skittering beats battered againt dissonant guitar storm. More recent works have expanded on MBV's solitary samplede-based miniature "Touched". Meanwhile, Elliot's acclaim and poplularity have grown to a degree remarkable for someone whose work reaches formidable peaks of intensity. Advance reports suggested Little Lost Soul would represent a mellowing of the Third Eye sound. In fact, although this is Elliot's most tasteful and simply beautiful work to date, the sheer density, otherworldliness and fevered, polytonal rush of the music is still in intact. The most noticable stylistic shift is a greater emphasis on ornate vocal samples, evocative of Vinnie Riley by The Durrutti Column. This is problably the best Third Eye LP yet but it's not sheer quality alone that makes it an essential purchase. This truly innovative and visonary album is. a mocking laugh at all the dreary instrumental indie-rock and trite electro-kitsch masquerading as futuristic experimentalism. Its translation of clamorous technical complexity into simple emotional impact is indicative of a musician realizing the potential of his chosen instrument. With every piece of music and environmental sound ripe for sampling, Matt Elliott's only potential limtations are his technical ability, courage and imagination. All the evidence suggests he is not even remotely inhibited in any of these regards. More reviews MARY TIMONY Mountains (Matador) A solo album from the frontperson of colourful US indie-rockers Helium raises certain expectations. On first listen, Mountains is disappointingly unobtrusive. It's got plenty of good tunes and cool sonic flourishes but it lacks rhythmic energy or anything forceful enough to make it immediately memorable. Boy is it a grower, though! The album's understatement is actually a large part of its charm. Timony admirably rejects hysterical expressionism in favour of a dispassionate delivery which allows emotion to emerge organically from the surrounding music. It's helped along by her remarkably imaginative way with harmony, structure and arrangement. These songs are certainly not as conventional as they initially appear and represent a subtle display of daring and imagination that many lesser musicians could learn a great deal from. A couple of negative criticisms do spring to mind. First, one can't help but wish she'd be a little more demonstrative occasionally. Second, is there anything on here that she couldn't have done with Helium? It's a bewitchingly idiosyncratic piece of work nevertheless, that has more in common with Nico and Jefferson Airplane than anything on the contemporary left-field rock scene. Give it some time and you'll discover a cache of rich chords, weird scales, eclectic instrumentation, colliding musical opposites and rambling structures all deployed for maximum atmospheric effect. More reviews
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