stuff...

[hsut@ec.purdue.edu (Tsun-Yuk Hsu)]

	Re: desert island cassettes

	Hey hofmann, no fair using C90 cassettes! This way I could have
squeezed all my "2nd 10" selections in too. Well, I guess since I got
to name my 2nd 10, and Tim included lots of multiple album sets, makes
it even :-)...

	Where can I find Bill Lazur's stuff? Is he in that Rough Trade
catalog that I should be getting in the mail any day now??

	Thanks to Doug for forwarding my Art Zoyd request. Since I didn't
get any responses to my Univers Zero and However requests, I assume
the two albums I'll review will not be old hat to everybody:

HOWEVER		SUDDEN DUSK

	However is on the Random Radar label, which I have never heard of
before this. They included a little brochure with the album. Fred Frith
does some stuff for them, so they're probably cool... :-)

	Anyway, However plays acoustically flavored chamber music/rock,
almost like Birdsongs of the Mesozoic. 3 or 4 of the 10 tracks have
lyrics. The songs are the strong points, since the band seems more
focussed with lyrics to work from. Most songs are fast, zany and clever,
kind of like free jazz and Captain Beefheart. The instrumentals have some
nice sounds, but tend to wander and the bad parts have a dangerous
tendency to resemble the worst of Wyndham Hill/New Age things. (This is
NOT a slight of WH in general, please note!)


UNIVERS ZERO	HERESIE

	Imagine the world disintegrating around you. The heat death of the
universe approaches. On a barren windswept desert plain, a group of 
musicians play a quiet music of death and decay. This is Univers Zero...

	Purple prose aside, Univers Zero plays relatively lowkey, rock
and jazz influenced modern chamber music. If you're into comparisons,
they sound like a mixture of Arnold Schoenberg, Joy Division and Chrome,
without a dominant beat. They play pretty depressing and dissonant music
on mostly acoustic instruments. Their sound is not very varied, so the
long pieces sound really LONGGGGGG (their tracks are timed at 12, 13
and 25 minutes!) My French is not good enough to decipher the few lyrics.
Despite all this, I feel they're still worth looking into for a unique
experience. At least they have cool band pictures...:-)


	By the way, thanks to hofmann for the Plan 9 recommendation.
FRUSTRATION was a nice neo-psychedelic fix...


				Bill Hsu