reviews

[hsu@uicsrd.CSRD.UIUC.EDU (William Tsun-Yuk Hsu)]

New Lustmord is called Paradise Disowned, with a "latent" side and a
"manifest" side. The latent side has slow, agonizing, thick slabs of
noise that conjure up images of Azathoth and his demon brethren tossing
and turning in the primordial void. Apparently most of this stuff
was recorded in underground caves, cathedrals and such places, so the
wild reverb and other acoustical properties add to the effect. The
manifest side is more conventional, with standard industrial drum
machine and not very outstanding noise collages. This album is much
more controlled (at least the latent side) and effective than Lustmord's
last album, but I do miss the distorted '50s pop music. You'll like
this if you like side A of PGR's Flickering of Sowing Time, or Jeff
Greinke, or the new SPK but without the ethnic instruments.

I meant to write something about this compilation thing called Passed
Normal weeks ago, but kept procrastinating and now Option has reviewed
it. Anyway, it's mostly twisted rock/pop, with some good playing and
decent songwriting, and one or two fairly weird things. The Skeleton
Crew tracks have incredibly bad sound. The Shockabilly tracks are
characteristic Shockabilly. Snakefinger's songs were kind of lame.

The more demented stuff comes from the lesser-known contributors. 
Good complex rock with horns from Voodoo Mark called "Coffee", similar
sentiments as Lou Reed's Heroin. Tricycle Thieves contribute the
hilarious "Careful with that axe Eugene Pt. 2". The acoustic guitars
on Jeff Michel's "Chimes" scream "New Age" at you until you hear the
wild swooping Fripp-ian electric guitar solo. Sediments and Shmazz
work within more traditional rock formats while adding weird twists,
while Kixx, my favorite on the album, play demented sax and guitar
and add free improv noise and turntable manipulations over a chugging
rock rhythm.

The name Passed Normal is a pun on Normal IL, where many of the
contributors live. You can also get two cassettes with the album,
with all different material. The second cassette (free if you
get both the album and the other cassette) is fairly uneven
(like the first cassette) but has a great song by Scott Lucas called
"Butt Plug" and the greatest cover of "Black Dog" ever recorded.

Bill