ERALDO BERNOCCHI/MICK HARRIS

mjeanes

Damn that Mick Harris. Ever since he got off of Earache, he's been putting so much stuff out that my ears are happy, but my wallet (and my speakers) aren't. Damn,just imagine if him and Bill Laswell hook up again, just add Masami Akita (Merzbow) and they'll need to start a whole chain of stores for their stuff. I can hear it now...Customer: "Do you have that new Laswell/Scorn/Merzbow disc?" Salesperson: "The one that just came out 15 minutes ago, or the one that'll be here in a half hour?". Anyway, this is just Harris and a guy named Eraldo Bernocchi (the name sounds familliar...is this the guy that plays as Matera and SIMM? [only SIMM - SW]). Remember last year's Quoit disc Lounge? This is much along the same lines, ambient/isolationist jungle. A little shorter than that, just 5 tracks and 56 minutes long. I had a huge smile on my face as soon as I played the first track, "Overload Lady". The breakbeat that started it off grabbed my attention, then the samples and megabass sound just made it all the better. By the end of the track, more samples and a different beat come out, along with some cool ambient synths. "Demo Car" starts out sounding just like something off Lounge, a not quite evil sounding sample starts off, then some dark sounding synths and bass line that sounds like a helicopter drops in. This track stays more on the minimal end of things. "Lobster Family" starts off with what sounds like a processed conversation, then some bass treated beats right off of Zander show up. The pace slowly picks up as the track progresses. "Digital Monk" starts off with a cool phaseshifting synth that is joined by some more of that ungodly sub-bass and a somewhat slow jungle rhythm. "The Hand" starts with samples and bass right off of Logghi Barogghi (you know what I mean, you can't hear it as much as feel it.). The beats on this one are once again jungle, and somewhat in style to Photek's work. One surprising thing was the addition of voice samples to the album. The disc is a lot darker sounding than a lot of the jungle stuff out there, but still not mass-murder level, like Alec Empire's The Destroyer (I'm sorry, I still think Empire's disc is the pinnacle of drum and bass). If you liked Quoit, go get it now!

Overall - 5/5

Creaig Dunton (courtesy of the False Prophet Campaign website)

This album of Drum 'n' Bass received some bad flack in reviews, undeservedly I feel. All the right elements are there - mad scattering drum patterns, simple bass ripples, all combined with a subtle Industrial backdrop. Perhaps people felt it shouldn't be as clean as it is (and it has an ice-cool, ice-clear clarity), or perhaps were offended by the genre hopping of these artists. Either way, it has a lot more going for it than people gave it credit for. What I will say is that it's a kind of natural progression, or breakaway, from the more familiar SCORN work Mr. HARRIS is known for. And in many ways it has a much more 'full' sound than latterday SCORN, being ten times as busy, the tempos being supercharged, and all the accompaniments being equally as active. Moods change from Industrial chill to warm and enveloping, all smoothly mixed to sound so easy as to be simple. But the more you listen the more you here. These are long tracks, reminding me a little in approach to the DIVINATION "Akasha" album's 'Rhythm' disc, although less spatial, more urgent in tempo, although there seems to be a comfortable easy about which these tracks fall together. And many of the gaps between percussion barrages make for Industrial Surrealism with hints of Isolationism and Jazz.And if all that mean't little to you then my Wife Lizzie came in declared that she really liked it, and wanted to dance to it, loved the deep gut level bass noise. So one satisfied customer anyway.

Antony Burnham (courtesy of Metamorphic Journeyman website)

HARRIS & BERNOCCHI's "Overload Lady", billed on the cover as 'blasting nasty Drum 'n' Bass'. Although the drum programming isn't bad, the accompaniments don't make the grade. The bass lines just roll round and round and the music goes nowhere. If EBTG could be described as Drum 'n' Bass for people who don't like Drum 'n' Bass, so could this, albeit from an Industrial angle. At such a remove from the dancefloor, labouring under a cargo of 'heaviness', the music is dead and one-dimensional. Like some of the weaker sounds produced by ILIBIENT's take on Dub, it's a deliberate impoverishment of a vocabulary - making a vice of simplicity. Without Funk or flexibility the music just withers boringly on the vine.

Will Montgomery from THE WIRE 162