Various - Zann

  by David McNamee

published: 17 / 12 / 2001

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Review

“He was trying to make a noise; to ward something off or drown something out; what, I could not imagine…” So wrote H.P. Lovecraft in The Music of Erich Zann, the work from which the concept for this compilation originates. The music you play to scare monsters away. Of course Zann only had a violin, these days we have 303’s! And boy do we know how to use ‘em. Keeping in line with the vague mission statement of the collection (see beastie: kill) most of the 18 artists here deal in a sort of Warp-ed minimalistic aural sabotage, drenched in spooky Hammer Horror atmospherics. With the majority of contributors currently unsigned, the quality does veer slightly – Trance To The Sun’s queasy industrial Cocteau Twins sits uneasily next to The Unquiet Void’s fearless scream into a black hole. And there’s a naggingly prevalent proportion of Nu Goth Enigmas, music which possibly wouldn’t so much scare the monsters away as attempt to open the doors of their perception with patchouli. Clang Quartet’s psyche-shredding ‘3rd Day’ however is a fantastic shrieking migraine of a song and by the time we get to Drekka’s ‘A Reminder’ we’re patrolling Mark Z. Danielewski’s 'House of Leaves' with synths set to kill. Elsewhere scary men with Eastern European accents create scary sound collages of whispers (sort of Will O’ The Wisp meets The Omen) and the odd harmonium coughs its lungs up against some deadly brain-piercing analogue butchery. In the process, neurons are skewered and theremins are wielded like light sabres. Whether ‘Zann’ keeps the demons out is anyone’s guess, but considering what its done to my insomnia, the spiders under the bed better watch their back.

Track Listing:-

1 Small Life Forms with Jarboe - Hohn
2 pfrenz -C - Blue Places
3 Trance To The Sun - Phases Of The Razor (Part 1)
4 Clang Quartet - 3rd Day
5 Jerry Blue - Dromo
6 Subarachnoid Space - Speckled Birds
7 Origami Arktika - Til Dovre Faller
8 Plumerai - Tearing Skin
9 Aarktica - Drone On A Theme By Thomas Tallis
10 The Pulling Kiss - Human Beings
11 Alchemia - An Explained World
12 Pineal Ventana - The Sweetest Music
13 Rollerball - Widdershins
14 Da Sebasstian - Crawling
15 Tore H Boe - Noise
16 Remora - Window
17 Drekka - A Reminder