SWARM
'Sea Man Or Giordano Giosus The Unsuspecting Landlord'.
Exclusive Track
REVIEWS
VITAL WEEKLY
In the course of 16 years, Cold Spring has evolved into one
of the most influential post-industrial labels, with dozens of classic
releases.
Since its establishment in 1990, the British born label has come around
an impressive span of musical styles and expressions. Swarm does certainly
prove that! Being a double CD the albums offers almost two hours of
music for the price of a single disc. Swarm contains a mixture styles
covering martial industrial, dark ambient, noise, neo-folk, drones,
orchestral filmic to experimental. Presenting a line up of 22 artists,
some of whom have already had releases out on Cold Spring and others
whose work is still forthcoming, the compilation gives the listener
an image of the history and the future of the label. Every track has
been
composed exclusively for this compilation. Disc one opens dramatically
with Austrian trio Kreuzweg Ost and their neoclassical piece "Ein
neuer krieg"
based on martial rhythm texture and German speech. Followed by Andrew
Liles and his soothing blend of experimental electronics, ambient and
neo-folk the style continues with Shinjuki Thief and a live version
of
the "Sacred Fury" from last year album with the same title.
After this fairly polite opening, the sonic threats begins with the
dense track "Partikel MN2" of suppressed power electronics
delivered as a joint
venture between two masters of abrasive expression, Merzbow and Nordvargr.
Things get even worse with the full-throttle aggressive ode to the American
actions in Fallujah, the excellent track "Division" by Clear
Stream Temple mixing Arabic style with heavy percussion and harsh noise
explosions. Another noise assault is established during the end of first
disc where Deadwood puts and to the first disc with "The serpent
spiral" based on slow voices and low frequency power electronics.
Quite a few tracks of astonishing ambient occurs on the album. Especially
Sleep research Facility impresses with the drone-based piece of subliminal
soun dscapes.
Quite remarkable is also the beautiful track "At dawn we meet our
maker" by Dutch project "A Challenge Of Honour" and the
cinematic piece of ambient by Fredrik Klingwall. Other great moments
come from Von
Thronstahl and his moody neo-folk strumming tune "Adoration, to
Europa" and Band Of Pain's creepy tones of dark drones. With its
impressive span of
styles and high quality contributions, Swarm is a convincing double
disc anthology that will satisfy a wide range of electronic music listeners.
Fans won't be disappointed meanwhile newcomers will be happily
surprised. Highly recommended! (NMP)
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