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)