Spon

SPON
Dumb Cunt Comcs
A4 Zine. No idea of cost of trade status.

Contact:

Dr. Adolf Steg
1 St Hildas Road
St Annes-on-Sea
Lancashire
FY8 2PT





Two issues of SPON appear. One contains nothing but Dr Steg’s paintings, collages and montages some of which I’ve reproduced here. The reason I’m getting excited though is issue 3 which has an interview with the Ceramic Hobs main-man Simon Harris. For anyone even half interested in the Hobs this is essential. Harris’s deep understanding of serial killers, conspiracy theories, Phillip K Dick and Power Electronics are all brought to the fore whilst for long time Hobs fans there’s the chance to discover the hidden meanings in a number of Hobs releases and why Harris’s relationship with long time Hobs collaborator and guitarist Stan Batcow soured. The paintings aren’t half bad either. These publications may be slight - eight pages at most - but that doesn’t make them unimportant. Seek out.

TDOTEP

TDOTEP - Force Feeding The People Locusts
Studio 5 Recordings. S5R 003. CDR. 50 Copies.



I don’t know why I feel this way but whenever I listen to a TDOTEP release [an acronym for The Death Of The Enlightenment Project] I feel like a kindly uncle passing on pointers in life to a confused teenage cousin whose just experienced his first ejaculation. Maybe thats because TDOTEP releases usually arrive with a note saying ‘heres my latest piece of crap’ or somesuch and then you listen to them and whaddyaknow? theres a not half bad noise album lurking in there. Despite the self deprecation the last TDOTEP release that came this way [Temple of Wounds - Pumf] went some way to convincing me that TDOTEP was heading in the right direction but after feeding myself with the locusts I’m not sure if that gravity defying trajectory has gone all limp and is now terra firma bound with just a sudden bump waiting for it.

Maybe I’m being too harsh?

Things for:

There’s some good noise on here: First track [Underlying Resentment] kicks in with some Emil Beaulieau style looped lock groove treatments. Third track [Arcade Fire Helicopter Tragedy]  kicks off in fine Incaps territory.

There’s no Charles Manson sample.

Kate Fear from the Ceramic Hobs appears on track two [though what she’s up to I couldn’t tell you].

Things against:

Comes in a half size DVD cases with art work that drops out and is ill fitting. This may sound pedantic but if you’re going to go handmade then make it handmade not some halfway house between handmade and made to look like it was bought in a shop made.

Segueing all the tracks into one long track and then printing the running times in chronological order.

Track three doesn’t end in Incaps territory, it ends with some horrible industrial death scream beats.

Track five [Of Shit Subliminal Message] sounds like a Slogun outing crossed with the Predator soundtrack.

Track nine [The Priestly Unit] Like Non gone wrong rather than the real Emil.


Yes, maybe I am being too harsh but these things need to be said. TDOTEP has greatness within itself its just that somewhere along the line its all going wrong.





Contact:

www.TDOTEP.blogspot.com

TDOTEP [at] gmail.com

www.studio5recordings.blogspot.com

Schuster

Schuster - Blac Flies Resplendent On Blak Moon
Adeptsound CDR. ADSCDR03.

Available now for pre-order. Release date: 18th of April 2011

[Also available via Licht Und Stahl in an extremely limited run of 20 cassettes.]


Blac Flies Resplendent On Blak Moon is one of those highly polished Industrial Ambient outings where upon playback you start to count off the Industrial samples on your fingertips only to quickly realise that you’d need the hands of a dozen TG acolytes to finnish the job off properly. Within eleven tracks and almost an hours worth of material I was indeed transported and whilst sat crossed legged in the middle of my inverted star [thigh bone in one hand, fly whisk in the other] I was submerged into that familiar world of murderers monologues, house flies trapped in bottles, Paul McCarthy groans, bowl rings, vocals treated to sound like Darth Vader crossed with a Tibetan shaman, water bubbling underground, vinyl surface noise, machine blasts, sonar bleeps, reverbed vocals, astronaut chatter, street rioting … there they all were, waiting for me to check em off and write em down. Now where’s my I-Spy book of Industrial samples when I need it?

This may enlighten you further: Blac Flies name checks Rudolf J. Mund, an obscure member of an obscure Nazi occult outfit, Andrew McAuley who disappeared one day in his Kayak off the coast of New Zealand in 2007, contract killer Richard Kulkinski, reggae star Dr. Alimantado [?] and others too obscure even for Google. Here are some other things to think about: track four ‘Esbat’ isn’t just 30 seconds of insect chatter its also the name of the Wiccan full moon festival. First track ‘Bellerophon’ is also the name of a mythical Greek hero. Third track mentions “Sepharial’, the chosen name of English Occultist Walter Gorn Old. Seventh track; Blakk Bile, meaning, I assume melancholia, depression or maybe some kind of Masonic ritual. Wrap all these occult/pagan trappings into some bleak Industrial landscapes and you have yourself a damned good Industrial/Pagan/Occultist/Ambient workout.

But first lets go back: the previous Schuster release ‘Breaking Down Into His Own Oblivion’ [also on Adeptsound] had the outstanding track ‘I Am Living In My Own Corpse’, a backbone track, a bleak masterpiece of desolation the likes of which gave you some idea of what it must be like to be dumped onto the barren surface of a dead and windswept lonely planet. This is what ‘Blac Flies’ is really missing, a solid twenty minute track that pins it all together. Too much is gone before it has time to settle. I personally wouldn’t have minded the 10th and best track on here ‘Giving’ expanded up to the twenty minute mark but after six minutes and 43 seconds its all too sadly gone. 

You can’t deny the heritage though - English Industrial down to their [thigh] bones and no doubt sporting bad haircuts and a healthy dose of misanthropy to boot. A couple of releases in 1988 and then nothing for nigh on twenty years. I think I know one member. The Adept website mentions Dieter Müh and the sleeve mentions SC. Step forward Mr. Cammack. Discogs gives the rest away by naming Tim Bayes who I think I’m right in saying was a fringe member of DM in their formative years and is the man behind Adeptsound. But back to the music.

My big complaint of Blac Flies is that its hardly treading new ground. The mumbled vocal on ‘Sulk’ is so close to TG’s Weeping that its hard not to think of anything else whilst listening to it. The strings that see out ‘The Second Moon [Sepharial]’ could have been plucked straight from one of Arvo Pärt’s sacred minimalist pieces. The Industrial pummel on ‘Stubborn’ is Pan Sonic mutating into Paul MaCarthy grumbles and moans. The murders confession on ‘Giving [who I’m guessing is the afore mentioned contract killer  Richard Kulkinski] plays out to a background of cicadas and distant ritual drums and whilst this is highly effective [‘the rats used to eat them’] it was almost as if I was half expecting it.

I now find myself in the curious and slightly embarrassing position of playing down what is obviously a classic piece of Industrial music - which probably says more about me than it does about Blac Flies. Having said that and put an ever so slight damper on it, I have to say in its defence  that this is still a criminally good release made with perfectly weighted hands - Grade A Prime Industrial Ambience with a soupcon of ritualism and the occult thrown in for good measure. Blac Flies Resplendent On Blak Moon may not be progress but neither is it Industrial music by numbers. Just don’t give Chris Bohn a copy.



Contact:

www.adeptsound.net


PO Box 3760
Success
Perth 6164
WA
Australia



http://lichtundstahl.blogspot.com/

Kali-Yuga Karma - The New Blockaders / Merzbow / aNoMaLi

 

Kali-Yuga Karma
The New Blockaders / Merzbow / aNoMaLi
Hypnagogia CD. GIA05. 300 Copies.




Paul Coates is the quiet man behind Hypnagogia and the even quieter man behind noise project aNoMaLi.  Hypnagogia is a spasmodic affair which since the early 90’s has released items of a discordant nature but which I think is mostly remembered as the home to some the best of The New Blockaders output - the apex arguably being the mighty 4CD anthology ‘Gesamtnichtswerk’. That’s not to treat everything else Hypnagogia has released lightly though. During 2003 and 2004 Hypnagogia released three ten inch platters that were Falten by The New Blockaders, Oumagatoki, a collaboration between TNB and Merzbow and Nitya-Baddha a solo aNoMaLi outing. Kali-Yuga Karma brings them all together and as an added bonus/dangling carrot/cynical marketing ploy [select which ever reasoning fits your preference] a track called Kali-Yuga Karma that is a 5 minute and 38 seconds collaboration between all of the above. Its best to start here ... with a cow mooing. It also ends with a cow mooing, apart from some almost insignificant squiggle that appears a second before the track ends which I cant for the life of me think has been put there except as some kind of listener test. After the first cow moo comes the playing of the last post and gun shots [probably lifted from a 50’s cowboy movie] and then a countdown from 5 to 1 before a full on face rubbing, ear pounding, head bashing swirling torrent of noise. It couldn’t have been anything else really and if it had I think I may have been a little disappointed.
Its not as full on as Oumagatoki though which is a slow to build beast featuring some lovely low end Merzbow wobbles and some close up decay ear fracture from TNB. Very similar to the Merzbow/TNB CD Ten Foot Square Hut which appeared around the same time and which no doubt came from the same sessions. Falten finds TNB in sparse decay mode - all needle fluff, scraping sledgehammers on concrete floors, galvanised bin destruction. Certainly one of their better outings and comparable to the best of their earlier work. Amongst these titans of noise we find aNoMaLi whose Nitya-Baddha sits between them like a naughty schoolboy with ink on his fingers. aNoMaLi achieves his sounds by mixing samples of North East dj’s and dart scorers cut off in their prime [ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHT], Indian movie soundtracks, murky conversations, all of this loaded onto prime noise detritus: dentists suction pumps, buzzing noise drones, TNB like rain clatter, reversed church choirs, reversed vocals, 60’s pop. Its not a million miles away from that other TNB involvement Mixed Band Philanthropist in that it has humour at its heart whilst enlightening and rewarding the ear with a multitude of sounds. It’s a pity theres so little aNoMaLi about. Two releases as far as I can ascertain.
Paul Coates may be a reclusive figure in the world of noise but his label does release the occasional gem. And although this may be just a bit of archive gathering with a dollop of cream on top that doesn’t mean you should pass it off lightly. I’ve reviewed all these before upon original release, I enjoyed them then and they still stand the test of time now. A useful release for those who missed out on the original vinyl and those TNB/Merzbow nutters who must have everything.

Blue Sabbath Black Cheer / Wicked King Wicker / Irr.App.[Ext]

Blue Sabbath Black Cheer & Irr. App. [Ext.]
Skeletal Copula Remains
Gnarled Forest Recordings [GF42] / Errata In Excelsis [eie010]
LP. 500 copies. Comes with 18” x 35” poster and insert

Blue Sabbath Black Cheer/Wicked King Wicker
Gnarled Forest Recordings [GF43] / Noiseville 95
Split LP. 300 copies plus insert.


Theres only so much you can do with a guitar tuned all the way down to ‘e’. It’s a great sounding doomy chord but If you want to further explore the deepest corners of doom and desolation then you need something else to get you there. I guess thats why bands like Wicked King Wicker and Blue Sabbath Black Cheer exist. Taking the premise that dark is good, noise is good, death is good, destruction is good and all things black are good they take that darkness mix it with a noise aesthetic and create whole new worlds of sonic nihilism and swirling vortexes of despair into which the likes of Earth and Sunn O))) get sucked only to be spat out the other end with with their monks cowls torn and dripping wet.

To be honest I never got my head round those early doom heavy bands - wave after wave of ululating low end hum, dry ice and expensive double albums - if I wanted something heavy to listen to then I’d dig out an old Sabbath album. I remember seeing a John Fahey interview in which he said he’d been experimenting with tuning all his guitar strings down to e and hawking the results round various shops and labels only to be told that the genre was called doom metal and was already quite popular. Listening to the odd doom related album does me no harm though. I theoretically place my back to the wall, turn up the volume and get down with the low end vibes. Its mutating though and mutating into something far more interesting.

Blue Sabbath Black Cheer have graced these pages before, their collaboration with The Nihilist Assault Group went down well here. It was an interesting construct with both artists striving for the same result whilst coming from different angles of the noise spectrum. Sadly I feel it doesn't work with Irr. App. [Ext.].  Irr. App. [Ext.] come from a background linked with Nurse With Wound not doom and destruction. Skeletal Copula Remains feels like a case of too many cooks too. Throw in the guitar of Mason Jones and the synth of John Lukeman [albeit on one track] and you can almost feel the claustrophobia. Theres four tracks with the titles giving you clues; ‘Subterranean [Insurgence]’, ‘Brennschluss --> Extinction’, ‘Crawling Eruptions’ and the side long ‘Glutton’. Couple all this to the black and white art work of viscera, bones. ethereal creatures and the enormous fold out poster and you have somebody going all out to make a big impression. And then you play it and it all seems a bit messy. Death, doom and destruction are there in spades but it feels like everybody involved here tried to cram in every one of their nuances and it makes for an unbalanced listen. Starting with a gong crash the three tracks on side one do their best to create symphonic death ambience with hyenas tearing flesh apart and the squealing noise guitar of Mason Jones [which comes at you like a thousand squeaky gates all banging together at three in the morning] but it never quite gets off the ground. The side long ‘Glutton’ works best but spoils itself by introducing actually introducing those low e tuned guitars when it would do better to dispense with. Thrum thrum thrum thrum slow steady droney thumps and then a suction pump stuck into the open gut wound of a dying alien, stalking music, guttural wolf growls, limbs being twisted apart, cartilage popping, it gets louder then cuts to the sound of animals chewing, zoo screams, someones shooting all the parrots whilst someone else plays with a squeaky door. Door shuts. Record ends. Its hard to engage with much of this with one sound being replaced by another before it has chance to make an impression. The second half of Glutton contains some genuinely ear teasing sounds though but all the posters and fancy art work in the world doesn’t make up for the fact that is only half way there.


The split LP proves to be far more rewarding. Blue Sabbath Black Cheer’s ‘March Of The Damned’ is like being stuck halfway down a subway tunnel with the cars hurtling past two inches from your nose. Its Earth crossed with the low end rumble of a Merzbow gig. Sunspots erupt, Howler monkeys scream, demented souls are tortured for eternity, as it ebbs away slowly rotting bodies swing on charred tree limbs. The shorter ‘Into Nothing’ is even more sublime, it captures desolation perfectly; cold iron on stone, creaking boat timbers, dying breaths, distant bombs.
Utilising bass guitar and noise Wicked King Wicker create walls of noise doom. Its the next step up the evolving noise ladder with doom metal at its heart but with noise treatments giving it the room to unfold into ever more fractured and discordant patterns. On ‘Now That We’re Dead To You’ tumbling chords of ultra distorted bass guitar and noise gadgets create a claustrophobic atmosphere that builds to a wayward crescendo. Bass notes become muffled screams, noises become ever more disorientating the whole thing rupturing revealing its component parts on ending. Given a side each and left to their own devices both BSBC and WKW produce far more cohesive works. I think I may be a fan.



Contact:


http://gnarledforest.blogspot.com/


http://www.noiseville.com/home.html


http://www.myspace.com/irrappext

Midwich

Midwich - Months, Years
Midwich - Raised Ironworks

3” CDR. 50 copies each. No label.



The first time I met Rob Hayler was on the door of a Death Squad gig about ten years or more since. It was a Termite Club gig so there were only about ten people there, most of them Americans, but Rob was doing his bit for the cause by taking peoples money and flogging some of his newly pressed Fencing Flatworm Recordings releases. Rob was one of those people you find incredibly easy to get along with; softly spoken, infectious laugh, a ready grin, intelligent and for the next few years I saw a lot of him and his label. Then, as so often happens, he disappeared.

A few years passed and then out of the blue Rob reappeared, this time via a blog. He’d had problems with his head, or with the world or a mixture of the two [I’m not telling you anything you shouldn’t know here - he writes about it fluently and matter-of-factly himself] he’d got married, lost his job, found another, his wife lost her job, things were happening in his life. I discovered he supported Farsley Celtic and my heart burst with pride because I always kind of knew that if Rob supported a football team it would be a lower leagues three men and a dog set up. But most importantly he was back and being creative once more. 

Rob likes his drone which was reflected in FFR and his solo work under the Midwich moniker. Besides his own material he released work by Andy Jarvis, Neil Campbell and Klunk along with a few others. His diffuse cassette label OTO ran to fifty releases and gave all manner of oddballs there day out in the sun; The Bongoleeros, Killy Dog Box, The Ceramic Hobs, even old Unky Thurst chipped in. Then there was the FFR night at the Brudenell. My first encounter with laptops in a live environment. I was sat there chatting away only to be told ten minutes into the sounds appearing from the PA that this was it. But theres nobody on the stage said I. Thats because he’s playing a laptop from  the side of the mixing desk came the reply [this probably because there was less chance of it being knicked].

So Rob came back and started his blog and told us all how his head was getting better and how he was meeting people once more and going for a pint now and again and enjoying his married life and heres some old stuff I thought would never see the light of day but the urge is upon me to put stuff out once more. And why not.

Midwich produce very dainty drones by holding down various keyboard keys [I’m guessing]  and little else. To my best recollection Midwich drones were slightly flecked in their purity. Throbbing, aching, pulsing things with little motifs flitting in and out like the fish that used to adorn the early FFR covers. Some were short lasting less than a minute whilst other set themselves adrift up into the 20 minute mark. I quite liked the shorter stuff which is why I like the last track on ‘raised ironworks’ a perfect piece of two phase drone with the one playing off the other, each coming back to reinforce its beginnings like some clever piece of work by Steve Reich, it could go on much, much longer and I doubt I would tire of it. As for the rest, well, its drone. Simply done, effortlessly put together, maybe slight but who cares? ‘ months, years’ is one 21 minute piece [also its title]  and theres three others on ‘raised’ but it would take a far more brazen heart than mine to criticise either of these releases. If they were the biggest turds fished out of the beck this year I may drop a hint but theres no need. They may be slight but its what they signal that is far more important.



http://radiofreemidwich.wordpress.com/

Tony Conrad – Ten Years Alive on the Infinite Plain

What normally happens is this: I listen to what I’m reviewing through the week, thinking up thoughts and ideas about what I’m going to write and come Saturday the words magically appear on a white rectangle and I save them and post them on my blog. Except for this week when I was struck by a hideous malady. An illness so henious and insensitive in its effectiveness that it had the impertinence to appear on Friday morning and clear up on Monday morning [just].

This then to let TDOTEP, Hypnogogia, Rob Hayler, Stan Reed [I’m assuming its Stan but if its not then thank you to the person who sent me the two LP’s from the States featuring BSBC etc ..] and Hyster Tapes that their work is here and has been played. The words are in my head floating about. Its getting them onto the white rectangle thats the hard bit.

Here then, in place of my usual weekly ablution, a review from about five years ago. At the bottom you will find a link that will enable you to replicate this experience, if only for about three minutes.

Tony Conrad – Ten Years Alive on the Infinite Plain
Leeds City Art Gallery – April 3rd April

See that saw Tony? Saw it good. Take that violin and saw the saw, saw that fucker into little pieces in your Ten Years Alive on the Infinite Plain journey. Saw it up your arse and never come back and haunt the dark streets of Leeds ever, ever again. Nothing personal of course. Maybe I should have got stoked on some decent whiskey like Campbell. I could see his baldy head bouncing around down the front. I was sat at the back had been up since 5.30 that morning and had little sleep the night before. I wasn’t in perfect condition for an arduous ninety minute drone-a-thon so this review is somewhat tainted.

Maybe I should have got ripped on some appropriate drugs, spent all day in the Duncan or maybe stayed in bed a little longer the night previous. Whatever, I was beyond tired and had only really gone to see Kyle who had come all the way from NYC so I had to make the effort. We made small talk outside the venue whilst he doled out vegan sandwiches to his family, I could just about make out his accent from underneath his big bushy beard, his kids were cute and impeccably behaved, we should have gone to the Victoria instead.

It was a sell out. All of us sat there in rows with a four paneled screen to the fore. Each screen slightly angled. The violin began its sawing and the right hand screen flickered with a grainy image of black and white alternating strips. The one violin was joined by other instruments. I couldn’t tell which was which as the players were behind us but one of them made big boinging sounds like when you pull out the bottom ‘e’ of a bass guitar as far as you can and let it go with a massive TWANG. There was some kind of instrument that made nice resonating sounds that could have been played by a Japanese lady but I only got glimpses of them after the dust settled so I can’t be sure. And then another of the screens came to life with another jumping around black and white grainy image. The woman in front of me was beginning to fall asleep. I became more transfixed on her slowly descending nodding head as I was the flickering screens. Eventually all four screens were filled with jumping around black and white stripes. My back ached and I shifted around trying to kill the numbness in my arse cheeks. I resisted the temptation to look at my watch fearing that only ten minutes had passed and hoping that it was more like eighty five. I lost all track of time. I eventually noticed that the four images were slowly moving into each other. Maybe when all four screens merged into one the whole thing would be over and I could go for a pint before heading back home. I shut my eyes and could feel myself falling asleep. The sawing continued. I felt as if I was tripping, as if I was having a bad dream, as if I was trapped. Some people were walking out but how long had they stood it before realizing they could take no more. Maybe I wouldn’t be able to take it much more. My back was stiff. I moved my legs and watched the nodding woman for a bit more. Eventually the sawing and throbbing and TWANGING slowed to a halt. People applauded, some whooped and whistled but I think most people were just glad it was all over.

I eventually made it to the Victoria. Wire scribes propped the bar, copy already running through their heads, pints at elbows nodding knowingly to TC when he appears in his pensioner’s coat and bend in half shoes.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7yCHstLAChs

The Ceramic Hobs

Ceramic Hobs - OZ OZ Alice
Poot Records. Poot43. CDR. 148 copies.

Ceramic Hobs - The Best Of The Ceramic Hobs 1986-1989
Smith Research. SRV19 CDR. 50 Copies




It would appear that the further into the mire Blackpool sinks the more crazed, unpredictable and important do the Ceramic Hobs become. You can not help but tie the Hobs up with the grotty string that is their home town of Blackpool. The Hobs are now making music that is the mirror image of what Blackpool has become; a run down seaside  town full of shuffling zombies reliant on pharmaceutical crutches. Last week I was listening to these two latest offerings when I discovered that Blackpool is now the anti-depressant capital of Britain - a staggering 134,000 anti-depressant prescriptions for every 100,000 inhabitants. But if you believed the local tourist board or any of the thousands of day trippers that pile into the place year round you’d believe it to be a thriving palace of beer, sex and chips. The image I have in my head of Blackpool is of a rotting corpse upon which someone has stuck a big yellow smiley face. You don’t even have to scratch the surface anymore, its there for all to see.
Out of this psychotic mess the Hobs have somehow managed to release some of the most important music coming out of the country. Its all down to sole surviving member Simon Morris for the totally skewed spastic rock alley down which the Hobs now rattle. After years of teetering on the edge of psychedelic experimental rock it would appear that the Hobs have finally fallen in dragging with them the corpses of The Butthole Surfers, The Gerogerigegege, Wild Man Fischer and more bizarrely Deep Purple.

With Morris at the controls the Hobs have decided to bow out with a series of releases all called OZ OZ Alice. I think I’ve reviewed two or three of these [I’m easily lost and confusion seems to be a big part of the game] but this is the rawest of the bunch so far. Morris’s singing voice is one of the great unknown instruments and here its even more guttural and raw. He sings like an irate football fan, like he’s deliberately trying to ruin his vocal chords. That when he’s singing. Some tracks are monologues spoken to a background of washed out fuzz and band jams, endless riffs and TV samples - the more I hear of these OZ OZ releases the more I feel like someone trying to crack some kind of hidden code - samples of kids TV overlap each other, some tracks have two tracks going at once. All the tracks are untitled. The last two songs are covers of Deep Purple’s Child in Time and Black Knight, the first ending with Morris screaming out the chorus to ELO’s Mr Blue Sky with the latter ending with someone singing Starship AOR fodder We Built This City. Last track is found sounds; whistling, traffic, distant voices whilst the first is a song recorded straight from what sounds like a Christian TV channel via a condenser mic [all thirty seconds of it]. At its very heart lies a 13 minute riff of driven spazzed guitar, pumping drums and demented vocals thats as good as anything Faust ever did. In it Morris sings unintelligible lyrics, ridiculous over the top guitar solos come and go, monologues come and go, guitars crumble and die only to get back to their feet like dying monsters in the final reel, the wailing becomes more intense, sirens blare, gibberish is spoken, nothing ever settles.

The piece of A4 paper this disc comes wrapped in doesn't even mention the Hobs by name just some artwork and a list of starting points for conspiracy theorists [some of which I checked out and either don’t exist anymore or were never there in the first place].
I’m pretty sure I’ve heard some of this before but where I’m not entirely sure. Maybe these are tracks culled from tiny tape runs, hastily dubbed CDR’s on obscure labels, or demos that have found their way here via Hobs HQ? Compared to the last OZ OZ this feels like a mad rush, a desire to get it out of the system, a lancing of a particularly painful psychotic boil. The previous OZ OZ was a labyrinthine affair containing all manner of clues as to its existence, this is a coughed up lung oyster spat onto a piss ridden bus shelter wall, left to dry out amongst the discarded chip trays and anti PNE graffiti.  Roll on the next one.


The Best of 86-89 also contains material previously heard and found elsewhere but none [as far as I’m aware] that has come straight from Morris’s own Smith Research label. As Morris states in his sleeve-notes ‘We didn’t really know what we were doing … and the results were widely variable in style and quality’. He’s right of course but even here the seeds for what we’re hearing now are being sown. Skipping past the first few whimsical acne ridden starters brings you to Happy Hour where during eleven minutes of fucking around you kind of get the idea that the Hobs were never going to settle for a straight forward intro of ‘1,2,3,4’ for very long. There is indeed much whimsy here, track titles like Bob Holness Must Die and Patrick Moore Hernia Library being testament to such [and maybe taking something from Half Man Half Biscuit along the way?] but by its end and with tracks like Big Frog the guitars and the vocals are distorted to buggery.

When the Ceramic Hobs do eventually pack it in those early years may not be looked back on with the greatest of fondness - they really were just fucking around your honour - but go and listen to the last track ‘Oh Dear What Can The Matter Be’ with its squealing feedback, lumpen drums, wailing vocals and US government spokesman warning of the dangers of LSD - its all there just waiting to erupt.



   

Contact:

Smith Research - http://smithresearch.blogspot.com/



POOT - gordon_fucwitt [at] hotmail.com



*PNE [Preston North End - arch rivals of Blackpool FC]

The Strolling Ones

The Strolling Ones - There Was A Terrible Ghastly Noise
Music Mundane. CDR



The Strolling Ones are Martin Walden and Stewart Walden who one day went to Richard Youngs house and inadvertently formed the A Band. Who never learnt to play their instruments but who became an important group due to the fact that they became a catalyst for many of todays UK experimenters. Including Neil Campbell whose Music Mundane imprint this appears on.
There Was A Terrible Ghastly Noise is a collection of early tape works [some of it unreleased] from the early to mid 80’s which on the whole could be described as just plain daft but if you’re in the mood for this kind of thing could also be described an English Dada Frankenstiens monster made from the bodies of Viv Stanshall, Monty Python and Spike Milligan and maybe, just maybe Throbbing Gristle
One track sounds like a Goons outtake [The Seventh Leg Society] replete with silly voices, ‘Arson’ is a Dennis Duck type stuck groove with the word ‘arson’ repeated for its 62 second duration, the last track ‘Music For Dead Zebras’ is 42 seconds of someone trying to screw in a light bulb before it cuts with the words ‘oh well, thats enough’. ‘Live in …’ at twelve minutes is by far the longest outing, over a background of jabbed keys, air horns and unidentified noises one of the Waldens ‘sings’ and I use the term in its widest sense, absolute nonsense in a heavily reverbed voice before dipping into White Christmas, for some reason I kept being reminded of Genesis P Orridge in one of his early TG outings.
‘Sock Eating Competition’ is a hysterical pair of Walden’s off their tits on something stronger than tea talking about a sock eating competition. ‘Crowd Scene’ is a straight recording of a group conversation in which several people are laughing and talking and laughing and talking of Dada and Mongolian armchairs. All at the same time. And on it goes. For 18 tracks and 50 lunatic minutes.

There’s no point in trying to make any sense of these 50 minutes. They are what they are - two people fucking about with a tape recorder [and a few tracks recorded with a Casio keyboard at Richard Youngs house] but having a great time with it. But what fine loam this is. Whether its worthy of repeated plays is a moot point. It is what it is. It has served its purpose.

Anyone reading this who has no idea what it was like to grow up in England in the 70’s and have to stay up until the middle of Sunday night to watch Monty Python or argue with their parents so as to watch Spike Milligan on one of his ‘Q” outings, [on one of the three channels available then] could do no better than listen to this. It could open up lots of doors, it could give you some kind of insight into the eccentric British psyche or it could just plain baffle you.

The last time I saw Stewart Walden he was throwing people around at a Smell & Quim gig. The time before that was at a gig in London where he’d turned up in a silver lamé suit carrying an ironing board. Not somebody you’d meet every day. What happened to his brother Martin Walden I have no idea.

Contact: http://astralsocialclub.wordpress.com/

Sudden Infant - Bye Bye Berlin

Sudden Infant - Bye Bye Berlin

No label. Self released C90 cassette.

When Joke Lanz left Berlin for Switzerland in the late 90’s he left behind Bye Bye Berlin as a leaving present.

Remarkably it seems to have disappeared from the records. No mention of it in Discogs or even the official Sudden Infant website. But here its, ninety minutes of found sounds, noise bursts, spastic utterances, sped up punk records, reversed tape, turntable abuse, schlager music, Nintendo noises, African drumming ... for the found sounds Joke Lanz spent a night wandering around Berlin with his tape recorder, at one time fixing it to a lamp post to capture whatever came past: footsteps, children playing, train stations, birds, beer bottles, whistling and someone shouting what sounds like ‘rape’ in a rather menacing fashion. Its all prime Sudden Infant material in other words but some years before an official SI release would ever appear. A full 90 minutes of it too.

I’ve been in touch with Joke and he’s happy for me to post this. He just about remembers releasing it and says it came in a plastic bag [which I don’t have] but apart from that and the fact that it was recorded all in one night details are few.

Part I

Part II

Top photo shows Joke Lanz recording Bye Bye Berlin in 1999

* schlager = ersatz pop music popular in Germany and many other European countries but not Britain.

Misery

Misery [all track titles in Russian]
Liniya Shuma. 23 Copies.
Originally released in 1999/2000


http://www.myspace.com/miseryrus




Not a review but the first in a series of downloads culled from tapes from my own collection that I believe deserve a wider audience.



I first heard of Misery back in the late 90’s via one of the Betley Welcomes Careful Drivers catalogues. Misery were from Russia and that intrigued me a lot. There were Russians making noises? Well, why not? They make it everywhere else. So I bought the tape and got in touch with the man behind Misery, a certain Andrey Ivanov. We kept in touch for a few years and then as usually happens we stopped corresponding.
Then last week a review of one of Misery's releases appeared on the MuhMur blog and that got me digging around. I have a few things by Misery but the one that I cherish most is a homemade cassette that ran to just 23 copies.
Now I’ve seen my share of home made cassettes but this one blew me away: laminates, glued on dried leaf, tiny squares of card carrying logo and info, a personalized insert and all of it housed in a sumptuous little flip top box all held together with knotted string. Even the cassette itself has been sanded down with the Misery logo etched into both sides. Exquisite.
But its not all fur coat and no knickers. Having reacquainted myself with this C60 I can honestly say that age hasn’t harmed it one bit and I don’t mean technically. Its bleak Industrial ambinece at its finest. Side one track one [there’s four in all and my Russians not up to much so forgive me] is pure desolation. There's squeaky gate hinges, a recurring motif that sounds like a bleak wind, then empty bottles rolling down a street. The second track is equally morose featuring distant fog horns, looped voices, disintegration. Both tracks create the same kind of atmospheres as exemplified by William Basinski, sadness, melancholy, unease. If I’m being honest, the second side is a bit weaker than the first but don’t let this put you off trying it.

I’m pretty sure Andrey was using analogue tape at this time but as with all great works you’re never really sure how he creates his sounds. As far as I can remember most of his work was of a similar nature. I’ll have to dig deeper and reacquaint myself further.

I’m no longer signed up to Myspace so if someone could pass this on for me I would be eternally grateful.

A shorter version of track two side one can be found on the Myspace site.

Two other things: I can’t seem to rid myself of some kind of interference when transcribing these tapes [I’ll crack it honest - I think its the phone]. It is very low level though, barely audible and in no way detracts from the listening experience. Next up: Sudden Infant - Bye Bye Berlin.

SIDE ONE

SIDE TWO

Kylie Minoise

 

Kylie Minoise - Sid Vicious Occult School Of Motoring
Kovorox Sound CD. KOVO-053



Its been my pleasure to follow Lea Cummings career since its inception [I think]. Firstly with the Solmania like guitar noise group Opaque, then through Kylie Minoise and more recently under his own name producing drone works of outstanding natural beauty. Lea keeps Kylie Minoise interesting and worthwhile which takes some doing in a world full of noise. I genuinely look forward to each new KM release like a kid at Christmas, seeing as how KM are one of the few noise acts who seem to genuinely push the genre in new directions. Its a testament to Lea’s hard work on the live front and his creative force as a noise artist that he’s stuck with what I consider to be such a ridiculous name. Its probably cost him plenty of serious minded noise listeners. More fool them.


Sid Vicious Occult School Of Motoring sits cheek by jowl with that other fine Kylie Minoise release Spank-Magic Lodge, same laser eyes, same kind of artwork only this time the bird’s Di not Myra. Nice touch.
The first eight tracks of Sid Vicious race by in a clatter of styles. Typical KM material in that you never really know whats coming next: a mix of distorted beats, blitz noise, layered swathes of wash and plenty of scumminess. Things kick off in fine style with ‘You … Fetishist!’ [all tracks come complete with standout exclamation marks] a garbled treated vocal mashed into a distorted rock standard. Nigel Joseph used to be very good at this - like hearing a worn out Led Zeppelin record played with a stylus that has a fifty pence piece stuck to it for ballast. Avant-Gore Nudist Asylum! takes that trademark Whitehouse mind bending squeal and hits you over the head with it. ‘There Is A Policeman Inside Every One Of Us Who Must Be Killed!’ is a slowed down distorted Rallizes stomp where you can just about make out some inebriated vocals - it sounds like Mizutani singing down a tunnel after too much saki got into his system. All the tracks are segued so that when you arrive at the two twenty second tracks your full on noise melts into an eerie Eraserhead like soundtrack moment. ‘Cocaine Addict Hooked On Cock Pills!’ is a pounding PE like pulse over which there could be violin strings. ‘Wizard Puke In The Crypt Of Dark Secrets!’ is apocalypse survivor soundtrack. ‘Explosive Kundalini Awakening!’ sounds like the amplified Red Army march on Berlin played out to a background of old gramophone record distortion. At nine minutes in duration its the second longest track on the album but its the last and longest track that I’ll remember this release for. Tipping the scales at just under the half hour mark ‘Princess Diana 13th Pillar Ritual Sacrifice To Reptilian Hectate! is a noise triptych that builds from a moody slowly shifting Muslimgauze like ethnic start to a noisy middle before descending through some treated Gregorian chant into mill pond bliss. Its the drone ending that brings to mind some of Lea’s solo work and its pure bliss. For those that made it through it is anyway.

Contact - www.kovoroxsound.com

 

Early Hominids

Early Hominids - Alkali / Dilate
Total Vermin cassette. Total Vermin 38



Now that Campbell has ditched mywasteofspace and started his journey into blog-land I can reveal the inner workings of the Early Hominids work cycle; they drink beer and shove pizza down their necks. And then, over the course of an evenings experimentation, sounds appear that would be equally at home in Mirfield’s Panache [long gone 80’s cheesy disco - plasma on draught, punch in the face on leaving] and a Berlin art space. What appeals to me is the fact that Early Hominids are now beginning to find their feet. Their first release [Metatarsal] sounded more Mego than Mirfield, the second [Batley Bathz] more art space than spacey, this is the one that clicks - Campbell’s Astral Social Club vibes and dance/pop head bobbing enthusiasm fits foot in sock with Walsh’s gadget box glitches and oscillations. Layering noises and waves onto looped dance backgrounds of varying BPM’s was always going to be a winner with me. And its filled too. Filled out, fleshed out, full of everything all going off at once delirious and loose like an epileptic on whizz having a fit in front of a strobe light.

So; ex-members of Smell & Quim produce noise dance shocker. Or ex-members of Smell & Quim lay it down phat and noisy after supping ale and shoving pizza down their necks. Or I could dance to this if I’d had enough to drink. Either way I always wanted more dance orientated noise crossover releases and this is definitely one of them. There’s two tracks on here but there’s essentially six segued tracks, one of which feels like it was the plucked from the middle section of an intense jam when A somehow managed to slot into B and the head was right and the body was right -  a perfect piece of unscripted experimentation - that's the epileptic on whizz. There’s slower sections too where it feels like you’re trying to make your way across a muddy field in divers boots but even these feel unctuous and warm like drowning in a lava lamp, you’re a small glycerin bubble being warmed and cooled to the sound of weld spatter hitting a wet floor and bits of Rihanna. Well, almost.

Total Vermin meanwhile, carries on its good work. Ignore it at your peril.



Contact:

earlyhominids [at] hotmail.co.uk

http://totalvermin.blogspot.com

http://astralsocialclub.wordpress.com/

Night Science IV CD

V/A CD that comes with Night Science IV magazine.
500 copies.

Magazine reviewed elsewhere - here’s the CD review.



Features:

Hum of the Druid
Raionbashi
Golden Serenades
Kazamuto Endo
Dieter Müh
The Haters
Halthan




I have a theory that a CD stuck to the front of a music magazine will either have one great track or be a huge pile of one listen only shite. And as the amount of magazines with CD’s stuck to their covers grows larger by the month it seems the less interesting the music contained within them [or the more useless the software if you’ve just bought PC Almost The Same As Last Month monthly]. When the British weekly music press was in its prime, [that would be when guitar based music was actually worth bothering with] an issue that came with a free single or cassette usually carried something worth hearing. The NME’s C86 became a landmark release in its own right, heralding the death of post punk and the birth of jangly angular guitar angst. Now that the music weeklies have been replaced by the nostalgia music monthlies it feels almost obligatory to stick on a loudly praised but poorly executed cover mount. A friend lent me about half a dozen of these things which at first sight looked immensely appealing but on closer inspection revealed nothing more than a series of shoddy live tracks and various nobodies doing cover versions of their wet dreams b-sides. The Wire joined in the fun too, I sat and listened to the first 15 of their Wire Tapper series before retaining a handful of tracks and eBaying the lot. Social Networking and the availability of peer to peer software have further diminished the impact cover mounts have but thats never going to stop the music monthlies using them as customer bait.

Whether the disc accompanying Night Science IV becomes a touchstone for future listeners remains to be seen but even if it doesn't its still a great stand alone release. For those already familiar with Industrial, Noise, PE and experimental genres you’ll no doubt be familiar with most of the acts here but if you’re not its great gateway.
Dieter Müh’s Burning Bodies is a fire crackling pean given added eeriness with the introduction of two female voices, one moaning, the other a prim 50’s BBC voice intoning the words ‘you are burning people’. Chilling stuff indeed. Raionbashi’s sub four minute contribution contains all manner of organic sounds, ranging from an executioners swinging axe to slurped water to a bell that rings so clear that it seems to resonate into infinity. The Haters track ‘Spinning Spade is nine minutes of radio static, hum and swirling noises which if I’m correct was made using an antique turntable and a toy spade. Haltham provide the PE element with a well executed stretch of grinding despair whilst Endo and Golden Serenades both chip in with quality noise tracks, the former encased in a treated Japanese junk noise arena whilst the latter ends up in a more freeform, high-end European firmament. Which leaves Hum of the Druid. Teetering between brilliance and mundanity would imply that HOTD are still a sound in search of maturity. The last thing I reviewed by Hum was a bold array of electro-acoustic sounds that bore comparison with TNB and Mark Durgan. It also had some crap on it. The same thing happens here - given two tracks to elaborate with Hum confound and delight. The first track contains the exquisite sounds of steel pins being rolled down distant concrete steps coupled to a ghostly drone whilst the second is a piece of ordinary noise rumble, OK in itself but in the light of whats gone before hardly thrilling. I’m still holding out for Hum of the Druid to come up with something really special though.


I’m sure all these tracks are exclusives too.



Contact: http://www.iheartnoise.com/cipherproductions/

Pre-Dating The 13th

Pre-Dating The 13th - Drifting Away

The Way - Station Between Ecstasies


Contact:  kdogbox [at] hotmail.com



It takes a special kind of person to call themselves Morbid. Steve, Joe, Fred, Michael, Wayne, Ian and Kenneth are all workable names but I’m assuming Morbid wanted a moniker that stood out. He really is called Morbid too. Lots of people change their names of course, there's nothing hard about it; Derek Dick didn’t like his given name so he changed it to ‘Fish’ and started Marillion [although I’m not sure which name is the most embarrassing and why change one embarrassing name for another?] John Cleese’s father changed the family name from Cheese and Eric Clapton just doesn't have the same guitar God ring to it as Eric Clapp. So I wonder what given birth name lies behind Morbid? Maybe an obscure Biblical name like Ezekiel, a name lumbered on someone by over zealous Zionists parents perhaps or maybe its plain old Jack or Alan or Mohammed? Who knows. I used to correspond with Morbid back in the 90's and I seem to remember that he became fixated with an obscure Romanian artist called Victor Brauner and then maybe he changed his name to that. He started a band and called it Killy Dog Box and then we discovered we shared a passion for early Genesis. Not the early, early Jonathan ‘my lovely boys’ King Genesis but the stuff that started with Trespass. He wrote and printed a zine called Navigator which ran to a few issues and was full of trips to the coast and other ramblings and then as sometimes happens, we drifted apart.

Until last week when an email arrived from Morbid and on the back of it a download to Pre-Dating The 13th’s eleventh album. Now I may have been getting my Pre-Dating’s and  my Killy Dog Box’s mixed up but I’m pretty sure Pre-Dating is a collaboration with someone unknown to me and that KDB was Morbid all on his own - but I could be wrong. I seem to remember KDB being all dark ambiance but I could be wrong on that count too. There was a tape on Rob Haylers OTO label but nothing much more than that plus a few home spun jobs. I dare say I had some Pre-Dating in my hands around then too but the mists of time play tricks with my brian, I mean brain.

Drifting Away is an hours worth of segued tracks no doubt intended to induce some kind of altered state. Whilst listening to it I tried to think of what it sounded like and I came up with the following list; Aphex Twin’s ‘Selected Ambient Works’, Throbbing Gristle’s ‘In the Shadow of the Sun’ and  everything I heard by La Bradford in the early 90’s. There’s also bits of Ennio Morricone - which turn out to be the best bits. The worst bits are when the moaning vocals come in and then I got very angry. The Morricone bits are scraped strings, twanged strings, simple but effective. The opening is churning bass and seagull swoops of electric guitar, so much like La Bradford that I nearly swallowed my mentholated pastille. Great things are coming I thought but it wasn’t to last for Drifting Away is [fanfare of trumpets] a bit of a curates egg. At times the music does carry you, there’s a swarming over-driven buzz around the 50 minute mark that almost drifts into C.C.C.C. territory but these highlights are few and far between. With a bit of spit and polish though [and some judicious editing] Morbid could have this down to a decent enough 20 minute piece but as it stands its a wandering assemblage of moods and ambience that only rarely engages the listener. Well, this one anyway. I dare say that if you spend lots of your hard earned giro at Cold Spring then this may just have enough in it for you.

I forget where The Way came into things but if you want an hours worth of really bad Tangerine Dream, wounded vocals, thrumming bass guitars, tortured cattle and distorted twangs blasted out over a frozen plateau then get emailing. 

I like you Morbid I really do but sometimes your music just doesn’t do it for me.

Zines - Niche Homo/Hiroshima Yeah!/Night Science

Night Science IV
A5 zine + CD. 136 pp. 500 copies.

Niche Homo
Issue 4. A5 zine. 80pp approx

Hiroshima Yeah!
Issue 72. A4 zine. 6 pp.





I used to write a zine. Lost days spent with your head in a pair of sweaty headphones listening to CD’s with your finger on the fast forward button. It was Simon at the [still] famously Luddite DDDD zine who pioneered this approach and when time is against you I can honestly say it works - badly dubbed home made CDR’s with scribble on them can be despatched in a matter of seconds. The only hard part is thinking up words to say about them afterwards. And then eventually one day you wonder why you’re bothering and out come the Art Garfunkel LP’s and the Genesis LP’s and you think to yourself why, this is much more pleasant.

I’ve been reading Chris Donald’s book about his 20 years as editor of Viz. Chris Donald took Viz from a 100 run comic hawked around the pubs and clubs of Newcastle into a publishing phenomenon that at its peak sold over a million of every issue. It made him and a few people around him very rich. It also lead him to clinical depression. Because thats what zines can do to you. They take over your life to such an extent that instead of having a life you find yourself at home in a dark room with a pair of sweaty headphones on trying to think up interesting things to say about a piece of kak from Zagreb. It all starts as a bit of harmless fun; the joy of getting free music, seeing your work in the hands of others, people talking about it, some of them even liking it and then comes the down side; the queues at the Post Office, the teetering review pile and then the letters and emails, why do you hate my music when its so obviously the best thing ever and you missed one of the ‘t’s’ out of my band name and when’s the next issue out and can you do this and that and blah blah blah and you’re looking at the clock and thinking I could be doing so many other things with my life and then one day you wake up and realise you just don’t have the time to do it anymore and you stop and you write a blog instead.

Zines are a great way of filling spare time and finding an outlet for your passion. If you’re on the dole and you’re of a creative bent then zines are good way of killing dead time. If you’re working a regular job then kiss your spare time goodbye. Hello zine, goodbye life.
Which is why I really do appreciate zines, even if the interviews are slightly banal and predictable or the writing is a tad poor because more often than not if the hearts are in the right place it’ll work - enthusiasm can conquer many obstacles.


Having three zines land on me in the space of a few weeks also goes to prove that the internet hasn’t entirely slaughtered them either.  What alarms me most though is the fact that Niche Homo got to issue four without me being aware of its existence, even though its produced in nearby Leeds and covers bands and acts I care about. Niche Homo is in classic zine territory; band interviews [with issue 4 you get Ramleh, The Homosexuals, The Pheremoans and Thee Oh Sees] and articles including the diary of a local swimmer, a three-way mix tape discussion, an odd piece on record collecting and something called Geocaching in which you spend £50 on a gadget that helps you locate film canisters with 50p’s in them on canal banks in London - at least you get plenty of fresh air I suppose.
Its a zine, the quality is up and down, the interviews could do with editing but its put together with much love and attention and that’ll do for me.

Night Science IV has been kicking around for a few years now and during that period has established itself as a serious weighty tome. Due to its sheer volume its going to take me a while to get through it but at least for now I can recommend the accompanying CD [in fact the CD could merit a review of its own - I’ll post one at a later date]. Sole editor and writer Chris Groves has my utmost admiration in putting out a zine that runs to a 136 pages and contains over 200 reviews which as far as I can see have all been penned by his good self. In fact with its prefect bound spine and high standards you could argue the case that this is as good as a small book. Chris interviews Kazumoto Endo, Halthan, The Haters, Dieter Müh, Golden Serenades and Raionbashi and then puts them all on to a CD for your listening delectation [all exclusive tracks I believe]. There’s also two live reviews featuring Dave Phillips and Runzelstirn & Gurgelstock along with KK Null. With Chris living in Tasmania I guess the opportunity to witness much in the way of noise and experimental behavior is hard to come by but this doesn’t stop him taking K.K. Null to task for being predictable. Which is some indication of how critical Chris can be. Chris’s writing can be a little clinical at times but there’s no denying he knows his stuff.

One quality that all true zines should exhibit is regular availability. The only way to go with a monthly zine is to make it cut and paste and go with what you’ve got come the deadline - which is exactly what HY does. I’ve been with HY since its inception and its monthly deliverances are welcome missives. HY works because both of its contributors come from different musical backgrounds; Mark Ritchie lives in Glasgow and likes singer songwriter stuff, his live reviews begin when he wakes up then take in all the food he ate, all the buses he caught, all the pints he sank and all the Glasgow pubs he sank them in with the band sometimes getting a mention in the last sentence. His reviews of everything from John Martin reissues to books and films are short and precise. At the other end of the spectrum comes Gary Simmons. Simmons London based misanthropic rants mixed with Whitehouse lyrics aren’t to everybody's tastes but when he gets on a roll he’s unstoppable. In issue 72 he reviews Pendercki, Gorecki and Charles Manson then gives us a blow by blow transcription of a text war he had with fellow HY reader Jimmy Little which ends with Little being arrested by the London Met. HY is a crude, photocopied, few pages of cut and paste A4 stapled in one corner zine and its perfect. If the writing is good enough cut and paste will suffice.



[HY is available for the cost of a few stamps though I suspect that hard cash wouldn’t go amiss - email for contact details as Ritchie tends to move about a bit. Niche Homo has no cover price whilst Night Science IV is available via the Cipher website for $15 Aus/$16 US plus postage]





Contact:

Night Science
℅ Cipher Productions
PO Box 169
Newtown
Tasmania
7008
Australia

iheartnoise.com/cipherproductions cipherproductions [at] lycos.com


Niche Homo
www.weirdoguise.co.uk


Hiroshima Yeah!
donbirnam [ay] hotmail.com