Afterworkpopsongsforchildsoldiers v/a comp

4th World - Afterworkpopsongsforchildsoldiers
Zaetraom. Zaetraom  016. Cassette w/ A5 booklet
250 copies.



Once upon a time international tape comps used to be all the rage, I must have had one a week come though the door. Some of them were good, some of them were very good and some of them I still look upon with a fond sense of nostalgia. An international tape comp was your gateway to other worlds, they gave you an idea of what was happening out there in the big bad world of noisy racket. With a few IRC’s and a hand written letter you could make contact with a new discovery and soon become the recipient of new sounds. And so your musical world would expand. Then the internet came along and nothing was ever the same. 

‘Afterworkpopsongsforchildsoldiers’ isn’t a noise comp per se but it does give me the feeling of one: A5 colour booklet with a page devoted to each project, a dozen artists from all corners of the globe, slightly disturbing subject matter, in fact the only thing thats really missing is the contact page from where your musical world would slowly expand. The internet really has put paid to that particular ritual.

So we use the internet to search for Fred and Luna because this is what you do to find their online presence or maybe some youtube footage which is how I come across David E Williams who seems to be the most unlikeliest video star judging from his sulky walk around a summer garden with his black trench coat on. William’s songs are fraught affairs wrung from strangled guitars with strangled vocals. Because this isn’t an all out noise album or a PE album even if the words I keep writing down are ‘Industrial Ambience’.

Even that term doesn’t cover what Fred and Luna create, that being gentle Electrokraut with unabashed nods to Kraftwerk and Neu! Dogpop are angular minimal synth merchants, all austere like a moody D.A.F. Genevieve Pasquier, also from Germany, doesn't fit the bill either with her ethereal euro pop melodies. Which leaves me wondering why I kept writing down the words ‘Industrial Ambience’? Maybe it was the only UK contributor Salford Electronics with a suitably grim slice of urban rot or the intro’s and outro’s containing disturbing field recordings of riots and speeches in African tongues? You know where you are with Pain Nail, Grunt and Am Not though. Am Not contributing the most memorable track with a not too succinct PE dirge that sounds like it was delivered by the devil himself. Grunt is on top form as ever with a track that chips out in full on TNB style. Deathpanel also find themselves within the confines of the Power Electronics family. Ill are just ill, murky drones and muffled vocals.

A rare treat then and for such an eclectic comp there’s barely a dud minute. Somebody at Zaetraom has good ears.




zaetraom [at] t-online.de