Hello,
The year 2003 is now gone for good, and as the first Ad Noiseam release of 2004 (Lapsed's "Twilight") is coming soon, it might be accurate to look back at what last year brought for the label. 2003 was a busy year, with 12 releases, a long tour, and Ad Noiseam's second birthday.
Here is therefore an account, release by release, of how Ad Noiseam evolved in 2003, and what it brought up. Feel free to comment.
January 2003:
adn21 - Cdatakill "Paradise" 2CD
adn22 - Cdatakill "Paradisi" 12"
2003 began for Ad Noiseam with a big release, Cdatakill's double CD album "Paradise", which was a bridge on several accounts. First, it somehow offered two distinct kind of music with which Ad Noiseam had been dealing in the past: the hard rhythms of its first CD and the dark atmospheres of the second. Then, it also united over one release two separate audiences, coming from the breakcore and industrial sides of things (however inaccurate these terms may be), as the first discovered the labels through Cdatakill, and the later this act because of this release. Finally, Cdatakill's "Paradise" was also the first release on Ad Noiseam to come both on CD and vinyl, a format that will appear more often in 2004. A major release, which was well received and started off nicely the year 2003.
April 2003:
adn23 - A. Kiritchenko "Kniga Skazok" CD
adn24 - Uniform "Not a word" CD
adn25 - Tarmvred & Iszoloscope "Do America" CD
Three releases coincided with the tour which brought Tarmvred on the roads of the USA in April 2003. A very important event (and one of the longest tours of this kind ever done), this proved to be a definitive success. Moreover, the support shown by the audience during this tour is something which was important for both Ad Noiseam and Tarmvred, as it proved that people do actually care about this band and this label. Thank you once again to everybody who came, said hi, or danced.
The two other CDs released for this tour, by Andrey Kiritchenko and 2nd Gen's side project Uniform belonged to a clearly different music style. It seems to me that Ad Noiseam is not a label to focus on one sound only, and it was important to show that, whichever release brought you to this label, it is important to keep your ears open. Andrey Kiritchenko's delicate and sharp poetic electronica, as well as Uniform's abstract sound sculptures are not something to dance to, but, I hope, are recognized as albums that are extremely satisfying to listen to with your brain. As people tend to often listen to club oriented, or home oriented music only, it feels necessary to present to each other the other side of things.
June 2003:
adn26 - Detritus "Endogenous" CD
adn28 - Larvae "Monster Music" CD ep
Back to the beats. The June releases, as different as they may sound at first, were both something that combine the taste of new electronic music displayed with the previous release and a beaty, clubby approach, demonstrating that the two can come together. First, it was the first Detritus album, quite a long time in the making, which somehow crowded this UK act with a first CD album following a lot of activity in the fields of remixes and compilation tracks. Surprising to a lot of people, it combined soulful compositions and hard beats, and underlined something that will probably never been said enough: music to dance to does not necessarily have to insult your brain. This is what, in my opinion, Detritus demonstrated with this CD.
And the same thing can be said with Larvae's first CD on Ad Noiseam, the hard hitting but tongue-in-cheek take of this act at the Godzilla cult, the "Monster Music" CD ep. This little CD has a particular historym, as it is both the fist material I heard from Larvae and something that was not planned to be released on Ad Noiseam, but had been scheduled to be shelved. Making some dance and other head nod, it was, I think, a good way to discover Larvae, an act which got an even broader exposure with their remarkable and remarked later album, "Fashion Victim".
October 2003:
adn29 - Larvae "Fashion Victim" CD
adn30 - Magwheels / Stone Glass Steel "Pane" CD
adn31 - Cordell Klier "Winter" CD
adn32 - Tarmvred "Viva6581" CD ep
October was the month during which Ad Noiseam invaded the shelves of CD stores "en masse". With four releases, this was the most productive moment of the label's life so far. Starting with Larvae's first CD album, which is probably one of the most discussed and praised releases on the label (and one of the most varied and thoroughfully produced of its releases), as will be proved again with this act's tour in April 2004, and then going for new releases by acts who had all had something on Ad Noiseam already.
The teaming up of Magwheels (a project which I can not recommend enough, and which I think is still very underrated) with the industrial veteran of Stone Glass Steel was not something one would have thought to as obvious, till one is to think that Stone Glass Steel's Phil Easter had already worked on the mastering of Magwheels's previous album, "Evebuildingbomb", and has several times expressed his taste for emotional guitar based music. It was therefore him who did collaborate with Maghweels on this release, and not the expected suspects (Stars Of The Lid or some Godspeed avatars). And in a way, the result, a very lush and human album, was a good counterpoint to Cordell Klier's second album, "Winter", in which Cordell went even further in its travel through sharp clicks and bleeps. Still, it seems that the combination of these precise elements with more accessible soundscapes and structures somehow seduced people who had been scared by his uncompromising first album ("Apparitions"), and brought new fans to this very productive, talented and hectic musician.
Finally, people braced for impact as Tarmvred's "Viva 6581" CD ep, his first release in solo since 2001's "Subfusc" was released. Surprising people who have not followed Tarmvred's various activities and live shows, this highly playful and well written CD stired controversy, with some people being seemlingly unable to go beyond hard noise and "dark" tracks (received this CD ep quite badly), and some other embracing Tarmvred's statement that music is not necessary done to weep to (which could be an Ad Noiseam one too) and included "Viva6581" in many a "top 10 of 2003" list. With the whole rhythmic noise genre running in circle with a frightful ability not to sort good from bad, here is a release which was very important for Tarmvred and Ad Noiseam, in my opinion, as it brought smiles and colour to a genre that desperatelly needs both.
December 2003:
adn33 - Crno Klank "Etat des lieux" CD
The December release batch consisted only of one release, the incisive and thick "Etat des lieux", first CD by the oldest project of the iconoclast and genre-crossing C-Drik. Enough noise to wreck your speakers and enough rhythms to make you shake your body, "Etat des lieux" (incidentally also the first release by a french speaking artist on Ad Noiseam) is a CD that, I think, brought back the noise in Ad Noiseam. An album which might be more accessible for people who like their music saturated and noisy, "Etat des lieux" is a remarkable album in the sense that, without embracing any of the newer genres that C-Drik has worked on lately (from ambient to hard breaks), it combines a bit of everything in a truely "industrial" sense, and all of this with an album that doesn't comply itself in cliches and which, in my opinion, brings something genuinely fresh to this sound.
So, 2003 was a busy year and a varied year. We got people head nod to heavy bass, dream of electronic fairytales, shakes their feet to staccato rhythms and 8 bit sounds, explore clicky and noisy environnement. What about 2004? Well, we'll see. It's all going to being with Lapsed's debut album, then with a tour (Larvae touring the USA) and two other CDs (by Wilt and Horchata). Then? Well, I can't tell yet, but a lot of very nice things are coming. Ok, in short, the three next releases:
adn34 - Lapsed "Twilight" CD
adn35 - Wilt "As giants watch over us" CD
adn36 - Horchata "Basiida" CD
Best regards and thank you to everybody for your support,
Nicolas
The year 2003 is now gone for good, and as the first Ad Noiseam release of 2004 (Lapsed's "Twilight") is coming soon, it might be accurate to look back at what last year brought for the label. 2003 was a busy year, with 12 releases, a long tour, and Ad Noiseam's second birthday.
Here is therefore an account, release by release, of how Ad Noiseam evolved in 2003, and what it brought up. Feel free to comment.
January 2003:
adn21 - Cdatakill "Paradise" 2CD
adn22 - Cdatakill "Paradisi" 12"
2003 began for Ad Noiseam with a big release, Cdatakill's double CD album "Paradise", which was a bridge on several accounts. First, it somehow offered two distinct kind of music with which Ad Noiseam had been dealing in the past: the hard rhythms of its first CD and the dark atmospheres of the second. Then, it also united over one release two separate audiences, coming from the breakcore and industrial sides of things (however inaccurate these terms may be), as the first discovered the labels through Cdatakill, and the later this act because of this release. Finally, Cdatakill's "Paradise" was also the first release on Ad Noiseam to come both on CD and vinyl, a format that will appear more often in 2004. A major release, which was well received and started off nicely the year 2003.
April 2003:
adn23 - A. Kiritchenko "Kniga Skazok" CD
adn24 - Uniform "Not a word" CD
adn25 - Tarmvred & Iszoloscope "Do America" CD
Three releases coincided with the tour which brought Tarmvred on the roads of the USA in April 2003. A very important event (and one of the longest tours of this kind ever done), this proved to be a definitive success. Moreover, the support shown by the audience during this tour is something which was important for both Ad Noiseam and Tarmvred, as it proved that people do actually care about this band and this label. Thank you once again to everybody who came, said hi, or danced.
The two other CDs released for this tour, by Andrey Kiritchenko and 2nd Gen's side project Uniform belonged to a clearly different music style. It seems to me that Ad Noiseam is not a label to focus on one sound only, and it was important to show that, whichever release brought you to this label, it is important to keep your ears open. Andrey Kiritchenko's delicate and sharp poetic electronica, as well as Uniform's abstract sound sculptures are not something to dance to, but, I hope, are recognized as albums that are extremely satisfying to listen to with your brain. As people tend to often listen to club oriented, or home oriented music only, it feels necessary to present to each other the other side of things.
June 2003:
adn26 - Detritus "Endogenous" CD
adn28 - Larvae "Monster Music" CD ep
Back to the beats. The June releases, as different as they may sound at first, were both something that combine the taste of new electronic music displayed with the previous release and a beaty, clubby approach, demonstrating that the two can come together. First, it was the first Detritus album, quite a long time in the making, which somehow crowded this UK act with a first CD album following a lot of activity in the fields of remixes and compilation tracks. Surprising to a lot of people, it combined soulful compositions and hard beats, and underlined something that will probably never been said enough: music to dance to does not necessarily have to insult your brain. This is what, in my opinion, Detritus demonstrated with this CD.
And the same thing can be said with Larvae's first CD on Ad Noiseam, the hard hitting but tongue-in-cheek take of this act at the Godzilla cult, the "Monster Music" CD ep. This little CD has a particular historym, as it is both the fist material I heard from Larvae and something that was not planned to be released on Ad Noiseam, but had been scheduled to be shelved. Making some dance and other head nod, it was, I think, a good way to discover Larvae, an act which got an even broader exposure with their remarkable and remarked later album, "Fashion Victim".
October 2003:
adn29 - Larvae "Fashion Victim" CD
adn30 - Magwheels / Stone Glass Steel "Pane" CD
adn31 - Cordell Klier "Winter" CD
adn32 - Tarmvred "Viva6581" CD ep
October was the month during which Ad Noiseam invaded the shelves of CD stores "en masse". With four releases, this was the most productive moment of the label's life so far. Starting with Larvae's first CD album, which is probably one of the most discussed and praised releases on the label (and one of the most varied and thoroughfully produced of its releases), as will be proved again with this act's tour in April 2004, and then going for new releases by acts who had all had something on Ad Noiseam already.
The teaming up of Magwheels (a project which I can not recommend enough, and which I think is still very underrated) with the industrial veteran of Stone Glass Steel was not something one would have thought to as obvious, till one is to think that Stone Glass Steel's Phil Easter had already worked on the mastering of Magwheels's previous album, "Evebuildingbomb", and has several times expressed his taste for emotional guitar based music. It was therefore him who did collaborate with Maghweels on this release, and not the expected suspects (Stars Of The Lid or some Godspeed avatars). And in a way, the result, a very lush and human album, was a good counterpoint to Cordell Klier's second album, "Winter", in which Cordell went even further in its travel through sharp clicks and bleeps. Still, it seems that the combination of these precise elements with more accessible soundscapes and structures somehow seduced people who had been scared by his uncompromising first album ("Apparitions"), and brought new fans to this very productive, talented and hectic musician.
Finally, people braced for impact as Tarmvred's "Viva 6581" CD ep, his first release in solo since 2001's "Subfusc" was released. Surprising people who have not followed Tarmvred's various activities and live shows, this highly playful and well written CD stired controversy, with some people being seemlingly unable to go beyond hard noise and "dark" tracks (received this CD ep quite badly), and some other embracing Tarmvred's statement that music is not necessary done to weep to (which could be an Ad Noiseam one too) and included "Viva6581" in many a "top 10 of 2003" list. With the whole rhythmic noise genre running in circle with a frightful ability not to sort good from bad, here is a release which was very important for Tarmvred and Ad Noiseam, in my opinion, as it brought smiles and colour to a genre that desperatelly needs both.
December 2003:
adn33 - Crno Klank "Etat des lieux" CD
The December release batch consisted only of one release, the incisive and thick "Etat des lieux", first CD by the oldest project of the iconoclast and genre-crossing C-Drik. Enough noise to wreck your speakers and enough rhythms to make you shake your body, "Etat des lieux" (incidentally also the first release by a french speaking artist on Ad Noiseam) is a CD that, I think, brought back the noise in Ad Noiseam. An album which might be more accessible for people who like their music saturated and noisy, "Etat des lieux" is a remarkable album in the sense that, without embracing any of the newer genres that C-Drik has worked on lately (from ambient to hard breaks), it combines a bit of everything in a truely "industrial" sense, and all of this with an album that doesn't comply itself in cliches and which, in my opinion, brings something genuinely fresh to this sound.
So, 2003 was a busy year and a varied year. We got people head nod to heavy bass, dream of electronic fairytales, shakes their feet to staccato rhythms and 8 bit sounds, explore clicky and noisy environnement. What about 2004? Well, we'll see. It's all going to being with Lapsed's debut album, then with a tour (Larvae touring the USA) and two other CDs (by Wilt and Horchata). Then? Well, I can't tell yet, but a lot of very nice things are coming. Ok, in short, the three next releases:
adn34 - Lapsed "Twilight" CD
adn35 - Wilt "As giants watch over us" CD
adn36 - Horchata "Basiida" CD
Best regards and thank you to everybody for your support,
Nicolas
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