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Perhaps I should be more familliarized but up to now Needle Sharing has represented little more than a tool for Usenet name droppers since getting their discs is an expensive cross-border proposition which has little incentive for me considering the volume of terribly addictive material such as the disc in question which I receive for review already. Tarmvred's recent Ad Noiseam full length however has burned through several laser diodes of mine and other compilation and EP appearances have been equally respectable for the most part. Panacea was laying the boots to eardrums around the time I first heard Alec Empire, the similar amounts of ferocity between them making "Low Profile Darkness" a top fave of mine which has survived countless spins. Since then the breakaway pants sporting German fellow has fallen out of personal favour due to some head shakingly silly ESL rapping embarassements that while no where near as unbearable as el crapola like Pop Will Eat Itself, still deserve a huge helping of ridicule by Beavis and Butthead. When cooler heads keep him away from the microphone though he still can demonstrate some mad skillz and in this particular venture he has at least temporarily redeemed himself.

The disc itself contains 9 tracks evenly split between the participants and containing a total of 57 minutes of material. The methodology used was apparently pretty straight forward sample trading though whether this was via complete Cubase projects, plain jane WAV files, minidisc recordings or answering machine messages I have no idea. Being familliar with both Tarmvred and Panacea makes this disc oddly surprising in that most of the times I have a given track pegged it turns out that I am instead making my ass into a blowhole, like totally wrong. I had Panacea blamed for "rasta bash" (actually Needle Sharing), "faggot house" nailed down to Tarmvred (Panacea) and I just had to give up on the slot ramming after a bit since these folks are skilled enough to be fucking chameleons.

The festivities spin up with a tech steppy bit of car commercial material from Needle Sharing that should have both Volkswagen and BMW throwing filthy wads of cash and not so idle threats around to get their greedy hands on it. Female vocals evaporating off of undulating eye level pads and sharpened thwack percussion makes me enjoy this piece far more than I like to admit. Panacea steps off the "Mothership 2" next, dragging Tarmvred sounding constructions through a rigidly compartamentalized reverb chamber situated under the animal testing lab of an unnamed university. Tarmvred comes up with a Tertium Non Data scented bit of heart wrenching, like 10 John Carpenterss duelling with 2 second bursts of Chinese New Year. Back to Panacea for the sports fan pleasing title "faggot house", sample and hold chord arpeggiators drenched in reverb and up-tempo techno beats fighting for air in the metallic Tarmvred seeming environment. "Rasta Bash" is my least favourite track but that's just cause I kind of have a stick up my ass about this type of vocal sample CDs - I kinda doubt that anyone in Needle Sharing is a jolly black Jamacian fellow and when white European guys use rap stabs from East n West I feel like I am being drowned in stinky cheese. The track has excellent production, is actually kinda fun (excellent use of sirens, which are normally as out of bounds as breaking glass) but blows away if you so much as fart being the fluff that it is. "primitive germanic" is another tasty concoction from Tarmvred, the fingerprints quite recognizable on the solemn yet moving suicide note. Needle Sharing push their way in again, sounding like escapees from Frozen Empire Media to my ears, ratta tatta click snares and swooshing thump kicks picking up some slight ravish synth lines while gaining speed along the rails. More techno, just slow enough to side tech-step gabber but head strong none the less, is offered up by Panacea in the form of "kill the processors". The track again pours on the reverb but with less of an overt face wash leaving the more complex overlays intact, resulting in more momentum and a fair amount of automatonic limb flailing. The final piece is from Tarmvred and wavers between crunchy ambience and tautly vibrating heart strings, the warm swells finally crashing over the listener leaving resonant riffing and pounding percussion to fight over the fading after image.

By the time the disc spins down I'm left feeling like I have listened to hours of random play, the multiple personalities here intertwined just enough to maintain a feeling of similarity but the teritorial range wide enough to misleadingly roll over the odometer. Even the track I thumbed my nose at I secretly like and taken as a whole this disc is definitely waaaaaaay more quality than the last two Panacea albums combined. Placing the psychology of Tarmvred into the hands of the stout German fellow was a wise choice and adding Needle Sharing to the mix seems to have been the perfection of the prescription. Another great disc from Ad Noiseam (leave something cool to release for everyone else already).

posted by: moron on 2002-02-26 18:38:03
view: other review entries posted by moron