Otto Matta

Come on, reger. Are you serious? I mean that I've said Shpongle sucks so many times that it has surely become tiresome and annoying. I don't think Shpongle sucks. I just think it generally lacks substance, with one or two exceptions.

Yeah, I saw it first-hand, for several days, at Sonica.

Not quite. I admire his restraint. One can only say Shpongle sucks so many times before it loses its bite.

Come on, dude. This is pure, raw, Korean, indie, punk trance. It's cool if you look at it from a certain direction.

Dammit, did I say spongebaths? What's wrong with me? What I meant to say was I've really come to love my new bead curtains. Glass beads. Make a tinkling sound when you walk through them. High chi factor. Sorry for the misunderstanding. But yeah, Shpongle sucks.

Oh crap, did I really say "Shpongle"? I meant I've really begun to love spongebaths. So relaxing. Especially with an icy drink and good music playing in the background. No, Shpongle still sucks. Always will.

Alter Ego - Transphormer

Charlie, you'll be happy to know that since yesterday I've begun to really love Shpongle.

And I love popping and sucking acne.

I had all the FSOL albums up until The Isness, including all the maxi-singles. I actually still have one, which is We Have Explosive, a track I still kind of like. The last one to go was Lifeforms, about a year ago. And at one point I probably had about 4 or 5 Orb albums. I still have all my old Orbital albums. No accounting for taste. There's just sooooooo much more, better stuff than FSOL out there if one puts in the effort.

Or perhaps we could write in bleeps and swishes?

I'm lukewarm about FSOL/AA, too. It was fun for a few months way back when, but it got old. To me their contemporaries - Orbital - were better, so I listened to them instead. Until they went the club/pop direction, of course. Still, I would trade my whole collection of FSOL and Orb CDs (if I still had them) for In Sides.

I didn't intend my comment to be negative. I actually like his music, but in very small doses because there's just so much activity in it and I don't like having to pay THAT much attention to music for any length of time. I'd say the most negative thing I can say about his album is that it never actually gets into a groove (a trance), but then again it seems most psytrance these days is made to overwhelm and astound with wall-to-wall, wacked-out sound rather than entrance with a solid groove and some catchy melodies like it was in the beginning (goa).

NHJO fuckin' way! Must be a NHJOke. Kidding. Way to go, NHJO!

Never been a big Orb fan, but I remember enjoying Orbvs Terrarvm more than the other stuff.

Oooo, I've got a good one: The guitar part in S.U.N. Project's Dance of the Witches compared to Juno Reactor's Hotaka. VERY similar. And the former was out long before the latter.

Murcof - Ulysses

Damn, some good CDs in there.

It's interesting how that works, isn't it? My order of likes is directly related to the order in which I heard the albums. I noticed this trend again yesterday when I was comparing the original Mahadeva to the later version on Another World. Although the original is great, I think I like the later one better, most likely since it was the first one I heard. Doesn't always work this way, but it usually does.

I also forgot: Medicine Drum They led off for Juno Reactor in Chicago in 2002 or so. They were great. Lots of live performance and great sound.

1. IFO 2. FOL 3. Equator 4. Alien Protein 5. Nitrox 6. Chrome

Yeah, Ott was fun, and seemed to be having a very good time.

That reminds me: Pan American was also a great live act. He played all sorts of instruments and futuristic noise-making gadgets, including stuff he clearly made himself. Well Kevin Drumm actually opened for them, and it was the nastiest, noisiest crap I've ever heard. I've never witnessed so many people wishing the performer would just leave, or die. So it didn't set a good mood for Autechre and their own brand of what, for me, has become noise.

Yeah, it's good if you like an overdose of the psychedelics, shit flying around all over the place.

In electronic veins: Best: Squarepusher, Broadcast and TRS-80 Worst: The Crystal Method, Autechre, Kevin Drumm (oh shit, that was horrible)