From: doom@elaine6.Stanford.EDU (Joseph Brenner)
Subject: The Belladonna way of life 
Organization: DSG, Stanford University
Distribution: rec
Date: 29 Aug 92 17:22:58


Last Wednesday night I sat down in front of a NeXt machine,
with a walkman tuned to Beladonna on KFJC (89.7 FM, here
around the south end of the SF bay), and this is what
happened:

_X10_, "the beast": some classic industrial.  

New from _Schnitwacht_ (sp?)  Okay.  Suprisingly far in the
direction of mellow, though not quite all the way.

_Sterotaxic Device_: Eerie gothicesque ambient.  A bit
Fripper(eno?)tronic.

Brand new stuff from _Out, Out_: A bit hard to classify.
Sort of acid-housey. Indust dance, w/some edge... a tad
overproduced? Trite sexual lyrics like "each time it gets
better..."

_Porgaisiza_.  _Forgaisia_?  _Vorgazia_, maybe?  The song
is: "Rumors Space". A Boris Karloff voice, slightly
demented, a slow melody (with bongo sounds in the
background?).  "They found found him dead/with a smashed
head."  Dirgy.

Live _Christian Death_: "Iron Mask": Some sort of modern rock
retread.  Sounds okay, maybe an improvement on the original
mix, but who cares?

New from _Hunting Lodge_: Tap tap clunk of drum sticks,
flying saucer effects, windstorms, distant screams.  Muffled
pounding on the door.  A pleasant cacophony.  

_Einstzengen Neubauten_ (all right, so SP?!): Breaking glass,
hints of dead TV screen static, cutting in and out,
switching between the two, incomprehensible babble like a
bubbling fishtank, a sudden interruption, silence, and a
hushed voice in German.  Later: "Ich bin war Hamlet."  The
German voices alternate with noises, fading in and out
quickly.  Atonal and arhytmic.  Interesting, though a bit
overplayed...  "Kind of a performace thing", Beladonna says,
but I'm hearing it, not seeing it.

"the one and only" _Delirium_ -- Droning, slow, ambient
industrial.  

_Dive_ off the "Object 5" Compilation.  "ddDDivvee." slow
motion, slowed down, distored voice.  A single deep tone,
repeated endlessly, sounding like some cheesy submarine
movie music, only deeper, stranger.  Some other faint
string-like sounds join in.  An indistinguishable,
repetitious voice comes in, still deep in the background.
The foreground is just that throbbing monotonous "Dive!"
sound, though the tonality shifts slowly, other noises,
other little bits of music fade in and out, some structure
appears in the pattern of reprisals...  Good stuff, though
you gotta be in the mood.

_Grotus_: Some most annoying staticy sounds, with wailing
Indian voices, calms down into another repetitious
thundering basenote, but with less distortion, and a more
conventional connection to the background melodies and
rhtyms (far back there, a sound like bongos?) shifting
tonalities in the base note, other faster rhythms come in,
and then the vocals "push down at the root, slipping from
somewhere"... 

_Force Incorporated_: some midnight techno, a bit harsher
than rave music, though (Ooh! that high "beeeeep!" it kicks
off with could kill you).  Kind of annoying, but it works.

"Down!" "Down!" "Down!"  Really good, harder edged
technoindustrialhousewhatever.  I *think* this is: _Bazz_:
"House of Pak".

_My Dying Bride_ Song:"Silent Dance" Drawn out, almost
traditional Dramatic movie music... Call it okay, at least.

New stuff from _In The Nursery_: Nice vocals, probably
french, a woman singing in a hushed voice. Dirge like music
also seems movieish, but it plays it straight, it's not a
satire like the _My Dying Bride_ cut was.

_Cyclops Joint_, of off the Manifest Destiny (vol II)
compilation: Nice germanesque grumbling, scifi sounds like
the star trek elevator, "I heard him--", "Insane", "Slit his
wrists", "She came an angel/sucking on his fist".  The voice
quavers from left track to right.  Could this be *live*
drums here?!  "Not I.  Not I!"

"Animals of Sound" by _Cluck DVA_: "Performance perfect is
perfect performance" A female voice over a PA in a nightmare
factory of the future, murky sounds like huge tubes of
plastic banging into each other, and resonating as the
cranes carry them throughout the night.  Long drifting
resonant notes, oboe like?  Brilliant.  A really sinister
little ambient, but not without it's soothing qualities.

New "Liceia?" "Leisha?": Montonous base strumming, sawing
through the base of the tree of life.. Or just twigging the
branches?  More synthetic organ notes, slow, melodic
compared to the strumming.  An unusually short piece.  

_Terminal Power Company_, "the hunger the heat": Traditional
funky dance rhythm.  Weird for Belladona.  What is this?
Lyrics "Caught in a trap/No way back/Their firing the gate/
My ordered state/ the midnight life/ the rising sun/the
hunger the hate/ out they come/ the hunger in here/ that
keeps me alive/ the hate in here/ that lets me survive"

Four in a row by _SkinnyPuppy_, "Pupmeister":

(1) Just another industrial track.

(2) Now this one is cool.  Sort of like movie sneaking
around music, "the pink panther", but *not* cute.  Some neat
voices just making noises, just part of the melody.

(3) At first it's just another industrial track. "you cover
my head", "are you in my head, or only in my body" then it
cuts in: "too late/the stench/inside/inside", "lies/arise",
"decide/which side"... more like free association than
poetry.  But "...smile/your social style" that's not a bad
rhyme there.

(4) Dirgy ambient. Minimal.  Little to distinguish it.  

_Switchblade Symphony_, "Chain": Nice female vocals,
comprehensible in places "You are wicked..."  
 
_Diatribe_, "Therapy": "you're young, you don't know" Deep drums. Like
sinister native music from a bad tarzan movie.  Pretty cool.
But then it's just the usual horse screaming, could be NIN
or anything...  But it's still good. "You can never show
your face out on the streets again.", "....in every worst
case scenario.", "Lies. You can never do it without any
violence/Sex. You can put aside the damage because it's
permanent."

And Beladdona finishes up with _Nurse with wound_: The
humming of an electric motor.  Sounds like pneumatic valves
closing.  Then just the hum, for longer than you expect.
Suddenly: *meep* *meep* *meep* over and over again, then a
high pitched buzzing noise, and the trite, over-used 60s
movie computer sound effect.  Beep beep boop type stuff.  Or
is it just a xylophone? And then it all crashes.  Except the
*meeps*.  Other noises come in, and all the oscillations
actually become _music_.  Interesting, but an oddly distant
intellectual piece, no visceral snarl to it at all... 












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