Various - No Sell Out ('Cause No-One's Buying) flac album

Side One opens play with "Groovey Day" by SYMBOLIKS - an interesting piece which is basically a cross between EBM, lndie-Pop, Hip-Hop & a more severe, experimental sound with feedback warped guitar & all manner of odd noises. Especially strange is the vocalist who gives a performance which might have been assisted by samplers & electronics - and then again... CHEMICAL PLANT bring us "Eighth Commandment" - a fast-drumming dirty noise which brings to mind TEST DEPT circa the "Beating The Retreat" album's thrash.out. Combined with thin battering drumbeat is a selection of massed noises, fit in dense shapes within the relentless framework. "Ordalia" by CRONIAMENTAL comes next - familiar to me - the entire album was reviewed in SOFT WATCH #2 - a bright studio piece, full of electronic strangeness, yet with a heavy Ethnic influence, mainly through the fast, frantic percussive sequence central to the piece. Its a quick-paced Eastern dance ritual yet seems to have been composed in a laboratory or some sterile environment. HEADBUTT bring us "Situation Report", a combination of old movie soundtracks, distant pattering drums & dirty-white noise blasts. It's a strange, compelling hybrid of images. echoing in an almost hypnotic structure. It grows, changes, becomes a heavy mass of sounds, a throbbing factory of twisted images. My own "Study For Risus Sardonicus No.2" (under the working title of ANTONYM) is very different from the single, for which it was an early study. Influences were RILEY, STOCKHAUSEN & VARESE, although this is altogether weirder & often more structured in a formal way - snatches of gated tape mix with treated drun machine into a structured anti-rhythm. RAMZALLAH bring us "Now I See It All" - combining found voice loops with fade-in electronics & echoed chugs, all surrounded by a filigree wire drum pattern. Chanting vocals combine in this intriguing, passive rhythmic track - it's both listenable & smoothly relaxing. "blygd" by factor X closes side one, showing advancement from his earlier work - a very professional-sounding piece which combines an awkward battering rhythmic sculpture with haunting backing vocals while the lead vox sound a little like MATT JOHNSON during his primal, more experimental days - very probably the most strange & compelling track on the whole album - a song, but sung in such a bizarre way as to be a classic.. . maybe? Side two kicks off with "Waha" by THE VENUS HANDSHAKE is a fast, thick monster of a piece - built mainly on pounding drums with distant shouted vocals in the background. It's a bludgeoning onslaught & impulsively likeable. "Sometimes" by factor X is a very strange piece built on strumming guitar, distant drum & a weirdo voice added, all dwelling in an overall warped atmosphere. "Trash Edit" by RAMZALLAH comes next - another strange piece which seems to consist in equal parts of concrete wizardry & sampled noise, all combined into a thoroughly interesting noise/music collage which holds the listener transfixed by it's ever-changing images. It has a certain rhythmic logic which it sustains - quite clever, when you hear what's involved. OPERATION MIND CONTROL give us "Boulder" which opens on scratchy, sustained feedback before becoming a huge, massive drum & distorted noise onslaught - somehow defying any form of tune, while filling the drum-framework to overflowing - a chaotic killer of a track. Next up is "VHO" by CRONIAMENTAL - an interesting electronic-and-atmosphere rhythmic piece - a ritualistic dance track from Cyberspace Jungles. 30 seconds of this were featured on the SOFT WATCH #2 sampler cassette - if you've got a copy, judge it for yourselves. SOMEWHERE IN EUROPE bring us the 'Canine Mix' of their track "Black Lodge" - a wall of fuzzed guitar held in constant tempo - dogs bark in the distance & sharp Selling-You-Something voices talk in the background. A noisy, distorted little thrash-out from this group who like to spring surprises. Finally THRONUS give us an "Excerpt From Insanity Seethes" - harsh electronics combining with massed short-wave radio to create a bubbling soup of chaotic sound, Joining this come various loops, cut-ups & bursts of sound, all combining into a gradually mutating semi-structured piece of rumbling, screeching, rolling sounds. All in all an interesting compilation with several well-known names on it. There's certainly some valuable experimentation here, as well as some rather odd compositions.Originally reviewed for Soft Watch.