Agonie Stationnaire

the beats are amazing. great band.

Day n'Bay begins percussively, then breaks out into a lovely, slightly off-kilter synth noise. A voice over stands out for a few seconds, then the percussion is back with a vengeance. Then there is a lovely little synth solo, before the percussion and a rush comes back. It's a nice pattern in the end, and the switch half way through is tasty. Even get a percussive solo towards the end. Nice track with a chaotic reprise. Bumpy is a cute little adventure with beats and melody, good travelling companions.

Drops & Bombs lowers the tone a little, then lays down the track pronto. Takes a breath a minute in then back to the grindstone, nice and solid. Lovely gloopy synths takeover. Into some crazy fairground of noises and rhythms. With a change of tone, much more serious, towards the end. Like falling out the rollercoaster of music! Dust room starts with a desolate noise atmosphere, and turns into good tough techno, with some nice touches.

At Moe's Fear starts slowly without losing the hard edge, which eventually shows through and takes over the stage. It shares it well enough, good cop, bad cop... and there is some nice combination of rhythm and sound, sometimes delicate, sometimes much more robust. Corkscrew rises out of the depths at you, it sounds 'big', and whirls you around it's gargantuan structure. Nice track. Sounds like a cyborg invasion of earth.

Ufo crackles away and turns into a wicked onslaught of noise and rhythm, quite dark in feel. Aspire starts off and has a lovely ambience to it, from the start. Then it diversifies appropriately. This track feels lighter than Ufo but the shadows start to creep in again! Then it's the Next Level... percussive start, then after a brief pause it's boom boom time again!

Under The Sea, is heavier from the start. Pounding out the beat it loops madly as the percussion slips into place and the track really just continues from there, with some layers added here and there. Magma Ghost conjures up interesting images and starts with the distorted voice I'd expect, this starts madly seriously. A Magma Ghost would be quite a formidable entity so it needs music that suits the concept. I think it does the trick and I'm only a minute into it. This is a nicely balanced track, and I love that mad laughter. Three minutes in and things seem to be picking up pace a bit, still retaining that eerie feel. OK the beat structure is the same, but the interesting parts are what's built around it. The theme worked well here, I think.

Programme Pirate makes me think of rusty old ships on the boundaries of a nations' waterboard, Radio Caroline being the epitome for the English music listener. Again, it's more of the same stuff in its foundation but the divertissemente that makes it worth a listen. Soirée Télé is cyberpunkrock. Nice mix. My favourite track so far, it's really good. A good meeting of diverse sound sources but then it falls back on the boom box and I don't think this track needed that at all. It stood up for itself very well.

Never mind, I am in hard techno land, I have to remember. Next, is Sonic Loop with a slow, slightly staggering build up. Now here the beat fits it nicely. I would have enjoyed more of this style I think, unfortunately short tracks now though. Suspension starts with beautiful synth sounds and adds a decent drum beat. It has an eerie feel to it. Nice little experiment, that I think has a better sense of balance. I'm not a jack-hammer fan, but I can see some nice potential here to diversify and improvise.

Lastly, Press Forward, which again shows a dark, almost industrial side to this music. Overall, it's a good collection if you are into hard techno. Go for it!-)