VARIOUS ARTISTS
In Case of Motion Sickness
Peter I'm flying
OPIATE
While You Were Sleeping
Fusion III
ANGELIKA KOHLERMAN
Care
Tomlab
AGF
Head Slash Bausch
Orthlong Musork
Take a hole punch to a randomly selected page from a glossy magazine and scatter a layer of confetti across your desktop. Some of the resulting circles will be of a solid colour, some will contain fragemnts of text or pictures which, depending on the size of the original, may be half-recognizable or just abstract shapes. Now, with your finger, trace a few quick lines in the heap, imposing some sort of visual rhythm.
This, give or take a few blips, is the current state of European electronica: a synthetic pointillism that permeates all areas from trip-hop to techno, and absorbs traces of everything it touches. The French compilation, In Case of Motion Sickness, summarizes this quality neatly with 13 lovingly fragmented tracks from France, Germany, the U.K., Canada and Japan. Overall, it tends to a warm, quietly glowing sound, with glitches candy-coated rather than scratching. Gel, Shinsei and Anne Laplantine stand out, but there isn't a single weak contrbution in the lot.
A little darker but equally strong is Opiate's While You Were Sleeping, a recapitulation of three years of glitch and drone which, although it failed to make Thomas Knak a household name, did win him chief-collaborator status on Bjork's last outing, even if Matmos got all the publicity.
There are few women working at the forefront of contemporary electronica, and Angelika Kohlermann is three of them, having also recorded as Anne Laplantine and Michiko Kusaki. On Care, she abandons the mesmerizingly neurotic techno of her other incarnations and gets cuddly with gently ambient melodic snippets and sampled voices, culminating in "German Lesson," a very short love story about a man and his computer, complete with happy ending.
AGF is an experimental side project of Laub vocalist Antie Greie-Fuchs and an exclusive set of collaborators which includes Vadislav Delay and Craig Armstrong. Her 23 short pieces on Head Slash Bausch consist of technical manuals read over almost random beats and low level noise (she's German, of course) – it shouldn't amount to much, but somehow it does. One of the most interesting sketches for future pop in years.
IN CASE OF... 5/5
OPIATE 4/5
ANGELIKA KOHLERMAN 3/5
AGF 4/5
TIMOTHY HECK
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