Drone Records

ANAKRID - UnoDos

Format: do-CD

Label & Cat.Number: Beta-Lactam Ring Records mt154 / Black Series negro 31

Release Year: 2007

Note: lim. / numb. / signed 400 copies with original piece of art by the band; compiles the deleted self-released LPs

Price (incl. 19% VAT): €15.00

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".... 'Father', the first CD is a nineteen track affair, which brings out the collage man. Bicker has all sorts of sounds (percussion, cheap old tapes, microphones) which he throws together in what seems to be an audio-blender (no, don't look on the internet for this lovely device, I made up the word): sampling his stuff together, adding more electronics in what becomes a wild, hot brew of sound. The influence of Nurse With Wound is never far away in this work. It's wild, even industrial at times, but the musical element is never lost. The second CD in this package is 'Rapture Of The Deep', which takes the material into a different direction. Things happen here in a much more peaceful manner. No wild collages, longer tracks and in general a more electronic approach. It seems as if sound is captured inside an electronic system, locked in rather and from there on things start to live their own life, in that closed system. Here no real Nurse With Wound influence, but rather that of the academics of the fifties and sixties, the era of serious composed electronic music, although Anakrid is not as rigid as the old masters. His form is more free, aiming for dark effects and sounding like a good horror soundtrack. Two different sides of the music of Anakrid, now that's what I call a successful double CD package." " [FdW / Vital Weekly]

"UnoDos (Father/Rapture of the Deep) Edition of 400 numbered and signed copies each with an original piece of art by Anakrid. A 2CD set compiling the self released LPs. "Anakrid is the experimental outlet of Chris Bickel (the raconteur behind In/Humanity, one of the greatest groups of hardcore agitators of the 90s, and its follow-up, Guyana Punch Line). Here he applies the smashist manifesto against atavistic darkness of the pre-laptop variety, evoking an affected take on Nurse With Wound and their contemporaries aether in more than a few ways. This comparison is particularly apt on "Father", recorded with what sounds like a home full of disused instruments, second-hand sound sculpture, and the ideas found on countless cassette-only xpr releases of the 80s, returning to roost on the mostly empty temple of No Fun style extremity. Its balanced, rhythmically primal, fairly engaging head music that leverages the occasional reheating of landmark ideas with a refreshing purity of craft wholly missing from the current noise landscape. Rapture of the Deep subtracts the percussive elements, leaving the listener floating in a sea of blue-black death ambience, without any pre-determined boundaries. Song titles and the cover painting of a woman drowning all but spell it out for you, so Ill spare any further nautical/asphyxiatory metaphors and just inform you that this work leans toward the sedimentary, eternal evil type of drone once practiced by Coil than that airy, Stars of the Lid style; its more granular and by side two becomes quite terrifying. Its eerie, tribal, almost polyrhythmic yet not improvisational in the least. Bickel doesnt view his music as an excuse to wank off. It is deliberately composed. He eschews the use of conventional instrumentation, preferring found sounds, home-made instruments and pretty much anything that "makes a sound that can be sculpted and manipulated". I hear the abstract surrealism of Nurse with Wound or Current 93 in the creepy, industrial soundscapes, but theres certainly a thread of Stockhausens electronic period, though its not nearly as mathematical." [press release]

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