Template:MyMusiki Documentation

Label: Comatonse

Produced By: Various, exec. Produced by Terre Thaemlitz

Download Link: From The Comatonse Website

Tracklisting:
 * 1) Unknown -  10 Years Of Amazing Demo Tapes
 * 2) Riverside 50/50 - Form and Trauma
 * 3) David Pescovitz - The Lonely Man Theme
 * 4) Christopher Penrose - Sympathy for a Chump
 * 5) Echelon/Jane Dowe - Robot Love I Love You
 * 6) Kuro Pipe - Bob Foxy/Midnight Sexy
 * 7) Yesterday's Heroes (a.k.a. Haco & Terre Thaemlitz) - Up'n'Down (Pogo-a-Gogo)
 * 8) Erik Dahl - A.D.D. Dance
 * 9) Simon Fisher Turner - Harrodspianos (T.T.'s Edit)
 * 10) Screech - Rain
 * 11) Brad Garton - Southside Silence
 * 12) Terre Loves Robin (a.k.a. Scanner & Terre Thaemlitz) - Terre Loves Robin
 * 13) Ralph Thaemlitz - Lincoln and Liberty
 * 14) Ultra-red - N30
 * 15) Takashi Kojima - Texts was Subscribed (T.T.'s Edit)
 * 16) Geri Thaemlitz - A Beautiful Rose Waltz
 * 17) You Speak What I Feel (a.k.a. SND & Terre Thaemlitz) - Singles Collection (Remixed by SND)

Review: Terre Thaemlitz has got his own label and has had it for over 10 years, and for the anniversary, he compiled Below Code. The original release was a CD in a DVD case filled with postcards for each song; it was a limited edition of 250 given away for free. For those of us who missed that, though, he put up the complete contents (plus a bonus track) available for free download. (Just use the arrow buttons at the top to navigate through.)

It's a pretty cool compilation. Not all of it is great, but most of it is pretty cool. "10 Years Of Amazing Demo Tapes" is basically what it sounds like -- a razor-tape of various demos. "Form and Trauma" is an off-kilter rock song -- the vocals aren't really that great, but it is pretty cool. "Bob Foxy/Midnight Sexy" is sort of similar to this vein.

Family Guy fans will probably recognize "The Lonely Man Theme" as a cover of the "sad, walking away" music from The Incredible Hulk -- it actually opens with a sample of Lou Ferrigno congratulating Comatonse on the anniversary. There're some more piano based compositions, like "A.D.D. Dance" (a really awesome avant-classical piano song with a drum machine), "Harrodspianos", which starts like a standard piano composition that gets processed in cool ways

There're quite a few noisy tracks on here -- quite a bit reminded me of Otomo Yoshihide's more electronic-noisy stuff; like "Sympathy for a Chump" (vaguely-rhythmic static that goes into a computer voice speaking), "Southside Silence" (modified/processed ambient-noise recordings), "Texts was Subscribed" and " Terre Loves Robin".

Since most of this compilation is pretty much in the noise genre, there's quite a bit of found recording type things: "Robot Love I Love You" is a small child singing a song (the lyrics are basically the title) that intially threatens to be kind of cutesy and annoying (a la Negativland's "Clowns & Ballerinas" and "Over The Hiccups" from A Big 10-8 Place and  Escape From Noise respectively), but then the recording is cut-up and processed and is actually really cool. I'm assuming that Ralph Thaemlitz and Geri Thamelitz are Terre Thaemlitz' parents or otherwise family members -- Ralph sings a short, phoned-in song about Lincoln and Geri plays a nice accordion song -- I'm not sure if the latter was recorded for this compilation ("Lincoln and Liberty" obviously was), but both have a "found family cassette" type sound to them, and they're surprisingly cool. And, "N30" is 10 minutes of field recordings from the Seattle WTO protests -- it's not something I'd want to listen to much as there hasn't been much (if any) processing, but it is still kind of interesting -- it doesn't really get boring.

Three of my favorite tracks are actually really poppy (and two of the three are by Terre, which makes me want to check out his non-Rubato CDs):

"Up'n'Down (Pogo-a-Gogo)" by Yesterday's Heroes (a project between Terre and Haco) is really, really cool -- it's sort of an art-dance track; very little in the way of different lyrics and pretty minimalist, really, but really keen. I want to get the full Yesterday's Heroes album.

In a more straight electronica feel, "Singles Collection (Remixed by SND)" by You Speak What I Feel (Terre & SND -- couldn't find any more information on SND, though) is really cool. I don't think this is available anywhere else, either, actually. I'd like to hear the non-remixed version, too; this one is really cool, though.

"Rain" by Screech is sort of a world-pop kind of thing; cool percussion in it. Screech released some stuff through Hippocamp, which also put out Hippocamp Ruins Pet Sounds (though Screech didn't appear on that comp.).

Anyway, though -- it's a pretty cool compilation, and it's free! So, hey, what more could you ask for? - Rev. Syung Myung Me