OFF: Circle, Pharaoh Overlord, Paul Chain

[Stephan Forstner]

>Yeah, Pori is great, and a good one to start for the uninitiated.  "Kartano"
>is a can't miss for Hawkwind fans.  (And the first half of Andexelt is also
>great.)  Zopalki is interesting to this of as 'cohesive,' 'cause I've never
>heard more contrast from one track to the next as I have between tracks 1
>and 2 on that album!  Of course, it's the best part!

Well, its very subjective I know, but to me some releases seem more like
'albums' and some seem more like 'collections of songs/musical pieces'.
Although the tracks on Zopalki cover a wide stylistic ground, they all seem
to come from the same spiritual/emotional/intellectual wellspring and end up
creating a complete picture - the contrast between tracks 1 and 2 that you
mention is an integral part of the experience of listening to the album, and
something would almost certainly be lost if you were to play the CD in
shuffle mode for example.
Pori also has great variation in its tracks, but again they all hang
together as a whole. On first listen I don't get that feeling from
Taantumus, it seems more like a group of (quite fine, even excellent)
individual pieces.

I'm sure a lot of people will disagree with this, but to take Hawkwind as an
example, I see all the UA releases as albums, while the Charisma releases
are mostly collections of songs, with the exception of Astounding which is
somewhere in between but closer to an album. I don't see an album as being
intrinsically superior to a collection, but I think it is more difficult to
create as the artist has to maintain a certain feeling across the entire
length of a work that may include many differnt kinds of pieces. Or I could
be full of crap, you decide.

To bore you with yet another example, I consider Ace of Spades to be an
album, as I discovered when I got the (otherwise excellent) Castle remaster
- they futzed with the track order to put the 'hit' Ace of Spades up first
and destroyed the 1-2 punch of Chase/Reptile. If AoS were just a collection
of great songs, you could pretty much play them in any order. Same thing
with Another Perfect Day, although there they may have had some
justification, as the painted tracklist on the back cover didn't tally with
the vinyl song order.

Sorry for the profuse verbiage.

> Oh, by the way, I just saw on the SubArachnoid site that they
>and Circle are also doing a split CD together soon.  My guess is that it'll
>be a joint Charnel/Ektro release.  Cool.

I've seen this news too, and that'll be something to look for.

>>Paul Chain - Signs from Space
>>Richard was plugging this earlier, and he is right: these guys really do
>>have the spirit, if not quite the chops, of '72 Hawkwind.
>
>I remember seeing this name awhile back...what label is it on?

Beard of Stars <www.vinylmagic3.it/beard> - get it (and Circle/Pharaoh
Overlord) from www.cranium.co.nz - hi Richard -is my payola in the mail?

On a related note, has anyone heard Ufomammut and/or Thumlock and want to
give their opinions?

Stephan