Smooth liquid
05/22/2000
(4 out of 5 stars)
"mellow.... ambient.... seamless.... beautiful. A splash of Goldie, FSoL and Deep Forest - give it a quick stir. Add Mick Karn's distinctive bass playing. Et Voila! This is gorgeous. Buy it!"
Permutation identification
Rare Prog | La Mesa, CA USA | 08/29/1999
(5 out of 5 stars)
"Fans of Amon Tobin's "Permutation" will recognize the identical musical context. Mick Karn's playing is distinctive as always, but the project overall is the twin sister of Tobin's jewel. Yeah!If you like this, try Mick Karn's "Bestial Cluster." Guests on that album include David Torn, Ed Mann (of Zappa), and Joachim Kuhn."
Interesting but ultimately a bit too disjoint.
Michael Stack | North Chelmsford, MA USA | 04/12/2005
(3 out of 5 stars)
"This album is essentially a Yoshihiro Hanno record heavily featuring Mick Karn-- I'm not entirely familiar with Hanno's work, but my understanding is that he's some sort of avant-garde drum-n-bass/electronica type, and it shows pretty well on this album. Karn, master fretless bassist, sounds a bit out of his element at times, but when he succeeds, the results are magical.
Conceptually, this was a sort of tape trading exercise-- Hanno laid the backing track and Karn put his stamp on top of it-- largely his contributions sound to be as that as featured soloist-- the settings range from sort of electronica ambient to drum-n-bass. Sometimes there's a sort of synthesized wave on top of this, over which Karn solos on bass-- sometimes riffing, sometimes with lines, sometimes just totally improvised. Its of mixed success, some tracks work ("Seafall", "Dialogue I II III"), some don't quite ("A Boy With Wings"), and some are in between-- "Primitive Water" fails for the most part, but the middle is bass over breakneck drum-n-bass beats and is totally brilliant.
I can't speak to Hanno fans (or really electronica fans in general-- I dabble in the genre but have yet to plunge full on beyond turntablism), but if you're a Karn fan, both the sound and the inconsistency of quality will be familiar to you. There's still more than enough good material to make this worth digging up. And its certainly a unique record."