Sielwolf
IV
Kk Records

You would have guessed it, this CD is Sielwolf's fourth record (although the count outside of their homeland might be different). And the music is so minimalistic as the choice of the title suggests.

Sielwolf is a relatively young band working in the obscure field of industrial music. Their main musical interest is sound, and they experiment a lot with it. Therefore their most important instrument is the sampler. On earlier recordings they used heavily distorted vocals as well as guitar and bass, but not this time.Aside from some samples there are no vocals on this disk, and there is no recognizable guitar nor bass. The music is reduced to its core, droning sounds recorded with a lot of echo and thundering drum rhythms. This is what industrial music is supposed to sound like if we take this term literally.

The whole disk sounds like it was recorded in an old factory hall or an underground tube. This is the result of the production and mixing work of Mick Harris (from Scorn). Each track has its own simple structure which is stretched over five to nine minutes. In between the tracks develop through the adding or removing of certain elements of the sound spectrum. As the CD inlay tells us, the music was constructed rather than composed. Melodies, when they occur, seem to be merely the result of the sequence of different noises than an intended composition.

The best conditions to listen to this disk would be in a darkened room where the music can develop its haunting atmosphere. It ain't no happy music.

Copyright © 1996 Lonely Locke