Marcelo Radulovich - Hello FLAC album

Whatever this artist may have hinted at before has been realized on this album. Perhaps the saddest thing is that this may indeed be the most widely appreciated album of his career. I seriously doubt he can make the same impact later as he does with this album. There's a balance on this symbiotic collection - while there are some seriously disquieting moments (screams, sudden bursts of noise coming from who knows where, far-side human voices) there's also a wonderfully seductive approach to rhythmic composition. Noises are both layered into the rhythms and act as segues between musical pieces. There's one voice - presumably a location recording, which sounds like MAX GOLDT's pervy toady character enjoying life on The Street. The rhythms are medium paced grooves which weave instruments and 'found sounds' into the mix like some slow food mixer combining ingredients, making the entire into a creamy swirl of odd bedfellows. At times it reminds me of the theatrical image-stimuli which UN DRAME MUSICAL INSTANTANE hinted at but never quite achieved. At other times there's a feeling of 'Electronic Jungle' - a complexity of slowly intermingling patterns created by people like BOURBONESE QUALK and TALKING HEADS - the audio equivalent of machete-ing your way through thick, dark, damp undergrowth, sucking in damp, almost poisonous air while you strain all your senses just to make out the environment. And yet this 'jungle' is most definitely urban - filled with human voices and the sounds of settlements (but no city noise pollution - cars, factories, thronging masses and construction work). Maybe RADULOVICH has humanised the Industrial rhythm, injecting Progressive Jazz extremes into what had traditionally be a cold, inhuman sound. That JOHN ZORN gives this album the thumbs up is no great surprise - this artist has a very similar approach - forcing composition to and beyond the extremes, this is like NAKED CITY or PAINKILLER composed under almost clinical conditions in a top studio. Masses of squiggling serpentine noises wrestle in painful death throes, juxtaposed next to peacefully haunting wave washes. There are even moments which remind me of the likes of factor X - messing with looped images while pushing things to the extreme. Difference here is that RADULOVICH has his hands on state-of-the-art gear and can make any amount of accumulated mess sound pristine. The last album to blow me away like this was probably JIM PLOTKIN's FLUX project - it seemed to push the parameters to the extreme without collapsing into all-out chaos. MARCELO RADULOVICH pulls off a very similar trick here, making an album which pushes the limits not so much because it dwells in extremes, but because it manages to do so and sound consistantly enjoyable, making you want to play it again and again. This review was originally printed on my Metamorphic Journeyman website.