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| NeBeLNeST - Nova Express |
 Released: 2002 Label: Cunieform Records Cat. No.: Rune 154 Total Time: 46:52 | |
Reviewed by: Marcelo Silveyra, April 2002 Picture yourself hurrying along the city streets at midnight, looking about nervously and in feverish paranoia as the odd car races by, the lights shine bleakly onto the pavement, and every corner is a potential danger set to trigger your adrenaline production into sweating overload. You quicken your pace in a frantic fit of desperation, look behind your shoulder as a taxi roars menacingly by, and expect the worst to come your way any moment now with abrasive fury. The noise in your head acquires devastating intensity with each violent step, and there is almost no quarter. Even when the chaos subsides, a threatening sense of warning stubbornly drills a hole through your brain, and you seem on the very verge of exploding into the angular scenery. Blackmail! Barely surviving the internal tumult, and certainly not unscathed, you open the nearest door and hurry into a seedy joint where the smell of cheap beer and cigarette butts can be perceived through the clouds of smoke and the mechanical faces of the drunk. An almost spacey melody blends in awkwardly with the surroundings, before mutating into a jarring percussive attack of monolithic strength and then washing away into a bizarrely persistent keyboard line that hums through the air before all hell explodes again and the persistent line acquires a short Arabic mood. You turn to the wall and manage to make out the phrase NeBeLNeST while the music once again lowers its volume, but just as you catch a glimpse of the name, everything picks up again and the band's drummer starts hitting away with amok skill. You sense a dissonant theme entering the picture again and try to read the sign again..."NeBeLNeST...at..." "NeBeLNeST at the Stimpy Bar!" NeBeLNeST? Stimpy Bar? With the rush of the city streets augmented by the band's gruff intensity and unlikely avant-garde aggression, you barely manage to stumble into the bathroom, hoping for some brittle sanity and quiet (D-E-R). The grimy floor flashes through your head as you try to keep it together, and something is definitely wrong here...you can still hear the band chugging away with brutal refinement outside, and can sense the drunk and their smell, the smoke and the stench of beer, but, but what is it about that band that can't escape your mind? The unlikely fact that grooves surge sporadically among the percussive intensity? The way it quiets down all of a sudden and sounds more ominous than ever with its odd-time harshness? The punch it packs? The distorted attitude (M-U-R)? Lurching your way to the corner, you notice something lying there inanimate, and meanwhile the sound outside is getting louder. Suddenly everything stops. An almost tribal percussion surrounded by weird effects settles in as you realize...red rum...drmreu...MURDER! You stagger outside and glare at the drunk, at the smoke, at the band, at the walls. Confused and fighting for breath, you run out in panic, and move through the streets in disjointed movements as the city atmosphere transforms into jagged edges of glass cutting through your body. That band is still in your mind, isn't it? All this activity, this distorted neurosis, this organized chaos, they understood it. The drummer seemed possessed at times, and the relationship between keyboards and guitar was frighteningly real, intense, like a murdering rampage. You can feel it flowing through your very veins now, heading its way with no regard for anything, devastating psyches and cutting a wide swath through frayed nerves with music that is both aggressive and ominous, yet always intelligent, isn't it? Cinema 1920 is just around the corner ... but how? Walk in. Why? Don't know. Just do. Do. There's something in the air, something unsettling ... weird noises, percussion flashes, a theme ... a theme? See how it loses shape again and slowly gains in volume ... a film is rolling, a band is playing, this is almost too subdued to be true, space jam, searing guitar persistence, and that threat resurfacing again. Then everything unites into a mechanical frenzy, calculated and grinding, that crushes everything in its path, and then diffuses again. That bass, driving ahead in relentless decision, and suddenly everything quiets down again for a few moments. Dissonant, avant-garde, harsh, silently ominous, brashly distorted, insanely percussive. Keyboards sliding in, playing around with sheer manic dissonance, and then floating off only to strike back after a second. And it is time to go, time to be absorbed by the angular abrasion of the city, time to climb aboard ... the Nova Express. Rating: 4/5 Similar Artists: Present, King Crimson, Magma More about Nova Express: Track Listing: Blackmail (9:35) / Stimpy Bar (5:12) / Redrum (11:03) / Cinema 1920 (5:00) / Nova Express (15:32) Musicians: Contact: Website: www.nebelnest.com/ Discography
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