Vampire Rodents
Premonition

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It is not my habit to review albums of this genre but when the valiant Floyd invited me to listen to this "Premonitions" (VR Productions, 1992) by the Vampires Rodents I was enlightened on the Road to Damascus (proving that I have no prejudice whatsoever in listening to things that are outside my usual patch. I am willing to listen to REALLY anything as long as there are NEW IDEAS and COURAGE, then the rest follows naturally).

Well gentlemen, here I say it and I do NOT deny it: this record is something absolutely unique and overwhelming, something rarely heard before (at least by me) where a certain idea of "industrial" and "dark" merges with something akin to the Zappa spirit and the most extreme experimentation without falling into boredom or pointless exercises.
The basic lineup of the first album (Anton Rathausen, anthropologist - Victor Wulf, film soundtrack composer - Karl Geist and Jing Laoshu, also anthropologists) is joined by Andrea Akastia on violin and cello (Geist had left after the first album).

Tracks like "Babelchop" and "Burial At Sea" are samples of industrial rhythms, used as bizarre background for the inspired and hallucinated recitation of Rathausen or for the unsettling atmosphere of the violin, as in "Waterhead". Others, like "Babyface", are disorderly and schizophrenic assemblages of electronic manipulations without continuity, bordering on a certain electronic avant-garde (Ovulation, Sitio).
"Annexation" ventures towards an ethnic and symphonic new age while "Book Of Job" moves into other territories, towards a "cosmic" electronics, with archaic-industrial rituals in a truly disconcerting wall of "voices" in support. Each track ALWAYS DARES a little more and pushes the listener to shift the limits of what they've just digested only a few minutes before!

The record settles after over an hour, in the imperceptible hiss of "Colonies", in that undefined territory where ambient music (Eno) and cosmic music (Schulze) meet, almost to catch a breath after the excessive (better yet... exalted at many moments) and almost psychedelic noise experimentation.
One of the most surprising things about this masterpiece, are the interludes between one track and the next. Moments of absolute avant-garde, handfuls of seconds scattered between tracks with nonsensical interludes, TV jingles, snippets of 30s music, in a truly offbeat blender that owes much to the late Frank Zappa.

If some pieces maintain an underlying identity, with "fairly" defined tracks in a genre, in others the "art of the crazy collage" becomes frenetic and absolutely insane, and the inserts flow rapidly, like a sort of "mad tube radio" rich in Dadaist oddities between serialism, free jazz, electronic collage, a tour de force of sampling and tape manipulation from the most disparate directions (in the track "Demon Est Deus Inversus" there even finds space a piece of dissonances for an entire orchestra!).
It's an exhilarating experience that I went through, something hallucinatory and "truly toxic", a true shock for the ears of the listener, music of True Disruption (especially if listened to at high volumes). Perfect music to live the "darkest nightmare"; music from the underworld mixed with something completely disorienting that gives you a very strong adrenaline rush almost like the electrodes used in a resuscitation unit, making you want to listen to it again, and again, and again, and on and on, till exhaustion.
Thanks again Floyd: great trip!! :)