COLLECTION

BEAT ALCHEMY: SUBLIME MANIPULATIONS

  1/  Elephant Alarm - Ataxia                      (Musso,Ghari)                 4.33
  2/  Hell-Odz - DJ Disk                           (Quintanilla)                 3.07
  3/  Him - SIMM                                   (Bernocchi)                   3.53
  4/  Southside - Dr. Israel                       (Israel)                      4.45
  5/  Sobeit - Splice                              (Splice)                      3.11
  6/  Tempura Dub - Mad Professor                  (Fraser)                      3.06
  7/  20/20 - Torture                              (Bobb)                        2.06
  8/  Neptunes Dream - Electric Soul               (Electric Soul)               5.13
  9/  Hed Gamez (neurons take a beating) - Spectre (Fernando)                    4.11
  10/ Automatic Brain - Ben Wa                     (Ben Wa)                      3.35
  11/ Splendor - Professor Shehab & Dr. Isreal     (Israel,Ghari)                4.58
  12/ Normalize - Crux                             (Crux)                        3.56
  13/ Fax Fungus & Funk - Worship                  (Worship)                     3.08
  14/ Shaping Technique - Splice                   (Splice)                      2.50
  15/ 100% - Blumolius Music                       (Blumolius Music)             2.49
  16/ Hotair - Crux                                (Crux)                        2.51
  17/ CTM Crash the Mac - Electric Soul            (Electric Soul)               2.37

          Recorded in various locations in 1996
          Exhumed from the vaults of Orange Music, New Jersey on Tuesday,
            July 11th 2006, at approximately 2:30 PM
          Summoned by Bill Laswell
          Overseen by The Almighty Unseen Force that makes all things possible.

          2007 - WordSound Digital (USA),  WSDD009  (Digital)

Note: This is only available through WordSound's digital arm, at various on-line download services.
Note: This is the album originally titled 'Excavation: Beat Alchemy' slated for release through Innerhythmic. The original tracklisting that Muze and other services provided was apparently never accurate.

REVIEWS :

A further newsflash for friends of the Professor and his cronies: A long-awaited - many thought long-lost or abandoned - compilation from the height of the illbient era (1996) was recently unearthed in the archives of Bill Laswell by Skiz Fernando. Skiz himself has been the major mover and shaker of illbient dub out of New York, recording, producing and overseeing productions under names including The Eye, Spectre, Roots Control, Minister Fernando, the Ill Saint, the Count of Monte Cristo, the High Priest and Slotek.

Unfortunately - and I say so as a representative of an apparently vanishing breed, i.e., those partisans of real, physical albums you can hold in your hands to enjoy their cover art and pore over their liner notes - it is only available in downloadable form, primarily at the WordSound Digital portal. "Beat Alchemy: Sublime Manipulations" features the familiar names of Ataxia, DJ Disk, SIMM (Bernnochi), Dr. Israel, Mad Professor, Spectre (now and as always, the downright scariest track of them all) and the now-defunct Ben Wa, along with an armful of lesser-known illbientists who may now have disappeared forever (Splice, Electric Soul, Crux, Worship, Blumolius Music). Though Laswell "summoned" the artists and supervised the compilation, he does not seem to have contributed to it, unless he is hiding behind a hitherto unused pseudonym.

Stephen Fruitman courtesy of the Sonomu website