seven

the traditional year-end top lists are almost a required and expected media outlet for all kinds of prognoses and summaries, ranging from purely opportunistic blabber to quite insightful.

"seven" does not escape this ritual, although we took our time to sort out the last offerings of the year with its usual before the holidays rush (apparently it affects even obscure electronic music genres).

these summaries seem to be a little pointless - on one hand, we are faced with the task of journalistic integrity - one needs to take into account everything that has been released in 2002, spend time analyzing and comparing, finally arriving at some conclusions. obviously, we could be reviewing and discovering gems released in 2002 for months an even years to come (take arbre noir meets polygon collaboration or telefon tel aviv's "fahrenheit not enough" that I got to hear only a year after their appearance).

on another hand, we keep going back and forth along the coils of a spiral that is music evolution; it would be unfair to limit my personal "year in music" just to the new material. missing persons and arvo pärt, xenakis and steve roach, drexciya and apoptose were some of the (re)discovered new names that have started obsessions illuminated by the gleeful glow of collector's eyes.

how does one "judge" the records? our impression is influenced by so many factors - there is no "pure" response - we are way past the idealistic claims of music as the absolute entity - we are influenced by artwork, the thought and the process behind the sound (sometimes the question is - do we really want to dig deeper into these, since it can destroy our initial fascination?), by innovation and references to various cultural contexts. all of the above is overlaid on top of our previous tastes and overall aesthetics. of course, one has to separate the format - how do you compare a brilliant 3" record and a double-cd that contains twice as much excellent material as well as plenty of spoilers? how do we evaluate the work of a label that often shapes and completes the creative vision of the artist (ant-zen being an example)?

the older we get, the more music we listen to, the more books we read, the more films we watch - the more we experience, not only widening (in purely quantitative terms), but also "deepening" the search. we always keep coming back again and again, to the core of our ideals, shaping and refining - whatever were the initial forces that drove us to energy of ebm, to idealism of industrial, to beauty of dark ambience, cold minimalism of glitch, drive of electro or radicalism of idm - all these genres that transcend the notion of "just music." we continuously refine, redefined, and cross-reference our impressions from these genres; new, radical, subversive, experimental, dark will always attract us, but those very definitions change as the time goes by.

we will not answer all of these questions here, we do not propose any solutions; instead we offer a compromise: what follows is an unordered list of albums that appeared in 2002 and caught our attention.

top 10 and more by anton:

somatic responses - touching the void - hymen

this morn' omina - 7 years of famine - live bait recordings

pneumatic detach - par-re-ses - frozen empire media

land:fire - gone - loki

m2 - the bitter end - hands

tekniq - compuglobalhypermeganet - fliesskoma

dead hollywood stars - junctions - hymen

c-drík - dissolution - hushush

l'usine - iron city - hymen

contagious orgasm - the cause of the flow - ant-zen

flint glass - hierakonpolis - brume

5F_55 - II - hands

first law - refusal as attitude - loki

antigen shift - inexplicit - self-released

murcof - martes - leaf

l'ombre - medicine for the meaningless - ant-zen

multiplex - mixt - senton recordings

manual - ascend - morr music

electric birds - gradations - mille plateaux

mago - definition of raw moments from a different perspective - ad noiseam

empusae - funestus - divine comedy

anthony rother - hacker - psi49net

top 10 and more by alan:

abfarht hinwil - links berge rechts seen - toytronic

casino vs. japan - whole numbers play the basics - carpark

flint glass - hierakonpolis - brume

first law - refusal as attitude - loki

manual - ascend - morr music

markant - vice versa - makant records

skanfrom - hand picked fragments - suction records

somatic responses - touching the void - hymen

squadra blanco - night of the illuminati - holosynthesis

subskan - recoiless - ambivalence

this morn' omina - 7 years of famine - live bait recordings

pneumatic detach - par-re-ses - frozen empire media

bad sector - ampos (re-released) - loki

boards of canada - geogaddi - warp records

celluloid mata - spectrum - ant-zen

dubok - technicolor - tinman

digitonal - 23 things fall apart - toytronic

hybryds - elektrik voodoo - daft

land:fire - gone - loki

legowelt - klaus kinski - bunker

mimetic - be-at sound.data sensitive - parametric

m2 - the bitter end - hands

syntetika - 100% syntetika - shaped harmonics

tekniq - compuglobalhypermeganet - fliesskoma

"maschinenfest '02" and ghostly's "disco nouveau" win hands down as best compilations, accumulating countless bonus points for innovation, insight, conceptualism, presentation, and quality.

as ebm slowly eroded into glorified pop-music, and rhythmic noise and idm are drowning in the mass of soulless hi-tech overproduction, we find ourselves going back to the roots in search of unifying aesthetics and meaning behind the music. dark tribal rhythms of this morn' omina and flint glass bring new energy and refined perspective; ambidextrous and syntetika turn our ears back to the likes of klaus schulze; m2 and dead hollywood stars venture into radically new genres, reassembling and rebuilding; antigen shift creates his own take on organic nature of violence; tekniq resurrects all the forgotten cross-genre classics; even some of the electro and disco (squadra blanco) are gradually getting closer and closer to the sound (if not the ideals) of early ebm.

at the same time there is still a lot of potential in exploring the combination of genres - tarmvred's obvious fascination with legowelt; unique mix of idm, drum&bass, rhythmic noise and dark ambient created by somatic responses; intense experiments of venetian snares; playful heaviness of proyecto mirage and b-movie sci-fi sensibilities of 5F_55; balance of organic and synthetic elements of l'ombre, l'usine and casino vs. japan; disassembled classics by murcof and acoustic sounds of manual/limp and mago.

and of course there are those genres that remain timeless - depths of dark ambient, as interpreted by land:fire and incredibly composed c-drík's dissolution; emotional richness and quality of multiplex and abfahrt hinwil; mind-blowing layered density of funckarma; ferocity and energy of pneumatic detach.

there are so many other releases worth mentioning for various reasons, but as usual, too much music - too little time; after all, this is what "reviews" section is for.