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zenflesh three post-industrial-ambient work which evolves within low register waves, emanating rich harmonic textures with vibrating metallic strings over dense structure. it slightly reminds of the undeservedly forgotten nww ‘soliloquy for lilith’, also pointing out the strong and solid mood, which being the most important issues of ambient prove the artist’s skills and knowledge of language… tango [forthcoming] zenflesh three after the crash though, tkp’s ‘slice’ comes into its own. the painful, numbing screech of metal, the knowledge that everything has gone dreadfully wrong, the realization of violent death, the sudden silence, the bloodied bodies. next up, ‘mad dog’ itself, where you can actually hear the police car sirens coming towards you through a searing mist of agony. then onto ‘envy’, the sound of a heavy rainfall from a baleful sky… the music of swirling, droning tones and sub-tones is weird, melancholy, difficult – at times even beautiful. the production is exquisite, the textures subtly layered, the imagination inspired. think metal machine music remixed by mr. richard aphex in his analogue bubblebath. think main, think schutze, think koner, think bowery electric. think tangerine dream doing alpha centauri. these aren’t ‘songs’ of course: there’s no tunes, no melodies, no verse-verse-chorus-verse. good job too, there’s too many songs in this sick old world of ours… - stewart gott [excepted from a group of reviews with the common thread of prose being about the death of princess diana] silencer web page [no longer on-line?] zenflesh three there’s no indication of what instrumentation is used on these ten substantial tracks, though processed electric guitars are obviously involved. the music here is uniformly dark and somber, and the predominately low frequency drones are not relieved by the presence of percussion. vague, almost subliminal voices are employed sparingly. to the unconverted, this cd may well sound like one long, blurry buzz, but one of tkp’s strengths is that within the narrow limits of the chosen form, the ten pieces display enough tonal and textural variety to keep the ambient/industrial freak well satisfied. depending upon your point of view or mood, the music hovers between ominous and comforting, enveloping the listener like a womb or a gloomy cavern – your choice. it’s nicely done and an auspicious debut. option nov 97 turk knifes pope mad dog cd eight minutes of pulsing electronic waves create an excellent introduction to this excursion into the dark side of ambience. only just restraining an explosion into industrial turf, the music on this 70 minute CD is generally an atonal background auralscape with hidden teeth and a definitely unsettling edge. Whirling sounds, scrapings, distant crowds, singsong decay and the gurgling patter of drone-drops await the unwary listener, ready to darken any mood. matt howarth, those annoying post brothers Sonic Curiosity The turk knifes pope cd mad dog, their second full length for zenflesh, is the sound of the gathering storm, pregnant with menace and poised to dump its cargo of hail, pestilence and war onto the industrial fringes of the dreaming spires. The ten shimmering instrumental soundscapes, each with a monosyllabic title such as 'nod', 'envy', 'wave', 'blast' and 'slice', nibble naggingly away at the edges of your reality until all that's left is a void. never listless or somnambulant, turk knifes pope is the perfect antidote to narcoleptic tendencies -- and, again, a perfectly glorious piece of packaging to house it in. ptolemaic terrascope #24 turk knifes pope mad dog cd did i miss something? where has this band been? this is like being forced into sleep therapy, strapped down to the bed, having electrodes attached to your head, being injected with some new brand of psychotropic and having the results set to music. the bands history is unknown to me - i can only go on what i hear. that is: older english influence such as organum and nurse with wound mixed with the isolationist tone of lull and mick harris' other work, maybe a touch of laswell too. this one drifts in and out of your consciousness until it spreads in your brain like virus. i HAVE to listen to it now, i have no choice. les scurry, your flesh #37 Zenflesh released three CDs to date, split CD of Turk Knifes Pope/Petit Mal, compilation CD entitled "Homegrown - Organic - Purifying" and a CDLP of Turk Knifes Pope "Mad Dog". The CDs come in recycled-cardboard with stickers, minimal artwork and a superb CD print. So much about trivia. The sound material the CDs contain are far beyond comprehension. Far beyond human minds. Complex systems of equations and metamathematical concepts resulting in motifs white, brown, or pink noise, filters, echoes, frequencies... powerful indeed!!! My only problem with noise music is that I cannot write specific things about it. Probably noone can write specific things about noise music. These CDs were my guide to the realm of noise music and I adore these. My greatest fave, though, was track 3 of the TKP split CD, which is a sound collage of human voices. Probably because this is the most human-related track of all. Should we call this choice of mine 'romantic'? Summing it all up: More implants. More noise. More fractals. More logarithmics-generated random-noise generators. More machines. More silicon chips. Destroy the flesh. paracusis radio web site Turk Knifes Pope -- MAD DOG Oooo, massive pulsing drones... kill me now, i'm in heaven. I like Zenflesh. I like Turk Knifes Pope. I like drones. I like their logo (a vacuum tube superimposed over a rorschach inkblot) and wish i'd thought of it first (except of course i would have replaced the tube with a similar-looking microphone, which is what i originally thought it was until i looked closer, and i would have made the inkblot look like an angel, natch). I like the nifty packaging -- the CD comes in a folded cardboard thingy with cool illustrations and wee cardboard mini-posters that are very mysterious and stuff. I like this first song "wa-ve" because it sounds like a lonesome guitar feeding back through a looped chorus pedal, winding its way through the fog with violins set adrift on a cold black river. I like the stacked-up drones and gong-like noises of "+symp/toms." I like the shuddering tidal ambience and cascading feedback waves on "b.la.st." I like Dustin LeBlanc's willful disregard for conventional punctuation (probably the influence of either too much e.e. cummings or too much beer before hitting the typewriter, maybe even both). I like the way all the songs make me sleepy. "'snor"e" is what heroin addicts hear after their eyeballs roll back and their skin turns blue. I like the ominious uberdistorted pulsing groan of "sli/ce" and its waves of zombified fear that sound like telephone wires screaming underneath a doomed sky. If telephone poles could play guitars this is what they would play and you would like it or else the telephone poles would fall and crush your tiny skull. Feel the wires shudder! Feel the quake! Let the droning distortion plug up all your orifices until you crash to the floor in a dazed stupor, totally unable to move, to even twitch your eyeballs! Stare vacantly at the ceiling as the waves pummel your weak flesh like ultrasound, damn you! I like the microphone feedback on "nod\" (sounds just like the tone favored by Autodidact in its more excessive moments). I like the rumbling waves of sound like the ocean. I like the tapping in the background. I like to imagine this pouring out of the world's biggest speaker in the middle of Times Square -- all the salarymen and pimps and politicians and dope-addled bums and ordinary housewives and smut peddlers and barefoot teenage runaways and burnt-out crack-huffing poets from Madison, Wisconsin who came to the big city to make it big but failed miserably and tiny children of every ethnic division imaginable and sewer rats and goldbricking city utility workers and street vendors and cockroaches and every living thing in the street all stand rooted to the cement, poleaxed with dumb horror at the waves of sound bigger than the Titanic with a hard-on come pouring out of the world's biggest speaker and knock all the buildings down in slow motion, see the endless footage of smoking rubble on the evening news. I like to imagine these things even though this music makes me so inert that i basically want to curl up and go fetal and close my eyes and shut out the entire planet. I like "e.nvy" because it sounds like all of the above. I like "a= trial" because it has an actual riff in it under all the droning sludge. I like the riff. I like the sludge. I like the fact that i have been hypnotized into submission. I like this as a cheap, legal, considerably more efficient alternative to mind-altering drugs. I like the return to droning, subterranean ambience and not much else on "-neg-ative-" (are those violins in the background or treated guitars? only your dog will know for sure). I like "m%ad dog!" because the tinny repetitive guitar is like the devil scratching at your back door while wind chimes turn and wail. Hell has your number and it's etched in the fillings of your teeth. They vibrate at night when you awaken all sweaty with only the vague memory of the burning fever dream, and the ringing in your ears... the pounding in your veins... the turning of the wind chimes on your back porch sound exactly like this.I like this CD because nothing else has made me write prose this fucked up in a long time. I like this because it reminds me of what drugs were like before they all went bad and made me want to claw out my own eyeballs and eat them. I like this strange band. I like this CD. I like Zenflesh. I like. I like. I like. I like. I like. I like. I like. I like. I like. I like. Dead Angel 35 "Mad dog" was the first full length album of the Californian Turk Knifes Pope project. This ten tracks can be seen as a sequel to the ones on the split CD with Petit Mal: dark atmospheres are build out of very long drones, sutble sampling and harmonic backgrounds. Turk Knifes Pope's music is done of long but somewhat fragile soundscape on the fringe between noise and tune. The sounds used are really original, most of them having an accoustic feeling that gives a nice particularity to this band. There are not really beats, but some echoed samples, distant voices, electric-sounding noise than add to the textures of the tracks. Accessible and pleasant, "Mad dog" is a dark CD that doesn't get suffocating or heavy. It's rather poetic and soft, relying on careful assemblages of mechanical soundscapes and weird sonic experiments. The result is encompassing and interesting, with ample tracks and an intense, tasteful sound. All in all, this CD confirms the good impressions one could have about Turk Knifes Pope from his previous appearances. "Mad Dog" is a very coherent CD that feature very strong tracks of experiments with drones and soft noises. Nicolas, December 18, 2000 recycleyourears [found on the internet - ] i don't know whether you have this available to you, but i have possession of a cd titled "two" by a group named zenflesh5. i got this cd from a teacher who was using it as a coaster. it is very demonic, very industrial, yet very subtle music (mostly sounds of metal against metal?) and is VERY appropriate for quake. i played it on my computer with my sister watching behind me and it scared the hell out of her ;-} getting this cd would be a problem. i don't know who these people are (they may be local in the sacramento area), and i can't find anything about them on the internet. it is an excellent cd, however. if you can find it, let me know! [other non-english reviews appeared in: opscene, masodik latas *2, odradek] footnotes: 5 it may or may not be obvious reading these reviews, but zenflesh "two" is in fact a compilation of recordings made by individuals, not the result of a group recording situation. |