&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&
AMAZING SOUNDS No.109 / August 27, 2001
&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&

To UNSUBSCRIBE from the list, send a blank message to:
amaze-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com

You can subscribe sending a blank message to:
amaze-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

More info here:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/amaze

====================
AT LAST YOU CAN ALREADY HAVE JOSEPH LOIBANT'S TRILOGY AVAILABLE:
"SINE", "PULSE" AND "RANDOM".
YOU WILL FIND IT IN OUR VIRTUAL SHOP:

http://www.amazings.com/mailorder.html

AS WELL AS IN:

http://www.at-mooss.com

====================

CONTENTS:

NEWS

HYPNOTIKA, THE AUDIOVISUAL WORLD OF NEURONIUM. Michel Huygen
(founder of Neuronium) and painter Tomás Gilsanz (author of the
images that at times have accompanied the concerts of Neuronium,
and the creator of some of the album covers of the band) have
joined their talents to create a spectacular audiovisual CDROM,
"Hypnotika Vol.1", recently released in a restricted distribution
and with only a thousand copies, under the name of Neuronium and
released by the label Oniria International. Michel Huygen has told
us about this project during an interview.

REVIEWS:
PETER FROHMADER: "2001" Nekropolis Records
WHITE NOISE: "WHITE NOISE V - SOUND MIND" AMP Records
STANISLAV KREITCHI: "ANSIANA" Electroshock Records

====================

Note: If mail to you bounces. you will be automatically removed
from the list. If in doubt, re-subscribe. If you're already on the
list from the same email address the second subscription will be
rejected as a duplicate.

====================

Attention: Long links can work badly when trying to click on them
if they appear cut into two or more lines. In case you cannot use
them directly because of this or other reasons, we reccommend you
to copy the COMPLETE link (including each one of its fragments) at
the location window of your browser. The link must appear in its
entirety in a single line.

====================

NEWS

Michel Huygen has granted to Amazing Sounds the privilege of
exclusively selling via internet the CDROM "Hypnotika vol.1".

Michel Huygen (Neuronium) has been working in an album with a
different style from his latest works, and whose idea occurred to
him in a quite sudden manner. This album is wholly rhythmic, in an
amusing key, far from the melodramatic as well as cosmic grandeur.
In it he widely utilizes ultrasynthetic sounds. It is very complex
with respect to timbric changes and is inspired in the style of
the night life typical of large cities. It is an energetic CD,
ideal to combat apathy.

The album "Hydro" by Neuronium is enjoying a great success both on
the part of the audience and on the part of specialized reviews.
In Brazil, for instance, it has been one of the main hits of
electronic music in general.

Anybody who orders the Bjorn Lynne's 3 CDs of fantasy style music
("Wizard of the Winds", "Wolves of the Gods" and "The Gods
Awaken") also gets an extra CD for free, which is the new
remastered version of his fantasy music CD "Witchwood". Secure
online order form (as well as details of how to order offline)
available on Bjorn Lynne's site:
http://www.lynnemusic.com
Read our article-interview about him here:
http://www.amazings.com/articles/article0051.html

====================

HYPNOTIKA, THE AUDIOVISUAL WORLD OF NEURONIUM
By Jorge Munnshe

Michel Huygen (founder of Neuronium) and painter Tomás Gilsanz
(author of the images that at times have accompanied the concerts
of Neuronium, and the creator of some of the album covers of the
band) have joined their talents to create a spectacular
audiovisual CDROM, "Hypnotika Vol.1", recently released in a
restricted distribution and with only a thousand copies, under the
name of Neuronium and released by the label Oniria International.
Michel Huygen has told us about this project during an interview.

Since the beginnings of electronic music and specially space
music, many have been the followers who are convinced about the
additional impact that this kind of musics has when they are
complemented with the adequate images. If a composition suggests
us a journey through unearthly universes, that sensation will be
enhanced if besides listening to the music we see the landscapes
that such a journey could bring to our eyes. The music videos
visually based upon that kind of images are scarce. Most just
gather live performances with a few surrealist images intertwined
with the live takes. This is why, when an audiovisual work whose
space character includes both the music and the image appears,
this no doubt attracts the attention of the followers of
avantgarde art.

"Alienikon" and "Aeternitas" are two movies (lasting about twenty
minutes each), based on this concept. Huygen and Gilsanz
respectively take care of the sound and the image.

The animations have been created by Gilsanz from paintings of his
digitalized by himself. All kinds of visual effects scroll one
after another. Landscapes passing before our eyes as if we were
overflying them. Supernatural apparitions. Ghosthly metamorphoses.
Wondrous worlds alien to anything known. And other effects hardly
describable with mere words. Gilsanz knows how to play with
psychology linked to visual perception. He makes, so to speak, us
see the invisible, tricks us with his pictorial magic making us
perceive things contrary to the laws of physics that govern the
behavior of light as well as our perception of it.

The nature of the visual content of these two movies has a strong
mystic component. The supernatural is present in almost all the
sequences. The textures are oniric, as if the animations were the
brain recordings of dreams. There also are remarkable psychedelic
touches.

The music created by Huygen that serves as the soundtrack for
these two movies acquires new shades and gathers new additional
meanings as it is listened to while the images are contemplated.
On his part, the visual universe of Gilsanz is enhanced by the
great emotional strength of the music by Huygen, which emphasizes
with a greater dramatic transcendence the different sequences.

The two long videoclips turn out to be ideal to let your mind fly
with complete freedom and disconnect from everyday life for a
while, something that no doubt many people look for in some moment
of the day. Aware of that, Huygen and Gilsanz decided to choose
the CDROM as the support for "Hypnotika" instead of the videotape,
so as to make it easier for the viewer to access this brief
evasion from the real world as one can use, to this end, for
instance, the same computer one has been working with for hours on
end, something more likely to be done during the worktime, rather
than having a television and VCR. Another reason for this choice
instead of the videotape was to take as much advantage as feasible
from the possibilities offered by the multimedia that the CDROM
provides, and in some way, support the artistic use of new audio
formats, as for instance MP3. Huygen thought of using the DVD, a
support he already works with, yet in the end he chose the CDROM
due to the fact that at present the amount of CDROM readers is
still quite larger than that of DVD reader units.

The use of the MP3 format has allowed, for example, to store in
Hypnotika" 70 minutes of music without pauses that adds to the one
acting as soundtrack for both movies.

The music contained in one or another way in this CDROM includes
stellar pieces of the entire career of Michel Huygen. Pure
electronic music in its most cosmic face, rising in its full space
splendour, with lively, fresh melodies, brimming with feelings, at
times introspective.

Michel once again impresses us with his graphic design for the
cover of the CDROM. An enigmatic figure of icy tones and diffused
contours, as if it were the gas of a nebula, presides the front
cover over a black background. As in other visual creations of
his, Huygen transmits some very definite meanings, yet he also
deliberately leaves an open door to the imagination of the
observer. In the first instance, he has re-created with great
subtlety two arms that shake hands around a beating heart, while
at the same time the entire design presents the aspect of a
spaceship. In the second instance, as many things as the
imagination of a person is able to produce can be likewise seen.
An alien face, the head of a magic serpent, the arm of a ghostly
old record player,or a supernatural lamp whose bulb emits
spiritual light, are some of the uncountable interpretations that
can stem from this image. The symbol in question is bound to
become an insignia for the oniric worlds of Michel Huygen since,
as he tells us, he is planning to use it as a logo for future
releases.

The work of Michel has extended as well to the programming of the
CDROM. For this project, there has also been the collaboration of
Toni Brunet as executive producer.

This CDROM is for a PC, and requires the following minimal
technical characteristics in the equipment where it is going to be
used: Pentium II 300 Mhz, 64 MB RAM, DirectX 6.0, a CDROM reader
(minimum 4X) It is possible to copy the entire contents from the
CDROM to the hard disk to solve the jumping of images that is
caused by slow readers.

An important technical detail of this CDROM is that Huygen decided
that the units were manufactured with a special protection system
to prevent illegal copies. With respect to the controversies that
lately are abounding about the intellectual property of music in
internet, the MP3 format, or the trajectory followed by Napster,
Huygen defends the good use of any new technology, as he shows n
his inclusion of 70 minutes of music in the MP3 format within
"Hypnotika Vol. 1". Yet he believes that the pretension to have
all music forcibly made to run freely in the web is absurd, since,
as is logical, this would attack musical creativity while forcing
the artists to stop being artists to take care of other jobs to be
able to eat. "I would like to see how those who defend this
gratuity would react if someone intended for them that they earned
no money at all from their jobs from which they earn they living
now" comments Huygen.

Michel Huygen has granted to Amazing Sounds the privilege of
exclusively selling via internet this CDROM.

The selling price is $40.75 or 5500 pesetas or 34 euros plus
postage and mailing. The orders can be made to:

sales@...

Further information on payment and mailing costs here:

http://www.amazings.com/mailorder.html#orders

That information on payment forms and mailing costs is likewise
applicable to the other CDs distributed by Amazing Sounds, a list
of which is available here:

http://www.amazings.com/mailorder.html

Free samples of the CDROM here:

http://www.neuronium.com/CDROM.htm

====================

REVIEWS:

PETER FROHMADER:
"2001"
Nekropolis Records
With a first hearing the listener already perceives the effort and
the intentionality there are behind this work. In successive
hearings, the range of this album appears in all its greatness.
Peter Frohmader surprises us once again with an immersion into
unknown abysses in the ocean of the musical avantgarde. He
utilizes electronics with a great imagination and skill, drawing
with energic brush-strokes a stage to let imagination run free
towards life-and-death situations. Psychedelic melodies, powerful
rhythms and oniric ambiences are some of the ingredients Frohmader
constructs his album with. "2001" is, no doubt, one of the most
amazing works by Frohmader, a work that cannot leave any listener
unconcerned.
JORGE MUNNSHE

If you wish to purchase any recordings by this artist you only
have to use this link:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ts/artist-glance/155542/thesciencebookbo

WHITE NOISE:
"WHITE NOISE V - SOUND MIND"
AMP Records
David Vorhaus, the artist who shaped White Noise's style, offer us
a work of electronic music of a deeply personal nature, with
passages which could be labelled within Synth-Pop and others
nearer to the experimental music. Vorhaus, pioneer of sound
technology and inventor of the Kaleidophon electronic musical
instrument, proves in this CD that he is an experienced musician
with excellent skills. He utilizes electronics with a great
imagination.
EDGAR KOGLER

If you wish to purchase any recordings by this artist you only
have to use this link:

http://gemm.com/q.cgi?rb=AMAZINGS&artist=David+Vorhaus

STANISLAV KREITCHI:
"ANSIANA"
Electroshock Records
Within the purest style of electronic experimental music, Kreitchi
presents in this album eight themes where ANS synthesizers are
intertwined with the acoustic instrument called "Ovaloid", built
by Russian designer Viatcheslav Kolleychouck. The music turns out
to be disquieting, bleak, withquasi-vocal sound effects that seem
to come from the Otherworld, and terrifying melodies.
MILENA ALEXANDROVA.

====================

We are preparing an international directory of record companies,
artists, festivals, radio shows, zines, webs, journalists,
associations, and other organizations & people working in the
field of electronic music, Ambient, New Instrumental,
Experimental, World Music, and so on. The inserts are free. The
persons or firms wishing to be included can send us a file of no
more than 600 words with the data they consider as being of
interest (contact addresses - snail mail, telephone number, fax,
email, URL... -) and an explanatory text on their activities in
English) to: amazings@...

We are also preparing an encyclopaedia of composers of electronic
music. The artists wishing to be included can send us a biography
(with a list of works and contact address if they wish to) of no
more than 900 words, in English, to amazings@.... Inserts
are free.

The persons or firms having a page in internet related in some way
to the alternative musics can communicate the URL, as well as a
brief description of its contents, to webmaster@..., and
we will set a link from our web to theirs (The insert of a link in
our web is free whenever it is corresponded with a similar link
from their web to our web)

====================

Our warmest greetings for our readers and until the next edition
of Amazing Sounds.

====================

For further information about this newsletter and back issues:

http://www.amazings.com/amaze.html

You can access all the contents in Amazing Sounds from the first
articles to the hottest news in our web organized as a directory,
in HTML format, with photos, and with hundreds of links:

http://www.amazings.com/ingles.html

Amazing Sounds is a professional electronic magazine free for the
readers. It is financed only by means of its sponsors. The firms
wishing to insert commercial advertisements in these pages can
contact us at:
advert@...

Recording companies, artists and other professionals of the
alternative musics wishing to send us their news can contact our
team of journalists at:
amazings@...

Our readers can send us their public comments to:
mail@...

All the texts are copyright of their authors, and their partial or
total reproduction by any means, or their re-distribution without
the prior permission of the publisher(amaze-owner@...)is
prohibited.

**********