records

Mileva - Stories Survive Sequels [lp] Diesel Combustible Records Pastoral German duo who use guitar, piano, and what in the good old days would have been called "tapes" but is probably a laptop with all sorts of technological gubbins on it. This is a very nice series of both instrumental and quietly sung bits and bobs with clear use of one of those smart phrase sampling guitar pedals, which means you can nip off for a spot of saur kraut whilst the machines do the work a la Kraftwerk! Although I would hasten to add that there is little to no similarity between these two teutonic acts, Mileva are slightly more in line with the likes of Faust or Can (if we want to be racialist about it), but there's an ever present, how shall we say, wimpiness that prevents this from being true Kraut Rock - in fact it's more like the definition of "post" rock in that it sounds like most if not all of the rock has been and gone out of this album. This is no bad thing in the long run though and saves us from interminable LOUD and quiet bits, concentrating instead on nice piano pieces, ‘Tisina/Coda’, folksy guitar, ‘Plankton Harvest’ and the odd electro bleep, ‘Who Beats Bronson’ for example. Although I've totally lost the press release, I'm going to say that's named after celebrated prison hardman Charles Bronson… and the slightly harder edged beats and rough ambient-ish guitar noise are as close as these boys get to an aural beat down. My hazy memory thinks that they might be something to do with Ma Cherie for painting (but as I say I lost the bloody press release), anyway they are covered in a lovely layer of warm sounding audio niceness and would sit very well next records by the likes of Avrocar, Magnetophone and Ariel M. I have no idea where you might get this but I do know they're named after Einstein’s wife… what more do you need to know! Ian Unpeeled (the zine that covers the John Peel shows, info from shane@unpeeled.freeserve.co.uk)