Shizuo

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simon silverdollar

Guest
to me, shizuo is THE great unsung genius of modern electronic music.

he was a digital hardcore stalwart, starting out as atari teenage riot's soundman, but his music far surpassed the rest of the DHR output. it's a brutal, druggy, take on jungle and noise, but there's this weird gracefulness to it. and often, when people hear shizuo, they feel that somehow it's a very, um... sexy sound but no one's ever quite sure why.

shizuo goes so far beyond the immediately exciting, but often fairly puerile, DHR sound, and creates these hypnotic streams of noise and rhythm, with the same samples being returned to again and again [he always worked with the most meagre of ingredients], to be reconfigured in constantly shifting ways, building up the intensity. the best example of this is the limited release, 'fuckstep 98', which is kind of a meditation on about 15 samples, which gets really twisted and trippy, but retains a balance and order in all the chaos, like a breakcore version of villalobos' 'alcachofa'.

as far as i know, shizuo (aka david hammer) doesn't record anymore, but hopefully i'm wrong.

to me, he's easily up there with people like aphex. anyone else a fan?
 

john eden

male pale and stale
He did some mad cartoons for Scud's "Fallout" zine, iirc.

Very good - the Ambush tracks are (of course) great. No idea what he does now... he was very young at the time, wasn't he?
 

polystyle

Well-known member
the Shiz

Have only heard his first CD Album - and finding it a bit stranger and sci fi -ish then the DHC sound at that moment, also having had fun at his NYC show after that release
I would hope he's continuing in some form ...
 
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simon silverdollar

Guest
last i heard he was playing in a japanese ramones covers band!
as far as i know, his last record was about 4 years ago,; 'shizuo no.1', put out on his own label. he told me in an interview for a fanzine i did at the time that he planned to release loads more stuff on the label, but he seems to have disappeared...
 

john eden

male pale and stale
simon silverdollar said:
last i heard he was playing in a japanese ramones covers band!
as far as i know, his last record was about 4 years ago,; 'shizuo no.1', put out on his own label. he told me in an interview for a fanzine i did at the time that he planned to release loads more stuff on the label, but he seems to have disappeared...

What was the name of your zine, Simon?
 

hamarplazt

100% No Soul Guaranteed
simon silverdollar said:
to me, he's easily up there with people like aphex. anyone else a fan?
No, not really. I've heard a lot of people calling him the best of DHR, and I've never understood why - I have the Shizou vs. Shizor album, and I actually find it a bit boring. And I'm especially puzzled by all this when I think of the total lack of recognition of the real underrated DHR-genius: Patric Catani! A guy with an unbelievable creativity, constantly reinventing himself and changing the rules of the games he participate in... first he made some of the most groundbreaking gabber records ever as E-de Cologne and Eradicator, and then switched to DHR, making multidimensional stuff, able to be both sad and silly, groovy and chaotic. And now, he have turned into to the wonderful Candie Hank, a bizarre and twisted kind of circus electro clash... or something. And then there's all the other projects: Ec8or, Puppetmastaz, The Horrible Plans of Flex Busterman. Catani have done so much, and he always manage to walk the line between scenius and genius perfectly, being totally unique and recognizable as himself, and yet never hermetic. Still, few people even seem to know who he is... or know him simply as half of Ec8or.
 
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simon silverdollar

Guest
john eden said:
What was the name of your zine, Simon?

heh, it was called 'astrochimps'. it was only a very small scale thing i did when i was 16-18 years old.
bizarrely, though, i found out that someone wrote a dissertation which had a chapter on it.
 

ripley

Well-known member
Hell, yeah on Patrick Catani! by far the best to come out of that camp. the Puppetmastaz are genius.

I saw Shizuo live, years back, and it was dreadful and boring and embarassing. All I can really remember is that there was some woman lurching around on the stage hooting "commit adultery" in this Nico-esque leaden germanic drawl, and stuffing the microphone between her breasts.. all of seemed like it was intended to be very daring, and it wasn't.

But maybe the studio stuff is better?
 

Clubberlang

Well-known member
Whatever happened to Christoph De Babalon? I like his record more than any of Catani's (or Shizuo's or Empire's for that matter.) He seemed to totally disappear after that too.
 

kingofcars

Well-known member
Clubberlang said:
Whatever happened to Christoph De Babalon? I like his record more than any of Catani's (or Shizuo's or Empire's for that matter.) He seemed to totally disappear after that too.


the last stuff i remember from christoph de babalon was a so-so 12" on the drop bass network sublabel ghetto safari, and a good split 12" w/ kid 606 on fat cat.... some more material of his would be much appreciated.

it's a shame so many of the dhr camp stopped producing. all the early stuff is especially great, before everything got swamped in one-dimensional distortion....
it's good to hear patric c is still doing stuff... i haven't listened to any of the candie hank or puppetmastaz stuff. his early stuff and solo stuff is completely brilliant, but the ec8or material really got lousy fast. i heard he's got a new 12" out on junk, which i need to pick up...
 

hamarplazt

100% No Soul Guaranteed
kingofcars said:
the last stuff i remember from christoph de babalon was a so-so 12" on the drop bass network sublabel ghetto safari, and a good split 12" w/ kid 606 on fat cat.... some more material of his would be much appreciated.
Christoph was never very productive. But maybe that's a good thing, I think he stopped because he didn't have much more to say... somehow his vision crystalized with If You're Into It I'm Out of It, and I really respect that he didn't just release a lot of reruns of that. (Of course I'm only guessing here, maybe there's another reason for his silence). He runs the label Cross Fade Entertainment, and that is quite silent too. The last thing I heard from them was a split EP of japanese noise.

kingofcars said:
it's a shame so many of the dhr camp stopped producing. all the early stuff is especially great, before everything got swamped in one-dimensional distortion....
the ec8or material really got lousy fast....
Hmm, I actually feel quite the opposite with Ec8or, I think they got better with each release.
As for other DHR-artists still producing... Puppetmastaz is actually a kind of ex-DHR supergroup, with Catani, Bomb 20 and Nitro, and Paul PM of Fever on some of the vocals (as far as I can hear).
 
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simon silverdollar

Guest
Eric said:
what band is that? is there even an associated name?

no idea, sorry.

i think shizuo's a bit of a loose cannon. i remember reading an interview with dj scud a while back and he was saying when he first met shizuo, on the london squat party scene, he was quite notoriously out of control.
 

kingofcars

Well-known member
i was listening to deadly buda's 'universal dynamo' mix cd the other day (which is a fine mix of hard acid, breaks, and noisecore). shizuo's 'sweat' is on there, lodged between two heavy, gabbery hip hop tracks.
'have you ever been kissed by a girl like this?' ---- BOOOM
it made my day ;)
 
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