Imaginary Time (Gesloten Cirkel Keep Playing remix) (6:30)
Imaginary Time '99 (Revolutionary Industrial Trance mix) (14:48)
Review: Acoustic instruments played by Charlotte Bill, "disarranged" by Nigel Ayers, Nocturnal Emissions' Imaginary Time is as much of a landmark as it is a total obscurity. The album title itself references a theory prevalent in some approaches to special relativity and quantum mechanics, a representation of time also used in certain cosmological theories. It's not made up, or unreal, but expressed via imaginary numbers. We can understand where Nocturnal Emissions were coming from with this record back in 1997, then. A strange, beguiling percussive experiment that's at once linear and yet pretty obscure. Here presented with two incredible remixes - Gesloten Cirkel's pounding but fun techno take on things, and the misleadingly-titled 'Revolutionary Industrial Trance mix', a slow building amalgamation of drums and vibe - this is strange yet totally accessible business.
Review: When the now defunct British music magazine Sounds took on Nurse With Wound's startling debut album, Chance Meeting On A Dissecting Table of Sewing Machines & An Umbrella, the critic decided to abandon the usual star rating. Instead, they awarded the record a 'maximum' five questions marks - ????? - nodding to the fact it's very difficult to know how to engage with it, let alone describe it. Since then, Chance Meeting has been reappraised and lauded by many, with FACT considering this among the Top 50 Albums of the 1970s. It's a wild ride, even if at times the 'noise' is actually more disquiet than anything else. Crackling, fuzzy, plucked, echoed, reverberated, refrained and made with a breadth of textures that go beyond most other listening experiences, this is a priceless and rare example of music as a tool of genuine, bold sonic exploration.
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