Incorporated (Lydia Tomkiw)

t h e b e t m a r s <hodson@gladstone.uoregon.edu>

greetings-

just thought i'd elaborate a little more on the lydia tomkiw cd. this
release strikes me as 'let's see how many different styles to which i
can put spoken word.' most of the tracks that aren't at least a little
more on the ambient/ethereal side come across rather contrived. forgive
me, but there's just something about spoken word over a garage band that
doesn't do much for me.

the dots only contributed on two tracks (including producing- i.e.
edward didn't produce on any of the other tracks). other contributers
are dirk ivens (the klinik) with one track (picture spoken word over a
song by the klinik), reality scare on three tracks (sorta
electro-ethereal), martin bowes on one track (ditto), robert coddington
on one track (ditto)- so far all of these tracks are at least decent.
where this cd flops is with sosumi's and chuck uchida's contributions
(on one and three tracks, respectively)- garage band music- and crappy
garage music at that. the other bummer is that the two lpd contributions

total only 2:30 and 3:00, respectively, while most of the other tracks
average at about 4:00.

as stated there are two tracks with the dots-

1) 'sometimes...' (legendary pink dots/tomkiw)
2) 'pretty something' (ka-spel/silverman/moore/tomkiw)

'sometimes...' sounds very much like 1995 dots material. mostly bass
and drums laying down a groove with lydia's spoken word- it actually
reminds me of the idea that's the basis for 'a velvet resurrection' or
the groove in the TG track 'empathy with the devil.'

'pretty something' is very ethereal a la the dots. i don't understand
why this one is credited to ka-spel/silverman/moore while the other is
just credited to lpd. if anything this track is so minimal that it could
be any one of them on an analog synth. personally i think they got the
credits backwards. anyway, spoken word over ambient dots.

this turned into more of a review of the whole disc than i intended and
as you can tell i'm not overly impressed with it. but the two dots
tracks are pretty cool although too short.