PRESS
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Ulan Bator | Ego:Echo | Review
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UNDER THE VOLCANO | Paul Lemosbrings together a wide spectrum of musical ideas and influences with its nine extended pieces.Former Swans founder, Michael Gira's Young God Label is quickly establishing itself as one of Manhattan's most vital outlets for consistently challenging new music. With the release of France's Ulan Bator's second album, the group has progressed tremendously. Cleanly produced by Gira himself, Ego:Echo brings together a wide spectrum of musical ideas and influences with its nine extended pieces. Many of the tracks meld elements of Jazz, Noise, and electronic music within carefully composed, continuously engaging structures. The haunting quietude of "Hemisphere" sounds somewhat like a collaboration between early Tortoise and recent Yo La Tengo, whereas tracks like "Santa Lucia" feature the dissonant guitar squall reminiscent of early Sonic Youth. Although Ulan Bator show their influences, the band generally maintains a fairly distinct sound, moving from passages of somber melodic subtlety to others of controlled chaos. Ego:Echo is a mature, complex record by a band that shows significant promise....
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Ulan Bator - EGO:ECHO | Review
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ROLLING STONE | David Fricke...a unique and addictive sadness…The coronary pulse of Can, the spatial trickery of dub reggae, the throbbing gravity of Joy Division: The French trio Ulan Bator build the stark architecture of EGO:ECHO (Young God CD), their US debut, from familiar materials. But the result, produced by grim-rock priest Michael Gira, once of Swans, is a unique and addictive sadness, a profound synthesis of gonglike guitar, medieval despair and the consumptive drama of singer-guitarist Amaury Cambuzant’s rich, low singing. At sixteen minutes, the album’s centerpiece “Let Go Ego,” is a particularly stunning display of Ulan Bator’s black magic. For best effect, turn the lights off before you turn the volume up....
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Calla & Flux Information Sciences
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THE AQUARIAN WEEKLY "Area 13" review | Mark SteinerLive Performance & Young God Records CD Release Party at The Mercury Lounge, NYC - Friday, January 19, 2001Young God Records, the brainchild label of Michael Gira (Swans, Angels of Light) recently ushered in the new year with both an intriguing sampler CD simply entitled "Compilation 2000 A.D.," as well as "Ego: Echo," the label's first impressive release from revisionist French avant-rock artists Ulan Bator. Friday night at Mercury Lounge marked yet another double release in the expanding repertoire of this delving indie label, with live showcase performances by Calla and Flux Information Sciences, both in support of their respective new releases. Unlike overseas peers Ulan Bator, who sing in French, both Calla and Flux Information Sciences are already causing more of a local stir, but then again, both bands currently reside in New York City, which fortunately lowers the odds in catching either act again in the near future. The vigorous live performance for which Flux Information Sciences already has a reputation is certainly fueled largely by the intensity of frontman Tristan Bechet, whose unpredictable stage antics include jolting about in a dressjacket and shorts while playing a casio keyboard or......
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Interview | Scavenger hunt
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TimeOut New York | Issue No. 278 | Mike WolfCalla settles into its very own gray areaAt it's best, music reveals things that can't be expressed in everyday life. Which may be why the transplanted Texans who make up the Brooklyn-based trio Calla find it a chore to express anything about themselves in verbal terms. "We're a pretty vague band," drummer and sample programmer Wayne B. Magruder admits with a smile. "Really, it just comes out this way and it sounds good." That's about as concrete a description as you'll get. But while conversation with the members of Calla can go in circles, the band's music is more eloquent. Calla's new album, Scavengers, is solemn and mesmerizing. The group creates languid, austere soundscapes using traditional rock tools: guitar, bass, drums and vocals. A kind of nocturnal life is breathed into the songs with tasteful samples and pockets of silence, which give rough texture to the songs and conjure a hazy emotional weightiness. The music is sad, but not depressing; still, but never stagnant—Calla always seems to land in between identifiable stations, both musically and emotionally. When other bands combine disparate moods, or pop-song forms with experimental concepts, it often results......
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Ego:Echo | Review
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TimeOut New York | Issue No. 276 | Jordan N. MamoneSimply put, Ego:Echo is an out-of-nowhere, art-rock masterpiece.Simply put, Ego:Echo is an out-of-nowhere, art-rock masterpiece. The French trio Ulan Bator has expertly assembled tempestuous guitar clang, mood-enhancing loop/keyboard exploration and oddly played yet sensual pop flourishes into a magnificent, natural whole that dramatically pulses with vivid ideas and gnashing severity. Undulating drones give way to soothing, breathy vocals, which dissolve in acidic tone clusters and hard, sternly stated rhythms—often within a single, shockingly cohesive track. This immaculately performed album jars when you least expect it, then anesthetizes with low-key beauty once you've grown accustomed to the full-on assault. Ulan Bator's enthusiasm, dapper hooks and nimble racket fully counter the asexual, antiseptic cool that too often plagues the rock avant-garde. There is nothing bloodless, self-conscious or distant about this demanding—but never unmelodic—music. Each song is a richly arranged suite of transformations: When the paranoid, sinister nerve-punk of "Santa Lucia" finally explodes, it reorganizes itself into a minimalist flutter of mellow bass figures, wispy drum vapors and abrupt stabs of electric sunshine. A one-note, lengthy mantra of fuzz tones and guttural incantations eventually overpower the continental, soft-funk glide of "Soeur Violence." Elsewhere,......