Last night coming back to Lake St. Peter was a sudden sharp contrast to the dust and construction noise of our Peterborough place. W. premiered me his newest album. At the Dragonfly living room listening to the CD, I wrote out this review.

In Emerge & See the elusive artist WEBmadman has given us Shakespeare’s “As You Like It” for the spoken-word to music set by releasing an almost completely instrumental record to which WEBmadman (Wayne Elliott) has been quoted as saying he even encourages the listener to make up their own words. “Daring to hope / in desperate defiance.” In one of 2 tracks with words, WEBmadman has mastered a delicate recording quality with the plaintive encouragement of the chorus: “Leave yourself behind...” in track 5. Apparently this is no. 3 of the Madman Chronicles – an ongoing CD project that includes invariably a bunch of free multi-media goodies inside for the computer. I would say that this edition satisfies some of the most surrealistic tendencies better than any other release. It’s something to put into the CD player and dream your own entire world to. A+

Remember when electronic music was good? It recalls the hey-day of the Thrill Jockey-style psychedelic jam epics with a Moby-like electronic single-mindedness of a Solo Artist that comes from some kind of COMPUTER SOUL. Track 11 stands out with a sense it’s coming out of a field recording slave song and then proceeds to transform into an exquisite corpse that reminds me of Beck making an abstract political statement. It can be described as music that’s old school meets new sensibility. It’s a rhythmical Vangelis that’s just perfect to put on for that special occasion or anytime. A trip with headphones reveals the subtle manipulations that take your brain to sections it never paid a visit to before.

Sitting at the computer no. 11 at the public library with 2 min. left on my alotted time, I manage to post my first weblog. Inspired by Wayne (whose 33rd birthday is today), I'm not exactly sure why I'm doing this but it feels right. I know it's right. This is what I wanted for the Original Plastic website but I just couldn't manage the updates. With the help of Blogger, perhaps now I can keep up. Happy Birthday Wayne! More soon.