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flag Canada - Luna Kafé - Full Moon 9 - 07/20/97

Digital Poodle: Combat!
Kinder Atom: Super Nice Hippy Pants
nice+smooth ultra media

coverpic Rising from the ashes of the once-mighty Death Of Vinyl, nice+smooth ultra media was founded a year or two back as both a label (licencing most of its releases through Hypnotic/Cleopatra) and a recording/post-production studio. These two efforts are the latest in what has been a fairly steady stream of releases from the n+s collective, and each provides a surprising variety of sounds. Combat!, which is the first new material from Digital Poodle in nearly three years, starts off weak with several tracks that show little progression from the band's once fresh but now dated tekno-industrial roots. Further in, however, there's rapid improvement which culminates in an excellent reworking of Crack, DP's 1993 single that provided the first clue of their interest in trance-techno.

coverpic It was this interest that sparked the creation of Kinder Atom, a side project which has since become nice+smooth's flagship act. KA covers many bases on their hefty double disc epic, so this reviewer recommends breaking it down into it's component parts for maximum enjoyment. When you're in one of those mellow moods, break out Super Nice, an enveloping, beatless journey of analogue bleeps and warm synth washes that harkens back to a time when "ambient music" really was ambient. Hippy Pants, meanwhile, breaks out the funky breakbeats and squelchy acid techno, before chilling out in the final, fading moments.

nice+smooth ultra media, 108A Roncesvalles Ave., Toronto, ON M6R 2K8, Canada.

Cleopatra/Hypnotic, 8726 South Sepulveda Blvd. D-82, Los Angeles, CA 90045, USA.

Copyright © 1997 Greg Clow

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