O. Lamm

Snow Party is a release from Active Suspension, a new label that's based in France, a country not too well known for electronic music but one that has lately been releasing some exciting material. Snow Party is frenetic glitch music, like Nobukazu Takemura meets John Oswald, wherein O. Lamm uses caffeinated melody and a bit of plunderphonics to create a restless, energetic and moody album. Snow Party is a fun CD, tending to zany glitch with just enough melody to keep the album from going completely abstract. O. Lamm's approach is somewhat choppy; his samples are terse and clipped at some parts, like someone spazzing-out with a radio dial. Squelches, squeals, electric sputtering and fragments of diced static are the ingredients of his creations, and he artfully arranges these unlikely noises to create catchy sound collages. Of particular interest is a track called "Cracking," which was originally a Suzanne Vega song off her debut, but O. Lamm has given it a good Fennesz-style processing and it has become mangled beyond recognition. It would be interesting to solicit Vega's reaction on having her music put through a digital centrifuge machine.