Ken Rei & Dino Felipe — Black T-shirt

Recordcompanies complain a lot about dwindling sales, pointing fingers to everybody but themselves, yet on the other end of the spectrum you'll find more releases than ever before.

Bananaseatgirl is yet another imprint that releases both cdr's in small editions (as small as 2 copies, even) as well as somewhat more 'high profile' releases like this one in a pressing of a 1,000 copies. The split here, which mysteriously found its way to my mailbox, features two artists: the duo Ken Rei (Adrian Bertolone and Andreas Texus) as well as Dino Felipe. Both present electronic music, somewhat similar to eachother.

Opening track Blew Blood, by Ken Rei, hits us with heavy distorded beats while for instance track three, named Victi'customers, is more loose and takes us back to the early tape experiments of the sixties but then digital. The material is rough, sometimes developing into a rhythm, like the breathlike cycles of Grinder Behind Her or more direct grooves like Puddle Facer

Compared to Ken Rei's five tracks the seven pieces by Dino Felipe are more loose, yet more thoughtful and subtle. Wanderings of static and oscillations, with bits of voices like in Rivers End reveal a different character even though the building blocks are somewhat similar. Only the track Various Funeral Types breaks out by featuring somewhat harsher sounds. The other tracks mostly consist of mysterious and subdued sounds. Particularly the long ending track, aptly titled The Fear.

The quality of the two artists is fairly equal and therefore works fine in one listen, also stylistically in spite of the small differences in approach. My preference is slightly in favour of Dino Felipe's part, but both are pretty good at creating an interesting soundworld.