BABYLONE CHAOS

"Les Machines Ecarlates"

OPN - 2007

CD - 500 copies

Babylone Chaos is a French industrial outfit featuring Botchan Karisen, who is lately very active with several releases under his own name, as well as with the aliases Botchanimal and Kördha, or in bands such as Human Object, Radio Massacre and SicNoise. Aided by Aya K., he develops a collection of suburban industrial soundscapes, using a wide range of sounds, noises and effects. "Les Machines Ecarlates", presented inside a DVD cover decorated by disturbing scarlet cyberpunk images, moves along desolated sceneries of post-nuclear downtowns, abandoned metro galleries and decaying docks, all dwelled by intelligent machines, hostile cyborgs and horrible mutants.

The music combines metal percussions, crunching machinery rhythms, background noises, electronic manipulations, distant eerie keyboard themes and occasional voice samples, effectively evoking frames from a film shot in a future dominated by machines. Each track seems to have been conceived as part of a cinematic score or a larger concept, rather than as individual song. Listening to the whole CD is probably the best way to get a correct impression of Babylone Chaos' music, even if there are some highlights standing excellently on their own: among the others, "Cursed Vision", "L'Auxiliaire Des Menteurs" and "Deambulation".

Fitting in the (in)famous French tradition of Bruitisme, whose flag was carried during the 80s' and 90s' by such historical names as Vivenza or Le Syndicat, Babylone Chaos certainly comes as no radical innovator, but its music is well-worth checking, especially if you're easily seduced by the most refined industrial ambient alchemies, or the nightmarish visions of a hopeless future.

- Simon V.

Website: http://www.botchanimal.net

Myspace: http://www.myspace.com/babylonechaos