blood_for_oil reviews

Mostly tribal-ambient if creepy experimental electronic sound washes featuring (but not centered around) soundbites associated with Bush, the "war", all the usual suspects. "Tribal rhythms, dark drones, electronic textures, guitar washes, vocal chants and field recordings blend together..."

1) chill creepy noise with soundbites about Hussein, Bush, etc about lead up to US aggression, "do not destroy oil wells", 24 minutes slow build, gets louder with buried tom tom beat, war drums, noisey loopy at end, very nice if long
2) "the great beast", soundbite is depressing, a tad conspiracy, but sorta true, over dark ambient wash, chill, then halfway it changes with commentary about Bush in the UN, depleted uranium and electro noise, Bin Laden connections
3) looping middle eastern feel with chant, drums, shifts to an electro drone midway, radio friendly length
4) distorted treated conga type drum, tribal with foreign voices
5) tribal percussion slowly gets buried by dark drones and washes, super hypnotic and beautiful, eventually turning noisey and electro
6) super deep dark drone, absolutely stunning, narcotic and hypnotic

http://zookeeper.stanford.edu/index.php?s=byAlbumKey&n=806105&action=search&session=
Reviewed by Your Imaginary Friend 2006-04-26

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bios+a+ic - "Blood For Oil" CDR - This ultra-limited (100 copies) release from Wesley Davis is a dedication to 'all the people in occupied Iraq'. Soundwise, this slice of atmospheric industrial sound collage tosses in fragments of political speeches, news reports, and interviews alongside tribal drums and enveloping swashes of ambience and radio transmissions. Parallels can be drawn to such textural sound artists as MUSLIMGAUZE or O YUKI CONJUGATE, but BIOS+A+IC come from an entirely different headspace. Political, yes, but 'Blood For Oil' also serves as an excellent (if unsettling) document of the whole fucked-up debacle that is the war/occupation. Absolutely effective (especially the masterful 24-minute opening track) and a highly recommended release, even if a close friend remarked parts of it sounded like a broken appliance. Hah! (Symbolic Insight/Parasomnic)
http://members.evansville.net/tgodsend/reviewB.html

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bios+a+ic "blood_for_oil"

label: Parasomnic Records
website: http://parasomnicrecords.com

bios+a+ic's soothing yet forboding drone is uberminimalist but uberaddictive. "blood_for_oil" is an audio universe once could easily get lost in, adrift, a place that is dark but comforting and from which you'd never want to leave. Why indeed would you want to return to the world under criticism in this experimental political treatise that features frightening political vocal sampling and distant tribal beats. Parasomnic Records releases only the best in experimental soundscape material and this is no exception.
http://www.fishcomcollective.net/?p=reviews&id=1971 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

The band Biostatic is actually one of the players from the Seattle experimental electronica act Entropic Advance. Now in Colorado, he has released this limited-edition cd-r on his own label Symbolic Insight, which Parasomnic is helpfully distributing to a wider audience. And well they should, for this is excellent dark-ambient meditation on the ongoing struggle in Iraq, combining news samples, dark and noise-laden drones, tribal beats, chanting, and other layers of texture into a flowing series of brooding soundscapes. As for the quality and direction of the pieces, there are strong echoes of the work of Rapoon, Voice of Eye, Aube, and Scanner in particular. The main bulk of the sound is a vast and shifting sandstorm of electronic hiss and noise over an insistent, hypnotic tribal beat, with voices from the war, commentary from the outside, and sounds of destruction floating up from the background at times only to be sucked back into the bed of noise. What could have been a strident exercise in politics is made more timeless (and less tied to a particular geopolitical situation) by the decision to mix the audio commentary on an equal footing with the rest of the items competing for attention in the mix. The result is a steadily moving cyclone of sound that is not overshadowed by its political message -- if you heard the music without being aware of its origin, it would be possible to miss the political context entirely and just be absorbed by the complex layers of sound. The nifty packaging, a cd-r enclosed in camouflage paper and sealed in a plastic sleeve, is pretty swell too. Highly recommended.
http://www.monotremata.com/dead/da04/music_reviews.html