Reveiws of 'Applaud The Execution'

from Reviews of The Almighty december 98

Another excellent release from Manifold (plug, plug) - lots of excellent, extremely tense driftmusics with the occasional lowend bass and drums that is perhaps a more stereo-intensive version of Scorn circa "Colossus..." The "normal" ambient tracks are excellent, along the lines of Surface of the Earth/Lull/etc school of glacier detunage, but the ones that most grab me are tunes like "raga" which masterfully tames the howlings of excited electrons and locks it into something not necessarily peaceful, but easy to listen to for, oh, 15 minutes or so despite the fact that it's obvious some piece of lo-fi electronic equipment went through unimaginable levels of pain to create those noises... Other parts sound a bit like Mika Vainio - these are my least favorite, but luckily they are rare. Heartily recommended, and I'll throw in that the Totemplow live show is quite nice as well, if little more than an excercise in expensive knob observance. abpurvis@princeton.edu http://www.princeton.edu/~abpurvis/radioshow/reviews/reviews.shtml

FROM AMBIENTRANCE DECEMBER 98

Ambientrance

An excellent foray into guitar-fueled ambience. Ominous and atmospheric, tracks range from the windy and slightly beaty title track, to the hazy 15.5-minute drone of raga, to the softly swirling murk of death valley. For the most part the guitar sounds are manipulated to an abstract haze, though a lovely acoustic/electric duet opens terminate. Quite nice!

SUBTERRANEAN RECORDS

Fave noise of the week (so far) goes to the Totemplow CD on Manifold, who ride that low end bucking python for all it's worth.

-Steve subterra@hooked.net

FROM SONIC BOOM Issue 4.11 - DECEMBER 96

www.sonic-boom.com

Totemplow is a brand new single person act hailing from the Bay Area. What makes this debut album so spectacular is that the entire record was totally performed on a guitar. Yet when you listen to each track you would swear that extensive sampling and electronic programming was used to compose each piece. In reality Chad utilized only a variety of pedals, distortion, layering and other mechanical devices to alter his guitar on each track. As a result there are few unaltered chords or notes present on the album. Each track thereby becomes a bizarre collection of analogue ambience and noise experimentation that could only be compared to people like K.K. Null or Jim O'Rourke in it's complexity. I'm astounded that Totemplow is a project that has appeared from virtually nowhere and yet contains enough raw talent and experience to compose such an awe inspiring release. It had to happen someday, but I have finally been truly humbled by a guitar players skill and it could not have been caused by a more deserving person.

- jester

FROM VITAL WEEKLY Week 45 / Number 57

Vital Weekly

On the mucho sympathico US label a new band. Applaud to them who invest their money in something we don't know. Totemplow is one Chad Jones who is exploring the guitar sound. This is done by sampling it to death, thus creating drones and playing the guitar over it. Totemplow creates rich textures of thick ambient sound, not unlike the works of Lull (for the droning part) or Bill Laswell (for the rhythm stuff that is added in the background). If this was Lull or Laswell, then you would have added it to your favorites but now it's Mr. nobody and you wait until the name buzzes around. My suggestion: start buzzing now as Totemplow deserves your ears.

- Frans de Waard

FROM ALTERNATIVE PRESS MAY 97

Four fingers

If anyone out there is looking for a really good soundtrack to an alien-invasion movie, seek the services of Totemplow, a.k.a. Chad Jones. The liner notes to this CD offer thanks to Buckethead and Bill Laswell, and the titles of several pieces - "teminate","death valley" and especially "raga (praxis killer dub)" - are pretty clear indications of a Laswell influence. But Totemplow is no Laswell clone, and even though most of this CD oozes with malevolence, it is a distinctive malevolence. Heavily processed droning guitars dominate, but the primitive, cavernous percussion on the title track is closer to Swans or Controlled Bleeding than to Laswell's Third-World vibe. Occasionally. Jones flirts with an almost benevolent ambience (that recalls the more abstact portions of Brian Eno's Apollo soundtrack), but a much more accurate comparison would be with Harold budd's unjustly neglected "Abandoned Cities" and "Dark Star". The best of the long drone pieces mix ominous rumblings and dissonant banshee wails within a context that is always at least vaguely musical. Jones characteristically overdrives his equipment on many of his pieces so that certain sonic frequencies seem to claw at the stereo speakers (and eardrums), trying to tear their way out (or in). This CD is hypnotic and deliciously unsettling.

- Bill Tilland

FROM STRANGER MUSIC QUARTERLY 3.13.97

from a reveiw coupled with Piece for Jetsun Dolma/Thurston Moore

Less famous, but no less enamored of musical explorations, Totemplow is actually one person, former Seattle guitarist Chad Jones. After moving to the Bay Area, Jones hooked up with Buckethead and Bill Laswell and tuned into all-guitar sound manipulations that form seamless flows and thickets of rhythm that gather where his guitar's tone becomes shaggy and hoarse. Applaud the Excecution is sound in its starkest forms, but then it's rich with a fountain of grinding, tweaked electric guitars spinning a slow web that crawls in the lower registers and draws you in, the way blind Idiot God, Painkiller, and Buckethead do. Jones has concocted one of the deepest ( as in "depth charges" ) mixes around, and his work should garner wide critical acclaim.

- Andrew Bartlett

FROM CARPE NOCTEM Vol 4 Issue 1

The title of this disc immediately conjoured an image in my mind of a large crowd leering, urging, pressing forward as a life is taken in the name of justice, be it just or not. I envisioned a loud, dense, bloodthirsty soundtrack to illustrate the frenzy of the slaughter. I was then taken aback by what I heard. While not necessarily uplifting, the seven tracks presented here are diverse, subtle pieces of layered guitar ambiance. The title track is the most dissonant, yet is stuctured by low end percussion to create an almost dub-like effect. "Terminate" cathces the listener off guard with a melodic guitar intro which fades into dismal waves of tension over a voice speaking, "terminate without rational thought." The high point of the disc is "100 Miles", continued two tracks later as "Conjouring Repitition". Heavy barrels of droning notes, while high, sweet strings of sounds of hope that I find myself wishing will just hang out for a while drop subtly, quietly, acting as reminders of inevitable endings, lost dreams and crushed hope. What we have here is a reflection on the passing of life and the looming finality of death, and, more imortantly, an exploration of the conflicting desires to resist or embrace the inevitable.

- Andrew Corson

Review from Bryce Moore - dj/fremantle, australia

bryce@iinet.net.au

This is an album of contrast and tension: between the rhythmic and the free form, between the throbbing, pounding industrial, and the soaring ethereal ambience. Every now and then, hammering drums and basses try their darndest to impose a rhythmic straitjacket on the atmospheric guitar timbres, but never with much success, and never for very long. Even while the percussion is almost drowning out the softer sounds, they persist, lingering around the edge of audibility waiting to re-emerge. The longest track, Raga, is a beautifully restrained exploration of high guitar timbres, alternating between lofty halls and lush, humid gardens. Evocation of the mythic orient is entirely apt both in the freely-flowing style of the music and the images it evokes. 100 Miles brings in low-level drones that severely test the sound system and almost hurt the ears, plunging to the very lowest echelons of the audible range, and forcefully reminding the listener that this is not pure ambient music. A collection that will repay repeated listening handsomely.