About Unsound: Reviews

About Unsound: Reviews

1996 demo EP cassette:

An intriguing blend of industrial, ambient and avant-garde craziness, utilizing a variety of instruments (like feedback, MIDI chapman stick and electric violin). The music is intense and thick, Stockhausen-cold with the violin doing a superb Fred Frith guitar solo.
More than half the material here is live, proving that Unsound need not rely upon overdub or production to achieve their crisp darkcloud of sonics.

- Matt Howarth, in Sonic Curiosity
February 1997 performance at A-Space:

...the Captain pulled on a red ski mask, the modifications to which included a makeshift pair of bunny ears and a cyclops eye. Speer and Cpt. Mikey traded words to create a coming of age story about a child who grows up to become a "warm, gooey, and infamous international banker."

- Sean O'Donnell, on the (defunct) Phiba-Improv mailing list. Full review
October 1999 performance at Gate to Moon Base Alpha:
Listen to this performance.

what a great way to spend an autumn evening. good vibes, good food, good music. i finally got a chance to see UNSOUND perform. wonderful stuff from Mike and Jim. primordial, mysterious, primitive and transcendent. the choir and the tympanum. screaming electrodes and terrible cannon. all in wondrous stereo action. AND topped off with the juxtaposition of Cap'n Mikee's neandrathal-superhero-fertilitydance and Jim's nouveauwave-robotic-fertilitydance.

- Dave Champion, on the Philly-Ambient mailing list.

I thought to myself "It would be nice if the music stopped right NOW" and at that moment the music stopped.

- Mike Benedetti, on the Phiba-Improv mailing list. Full review
Fusebox cassette, Life in the Circus:

Life In the Circus is an extremely well put together piece of work with great poprock songs. It's one of those tapes you put in which goes so smoothly and you're having such a great time getting into the songs that it's over before you know it.

- Bryan Baker, in the GAJOOB DIY music zine. Full review (preserved by the Wayback Machine on the Internet Archive)