music review:

psybURBia ::: "They come for the Beats"

electronica - doof

Note: for a while this project was known as "URB"... since I wrote this review in early-1998 it changed name to "psybURBia" and signed to Matsuri Productions, releasing an extended version of this e.p titled "carmageddon"...... on with the review...

I had been wondering what Mr. Bardoe and his band Ragewar had been up to. So I found out: like so many industrial heads (meyeself included) he's getting more and more into lighter instrumental electronica now (must be part of getting old). URB is his new project

This is a 5-track 27 minute collection of funky snappy beats, acid-synth lines, trippy-synths and bad-yankee-voice dialogue samples. The samples in "Big Beat Rapture" have me a bit confused, though I'm bright enough to make out that the trippy "Carmageddon" is an anti-car song. My favourite track is "Urban Forest Odyssey"- truly spell-binding acid-trance - which originally appeared on the Ragewar album "Backlash" but it was a totally different style to the other Ragewar tracks. I thought it was out of place and perhaps a wasted track on that album, so I'm glad to see it re-surface here to reach the audience that will appreciate it the most.

from: PO Box 1082 North Fitzroy Vic 3068 Australia.

E-mail: [email protected]

web.zx.net/URB