Home > Archived Issues > 1999 Issues > Issue 3

I have to apologize for the lack of much content this month.  We have been having severe technical difficulties here.  To all the bands who have submitted your music to us, we will get to you.  Not to worry.  The April issue should well make up for the lack of content this month.  Coming up in the next issue should be a review of MCY.com, EZCD.com, and update on Wakefire Records and Underground Music Monthly, Reviews of several artists (around 6), and possibly a review of a book.  It will be out around mid-April.  This issue is just a slight hold-me-over, but both bands reviewed this month were excellent, and it is certainly worth anyone's time to check out both of them. 

Thanks for your understanding -

Gary Milholland, Editor Underground Music Monthly

Ghost In The Machine's rhythms alter your consciousness

by Rachel Miller

   The grinding, yearning voice of temptation slithers beneath earth pounding techno beats. Peppered Rammstein with a nod to the music god,  Trent Reznor and his earlier works on the album broken, thus the Ghost in the Machine is born.

    The self titled album Ghost in the Machine is meant to be taken whole. Once ingested, riveting rhythms alter your consciousness, but this is no hallucination, this is rock in it's purest form. The listener is no longer lounging in their room swamped by school notes, the listener is no longer stuck behind the wheel in bumper to bumper traffic, they are in an underground night club. They are in the blackest cauldron doused in darkest sin. Their breath, the air, the beat, everything is alive. Their body is helpless to do anything but leap to action once the synthesizers lick your soul. A treat for the weary mind craving release.

    Motor, the first track, is a rude awakening. you're thrown from silence into the heat of the battle. The voice introduces you to a darker realm of the human mind, the part we avoid, the part we deny, the part we only indulge when no one is looking. But this song isn't any private inequity, this is something you're sure to share.

    Technobelly, the name is a nation in itself. The dance floor is the country, it's captives, slaves to the beat. Citizens of music, this is your redeemer.

    Ghost in the Machine is the best of what's new. This is an album defianantly worth your time if you're a hard core dance music fan, a curious new-ager, or just a person with a taste the forbidden pleasures life has to offer. Hats off and sincerest congrats to Ghost in the Machine for this fantastic collection.

The beauty of "Butterfly Messiah" took my breath away

by Carrie Wagner

    The first song, "Cascading Stars," is played with tranquil whispers of the night, then it opens up to a pounding techno beat. The song is mixed beautifully with whispers of the purest female voice (Shannon Garson.) The voice in it self does not make lyrical sense, but it presents a touching, freeing, haunting sound. Then your ears drift in tune with the originality of "17 days" and the song drives to the core of thought. The song is not just music, it presents images of emotion, it is like your soul reaches to feel the sound of the guitar and drums. The images drift along the lyrics of "feeling waves" as your body senses the power and sadness of the ocean. In the song itself, the melting of female voices dances like candle light as they perfectly harmonize with the background sound of the instruments. The song gives a feeling of sadness, but it presents the image of a butterfly casting shadows on a field of dreams, it is pure poetry.

    The next song, "Away from the Goddess," opens up with the melodies of an acoustic guitar. Then the voices of the song drift along like the wind. To describe the sound of the song, picture a cold ocean lapping its waves among the purest white sand beach.

    Then the bass is turned up a little in "Leaving Me," when you taste the first male voice in the demo. "Leaving me" is a darker turn as it gives message of a woman leaving . The voice inside of the lyrics is talking to the listener about the experiences that we have about the one we love the most taking a path anew, and how we are standing crying for them not to go out of the door. 

    The last song on the demo was a continuation of the techno visit before in "cascading stars" as the band has reached another point of wonder. "Handsaw" blends the fixtures of the outside world into music, as you wonder what was the creative drive behind the music. "Handsaw" to me was almost a satire on our everyday technologies and how it allows us to be impersonal

    My personal thoughts of the band come from unique curiosity of the beautiful differences from one song to the next. The originality of their music is masterful as they can not be connected to any other source of music. In ever changing wonder it reminds me of the forefather of creativity, the picture of Jim Morrison speaking words of poetry over music. Their beat driving from techno is new, not overly funk or repetitive, but new, like a style of their own. I believe the originality of style and the meaning behind it makes it good music, but it is also the artists who put it together who form a band of music. I would urge who ever you are or what ever you are to dip your fingers in to something new and check out Butterfly messiah's home page at http://listen.to/butterflymessiah  and at this time I will give the proper rights to the musicians behind the music: Shannon Garson, who did the vocals, keyboards, and guitar, Nathan Davis who did the drums, vocals and other assorted instruments and to Ben Glover who played bass on "Leaving Me"- my final quote "simply divine, just like the beauty of the butterfly."