DD154918

DD154918

DD154918 is a scathing review of An Electric Storm published in TIME OUT in London magazine in the Sept.27 - Oct.11 issue (presumably 1968), page 41.

Slamming the brilliant album on every conceivable point, it is clearly written by someone either with serious mental problems, unable to control some personal grudge or with an overpowering interest in reducing the album's sales and impact.

“The only NEW album this month” refers to White Noise's advert in the same issue: see DD154941.

There is a high-definition scan of it in the Medialink library.

Transcript

WHITE NOISE: ‘AN ELECTRIC STORM’ (Island ILPS 9099)
   The only NEW album this month said the advertising. So what's new? White Noise's
album was launches with wuite a bang and was offered as a new revolutionary piece
of music. But I'm afraid on no account is it either revolutionary or new.
   The formula is simply electronic music mixed with vocals. Is that new? Stockhausen
was doing it in 1928 and Mimaroglu had done all that he had to do by 1950; and as
regards this album being revolutionary, it's about as revolutionary as ‘White CHristmas’
by Bing Crosby!
   The Electric Storm is the concept of a gentleman by the name of David Vorhaus.
He has various letters after his name (none of which have a thing to do with music)
and he does manage to produce some quite professional electronic sound effects and is
at time quite amusing and entertaining, particularly in his use of stereo effects. The
sound on a couple of tracks really do belt around the room. In the middle of a track
called ‘Visitation’, there is a heavily phased and split-steroed [sic] drum solo, which actually
made my cat go leaping up in the curtains in terror and he only came down when I put
some Chipmunks on for him. On the whole, the electronics are the same old clich/eacute;s
with a slight twist here and there. Mood-Synthesized noises, bags of echo and prolonged
fading out gets a bit boring after a few years; and only the masters can still get away
with it nowadays.
   All things taken into consideration, however, there are some quite successful
electronic passages and these compromise the most useful pieces of the whole album.
I did try to listen to the vocals and electronics as sympathetic units, but I found it
impossible. THey just do not seem to gell, which brings me inevitably to the vocals.
The credits give three names—John Whitman, Annie Bird (who manages to sing out
of tune throughout the complete album) and Val Shaw, whou sounds like one of those
chicks from ‘Newcomers’ or ‘The Archers’ making her first record.
   The lyrics on the majority of the tracks are I'm afraid, spastic. The include such
gems as ‘Here come the fleas’, ‘Love without sound’ and ‘Your hidden dreams’. Dreams
and love seem to be the preoccupation, and a track entitled ‘My game of love’ ends
with lots of orgasmic heavy breathing and evental encores. C'est la vie!
   Perhaps the most successful track on the whole album is ‘Your hidden dreams’.
This gives one just a slight glimpse of what the album could have been like with a little
more sincerity and possibly more work. By far the best track is ‘The Visitation’ which is
almost entirely electronic; that is if you try hard not to hear the various pieces of
‘freaky’ poetics which seep through now and again. The grand finale of the album
‘Black Mass—Electronic Storm in Hell’ speaks for itself. Seven minutes, twenty seconds
of horrors!
   I do wish that this album had lived up to expectations because it is time that
someone produced a really good well-integrated electronic vocal LP after Messrs
Lennon and Harrison's abortive attempts. Do, however, give White Noise a listen to,
if only to freak your cat out, and let's wait patiently and optimistically for their next
rendering with, I hope, new vocalists.                                               P.W.