the new york and smoke group/orators/glass of juice (3way split cdr from crippled ninja productions)
this split features two people who owe me tapes. not that i've been terribly good about keeping up with trading lately, i just mention it because i'm a bitter and lonely man. the first guy who owes me a tape is mr phil kretschman, part of the soon to be sprawling collective known as the new york and smoke group (so far though he's the only member, to my knowledge). he starts of the cd with a bunch of funky out-of-sync loops known as "numerous requests for our colleagues to eat sharp pieces of broken glass" which then disintegrates into harsh computer static and a distorted song thing that sounds like the main melody was made with a recorder or something, over crazy drums and guitar. nice stuff. about nyasg's final track, "ringo has his foot screwed on backwards so the drums sound kinda iffy", i don't really have that much to say. it has some funny distorted vocals, but really i just wanted to call attention to the humorous name, so there you go. the orators' third of the split kicks off almost a little too upbeat for me with the super energetic techno track "alacial interface", but slows down for "no vista" and "a new mediator" which until a couple seconds ago i didn't realize were seperate tracks, linked as they are by the sound of children playing. i thought the first was the intro or something. any case, these are my favorite orators tracks of the disc, with a slower, more idm-ish sound. another  uptempo track follows, "what i never told you", and ends with a more moody piano driven techno track "forgive me." glass of juice opens the final third of the split with a nice little guitar track that i wasn't expecting, not a beat to be heard, called "adventures in...", followed by "these flies" another guitar track, this one with beats, which seems to me to have a very tortoise-y sound to it, i liked this one a lot. the other guy who owes me a tape guests on the next track; joe fritz does drum programming and plays keyboards on "joe's head goes back in time" a nice spacey track. the cd ends with a very quite track "morning distance", with far off, almost subliminal guitar and nice quiet beats. lots of good tracks for only thirty-five minutes, and with excellent packaging by crippled ninja.