TRANSLATED | DAM 303 BUY ONLINE 01. World - Assemblage 23
global remix
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WORLD | MET 267 BUY ONLINE 01.
World
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WRONG | DAM 000 01. Wrong - Album Edit
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ORDER+JOY | MET 169 BUY ONLINE 01. Order + Joy
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EVERYTHING IS DEAD And GONE | MET 131 01. useless
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PAIN | MET 042 01. Any Anything
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BENEATH | MET 018 01. Die Driver Die
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SOVIET | TIN 009 01. Soviet (War)
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CRUSH YOUR ENEMIES | TIN 002 01. Celebrate the Enemy
[Underwater Mix]
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CELEBRATE THE ENEMY | TIN 001 01. Celebrate the Enemy
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METALWERKS | OUT 011 01.Waiting Game (Single Mix)
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Live Action | OUT 015 01. Die Driver Die
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| ALBUM NOTES: | ||
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World
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I really was feeling a bit down on the whole music thing around this time. I was tired of the close-mindedness I was seeing in the goth-industrial scene, unwilling to expand their minds and accept different things, sounds and ideas... Mick played me some of the stuff he was writing, and I liked it, but it didn't really inspire me. Then 9/11, which hit me really hard - having been buying coffee on a street corner (in NYC) when I looked up and saw these huge fireballs erupting downtown from the towers... scary!... I guess I retreated to something safe and comforting - the music... I was inspired to write and write. In many ways this is one of my favorite albums. It is and was my safety net. The music just gelled and really sounded great with Mick's lyrics hitting dead on! It gives me goose-bumps sometimes, listening to it. -- v.Markus We really tried to get at it all a bit different this time out. From the art to the "cleaner" electronics and vocals. At the end of the day tho, I still think you can see the "croc shop" fingerprints all over it - which is a good thing. Also the first of our "albums" to feature input from other artists since "Celebrate" - there were amazing remixes on here from dubok & Flesh Field (along with Rian's great vocals on that mix.) This is also the Croc Shop album that almost never was in a way - as we had taken almost a year off & I was seriously questioning doing any more records. I recorded 2 tracks "Tragedy" & "Try" sometime around the 9/11 Disaster & then they sat around for a month or two until Markus began flooding me with new "backing tracks" that were just too good to let sit , so I wrote & wrote & wrote lyrics and recorded & re-recorded vocals for weeks on end & we were finished just in time to make a year-end (2002) release schedule at Metropolis. -- Mick Hale |
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Order
+ Joy >
This release was our "return to the source" in terms of the way "Everything Is Dead..." (the previous album) went far out on a limb with more "noise" and free-form song writing styles than we had done in the past. With "O+J" we wanted to re-set the controls to the EBM minimalism that we had in the early "Celebrate" days. As a reviewer once aptly pointed out however, "simple" for Croc Shop is still a bit "dense" and not all that "plain" or something to that effect. Dj Rexx Arkana (NY) even went as far as to tell me in Toronto that Croc Shop's beats weren't "dumbed down" enuff for the masses ! Oh well . . . I guess I'd rather we've put out "intricate & interesting" listening albums with a danse beat than just churn out simple-minded crap like Apoptigma or VNV or all the "clones" of that sound ! eh?... Anyways back to O+J: My favourite cuts are: "Worldestroyed", "O+J" "Reason" & "Wrong" - but it plays well all the way thru ,with only one real "filler" track ("One Voice") which I think was a nice lull in the most song-oriented album we'd done in a while ! Oh yeh & this was also the 1st album that listed the band as (only) "Croc Shop" but only about 1/2 of the reviews caught that "edit" in the band name ! -- Mick Hale As Mick said, it was a return to the source. We actually set out to write something stripped and bare, but in the end, C/S has a hard time with that. I think our inspirations are drawn from so many different sources that we go into every track and every album with heads full of music... we don't just claim "to love 80s synthpop" and try to emulate it verbatim. The album ended up much denser and intricate. But reviewers did catch on and noted that we had really returned to a more solid EBM sound with this. -- v.Markus |
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EIDAG
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This was supposed to be the last Crocodile Shop album. And it was! After this we used Croc Shop. Its anyway. I think that Mick and I were really both involved in a lot of things happening just at this time, and while we were into the music, we were also in dark places. Len9's own musical approach helped to drive that, which makes this album so varied and multi-sounding, but I always think a bit melancholy, too. --v.Markus EIDAG was the first album to feature a new lineup in quite some time and theinfluence shows in the darker & more experimental approach we all took with this release. This cd actually had ALTERNATIVE PRESS so impressed they called Metropolis for an interview with us -- an honour only bestowed on maybe 3 or 4 Metropolis acts - ever! So I guess we knew we were doing something right... Tracks like "Useless" & "Core" (featured on the huge-selling HOT TOPIC release MET1999) are still live favourites & show C/S "thru the years" sound at it's best . Some of the rest of the album veers off into many "random" & diverse directions including Trance, Ambient, Synth-pop & all out Experimental Soundscapey stuff... A "trippy" cd to play start to finish. -- Mick Hale |
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Pain
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The last album we did with RA.Werner on bass. I was really into Bowie's German period at this time, and I think that Mick was, too, because there are many references to Low, Heroes and such! I love this album from the perspective that it is rather dark and sad... it sounds alone! I think much of that comes from the fact that in this one we really worked separately a lot, although we shared a studio. I remember dubbing keyboard lines and doing some reading for some of Mick's trax while suffering from a cold and on medicine - so it is shrouded in a haze. This one, also, was one of the first albums where my contributions were made entirely digitally. I've always like 'Input Out' and 'Soviet'. -- v.Markus |
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MORE "NOTES" COMING SOON ! |
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