Ellen Allien

I first heard German electronic artist Ellen Allien's song "Trash Scapes" in a club in Reykjavik last year - I was chatting with the DJ, and he said "I love DJ'ing in Iceland because I get to play all the crazy stuff that I can't get away with anywhere else." "Trash Scapes" seems a good distillation of Allien's work - a collection of terribly mangled beats, sampled slashes of guttural guitar, and her altered vocals leaking in and around the piles of sound. It's strangely compelling on a very human level for all its machined surface. Although the CD was released in 2003, it took me about six months to track down a copy back here in the US - might be easier just to see her out on tour.

Links of note:

Ellen Allien's label: http://www.bpitchcontrol.com - at least in the US, probably the easiest way to get a hold of her releases.

If you'd like, you can email me here: richard@hearingmusic.com.

Oh, and all content on these pages is copyright Richard Lewis.