Customer Reviews

Strange Familiar

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The music on Strange Familiar is in a similar vein to that on the later Mills/Undark release called Pearl + Umbra. I say LATER because Strange Familiar is actually a reissue of the debut Undark CD, originally released in 96 on the late, great t:me label. The difference between the two Undark discs is that in 1996, Mr. Mills was first venturing out from his more familiar territory as a visual artist. (He has been a mainstay of Vaughn Oliver's V23 studios and did album cover art for many noteworthy 4AD acts in the 80s and 90s.) Where some of the songs on P+U are more melodic and stand apart as individual pieces (particularly the haunting Shed Lustre), Strange Familiar is more of a collection of electro-ambient themes, with a lot of pulsing synthesizers and found-sound samples. As with P+U, Mills was able to recruit many influential friends to help him get started, people like Brian and Roger Eno, David Sylvian, Bill Laswell, Kevin Shields, and Robin Guthrie. Those are all the RIGHT people as far as I'm concerned, although their presence is not always very obvious in the midst of such an onslaught of electronics.

Russell Mills is the painter/graphic designer behind a lot of Nine Inch Nails, Brian Eno, and Bill Laswell projects.

Both of his CDs (so far), "Strange Familiar" and "Pearl + Umbra" are excellent constructions of ambient drone, samples, basslines and various contributions from collaborators like The Edge, Brian Eno, Robin Guthrie, Kevin Shields, Harold Budd, Sussan Deyhim, Thurston Moore, etc.

Personally, I like "Strange Familiar" a bit more because it flows together like a series of movements, but these two CDs would make a wonderful double album.

With collaborators like Michael Brook, David Sylvian and the Eno brothers (Brian & Roger), you rather expect the music of Russell Mills to sound about like it does. It would not sound out-of-place as backing tracks for albums by any of these excellent groundbreaking artists.

What *is* somewhat unexpected, at least to me, is the profound depth of these tracks. There is a myriad of things going on in them, just at the limit of audibility -- treated instruments, mumbled speaking, buried radio broadcasts, echoes of other treatments or other directions which these musical collages once wore. The tracks are, ostensibly, "backing tracks" in that Michael Brook would have played guitar or Brian Eno would have sung over them (had they been theirs), but by themselves, without that central focus to draw the ear, these multi-dimensional rhythmic sound collages jump to the center stage and reveal themselves to be fascinating little universes of their own.

It's a collection which must be heard on headphones, and heard repeatedly to be fully untangled.