Customer Reviews

Voyeur

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is a particularly excellent disk and I'm delighted to see them working under this name once again, but many people below seem under the mistaken impression that "Drill" was their first outing as Noise Unit. This is totally incorrect. The first one, "Grinding Into Emptiness" was a pairing of members of FLA and Klinik (from Belgium) on Chicago's legendary Wax Trax label and much more minimalist and experimental in tone, and my own favourite is still "Response Frequency," which never got a domestic release and has a very sinister element to it. My copy is on Antler-Subway Records from Belgium. Then there was "Strategy of Violence," which is harsher (like "Drill") and I never cared for as much.

This album is one of the rare few that has lived up to my expectations. I've been diving head on into psychedelically inclined music for the last few years now; starting off with Infected Mushroom, Astral Projection, Juno Reactor, Hallucinogen, etc...and this album lives up to the clean style I've come to expect from excellent psychedelic music, but has a flavor very much still its own.

The album seems very Sci-Fi friendly to me. It has an overall dark metallic feeling, low vibrations with a rhythmic pulse that is soft and deep. This is not the rave music that some other groups (like Astral Projection) border on. Instead it's steady, cold frequencies with a lot of high quality mixing involved. Perfect chill music, similar to portions of the Matrix soundtrack. There is a distinctly `quasi human' feeling to the album...like it was meant for a time in the future when the different between humans and machines gets difficult to distinguish.

All in all, this is a hot album for Psychedelic fans, or even for people who want something with a slightly darker cool chill feeling. 5 stars all the way!

I'll start by saying that I have not heard in great detail the other 2 Noise Unit albums. Though I am familiar with all of Leebs/Fulbers Delerium, Intermix and Synaesthesia projects I have generally strayed away from their harder, more industrial sound. Other then Front Line Assembly's last outing Civilization I've never been a big fan of FLA.

So, when I first heard about a new Noise Unit album from Leeb/Peterson I was not really all that excited. That was until I heard some samples. They sounded intriguing and it wet my appetite to hear more. After much ado to find "Voyeur", I was finally able to track the sucker down!

As soon as I walked out of the store, I placed the CD in my discman, took a stroll along the seawall and for 59 mins was taken for a ride far away from this chaotic world.

WOW... is all I can say! I'm even at a lose to describe what this album sounds like. There is a lot of ambience mixed with heavy beats at times and the occasional decoded voice. The production on this album is also unbelievable! There are a lot of sounds and layers happening all at once and it feeds the senses immensely!

Highlights include the mesmerizing opening track Illicit Dreams, with its decoded vocals, rumbling bass and heavy synths. Another great track is Surveillance with its dreamy, long intro... it feels at moments like your in a nostalgic dream. These tracks are only topped by the closing song Monolith which is simply epic.

Though the album still has some industrial roots and sounds, fans of Deleriums instrumental work, Intermix or Synaesthesia will want this album!

Like a previous reviewer stated I hope Leeb/Peterson are smart enough to continue Noise Unit into the future, it would be a real shame if they didn't.....

I really took a gamble with this album, I'm a fan of delirium, frontline assembly, synesthesia and most of the other Leeb projects but I had never heard of noise unit. I am very relieved that this is easily one of the best electronic albums I've ever heard.

Voyeur is an incredibly polished and deeply atmospheric journey into dark realms that showcases the evolving talents of Bill Leeb. There are layers upon layers of complex synths and vocals going on here that evoke images of a dark, sinister, high-tech future world. It could almost be another front line assembly album, except the vocals are very minimal and subtle.

This is a great CD to listen to while reading a science-fiction novel or something. Voyeur is a stunning achievement in dark-ambient soundscapes, I can only hope that Leeb makes another album in this vein.

I have been a huge fan of Leeb and Fulber's works (either together or separate) for almost a decade: Front Line Assembly, Synaesthesia, Delerium, Conjure One, Noise Unit, Equinox, Intermix, Cyberaktif, Pro-Tech. They have a great dynamic sound and this Noise Unit album, Voyeur, utilizes a lot of their other works while maintaining that Noise Unit feel.

Drill had a great industrial sound to it but I had always thought it a bit dry. Voyeur keeps that great hard, electronic sound but also wettens it up a bit, making for some fat tunes.

Illicit Dreams is a GREAT song to start the CD off with, perfect choice. It comes in vague, get's chaotic then BAM, it's off with that great Noise Unit beat. I could groove to Illicit Dreams all day and night.

In my opinion, the album is SOLID and is pure drive from begining to end. It has climbed to be the top of my favorites from all of Leeb and Fulber's works.

this album, along with "civilization", represents for me a bit of a turning point for the FLA chaps. gone are the predictable sledgehammer beats and chugging (and way too predictable) basslines of the last 10 years. instead, the rivethead cliches of old have been supplanted by spacey, intricate beats and soundscapes with fleeting and subtle melodies. i was afraid that with the success of delerium they'd forget about their more "industrial" projects (or worse, would continue doing them, but without any heart). my worries were for nought. keep it up!

however, in this case you'd better use your ears to get the pictures...this is absolutely amazing....I have two Noise Unit, their first vinyl, the 12" 'Deceit' taken from 'Grinding Into Emptiness' of 1989, and this new one, and they're both masterpieces in their own ends...'Voyeur' is the best record for many years...words from a 70s disco freak...hm...

Track 1 'Illicit Dreams' features some programming work also by Craig Huxtable of Landscape Body Machine of Victoria, BC. LBM has 2 releases: Structure (1999) and Revolution ep (2003) both are distroed by Interdimensional Industries - www,interdimensional,com
Noise Unit orig was Bill Leeb & Mark Verhaeghen of The Klinik of the first 2 lps and 2 12"s (Antler Subway & Waxtrax labels), later Rhys Fulber (FLA, Decree) joined (Offbeat label), now it's Chris Pederson (Will, Decree) with Bill Leeb on Philly's Metropolis label. Michael Balch (ex-Ministry, FLA, waiting for God) also contributes to 1 song. It's a different sound that those orig recordings, and different for those who expect Top-40 Delerium songs.

After a five year hiatus, the team of Bill Leeb and Chris Peterson are back with the next more modern installment of Noise Unit. This time they were helped in the mixing department by a talented Rhys Fulber (who is Leeb's partner in the production of FLA and Delerium) and Greg Reely (of Equinox production). This is not like the 1998 debut album 'Drill' which was a highly charged industrial beat. This album is textured with ambient new age rhythms and some softer more serene grooves that will appease the modern mainstream listeners.

The only issue I have with this CD is the artwork...I could not see the correlation between the music and the artwork. It just seemed out of place. This is a 9 track CD with the last two songs 'Tighten Up' and 'Monolith' more dance orientated (sounds like Delerium remixes). This is because of the input of Michael Balch of Intermix and Delerium ilk.

All in all this CD is highly enjoyable and any fan of industrial and ambient new age music should like this 9 song mix - of a more modernized Noise Unit delivered to the masses in early 2005.

This album reminds me of radio telescopes listening to the strange and inhuman sounds of interstellar space -- cold and mysterious and perhaps somewhat menacing, making one feel alone and very small.

The music is rich and atmospheric, combining the ambient tranciness of Delerium with the harder, darker edge of Frontline Assembly. It has an oddly soothing quality despite its menace; like Collide, it evokes the flushed, maddened inspiration of fever dreams.

I do feel that the first half of the album is stronger than the second half -- the second half is more taut and bleepy; sweeping synth melodies give way to complex tone and beat patterns, but the final track, "Monolith", takes us back into the vast strangeness that the first half of the album evokes so powerfully.

For all of these reasons, "Voyeur" is one of my favorite albums. If you like electronica, give it a listen.