Aquarius Records: More electronic weirdness courtesy of our pals at the prolific and 'all hit and no miss' Fflint label. The mysterious Cousin Silas delivers some down tempo, almost dreamy electronica (especially considering the 'fucked-up-ness' of most of the stuff on Fflint). This is Boards Of Canada for the underground set, a chill out record for after that heavy bondage session, or that robot war, or that day spent taped naked to the side of a building. Not for the faint of heart, but pretty and tranquil enough that adventurous mainstreamers might try starting here if they have any fantasies of listening to 'underground electronica.' Gentle chimes and toy xylophones, modulated bird chirp-like warbles, humming buzz and whirring static are woven into a surreal sounscape dotted with weird downtuned melodies, chiming soaring synths, stabs of minor key piano, skipping and shufffling, clicking and hissing, and pastoral washes of cottony sound. Not a whole lot of rhythm, but when it comes in, it's perfect: heavily reverbed, stuttering understated loops that stretch out into late night excursions through dark and druggy landscapes. Can Fflint do no wrong? How can Warp and Matador and Lo claim to have their finger on the pulse of electronic music when all this crazy, amazing and creative shit is blowing up right under their noses? Too bad.

JD: Excellent debut from this new Fflint artist! Anxiously awaiting a full LP

Flux Magazine: A secretive sci-fi writer broadcasting from the wilds of darkest Yorkshire snaps a half glimpsed fading image of something too horrific to bring to full consciousness. A child's toy chimes, a synth squelches out of time, a door slams shut and you're transported to Cousin Silas' spooky world where train-shunting drones, decelerating backwards beats and murky voices meld. The good trip up 'Warlock Hill' and the beats of 'Setting the Clinch' lighten the gloom but the night-marish walk through the tangled tortured limbs in a 'Garden of Pale Children' will haunt you for days. GR

Aural Innovations: WONDERFUL STUFF - Great production, extremely atmospheric with an EXCELLENT sound. No bullshit - WE REALLY LIKE YOUR CD! Terri was just saying that it's up there with Rapoon etc.

Karda Estra: Bountiful new electronic soundscapes from the mysterious Cousin Silas. The music ranges from the avant and eerily inventive 'Garden Of Pale Children' (all full of looped echoed ray gun voices) to my favourite piece - the lovely 'Warlock Hill' - a sumptuous pastoral landscape where the sounds of industry now only twinkle on the horizon and glassy electronics form a cold, icy morning dew. Richard Wileman, KARDA ESTRA

The Gray Field Recordings: Your album is absolutely fantastic! I love it. I have been listening to it all day. I especially like the song "Setting the Clinch". I played that over and over because it is far too short. Each song is like a glimpse into another world. Are you planning on making another album soon? I want to hear more...get to it! R.Loftiss

Enrique Jardines: Cousin Silas is really quite a fascinating piece of work. It has the components of music that I enjoy the most, a snarl along with a sense of humor. I must say that this wonderful music has a clear knack for gesture, sound manipulation and interesting compositional ideas. The music on this CD clearly is a compelling case for intelligence and passionate music making in an urban, post modern environment. Well done Cousin Silas! Now all we need is an encore!

Raw Nerve Promotions: The already impressive Cousin Silas bring to the table more electro weirdness in this EP that starts with View from a room , a head messer of a piece with toybox sounds, stunguns and alien noises, blipping and dancing around. Moorgate has more expansive noises before Warlock Hill brings along a nice melody aided by progressive touches here and there which remind me of The Orb and The KLF.

More classical drama in the perfect for film piece Setting the Clinch which could have lasted for a lot longer than its two minutes. In fact, that could be said for most of the outings on here, that they are, if anything, under-developed.

There are some very interesting ideas though, along with very strange minimal oddities that can describe the last three songs on this short, rather fascinating recording.

Aural Innovations: Cousin Silas is the electronic sound artist alter ego of Dave Hughes, editor of the outstanding zine, Modern Dance. Lilliput is an 18 minute collection of 7 brief tracks. The music consists of a variety of sound collage and avant-garde electronic pieces that can be abstract, spacey, aggressive... and all that and more at the same time. We get an interesting glom of avant-garde electronics and whimsical fun, dense electro aggression that paint sonic landscapes with a tank instead of a brush, and sound collage bits with cool looped effects. Among my favorites was the spacey proggy "Warlock Hill" and "Setting The Clinch", which is like a robot dance party in a tunnel with a bit of a Residents vibe. [Jeff Fitzgerald]

Kevin Busby: Many of Lilliput's vignettes are soothing and edgy at the same time. There is a sense of bright Summery landscapes, but from the perspective of someone with dangerously photosensitive skin. A duration of 18 minutes makes for a brief trip, but a lot of ground is covered. A little treasure.

The Brainwashed Brain: Cousin Silas is a new addition to the ever more rotund girth of CD-R label Fflint Central. This secretive sci-fi writer broadcasting backwards from the wilds of darkest Yorkshire fits right in with the Fflinty Ones, so if you feel at home with the Fortean soundscapes of Pendro and Cavendish Sanguine then Cousin Silas will bring welcome ear fodder. In fact Silas fits in so well that I end up wondering whether the sci-fi writer story could be a cover for yet another Jones and/or Williams noise entity even though they assure me that this is not so. Just take for instance the opening child's toy chime, out of time synth squelches and closing door slam of 'View from a Room' which could all quite easily be deployed the same way by Pendro. Named in remembrance of a 1975 tube disaster, 'Moorgate' revolves around a wondrously dense noise drone of the kind so loved by Berkowitz, Lake and Dahmer, shuffling like steam train shunting. 'Warlock Hill' has a brighter feel, with an uplifing rising keyboard line and pleasant little good trip pings. Even though the title 'Setting the Clinch' is pure Fflint Central, this track moves to a simple dancebeat with distant echoing ghost traces of early Non. Much of "Lilliput", especially the decelerating backwards voices and percussion of the title track, has a fading photograph feel, like a partial shadow of half glimpsed memory of something too shocking to bring to full consciousness. 'Lilliput' itself could actually be 'Setting the Clinch' played in reverse through some dirty effects. This is perhaps the spookiest Fflint Central release I've heard. The 'Garden of Pale Children' is a nightmarish walk through the dimly lit tangled limbs of tortured miscreants singing their unfortunate spirit songs and is a track Coil would be proud of. 'Chamber 7 Vat 3' closes the door to Silas' disturbing world with a horrific rotting futuremachine belch which I could imagine working very well as background music to the tense scene in 'Aliens' where they discover the alien hive. If you are yet to dip your toes into the fetid pool of the FFlinty Ones then this and 'The Oxide Heresies' of Pendro both make good starters that should leave you wanting to hear more. - Graeme Rowland

Modern Dance: Got this little bugger afore Dave W could get his sweaty hands on it, well, he has a copy but he's let me review it. He's been going about how good and innovative Fflint Central are, I thought, okay, let's check this out and see if we can validate his unswerving loyalty. Not quite an ep, more of a mini album, Lilliput contains seven tracks, and it kicks off with View From A Room. The track has a repeating four or five note pattern that is strangely compelling, especially with the noise of the crickets. Over the top of this, synth sfxs dive in and out of earshot culminating in something that sounds like a million birds taking flight before a prison door slams shut, ending the soundscape. Moorgate, the second track, is about the 70s Tube crash (I have this on good authority). It's a sinister piece that slams straight into your solar plexus and sets the imagination reeling about all the nasty things that would have been found there, the drivers face before impact (and after, maybe), y'know, all the stuff that we're supposed to look away from. Warlock Hill is perhaps my favourite as it's the most ambient of the tracks. Eno-esque synths wash like waves as something akin to a hunting horn sounds in the distance. There's also the odd phrase from an electric guitar as well as one or two bells. Rather sweet. Setting The Clinch features a heavily morphed dance beat and something similar to what could only be described as an old wobbly organ. All this is washed in deep reverb, and at one point the beat manifests into something almost like a steam train in a tunnel. The title track would appear to be a celebration on the alter of reverse. Hints of phasing trundle through a backdrop of reverse cymbals and beats with the odd haunting vocal and aural steam - you want to hear this stuff! Garden Of Pale Children is simply a piece with about a thousand babies, all crying, all in various degrees of distress, reversed, normal speed, slowed down, sampled and mixed to form a pretty disturbing canvas - moving, yet scary. The final piece is Chamber 7 Vat 3. This reminds me of something I read on a website about an underground alien base where experiments were carried out, and the results were kept alive in something called the hall of nightmares. I wonder if Silas read the same stuff? Horribly uncomfortable. Well, what can I say. I agree with Dw, Fflint Central seem to go beyond the reaches of music and actually, at times, create something almost tactile, music that sometimes disturbs, makes you really think... Could this be reality music? Scared the feck out of me! (Leaky Geen)

Kevin Busby: This full-length sequel to Silas's debut 'Lilliput' abandons the listener in a Brobdingnagian place of giant birds, monstrous machines and sonorously purring cats. Whilst many of the sounds on the CD are striking and insistent, there is also enough detail and restraint that when the CD stops it's all like a half-remembered dream. The best aid to memory is to leave the CD on repeat play.

Space Rock: Better known to us as editor of Modern Dance, this is editor Dave Hughes, exercising his creative urges in an electronic direction, across an experimental format.

"Portraits & Peelings" is something for you lovers of the avant-garde (i.e. readers of the Wire), with a few bones thrown to us spacerockers to keep us happy. Opener, "Bug Lady" is a real gem, going all cosmic on us, before "Olympus Mons" takes us further down the space corridor.

Things get all Edgar Froese on "Window Spinnerets" and "Glass Ravine", both heading down an ambient tangent, but by the time we get to "Hologram Chopper" it's gone all bleep drone skibop music of the future.

It's a bit Orb, it's a bit Tangerine Dream, it's a bit all of it's own, but it's never dull, always interesting, and on highlights like "Congealer", it's something new. Imagine a soundtrack to the most messed up sci fi mind control movie you can conceive (you know, "Bladerunner" but good) and you'll be close to the mark.

Aural Innovations: There's lots of interesting ideas on Lilliput, but music and sound works like these need a wee bit more time to be properly fleshed out. And well... what do you know? As if in answer to the call, the latest from Cousin Silas, entitled Portraits & Peelings", is a full length set of a dozen tracks that don't go on lengthy excursions but most of which do take the time needed for fuller development. And whereas Lilliput featured more experimental works, Portraits & Peelings offers much more to the lover of all things space, while still retaining enough of the avant-garde elements to keep things extra interesting throughout.

The set opens with "Bug Lady", a cool combination of cosmic space and harsh sound waves. Real spaceship engine room stuff. Cousin Silas kicks in the thrusters and soars into deep space with "Olympus Mons", "Window Spinnerets" and "Glass Ravine", all of which take us into some of the darker regions of Tangerine Dreamy space, but also have a somewhat heavenly vibe. If there were howling winds beyond the Earth's atmosphere... this is what they would sound like. Eerie and image inducing. "Congealer" brings to mind a chat room for aliens. "Butter Of Death" and "Atonement With Beasts" are among the quieter, but by no means calmer tracks, focusing on atmosphere, texture and theme. "Hologram Chopper" occupies a freaked out corner of space that's brimming with radio signals, bleeps and blurps, and a banquet of strange sound patterns that all come together in perfect alien harmony. And "Out Of A Neutron Sea" features alien industrial engine room freakout sound-art. Overall, an impressive set of floating space with an adventurous experimental edge. Imagine early Tangerine Dream meets the Residents. [Jeff Fitzgerald]

Aquarius Records: It's been a while, way too long actually. And we were starting to get the shakes, jonesing for some new noise from our pals at Fflint Central. And as if they heard our poor neglected ear drums calling out to them from across the sea, what should show up on our doorstep but a box of the new Fflint release by Cousin Silas! Whereas Silas' last release was a demented downtempo masterpiece, a sort of more damaged Boards Of Canada, things on this new one get way more abstract and spaced out, maybe like The Orb for the fucked up, noise rock set. Burbling, acid tinged spacescapes, with sinister gurgles and swooping blooping Hawkwindiness, Goblin-esque doomscapes and chopped up, rhythmic throbs, searing sci-fi synth splatter, and alien, almost house-like four on the floor pulses, creepy Whitehouse-ish free noise and delicate spider webbed melodies all coalesce into a nightmarishly soothing, gorgeously creepy late night chill-out record. All hail Fflint!

Raw Nerve Promotions: This is the first of 2 CD s I received together from Cousin Silas, and judging by the artwork and titles alone, I was expecting an odd ride!

I love the opening ambience of the rather minimal, swirling Bug Lady . This is how I imagine the sound of the earth breathing to be. Reminds me of my favourite electro artists Radio Massacre International a great deal here (although their songs are usually between 20 and 30 minutes each). A few blips of rhythm are included in the flanging Aphex Twin ambient style piece Olympus Mons before the huge disturbing alarms go off in Lesser Spotted Loopwing , delivering a full on wake up call.

Aside from the strange looping piece Hologram Chopper , most of the rest is certainly for you chill heads with 5 or 6 minute slabs of dreamy, spaced out sounds being the main concern. Window Spinnerets has great drama and an almost classical edge, Out of a Neutron Sea packs on lots of layers of warping sounds, and Glass Ravine is pure class minimal warmth.

Very good collection of tracks here.

Modern Dance: Cousin Silas is the musical alias of the well known member of the worldwide musical underground called Dave W. Hughes. Dave who? Dave is the editor of Modern Dance, this highly acclaimed (and quite successful as you're reading the issue # 46) review magazine. I knew him as a writer on music quite a while before I found out that he's a musician as well. I shouldn't expect too much, was his reply when I asked him for further specifications. When I received his latest recording, I took him literally - and put it on as dinner music on the evening of the day that it came in. It took me a couple of days to recover from that shock - and now it's you who should take me literally. The world of electronic music is full of seemingly profound synth noodlings that usually give you a nice ambient background for whatever you're doing while listening. And if you're an experienced listener of contemporary electronic music it must not sound nice (yet might even sound rather strange) and still lets you preserve an unscared mood. Not so the music by that mentioned cousin. This record is quite a brutal affair, psychologically speaking, a sonic version of a reflection of the deadly last things, actually peeling off anything that might be considered "nice" or "entertaining" in music.

Tracks one to three - "Bug Lady", "Olympus Mons" and "Lesser Spotted Loopwing" - might serve as some sort of an introduction or - better - initiation, and from track four on ("Congealer") you're all alone with these aspects of your inner life that you might prefer to forget. What you get is some kind of sonic poetry, alright, but would you expect topics or - better (again, I know) - titles like "Butter Of Death", "Hologram Chopper", "Window Spinnerets", "Atonements With Beasts" or "Glass Ravine" as something within the reach of contemporary (and still "popular") music? My only way of access was to regard this music as sonic literature, and it was not so easy to detect its sources in literary history: that part of the old Greek literature that reflects - far besides the well known ancient myths - the human condition as such and especially that period of time when mankind became aware of itself, and developed myths for the quite practical reason of survival (a recommendation for reading alongside the fifths or sixths listen to "Portraits & Peelings": Wasson / Ruck / Hofmann: The Road To Eleusis. Unveiling The Secret Of The Mysteries, New York 1978). The music of Cousin Silas is dealing with seclusion and desperation, comfort and relief, but, as in real life, the latter can only be offered as some kind of hope. There is no relief, and there is no escape, and "Portraits & Peelings" makes this quite clear musical wise. There is no obvious tension, no movement - just being and making you aware of alternative ways of being. It takes your full awareness and does not even let you think of anything besides it. A brainwash that clears your mind (and doesn't tell you lies as brainwashes usually do).

With "Portraits & Peelings" you get an impressive example of musical power, that sort of power you're usually looking for in demanding literature. And I don't want to recommend it with words like "if you're in the world of" or "if you have a liking for". If for you it's about musical content rather than about musical form, you should give it several serious listens whatever your other musical preferences are. When the contemporary musical underground once will have a library - a code of essentials - "Portraits & Peelings" will be filed in. One last warning before you fill out the order form: This is nothing that "mystics" or "spiritualists" or anybody within the New Age circle might like. This record doesn't make a myth of myths. Your drowning and yet your only chance is "Retreat To The Tide" (the closing tune). If you're strong enough for an encounter with yourself in the ghost train of the real world, get it and you'll never forget it. (Frank Gingeleit)