If you were present at last year's 'Festival des musiques ultimes', you will agree with me Batchas gave away one 'hell of a performance' that day. To all those who could not attend, Noise Museum (ex White Noise) now gives an excellent chance to make up for this missed opportunity with an impression of the magnificent concert that was given to 300 people. It is a piece of well structured noise, mlxed down in one long track, and constructed with modulated feedback waves, manipulated samples and effects. The sounds are very diabolic at times, and go way beyond the solemn atmospheres of the CD 'Tahafut-Ul-Tahafut'. An excellent document of a memorable performance. Comes as a white vinyl record in a 'linoleum' packaging and is limited to 444 copies.
QT/Transglobal Frequencies Reviews

This live performance unveils another face of BATCHAS: more ritual and more heavy... Very limited. If you like Nocturnal Emissions and Nurse With Wound, you'll love this!
Lowlands

Live industrial albums used to be the bane of my existence, as they allways seemed to be too spontaneous and lacked focus. I've since loosened up a bit and it's LPs like this one from Switzerland's Batchas that have made me realize the error of my former ways. The recording is from 1995's 'Musiques Ultimes' festival in France. It starts up with some delirious rumbling wich slowly builds and leads into some nicely layered atmospheric effects. From there the sounds begin to pick up a bit and gives way to cascading loops of sinister and menacing electronics wich continue through most of the performance, until the end when everything climaxes into a ritualistic sensoria with an insistent sequenced rhythm providing the backbone. The overall feel of this album is such that it straddles the line between ambient music and power electronics, and its difficult to classify wich genre it more closely ressembles. It's really easy to forget that this is a live LP, as the coherent and logical path the sounds follow makes it better than many studio efforts by like-minded outfits. Neat package too: the covers feature a glued-on linoleum tile, while the disc is on hazy clear vinyl. This one really should not be missed.
JS.Audio Drudge issue 7.

Afler the intermission, Batchas were ready to begin. Of all the acts playing at this year's festival, Batchas was the only one to have the distinction of having played at last year's festival as well with their performance later issued as an LP from Noise Museum. Batchas' show began with the stage empty of performers, and two white buckets suspended from mike stands provided the only sound; a quiet, ticking percussion. The performers began to come onto the stage slowly, and the music metamorphosed into a sort of electro-ritual hybrid. In addition to the electronics, there was also a man beating on gongs in the rear of the stage, and off to the right there was a woman who was standing and slowly bowing a long stringed instrument. In addition to the occasional sample (thunder storms, etc), members changed the scope of their playing throughout, and at differing points, one member was blowing into a long black tube, which looked like a plastic PVC pipe and gave off a didgeridoo-like buzz, and the standing woman picked up a violin, and bowed out a few notes. About 2/3rds of the way through the performance, the percussionist took over, and began beating on the gongs quite furiously, which gave off an imposing echo. As the metallic resonance faded in volume, the electronics came to the fore with a snippety delay sequence. There was some technical problems that caused the sounds to be crackly, but it seemed to fit right in with the rest of the sound that was being created. Based on the live LP, this years performance sounded different than last years with more of a minimal/ambient ritual fusion than previous. Overall, a successful performance, and the audience seemed quite pleased as well.
James Stephens in Audio Drudge-Issue 7-


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