What sets the label Bip-Hop's compilation albums Bip-Hop Generation apart is the fact that the focus is kept on a small number of artists, each one having the chance to develop his style over more than one track. The roaster for this third volume includes English, Australian, Japanese, French, and Russian names. The best known in electronica circles is
Neotropic, here offering two strong pieces of warped experimental techno ("High Fibre" is darker than anything on the Ninja Tune release Strawberry Alarm Clock). Avant-garde fans will recognize the name of Atau Tanaka, a Japanese artist who experiments with various means of data processing. "Bondage_2" is part of a series using harmonic analyses of photographs by Nobuyoshi Araki. In between these two poles one discovers a few (relative) newcomers. If the 14-minute piece by Zonk't (aka Laurent Perrier) feels too unidimensional to remain interesting long enough, Bovine Life's short tunes provide a nice moment of relief. His music is the most melodic and rhythmic on this CD, but it could hardly be considered as mainstream techno. The revelation comes in the form of three abstract, delicate, and very powerful tracks by Pimmon, a sound artist in the same vein as Artificial Memory Trace and Koji Asano. His work provides the main argument to acquire this CD, although there is not a really dull moment here. ~ François Couture