» Tue Jan 18, 2011 12:51 pm http://www.evestus.net/files/Evestus-wastelands-2006.rar
“post-nuclear pop music”
Wastelands is a concept album inspired by the “Fallout” computer game series. Written during 2005 and released in January 2006 by D-trash records, the album received series of very high reviews by the likes of Terrorizer, Virus Magazine, ReGen Mag, Connexion Bizarre and others and its original sound and feel was greeted with interest all over the world. Songs varying from raw industrial stomping to atmospheric cellos and desert guitars to dixieland jazz tunes and broken pianoloops… the album takes the listener to a post apocalyptic world that holds it’s last musical influences from the fifties. An original industrial journey that is a must for any industrial/steampunk fan. Even the recording techniques and environment were created based on a post-apocalypse world to give the album the right sound and feel!
Tracklist :
1.Intro – Leaving the vault
2.Reflection
3.Outdoorsman
4.Health Guide – (feat. Stitch)
5.Jetflight part I : Good trip
6.Thunderdome
7.Visions of Before
8.Navarro
9.Fallout
10.Vault Tec
11.Jetflight part II : Bad trip
12.What Have We Done
13.Cat`s Paw
Dtrash records 2006
REVIEWS:
Connexionbizarre (www.connexionbizarre.net)
Hailing from Talinn, Estonia, Evestus began work as a solo electronic music project around 2004. “Destiny in Life”, his self-released hardcoe-industrial debut album was later re-released by the Canadian label D-Trash Records and, in 2006 Evestus released his second full-length recording, “Wastelands”, an album which draws inspiration from the universe of the “Fallout” computer game series. Coming from D-Trash records and judging from the cover I was expecting something along the lines of a no holds barred post-apocalyptic digital hardcoe/industrial assault. To my surprise, what I found is more adequately described as an excellent and engaging, sample-heavy soundtrack to a post-apocalyptic road movie with plenty of 50′s ‘Atomic Age’ retro feel and the occasional “Mad Max” references thrown in (a track titled “Thunderdome” should be pretty obvious). “Don’t judge a book by its cover” and all that…
Narrative pieces from “Fallout”, two tracks, “Intro – Leaving The Vault” and “Visions Of Before”, provide setting and context for the album. Placed at the beginning and end of “Wastelands”, they divide the album into roughly two halves. The first half seems to focus on bits and pieces of a hypothetical main character, while the second half functions more like a world description. “Cat’s Paw” provides an epilogue of sorts, while an untitled last track aims at providing some perspective at the past and present of US politics.
Most, if not all tracks, consist of musical constructs arranged around samples which form the core of the “Wastelands” experience. Musically, the album is anything but easy to describe, considering the variety of musical styles that is present in it, as Evestus seems to be quite at ease working with a variety of music styles, whether composing or sampling them, from jazz to industrial and breakbeats to hardcoe. Testament to his sampling and musical skills is that “Wastelands”, both as isolated tracks and as a whole, functions extremely well and each half flows almost without a glitch, the album being a textbook example of accomplished musicianship and tasteful sampling skills.
Eclectic and full of ear-catching twists and turns, “Wastelands” is a case in which no single track can be considered as being representative of the album but there are stand out tracks. “Reflection” is a particularly memorable one, starting from the catchy cello and rhythm work and culminating with the clever use of sampled Travis Bicker lines. The jazzy “Health Guide”, while seemingly playful on the surface, becomes deadly serious when one listens to the commercial’s words more attentively. In the second half, the “Navarro”-”Fallout”-”Vault Tec” is particularly effective, from an almost ambient start to a composition revolving about the dangers of radioactive fallout, culminating in an almost epic track with pounding beats and intense guitars. For those wanting a dose of digital hardcoe, “Jetflight Part II – Bad Trip” is the track to look out for, merging contrasting elements into a chaotic but highly coherent whole.
Skilfully composed and performed, “Wastelands” is an evocative album that defies simple categorization and is sure to appeal to a wide audience, despite (or perhaps because) of the large amount of musical elements and influences which are successfully merged in Evestus’ compositions. It is a must for anyone interested in good music and confirms Evestus as a musician to be on the lookout for in the future.
– Miguel de Sousa [9/10]
Regen-Mag Magazine (www.regenmag.com)
A journey through Wastelands is well worth the trip. No gas mask required! Evestus didn’t let the idea of nuclear holocaust get him down. Instead, he took inspiration from the end of the world as we know it and created his own ode to death and destruction, adding a bit of humor, reverence, and sound clips from the Mad Max franchise. Structured like the memoir of a journey across a vast and desolate wasteland, the listener follows our lone hero as he encounters a strange and hostile new world. In “Intro – Leaving the Vault,” heavy beats illustrate the mood and provide a fitting backdrop to the narrative dialogue that explains that the end of the world went exactly as expected. The somber mood continues in the vividly instrumental driven “Reflection,” and seemingly Nine Inch Nails inspired “Outdoorsman” as our hero trudges through the heat, wind, and stinging sand toward some semblance of normalcy and civilization. What he finds is a reality in only the most nightmarish sense. The whimsical “Health Guide” inspires images of a deserted saloon where the only movement is a nearly destroyed robotic display, reading off the items necessary for survival in the wastelands. “Thunderdome,” while typical of the end of the world fare, avoids becoming trite by keeping the listener fully engaged with industrial beats and surprising orchestrations. Well crafted and executed, Wastelands is a beautiful piece of near future science fiction illustrated through musical imagery and haunting dialogue. Now even the apocalypse has a soundtrack. By: Charity VanDeberg
Chain-DLK Magazine (www.chain-dlk.com)
From Evestus’s biography: “My biggest influences are Cartoons and videogames… screw that: FALLOUT! FALLOUT 2 changed my freckin life! The world I experienced playing that game is what I’m trying to bring to people through my music! I bring you the newwave of Electronic punk, Post apocalypse pop.” That sounds about right. I must admit that I have a special place in my heart for the post-nuclear holocaust genre. I actually remember the drills and having to know where fallout shelters were (yeah, I know that this dates me a bit). The packaging is great—straight out of 1950’s civil defense propaganda (“duck and cover” and the Civil Defense logo on the CD are nice touches). On to the music. Mad Max movies and other post-apocalyptic sources are heavily sampled in this album. This is beat driven, but if you are looking for hard and fast, you will be disappointed. In fact, “Health Guide – Featuring Stitch” is a nice swing track. “Visions of Before” is nice militaristic neo-classical with snare drum and synthesized strings. “Jet Flight part 2 – Bad Trip” begins with good harsh noisy beats, but then becomes more laid back. Overall, this is difficult to pigeonhole into a particular style, which is often a good thing. There seems to be a bit of everything here. That is not to say that the disc is random and inconsistent. The tracks all work together to make a cohesive whole. The samples also seem to work well with the music, creating a story rather than simply using them as a kind of shortcut as usually happens. This is a good album, but not terribly club friendly if that’s the kind of thing that you’re looking for. This is the first that I had heard from D-Trash or Evestus. So far, so good.
Adnoiseam Records (www.adnoiseam.net)
“Dtrash usually rhyhmes with hard digital hardcoe fury, a reason why this new album by Evestus came as a surprise. Very laid back, mixing a lot of jazzy instrumentation with a lot of voice samples, constant accoustic drumming and the occasional epic guitar riff, “Wastelands” is more of a fun album (in the way of End’s “The sound of disaster”) than a noisy wall of beats. The whole thing is surprisingly well recorded and contains several pearls. Uncommon and very pleasant.”
Goth-Tronic (www.gothtronic.com)
“hardcoe-industrial-sample-heavy-fun-hardcoe experiments”, “Distorted vocals over a Dixieland jazz-band” and “multi-layered work of contemplative avant-garde industrial-electronica” are some of the phrases used in the biography of this Estonian band. D-Trash makes it hard to name it, and Evestus themselves are making it even more challenging. Evestus has it’s roots in a metal band, but decided to experiment more and therewith created Evestus: a project that has many layers and sounds and is very difficult to conceive. “Wastelands” is a concept, but not based on a book or movie. The regular WW2-relation is put aside and Evestus takes the computer game Fallout 2 as foundation for this work. The game tells the story of a world destroyed after a nuclear war and Evestus uses each of the years as a base for a song on the album. The songs describe the world before, during and after the bombings and therewith founding titles like ‘What Have We Done’ and ‘Visions Of Before’. A very nice concept, but musically not very interesting. Evestus has the ability to do way better. What can you compare it with? Well, distorted vocals over a Dixieland jazz-band, I think that sums it up quite well. -Eelco
Virus Magazine (www.virus-mag.com)
“Estonian artist Evestus’ 2nd full-length CD, “Wastelands”, is music inspired by the computer game “Fallout 2”. In other words, welcome to the “Mad Max/The Road Warrior” set, a post-apocalypso world ravaged by global nuclear war… What I found to be odd was that this CD sounds nothing like you think it should. I was expecting bleak noisescapes and the sound of crudely constructed machinery and the sizzle of clumsily wired electronics. Instead, what you have here are persistent melodies, entwined with bunker music, jazz loops, and samples. There are some great atomic age propaganda bites and earnest duck and cover calls for safety, as well as a beckon for civil defense preparedness straight from a government flunky-scripted public service announcement. Created, mixed, and mastered by Evestus, the music has a definite soundtrack quality, even though it does contradict the thematic structure. Perhaps the message of the music is that, despite the devastation of nuclear war, the human spirit will always find some way to endure the massive stupidity of fools and overzealous gluttons. 7/10″ -Michael Casano
3brainkarnakinterloper.wordpress.com
“Inside the liner notes of Evestus’s new CD, below all the credits, lies the phrase, “Have a nice apocalypse!” and the feeling evoked by that phrase is like the feeling evoked by Wastelands on the whole — good-natured pessimism. Wastelands is a shifting soundscape of moods and tones, a collage of industrial, jazz, techno, trance, and numerous other (mostly electronic) styles of music and samples, with traditional instruments and machines, and violence and restraint. There’s even a little reassurance, with loops that worm their way into the depths of your brain and swim around there for days at a time. Inspired by the computer game Fallout 2, this post-apocalyptic diary from a world that might have been maintains a narrative flow even if you have little idea what that tale is trying to say, lending its sounds to casual listening, but its layers of nuance ultimately reward a deeper attention.” -Laura Taylor/EXCLAIM
---- Have a nice apocalypse! ----
