INDIVIDUAL TOTEM - Mind Sculptures Flesh
Songs:  11 Time:  47:12
After playing the album name change game a few times, Individual Totem release their sophomore CD, Mind Sculptures Flesh, on Off Beat.  Picking up where they left off with S.E.T.I. and carrying their sound a bit farther along, Individual Totem show us that they previous album was not simply a fluke.  Mind Sculptures Flesh is a brilliant piece of work which oversteps many boundaries, meandering through various electronic realms while maintaining a highly danceable quality.  After a short instrumental / introduction track, Subsistence begins with a wave of soft sequences, manipulated samples, and spacey sound effects.  When the beat kicks in, it does so gently, as not to disrupt the atmospheric qualities the tracks builds upon.  By keeping the beat in equal time and space with the sequences, vocals and samples, Subsistence creates a sound that parallels IDM while at the same time edging its way towards more complicated electro.  The complexity of the programming continues throughout Paradoxon, a track constructed around massively distorted vocals, a cyber rhythm line, wet percussion, and energetic synth lines.  System Interrupted is a slower piece with revolving sequences, deep bass intrusions, and some EBM rhythms tossed in.  It’s an all around good track that breaks the mold of what atmospheric IDM usually sounds like.  Present Island is a rumbling piece with some more twisted samples, bold rhythms, upbeat sequences (including piano), and a stable beat.  I’d love to hear other musicians remix this piece.  Beginning with a mangled drum and bass beat, 3 Sec. Reality tramples through every electronic sub-genre.  Plenty of changeable wet sequences are intertwined over the intelligent beat programming, adding variety and intricacy.  With its cold calculated sequences, trotting beat, melodic vocals, and noisy electro guitar sounding riffs, Refuge sounds like anti-coldwave piece.  Some semi-abrasive sequences are aligned with a galloping beat and entrancing samples on Depressive Tendency.  For a slower piece, this track is extremely danceable.  I highly recommend that any and all DJs add this one into their set.  Chaos is created on Flow, a piece that washes back and forth between inextricable noisy sections to break-beat driven rhythmic sections to more melodic, almost synth-pop sections.  While the vocals are delivered in no where near a synth-pop style, at times the music does tend to be melodious in nature.  For a shorter track, Misconducted manages to meld elements of noise with cyber electro to produce a piece that is a wonderful crossover between the two styles.  The final track, Vince, has echoing rhythms, electrified synth lines, forceful (yet strangely delicate) vocals, and a thunderous, but not domineering beat.  Individual Totem really stunned me with the way they blended all their musical elements together on this release.  My only complaint is that the lyrics were not included in the booklet and at times I can’t quite make out the vocals.  But that’s not really here nor there.  You can definitely expect to see this on the Industrial Bible’s best of 1997 list.
 
OFF BEAT RECORDS                     Individual Totem is:
Horster Strasse 27                              M. Knopp / B. Madl
45897 Gelsenkirchen-Buer                Contact Individual Totem @
Germany                                              e-mail: bernd.madl@rhein-main.net
e-mail: offbeat@t-online.de             Individual Totem homepage:
OFF BEAT homepage:                    http://www.dave.de/individual-totem/
http://www.offbeatassault.com