SI-{CUT}.DB / BEHIND YOU

• "..different and easy to groove to" MixMag
• "Benford has (too) long been one of electronica's unsung greats...a very singular world of rhythm, melody and innovation" Immerse
• "...radical but infectious" Top Magazine
• "...make a nonsense of any notion that experimentalists lack soul" On Magazine
• "imagine Squarepusher and Luke Vibert being normal. That's what BEHIND YOU makes them look" Muzik Magazine
• "...a collection of knife-edge rhythm tracks..., chopped up by clean-cut, nervy keyboard interventions" The Wire

SCANNER vs SI-{CUT}.DB / THE BOVINE REVOLVER EP

• "Triangular experiments from this leftfield supergroup, that succeed in whipping up a weirdbeat tornado." I-D Magazine
• "magnificent" Keith cameron NME/XFM
• "Aphex or Mu-ziq -like breakbeats with a lovely Brian Eno-like melodic line...reminiscent of some of...Nonplace Urban Field, and Atom Heart......" IDM
• "excellent...needle pricks of the machine...startling counterpoints...ambient acupuncture of the highest order" The Wire

PANTUNES MUSIC / IN SEARCH OF THE SURFACE NOISE

• "...magnificent example of what it is the future of electronic music has to offer..., for forward thinkers only" The GuestList
• "In Search Of The Surface Noise grabs the lobes from its first elusive breakbeat and maintains a vice-like hold on your attention" i/e Magazine
• "Pantunes Music favour needlepoint rhythms, beats played by knitting needles" The Wire
• "Most inviting" Under The Volcano

VARIOUS / CHINESE WHISPERS

• "...it has its philosophical precursor in the likes of Jacques Derrida's Glas, in which he sampled Hegel and Genet alongside each other and looped the text around so you started the book as you finished. Chinese Whispers' cinematic equivalent is in the arch sampler Tarantino's Pulp Fiction" The Guardian
• " ... it's often impossible to discern the starting point (hence the name of the exercise) in any of the mixes, yet there is still a carefully crafted sense of continuity. ... The album works both as a fine exposition of contemporary electronica, and another investigation into remix culture." Motion
• "... stereolab did a song someone else mixed , then some one else, then....you get the idea.....then stereolab mix it again...you get to hear all the mixes in between." Roughtrade
• "A kind of musical game of tag played with a set of samples originating with Stereolab, passed through various remixers' studios before finalre-assemblage at the hands and sampler of Tim Gane and Andy Ramsay, Chinese Whispers brings a certain novel structure to the usual lack of methodology inherent in the remix album." Frequency
• "Chinese Whispers is the game where a group of people pass a message along, privately one to one, resulting in a vastly different, and often humorous result. " Chris Twomey, Exclaim

PUPPY / HORIZONTAL

• "...it's all dark stuff, but shot through with subtle, beautiful melodies and riffs, and underpinned with constantly changing rhythms. Puppy (aka David Hodgson) is clearly a big talent, but not a happy bunny." The Sunday Times
• "It's the monstrous sound of urban breakdown... " Ministry Magazine
• "Puppy locks you in for a long sight-filled ride that won't let you drift off too far from your seat." Interface
• "Existing somewhere between Nonplace Urban Field's Ghosttown Electronica and the more angular fringe of the Electro revival, Horizontal bypasses the twin obsessions of recent leftfield ectronic music. Amplifying neither sonic minutiae nor burried connections to the 80's golden age, Puppy (aka David Hodgson) aims for a middle ground between the two by extracting both groove and detailed texture".

FREEFORM / ME SHAPE

• "...blurry, deranged squeezebox sounds and devious Latin percussion. Think of a more clunk, plaintive PLUG with weird droid basslines, and Brazilian rhythms. Nana Vasconelos has been captured by PlayStation robots and hidden in a lego castle. See if you can find him." The Wire
• "This is the strategy of revenge and turning the virus of everday noise back upon itself."wReck thiS meSS on Radio Patapoe 97.2 * Amsterdam
• "Me Shape is an eccentric clamour of unfamiliar electronics built up into rhythmic compositions like towers of Legos. .... Quirky and hyper, Pyke blends coutless layersof loops into one organized frenzy. Freeform is slowly collecting his due recognition." Ben Diller. Interface v.16
• "... the programming is slightly less convoluted and bewildering than the free-associative anti-rhythms that pepper the impressive Freeform back-catalogue, the synth textures bubbling above it are even more succulent and satisfying than usual. Pyke shapes melodies the way. Jackson Pollack paints - with gooey spatters of metallic tones and drippy synths. The mingling of rich, tuneful substance, wayward and weird tonalities, and diffused Afro-Cuban percussive spasms actually places such Freeform frolics as "Arial Automatic," "Gni," and "Tangle" in league with the far-gone-and-out jazz of the Art Ensemble of Chicago or Sun Ra's Cosmic Tones For Mental Therapy." Motion
• " Pyke... , continues his own style of chunky polyrhythms and deranged melodies with ME SHAPE, his most cohesive output to date." Interface Magazine v.15 (July/August, 1999)
• "Freeform fits in somewhere between Bola and Autechre, brings somewhat more funk along as for example in Munchogram or Foil. Other tracks go deep into mysterious and vague rhythm and ambient things. Sprawl brings this fine album with perfect experimental listening stuff!" forcefield
• "The clanking beats and spooky astral synths of "Yours Sincerely" have echoes of DJ Spooky, but the standout track of the album has to be "Munchogram" which sounds uncannily like Mouse On Mars." Flip Side Review 5.5.99-18.5.99
• "... no-one can accuse Simon Pyke (aka Freeform) of selling out to the cheesemongers, the clank-clank and 'piffle-wiffle' swooshes tire and grate after a while, placing Freeform in the same bracket as Autechre and Mu-ziq, as worthy avant garde musicians but hardly easy listening. This said, there are some beautiful moments here" Ministry May 1999
• " Assembled from the now-usual urban sprawl of sounds which make up the inspiration for much of Electronica's current output, Me Shape is Simon Pyke's contribution to the clockwork maelstrom which characterises this apect of late Nineties music, and of which The Sprawl Imprint and club areparticular exponents." Richard Fontenoy FREQ Music E-Zine FREQ Music E-Zine and Rough Guide to Rock

SI-{CUT}.DB / RATE OF LIVING

• "rhythmic soundclashes and out-there melody crunch against each other in true Aphex style... worth checking" Muzik
• "leftfield stuff for sure...Rate Of Living does prove surprisingly enjoyable, melodic and even quite danceable in places. It takes real talent to come up with something so strange yet likeable" Future Music
• "... (the) rhythms are snappy...an emphasis on childlike colours...touching on chill out style melancholy or clean lounge flavours" The Wire
• "Rate of Living" on Sprawl is si-{cut}.db is Doug Benford who has recently worked with Scanner [Bovine Revolver] here putting jazz to drum and bass and electronic minimal blips to forge yetanother hybrid of new musics to melodic kinetic and frenetic effect." WreckThis Mess on Radio Patapoe 97.2 * Amsterdam
• For some electronic musicians, combining alluring melodies with intricate rhythmic patterns offers the highest challenge. Count si-(cut).db (aka Douglas Benford) among this idiosyncratic lot. While not as frenzied as the work of Sqaurepusher or Aphex Twin, Benford's music does share each's adventurous beat programming and tendency towards sweet tunes. Rate Of Living falls into thenetherzone between armchair techno and drum & bass, which I guess puts into the IDM category. Benford has clearly put much thought into these 13 compositions, and the result is an album that reveals new nuances with each play". Dave Segal, Alternative Press
• Since pulling up stakes and abandoning the Suburbs of Hell, Douglas Benford has set up shop at the intersection of Blip, Bleep, and Glitch. The annual block party finds him tipping back punch in the company of O.S.T., Bisk,Hab, Solvent, and Atom Heart, noisily exchanging soundfiles and DSP plug-ins the way hausfraus fuss over guarded recipes. ... Benford's most conspiratorial computer-aided anti-designs and programmed machinations only manage to bend them into amazing shapes." Grooves
• "... impressive credentials...thick full of melodies...complex off-kilter rhythms that keep a going....sounds like Autechre. Inventive and original." FAQT (US)
• "Noodle-doodle ambio beats and noise fest that tootles and parples merrily, making your head feel funny." Melody Maker 21.8.99
• "...full of catchy micro-global orchestrations & tweaked electro-beat landscapes, executing all the moves you've now come to associate with creative post-dancefloor production. Recklessly eclectic & therefore completely worthwhile. Kudos." Forced Exposure
• "... an intriguing collection of drum n' bass inspired beats and quirky melodies with a charm all of it's own" Footloose
• "...beat trickery....intricate beats....organic melodies, provide a modern tapestry that can be quite absorbing. Groovy accesible electronic mutations" Flipside
• "abrasive muzak comparable to To Rococo Rot" Magic Feet
• "I've been playing si-{cut}.db's "Rate of Living" on "repeat" mode today as it continually propels itself into area's i never thought IDM would enter: Weird & mysterious sounds, melodic bits and pieces of chaos, and an ultimately smooth yet coherent piece of work to date. Sounds range from synthesized electronica to dubby-jazz extracts and odd twitches of abstract (almost live) drum's pouncing in several directions with subtle ambient spurts here and there. .. "Pietro, IDM
• "symbols never did µ-ziq any harm...as dance producers grow up more of this wierdy electronica is going to be trundled out....explaining the weirdly tuneful breakbeat here, kind of Luke Vibert meets Spooky...only the most tight fisted would deny that there's talent here" Ministry
• "... the best Sprawl-release so far" Intro (Germany)

OSYMYSO / WELCOME TO THE PAILINDROME

• "Clever and conceptual....gleeful electronica. Sharing partial aesthetics with the likes of People Like Us and Mr Scruff, Nicholson arranges these sound-bites into funny/funky cut and paste collages that are under-scored by a compelling sense of absurdity." David Hemmingway, Alternative Press
• "...very very clever assemblage of samples, and intricate collage of sonic snippets which creates a bigger picture of the world as something between a cheeky sham and an insane post-Dada mess." WreckThisMessRadio100
• "Cohesive and listenable....witty fun and musically adept..." Future Music
• "... good stuff for lovers of too weird shit." forcefield
• "Osymyso combines a Monty Python sense of humor with hipswaying beats on Welcome To The Pailindrome; everything from spoken word records to dog food TV advertisements get chopped up with the rhythms and its damn fun." Andrew Duke Cognition/In The Mix
• "weirded out, distorted sample-fest of space disco" Pietro IDM/Grooves
• "if you like your dance with a big grin, this comes highly recommended" Birmingham Post (dance CD of the of the week)
• "Osymyso - 'The Not Quite The Fool' (Sprawl). It's one of those tracks that sounds like there are a million and one things going on at once yet it somehow manages to make sense" Steve Lamacq's Record Box (BBC Radio 1)
• BBC Radio 3 Mixing Album of The Week
• "A Dog A Panic In A Pagoda (taken from the album 'Welcome To The Palindrome') is a track I've been playing for the past couple of weeks, which is very funny if you have a sick disturbed sense of humour like Chris Morris, of whom I'm a great fan. 'Welcome To The Palindrome' is a whole album of cut-ups and brained beats." Annie Nightingale (BBC Radio 1)