Vital Weekly review of Ogrob & Alan Courtis cassette by Frans de Waard :Some years ago I was asked to write something about the recent revival of cassette only releases and to compare with the first wave. The main difference I noted was the fact these days not a lot of labels care much about a presentation that extents beyond the simple plastic box, save for those small cardboard boxes everybody uses. This split release by Ogrob and Anla Courtis is something of a huge difference. It's packed in a big, LP sized transparent cover, with architectural plans and a box with photos of a mine shaft. This mineshaft is used for mining - excuse le mot - the field recordings used by Ogrob and Courtis. I believe Ogrob is one side A and it's a recording made 858 metres below the surface and maybe not much else beyond that. The title translates as hell's gate as the temperature in the mine could be 50degrees Celsius. The original field recoding on side A is a fascinating piece of music. The large empty space with these highly reverbed sounds of falling objects simplysound fascinating. On the other side we find a remix of these sounds by Alan Courtis who takes the material into the world of industrial music with some top-heavy electronic treatments. The reverb/falling aspect is a bit gone, which is a pity and replaced by something that probably resembles the old mine better when it was fully active. That in itself wasn't a bad idea either. Music and package form a great thing; very 80s in many ways.http://www.vitalweekly.net