CHARTattack review
Moev — Ventilation
Ventilation
Carved Out
Rating: 4 / 5
Cameron Gordon (CHARTattack)
Moev are more "heard of" than "heard" at this stage in the game. That's unfortunate, as the veteran B.C. electronic outfit have been going strong (more or less) for close to 30 years.
Ventilation is Moev's first full-length in a decade and sounds fairly solid more than a quarter century in. There are plenty of echoes of the band's angry electro-contemporaries — Killing Joke, Sisters Of Mercy, the less growly side of Skinny Puppy and so forth. And to keep things on the up and up, co-vocalist Julie Ferris contributes some sultry vocals that sound not unlike Cat Power... if you can believe it.
Thirteen tracks total and from album opener "I Bend" on through, Moev do a nice job at keeping their gothic/industrial/electronic roots alive without sounding too dated or backwards-gazing. This makes Ventilation both a rebirth and a good stepping stone for people looking to discover this long underrated outfit.
Gothic Paradise
Ventilation - Review
This band has quite a history dating back to 1981 and including success on the Billboard dance charts. The latest incarnation is pretty much solely a studio project of Tom and Julie Ferris. This album marks the first studio album for them in ten years and is a great comeback for fans to enjoy. Their previous success in the clubs was marked with their club-friendly track "Suffer". This new album continues on with much of this same style and presents us with 13 of these powerful dance-friendly pieces.
This latest album is heavily based on electronic, dance-friendly, heavier industrial synthpop sounds featuring Julie's suave vocals. Nearly every piece features a moving beat that keeps the body moving, along with multiple layers of synth loops all providing the backdrop for Julie's vocals. It kicks off with the melodic piece "I Bend" which fans of "Suffer" should really latch onto and enjoy. The album from here becomes quite diverse despite being built on the solid edgier synthpop foundation. "Halt" features some heavy guitars and a harder industrial edge that hearkens back to the classic industrial sound that the band has built on over the years. Classic synthpop sounds from the 80's really come out in "If" and the variety continues with the softer mid-tempo piece "Escaping From America". All of this diversity showcases the various talents and styles that this band has experienced and produced over the years keeping the dancefloors moving and the fans happy.
Though the album as a whole is a great collective album, there are definitely some favorites here for my taste in the electronic genres. The previously mentioned track "I Bend" that kicks off the album for the reasons already listed. "Suffer" was a definite favorite from the past decade and this piece just seems to pick right up where they left off. The way they manage to pull of the heavier industrial elements on "Halt" and later on "Knee Deep", which at first you wouldn't expect as it slowly builds through dark ambience and experimental electronics and then kicks off with the heavier percussion and well-defined bassline. "Tear You Down" with it's haunting darker moods is a nice touch along with the edgier piece "Reflux". I think my overall favorite on the album is "Should Have Been Mine" with the more upbeat and melodic touches of a 90's synthpop style.
Overall this is a great album that was well worth the wait. A new classic from a band that's been around since the early 80's, the prime of great music, they've brought it all into the modern age of edgy synthpop with this great work.
Rating: 4/5
MOEV-Video
Reflux-Ventilation
Defiance Web zine
Moev - Ventilation
When I listened to this album for the first time the first thing I thought about was the soundtrack to "The Crow", as in the film. It has that feel and sound to it, that refreshing sound from music that in my mind was truly great. It reminds me of Medicine, it has the bass of the violent femmes and it has that oh my god feeling to it. For me this is music I fell in love with but refreshed and full of life.
Now I'm not saying it sounds like something else, the reason I say the soundtrack to the Crow is because this album is so diverse, it has the chunky bass and industrial guitars. It has the hauntingly beautiful female vocals it has that what I guess I'd call 90's feel to it. "Halt" being a track that demonstrates this well. Then we have the slow number with "This is Our Life", another beautifully composed track. There's so many tracks i like on this album, "Knee Deep" "Reflux", "In My Wake", "I Bend" in fact sod it I like the whole album. I'm struggling to find fault with it on any level.
It covers a very wide spectrum of sound, it has mass appeal. This album will appeal to the Indie kids, the Cyber Goth, the Metal Heads and even this old school Grunger right here.
This really and truly is a masterpiece and i haven't been excited over an album in such a long long time. For 10 years out of the studio these guys have seriously done a fantastic job.
If there is one thing anyone who loves their music regardless of genre should do, is trust me and listen to this record and see why my mind was blown away.
CHARTattack interview
02/18/10 5:33pm
by Cameron Gordon (CHARTattack)
Tom Ferris has used the Moev moniker to excise his musical inspirations for nearly 30 years.
Veering between industrial, gothic and straight-up rock 'n' roll, Moev have spanned many styles over their lifetime and maintained a particularly dark nuance that slots them alongside Skinny Puppy, Front Line Assembly and other purveyors of western Canada weirdness. Ventilation is the first new Moev album in a decade and collects songs written and recorded in that time by Ferris. It also features his wife Julie on vocals and a series of studio visitors.
Truth be told, we might've heard some of the tracks from Ventilation far earlier, had certain events of late summer 2001 not intervened. "Moev was going strong in the early 2000s and then 9/11 happens," says Ferris from his home near Tofino, B.C. "Drew Maxwell was playing guitar with us at the time and living in Bellingham, Washington. Crossing the border became a real nightmare for him so really, that closed the door on Moev and a lot of these songs for years.
"Honestly, I never would've thought they'd take 10 years to resurface, but that is exactly what happened." Ventilation is a dense, dark album that should appeal to fans of any of the bands listed thus far or other outfits that Ferris has either joined or collaborated with in past, including Econoline Crush (Ferris was a founding member), Waiting For God, or his collaboration with The Grapes Of Wrath's Kevin Kane in Lazarazu. Yet despite the pedigree, Moev remain a cult outfit throughout much of Canada, either beloved for their quarter century of industrial goodness or unknown for unwillingness to assimilate. "Moev has really split most Canadian cities. Montreal, Quebec City and the entire province of Quebec has always been amazing for us," Ferris continues. "But for whatever reason, Toronto has never been a market we've done much with.
"I can't understand — I don't know if we're too advanced or there's just not an appetite for harder electronic music. Whatever the case, I've played some really bad, bad gigs in Toronto over the years." Don't expect much, if any, live support for Ventilation since Moev stands as largely a studio project for the time being. Ferris says the situation would have to be just right to make efforts to reproduce these tracks on-stage.
In lieu, Ferris says Moev might fade into the background again sometime soon — just don't be shocked if Ferris brings Moev up for air again sometime in future.
MOEV featured on post punk compilation: BUSTIN' OUT
Future Noise Music
Bustin’ Out, The Post Punk Era 1979-1981: is an often-startling picture of the no-holds-barred musical ructions which sprang up after punk’s scorched earth revolution. The music termed post punk is well represented in many of its diverse strains by some of its prime movers. Compiler Mike Maguire has made a rigid stand against being pigeon-holed throughout his 30 year DJing career, spreading the message that no sound or genre should be compartmentalised. This multi-hued set, the first in the New Wave To New Beat series, is a fine testimony to this ethos, encompassing anything from Gary Numan’s austere electronic pop on ’Replicas’ through 23 Skidoo’s atmospheric tribal boogie on ‘The Gospel Comes To New Guinea’ to the scrabbling guitar-driven pop of Josef K from Glasgow’s Postcard Records providing a major influence on Franz Ferdinand.
What happens elsewhere defies blanket description as every track charts a different musical seam which, invariably, proved highly influential. Killing Joke’s radical, apocalyptic approach was often cited as a massive influence on anyone from Nirvana to industrial bands, but also incorporated dub reggae and New York dance music, as evidenced by November 1979’s ‘Almost Red’. The set also shows how later musical movements germinated in the new technology around this time, especially in the hands of electronic protagonists like former Throbbing Gristle duo Chris & Cosey, who pillaged the new sampling possibilities and predated techno with their use of proto-electro pulses, as illustrated by ’Heartbeat’, from their 1981 debut album. Or Belgium new beat pioneers Front 242, whose ’Body to Body’ sounds like a spooked house music prototype. New York was also leading the world at this time, particularly the legendary
ZE Label, which embodied the multi-genred melting pot of disco, punk, reggae and latin they called Mutant Disco. The label is represented here by Lizzy Mercier Descloux’s infernal treatment of Arthur Brown’s 1968 hit ‘Fire’ and Bill Laswell’s Material with ‘Bustin’ Out’, his first major dancefloor statement before going on to become a world-renowned producer. Another side of the city is presented by quintessential downtown NY post punk/no wave outfit the Bush Tetras and their debut single, ‘Too Many Creeps’, while visionary musician-producer Arthur Russell flies the wigged-out disco flag under his Loose Joints banner on the Larry Levan-remixed ‘Is it All Over My Face’. The set also illustrates how the disparate post punk spirit captured the rest of the world with the Kraftwerkian ’Cracked Mirror’ from Vancouver’s Moev, Germany’s No More with deadpan electronic classic ‘Suicide Commando’ and San Francisco’s avant punk Tuxedomoon providing one of the set’s most grippingly-complex outings with the title track from their Desire album. Meanwhile, Melbourne duo Dead Can Dance match Lisa Gerrard’s spooky vocals with Brendan Perry’s subterranean atmospherics on their 1981 ‘Frontiers‘ demo.