i was chillin at the house last night scanning my collection for some tunes and saw these… anyone else have them?
Artificial Intelligence
http://www.discogs.com/release/51781?ev=rr
Artificial Intelligence II
http://www.discogs.com/release/256159
Black Dog Productions - Bytes
http://www.discogs.com/release/57933?ev=rr
I have the first 2 AI comps. Pretty good stuff.
I never owned the AI comps, but I remember them. Waxtrax was moving in an ill-advised techno direction at the time, leaving guys like Cleopatra and Re-Constriction to pick up the slack on industrial bands.
you say ‘slack’ i say ‘crap’. Cleopatra AFAIK hasn’t ever signed anything worth listening to. Maybe some reissued Damned or something, and I’m not even a fan of theirs.
So many people wrote off Cleopatra because their roster had so many crap bands on it, but there were actually quite a few releases off the label that were really good. Most of the Spahn Ranch releases were good, Penal Colony’s 5 Man Job, all the Zoth Ommog releases they liscensed for domestic release, Kill Switch Klick, the amazing solo Information Society release by Kurt Harland, Gary Numan’s mid-1990’s albums. Yeah sure they all had typos and most had really bad cover art, but there were some gems in there.
Now Reconstriction… that’s another story. Chase had amazing taste in music and somehow only signed bands that I loved. If I could bring any two labels back from the dead, Reconstriction would be right after Wax Trax.
Kill Switch… Klick.
Excellent, excellent band!
Late,
grmpysmrf
you say ‘slack’ i say ‘crap’. Cleopatra AFAIK hasn’t ever signed anything worth listening to.
Big Electric Cat?
[cool]
What bisquitodoom said.
Cleopatra might be remembered as a solid label if they hadn’t flooded the market with awful compilations, remix, and tribute albums and heavily promoted their worst bands.
In addition to what he mentioned, they also licensed a lot of cool stuff from Off Beat and Hard, put out the first Download cd, were home for Psychic TV for awhile, released a rare Pig record (that they weren’t supposed to), etc.
Cleopatra has had some good releases (once in awhile), but the majority of it is just dreck especially the tribute/covers albums. Their entire art department, and whoever does their fact checking/ typesetting though should not be allowed near a computer ever again. Anyone remember those terrible Industrial and Goth books they put out ? Nick Ogre and Kelvin Key [:/] I rest my case.
yea cleopatra. when TKK was getting out of the original sound (post-sexplosion) i bought a hellfire club CD. i tried to like it but it wasn’t good. i was hoping for some more “i see good spirits…” tunes - which i guess i got - but it just wasn’t good. Anyone else give hellfire club a go?
Yeah, tried them once. Ugh. What a horrible band.
Electric Hellfire Club proved you can’t take the camp out of TKK. It just doesn’t work. And Cleopatra pushed the hell out of those guys.
They also heavily promoted '90s Die Krupps. Awful stuff. The Die Krupps guy in his heavy metal persona was only slightly cooler than Pat Boone’s (though Fatherland was a really cool track).
The Andrew Eldridge and Rodney Orpheus remix of “Fatherland” was amazing. Every other Die Krupps metal track was insanely bad. Yuck.
I actually rather liked the first two Hellfire releases back in the day, though I tried to listen to them again a while ago and was blown away as to how bad they were. Still I have great memories of dropping acid and listening to the second Hellfire album and freaking myself out.
“Live breathe kill for satan! Live breathe kill for satan! Live breathe kill for satan!”
stupidest intro of all time!
Late,
grmpysmrf
I remember having an mild argument with Rogue from The Cruxshadows about whether the line was “Live, breathe, kill for Satan” or “Live, breed, kill for Satan.”
We both agreed that it was a craptracular track, but that the Leather Strip remix at least rendered it listenable.
I have the first 2 AI comps. Pretty good stuff.
They look familiar. Autechre heads know 
And this was at a time their B-sides/compilation tracks were highly coveted.
I remember having an mild argument with Rogue from The Cruxshadows about whether the line was “Live, breathe, kill for Satan” or “Live, breed, kill for Satan.”
We both agreed that it was a craptracular track, but that the Leather Strip remix at least rendered it listenable.
Fuck yeah. Industrial Revolution 3rd Edition. That track is deviously sick. Played that on my Halloween and end-of-the-year DJ sets because it just fits.
Cleopatra, other than the IR compilations, is rather depressing. With poor artwork, bad typos, countless compilations (industrial bands doing pop covers of U2 and Madonna?) to make a quick buck, and re-releases with bonus tracks…I mean, I’m not perfect and, yes, I did spend money on them when I really needed too, but industrialists deserved better in Cleopatra.
I just want to know…why?
Why?
For the money.
Luckily, Metropolis came along and started signing and distributing a lot of good stuff, so we never had to suffer through Cleoptra releasing Wumpscut albums with the wrong tracklisting and a public domain picture as the cover art.