REVIEWS
XLR8 Magazine

"Li Alin is a mystery, and for now that's just as well. The story behind her mournful, raw songs-some with electronic embellishments, and all sung in French and English-might dilute the power of their presence. Backing her vocals with echoed pianos and skin-crawling cello strains, she creates authentically desolate atmospheres that re-claim Joy Division comparisons from the boy bands. When Alin whispers "My soul is bleeding/Today my heart is snowing," you believe it. Like a mistress sequestered in a tower, she contemplates love and the futility of life with heart-breaking precision. The eccentricities of Alin's incantations make them avant-goth of the highest order. Jokers say the goth dance goes pull the rope, kick the cat, toss the basket. Li Alin's compelling compositions add another step: rattle your bones."by Rachel Shimp
ALL MUSIC GUIDE

Marking the first time Li Alin's music has appeared on CD, All In is a sometimes haunting, sometimes mischievous, and completely unique blend of electronica and cabaret. Alin has likened her music-making process to "remembering a dream," and there is a dreamlike intensity and vividness throughout All In that makes it utterly fascinating. Alin's rich, world-weary alto is so perfect for cabaret that even the album's most faithful interpretations of the style, such as the brash "Folie" and the bluer-than-blue "The Stirring" and "Divinations" never sound contrived. Likewise, she's completely natural (albeit anguished) while whispering lyrics like "My soul is bleeding...I'm yearning for your love in my bones" -- words that could sound silly or melodramatic in the mouths of most other singers -- on the gorgeous album opener, "Feu." Elsewhere, Alin adapts cabaret's glamour, darkness, and wit to her own ends, especially on "Killing Time," where you can hear the mischief and impatience in her voice as she shouts "killing time is killing me!" even as metallic percussion crashes around her. All In is also infused with vampish sexuality: "Jesus"' depiction of a mystery man who alternately eludes and seduces a nameless woman has a tribal, hypnotic pull, while "Little Girl" is Alin's take on flirtatious synth pop (and even "Pray"'s sinuous cello lines sound a little less than completely holy). When "J'Aspire"'s smoky strings bring All In to a close, it's hard to believe that its spellbinding dream is over. Fortunately, the album's dark, mysterious beauty only grows more compelling with time. by Heather Phares
ALTERNATIVE PRESS

Naut Humon and his cohorts crafted to utter disregard in the dimming sunset of New Wave. While many San Franciscans cherished Humon's surreal and original performances (don't call them concerts), in the studio Humon etched out some of the most imaginative avant-garde slabs of pre-electronica to come down the pike, wholly original in execution and design. Imagine the sounds behind the imagery inherent in the title "Bent Metal Forest" and you might get an idea of the audio playground: rhythms heard half in REM-sleep, buried beneath cavernous, mysterious sounds that might just be aliens scuttering about. This is the stuff of Dali's far-flung nightmares and visions, realized in beautifully remastered digital clarity. Catch the historical magic that is CHASM'S ACCORD and re-live the mystery of sonic architectures past.
SPIN MAGAZINE

Just as bands like Einsturzende Neubauten take found objects, sounds and rhythms and mold them into exhilarating griders of glistening noise, there are bands that use nothing but microchips and things elctronic to come up with similar results. Rhythm and Noise sculpts towering electron-fired textures and subatomic hues with synthesizers, computer, samplers, along with the obligatory fraudulent vocals. Chasms Accord is by large more accessible than the band's name would have you believe. All the tracks flow into and out of each other in a seamless river of intra-acting components - shifting repetitions a la early Tangerine Dreams, randomly sampled non-sequitur noises, warm melodic choral flourishes. A mountain of synthesizers share a software moment under the perpendicular Christ during "Filament in Strata" a mesmerizing ebb and flow of deep space womb comfort. Very Effective.