reviews Press Notes, 1995 "...a very pleasant surprise ...Spybey uses rhythmic sound material and voices that are twisted beyond recognition but in a very musical fashion offering a tremendous variety of sounds." C.M.J., MARCH. "...the album is a disconcerting listen for an audience expecting any sort of simple landmark like a riff, a beat, a vocal or even an identifiable instrument but then that's precisely what Spybey would want." C.M.J NEW MUSIC JOURNAL., MARCH. "...these compositions are very strange in nature, sound and are hypnotic. Strange organic rhythms frame subtle layers of sound which slowly evolve and decompose, much like the world around us. This is not idle ambient fluff; this is music for contemplation, for questioning, for opening new doors. This is recommended for everyone regardless of what you're into. This will change how you perceive sounds." INK NINETEEN., MARCH. "...mark spybey and his co-conspirators present a fascinating recording unfettered by traditional concepts of composition, instrumentation or harmony. These are riveting soundscapes. Dead Voices On Air weaves sonic and rhythmic textures that are unnerving yet magnetic." WIRED., APRIL. "...interesting soundscapes.For your fill of the sounds of bricks in a blender or banging on sheet metal,Hafted Maul is the album for you." SLUR., APRIL. "...this album is certainly moody and clever enough that seekers of genuinely peculiar sounds won't feel cheated. This album has more going for it than any of the handful of Zoviet-France albums I have heard. Fortunately, Dead Voices' knack for creating sonic intrigue from such a limited approach shows just how unimaginative most ambient music can be." OPTION., MAY-JUNE. "...he creates an ambience which is simultaneously stimulating and disturbing sending you into a limbo that makes you strangely ambivalent about leaving." ALTERNATIVE PRESS., JUNE. "...mark spybey has set about subverting traditional ideas of what is proper and what is not, what is sane or insane. DVOA's debut album Hafted maul documents the sounds that summon memories from unused parts of the brain. Spybey creates reverberating palettes that resemble loud nights spent at an amusement park or serene canoe rides over a mist covered lake at dawn. Spybey's music is meant to shake you by the throat and your mind will follow." RAYGUN.MARCH. "...dead voices on air, the incarnation of Mark Spybey, takes ambient to another level, making a bridge between noise and soundtrack industrial with incredible deftness. I highly recommend this album." INDUSTRIAL NATION., SEPTEMBER. " although "Hafted Maul" was chronologically released first, it technically was the second Dead Voices on Air release, as "New Words Machine" on Cleopatra Records was the true DVOA debut album. If one has the luxury of owning all three DVOA releases they can play them all back to back and will begin to notice the obvious movement from a long drawn out ambient orchestral arrangement towards a more finite level of sample deconstruction and manipulation. "Hafted Maul" lies tettering on the edge of both musical voids and as such utilizes excerpts from both schools of compositional style. As a result both extremely short and tenuously long arrangements exist next to each other on the album developing a sort of epochal wave form which lulls the listener into a ambient veil of seduction just long enough to throw them kicking and screaming into the abyss of cacophony which lies at the reciprocating end of the bell curve. "Hafted Maul" by far exhibits the most diverse range of musical elements that Mark Spybey has available to him and thereby ends up standing out as a glimmering icon amongst his other solo work." SONIC BOOM. "...this being the second Dead Voices on Air release in two months came as a total surprise for me.Having just gotten over how good the previous album "Hafted Maul" was, and then to be graced with another so soon was like divine intervention. I originally picked up the old album on a lark mostly because it had been highly recommended to me by friends. I was more than a little afraid seeing as my only previous experience with Zoviet France consisted of 23 minutes of grinding glass noises, instead I was pleasantly surprised to be blessed with wavering sound sculptures and dark esoteric disturbances. The entire hour length album evokes convulsive nightmarish entity which wafts through the air threatening to choke the life out of the listener. Definitely the kind of music to be played in a dark room in the middle of a thunderstorm. So if you've been a skeptic about picking up either release of Dead Voices on Air, reconsider for your own sanitys sake. SONIC BOOM. "...mark Spybey returns with his third album in less than a year under the moniker of Dead Voices on Air. This time instead of releasing an album composed of several long drawn out tracks, he has chosen to compose a diverse selection of much shorter tracks. Mark has also shyed away from the previous notion of subtle ambient texturing towards a more experimental sound. He tends to focus more upon the delicate intricacies of reworking a single sequence or sample for the entirety of a track by varying such things as the pitch and wavelength in order to expand the contextual depth of each unique sound. The track titles and vocals still drawn heavily upon such languages as Olde English, Latin, Greek, and Sanskrit to name but a few. Absent for the first time from a Dead Voices on Air release cEVIN Key instead Mark has preferred to compose the majority of the tracks completely on his own with only the aid of Zev Asher, Martin Atkins, and Curse Mackey on two of the tracks. Mark has yielded yet another exquisite aural masterpiece which has this time has fully exploited his unique fascination with experimental sound alteration beyond the scope than any of his previous releases. SONIC BOOM. "...yeah, sure, being a big Skinny Puppy fan, I obtain all projects even remotely associated with it. This one is Mark Spybey's baby (who has worked with Zoviet France), and cEVIN Key does some guest appearances. It _is_ terribly hard to describe -- noisescapes, kind of like Daniel Mench (?sp), not quite as dissonance-laden as Lustmord, but excellently produced. More minimal. Not as "scary" as other discs I've heard mentioned in this vein. Kept my attention enough to get both discs (Hafted Maul and New Words Machine). DUSTY CHALK..AMBIENT@HYPERREAL.COM. Nuclear winter, a barren apocalyptic landscape, an industrial wasteland... all these images and more can be yours if you go buy this CD now! This is about as good as it gets when it comes to ambient noise. Dead Voices On Air is ex-Zoviet France member Mark Spybey, who is helped here on three of the tracks by none other than Skinny Puppy's master gizmo- wizard cEVIN Key. A match made in industrial noise heaven? Pretty much so. The disc opens with a 19 minute-plus ambient track that features not a single discernible, "obvious" noise. All I can say about it is that one gets the feeling Spybey actually has been able to record voices of the dead on air. The lulling qualities that this track has are ruffled a bit by the second track (clocking in at a somewhat shorter 13 minutes) which makes one feel like you are trapped inside a broken radio in the loneliest corner of a frozen hell. The next three tracks are much shorter and are the ones that feature cEVIN; not surprisingly, they are also the noisiest tracks. These bits come as quite a jolt after the previous half hour of trance-inducing manipulation. Finally the CD closes with another extended ambient dirge. The inner journey the soundscape on "New Words Machine" can take you on ranges from unsettling to just downright creepy. If you listen to it alone in a dimly lit room, I guarantee you will look over your shoulder at least once... (Dan H.) THE LISTENING ROOM.

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