Label samplers have a long history of pissing me off. And Hard Sessions isn't working very hard to restore my faith, despite its extremely affordable price tag. We're in a shit state if we're now obliged to pay to be marketed to. 85% of my daily newspaper is advertising, and a third of each primetime hour on television pushes Acura, Checkers and AAMCO; can it really be good for us to shell out money for blatant promotional items?

You'd have a difficult time convincing me that label samplers aren't just as annoying as inserts in magazines, or Goodyear blimps buzzing over tranquil North Carolina beaches. Ideally, record companies should use such ancillary opportunities as samplers to more widely distribute the holy-grail remixes that are sent only to privileged, market-forming DJs. One Little Indian was gracious in this regard when they released Björk's The Best Mixes from the Debut (For All the People Who Don't Buy White Labels); Six Degrees recently offered up Motion, a mostly superb collection of highly desirable unavailables; even the high-rolling hip-hop indie label Rawkus has dished out, with no expectation of recompense, Raw Materials to showcase their new joints.

But Shadow Records, known for their cheekiness, have decided to make me pay for album tracks. There is, to the furthest extent of my research, nothing exclusive on Hard Sessions. And the music itself is that type of vicious hate-fuck techno and drum-n-bass that's so uninviting to anyone not into that malignant scene.

None of the ten tracks compiled makes any concession to humanity, to grace, wit, or to originality. These are the Grand Guignol dreams of boys who think machines are inherently evil, conspiring to sodomize us with eighteen-inch titanium-barbed dildos. Aren't we beyond such adolescent insecurities? This was the lesson of Jake Mandell's Love Songs for Machines. But alas, Hanna, Illform, and, to a lesser extent, Dietrich Schoenemann, perpetuate sadistic noise for the sake of cheap, ultimately unsatisfying thrills.

Magnetic, (aka junglist David Harrow in laptop mode), provides two lint-free precision die-cuts of digital drum-n-bass which would pass by unnoticed in any other surrounding. Dietrich Schoenemann exhibits his tribalistic take on Cologne mech-funk in "Dark Sight," and references the opening stellar strains of the original "Star Trek" theme on the barrage called "Autumn Ground."

But boldly going where no one has gone before these artists sadly are not. Droid's two contributions, lifted from their charmless and indulgent NYC D&B; album, speak volumes of the trio's inability to get beyond the idea of their band by fusing Jon Hassell-style treated-trumpet jazz with grim drum machine hyperkinetics. That Ben Neill and Nils Petter Molvær have long since mined all the textures and permutations possible in this fusion escapes Droid. Even their chosen moniker signals their banality.

Shadow have an opportunity to publicize the talent in their company. Whoever proposed and secured the licensing deal with the Jimpster's Freerange label (the imprint that originally released Marasma's thrilling Signals LP) should be given the opportunity to scour the tiny labels of the world and compile a pan-genre compilation. Marketing departments must realize that in this age of MP3 file-sharing, we're hardly likely to dole out cash for stuff we can get for free, unless that stuff is unique, rare, and-- bottom-line-- good. Hard Sessions has only persuaded me to look out for Dietrich Schoenemann's full-length in the used bins. And the shiny ooh-I'm-out-my-gourd hologram cover-art hardly counts as an inducement, either.

-Paul Cooper