Zaft 039   Various Artists   Joy

Tracklisting:

  1. Thee Virginal Brides - I Have Been Slowly Singing of Salvation for 2000 Years
  2. Dead Shall Not Have Died In Vain – Silent
  3. Tzesne - Aislante Blanco
  4. V.I.K.I. - Carbo ex Nivis
  5. Astrogenic Hallucinauting - Component
  6. Atas-400 - New Year
  7. ctephin - The Cherubim Dance
  8. Der Tribologe - Glacier
  9. Fail - Bells Jingled.... Check!
  10. Gorgonized Dorks - Something's Wrong With My Eggnog
  11. humanextermination project - Dept. of Homeland Security Killed Santa Claus
  12. Goose – Prophecy
  13. Stolen Light – Jerusalem
  14. Black Saturn - Cosmic Snow
  15. Karl Bösmann - The Dwarf's Winter Fear
  16. rs-232 - Winter in Perpetuity
  17. mystified - Polar Event
  18. Thunderwheel - Night (Bethlehem Mix)

This year will be the final Zaftig Research Christmas Compilation. After 10 years of doing it, we've decided that we should end it while it is still fun to do. It pretty much started out as a joke but became an integral part of Zaftig Research in ways that I could not have imagined back in 1998. Who would would have thought that Zaftig Research would still be going after all these years? I think that this is the longest I have ever done anything consistently. I now have enough Christmas music to get me though the entire day without ever repeating a track.

I have been lucky enough to work with some wonderful people throughout the years and this year is no different. I think that if I had to end the series, this is an excellent note to end on. The disc is crammed full of music and it is a wonderful mix of noise, dark ambient, experimental, and just general weirdness. The tracks that blew me away this year are those from Thee Virginal Brides and Thunderwheel. You may not have heard of Thunderwheel, but you probably know him as Chaos as Shelter. At first I wasn't too into the Gorgonized Dorks track, but it has definitely grown on me and it makes me smile every time. All in all, this is a great ending to a great series. I don't think there ever has been or ever will be a better series of holiday music than this one.

Review from Vital Weekly:

Posted three days before christmas kicked in, this of course arrived well after new year, which perhaps is a bit late to listen to a music compilation celebrating christmas holidays in an alternative manner. Zaftig has been releasing compilations for this holiday for about ten years now, and 'Joy' is the last one and that they exhausted the topic. I think I reviewed only five in total, including this one and the good thing is that the whole christmas aspect is moved back even further on this compilation. If you wouldn't know any better (say looking at the cover and see titles like 'Night (Bethlehem Mix'), 'Jerusalem' or 'Bells Jingled... Check') then this could altogether be easily mistaken for another eighty minute CDR release of experimental, electronic and noise music compilation. There is some religious tunes scanned in for the season pleasure, but throughout the 'bands' play noisy bits, electronic chants and are perhaps like me: glad the whole christmas/new year thing is over by now. Besides name checked people like Thee Virginal Brides, Tzesne, Mystified, Karl Bosmann lots of new names, such as Dead Shall Not Have Died In Vain, V.I.K.I., Astrogenic Hallucinauting, Atas-400, Ctephin, Der Tribologe, Fail, Gorgonized Dorks, Humanextermination Project, Goose, Stolen Light, Black Saturn, RS-232 and Thunderwheel, which seems to be a new name for Chaos As Shelter. Nice compilation for all seasons. (FdW)