Raté — Bruit De Fond

Bruit De Fond is an example of churning walled noise nihilism from Bordeaux’s Raté. It’s a single thirty-four-minute track, which remains terminal hope-battering & unbreakable over its full length.

Necrotik Fissure — Was

Here’s seventy-eight minutes’ worth of barrenly searing ‘n’ crudely whizzing HNW from this Hungarian project. Necrotik Fissure has been active since the early 2010’s- been both prolific and unflinchingly extreme in its releasing of the walled noise form.

Trace Of Stones — Trace Of Stones (Blu Ray)

From the late 60’s, Trace Of Stones is a decidedly serious-toned yet low-key impactful drama set on a socialist-led construction site. It’s a film produced by the DEFA – the state-operated film studio of the German Democratic Republic - and was pulled from theatres or barred from release due to its supposedly anti-socialist themes. The black and white film features some well-realised/nuanced acting, rewarding character arcs, and a look at where the party meets humanity. Here from Eurkea’s Masters of Cinema series is the first ever Blu-ray release of the film, taking in an HD scan, and three archive documentaries.

Brunhild Ferrari, Eiko Ishibashi, Jim O'Rourke — L'oreille Voleuse

It’s a star-studded cast to be sure, when Eiko Ishibashi and Jim O’Rourke are invited to make something from the vast archive of field recordings left behind by the erstwhile progenitor of said genre, Luc Ferrari.

Mancunian low-budget Movie Mogul

Cliff Twemlow On Severin

One of last year’s real big surprises in the world of Blu-ray box sets was Bloody Legend: The Complete Twemlow Collection, as it was a wholly entertaining, fascinating, and at times heart-warming set. The Severin released boxset brought together the work of one of the UK’s unlikeliest movie moguls- Cliff Twemlow, a Mancunian bouncer/ body builder, who went on to write/star in/produce a series of low-budget/ largely SOV films in the early 80s to early 90s- these moved between action, thriller, sci-fi, and horror. His most notable/notorious film was 1983’s G.B.H., which landed on the video nasty list, though he was connected to other ten feature films, many of which got their first real full/proper release on the boxset. Opening up the set was the excellent 2023 documentary Mancunian Man: The Legendary Life of Cliff Twemlow, which really pulls you into the set. I caught up with Severn’s David Gregory and Jake West, director of Mancunian Man, to discuss the boxset and all things cliff.

Repetitious History - A Quick Trip Into The World Of The Fall

The Fall

MES( Mark E Smith- The Falls main creator) possessed the ability to cram phrases into impossible spaces - “I’m hunting and I’m trying to find” delivered as “hut’na tryna find”; the eight-syllable “mere pseud mag editor’s father” hastily squeezed into a manipulation of time and space, heralded by the prior line “twice each at least”, the latter naturally repeated thrice.