The instrumentation on Jon Porras' Achlys is hard to pick out, and perhaps that is intentional. Whether guitars or soft synths, the sound sources on this ambient work are kind of all background, with little fury or pathos--very few lead lines or licks. That is the point of this kind of music, at least according to its chief architect, Brian Eno. The lack of counter point and inherent conflict was certainly welcome then, and maybe still is, too. Much on Achlys sounds like a refinement of Eno's early ambient works, specifically Ambient 1 (Music for Airports), the soundtrack to ambivalence. The transitioning and mixing of that seminal work are revived in Porras' hands, smoothing shifts between tracks, eight in all.

Mercedes Bryce Morgan’s third film is a fascinating mash of genres that keeps its audience guessing. On the face of it, the 2024 picture is a punchy entry in the brewing Airbnb horror subgenre popularised by films like 2020’s The Rental and 2022’s Barbarian. Horror fans, however, may be surprised at how well they take to an opening hour of mystery that unravels as an awkward romantic drama before things take a dramatic turn for the bloody.

Foutu is a recent four-track album from Bordeaux-based Raté . It’s another sonic journey into hope-numbing/nihilistically battering walled noise from the project. Each track comes in at just shy of fifteen minutes, and each is as unforgiving/ unrelenting as the other.

Incessant severs up an hour and seven minutes of wall noise head-roasting from this Hungarian project. The track blends thick roiling lows with jittering ‘n’ hissing mids, for a total sonic engulfment.

Etherfall is a new four-track/full-length release from Polish wall noise project Olion. Each ‘wall’ comes in around the fifteen-minute mark, with the entire release featuring an Icelandic ice desert and waterfalls theme.

OK, everyone involved in this project, please look away after this sentence: this is not really my kind of thing. Looking away? Good. This is not great. When I first looked at the album, which arrives on a CD in a somewhat thin cardboard wallet, I thought perhaps the title was a knowing nod and I would be listening to abstract electronics of some description. When I examined the line-up and saw a mixture of traditional folk instruments and ‘drum machine, synth, sampler’ I did raise an eyebrow, but within 90 seconds of pressing play my fears had been well surpassed, and teeth were gritted.