Many years in the making, the original recordings for Stephen O‘Malley‘s latest solo work, Spheres Collapser, date from December 2021. Even more remarkable than the latency of this two–part composition‘s release, is the instrument that serves as both source material and structural guidepost for O‘Malley‘s minimalist pieces, Les grandes Orgues de Lausanne: a singular, Frankenstein of a pipe organ that amalgamates designs from the three previous centuries. This majestic behemoth sits like a reliquary in the Église Saint-François in Switzerland, its sound both taut and terrifying. The two compositions, “Phase I & II Organ” respectively, each fill out the side of a standard LP and represent two very different takes on the instrument, realised with organist extraordinaire, Kali Malone and sound artist Frederikke Hoffmeier (aka Puce Mary).

Several years before the appearance of Art the Clown & the Terrifier franchise, there was another brutal, gore-loving killing machine clown on the block.  Gurdy- is a plump, white-suited, black balding wigged, and huge hatchet-carrying killer- who's the star of 100 Tears- which blends extremely brutal stalk ‘n’ slash, with investigation thriller, and light touches of humour. Here from Unearthed Films is a Blu-ray release of the film, taking in a director's commentary tracks, and a few other things.

With a title like Garden Of Love, you may be expecting a romantic drama based in the outdoors, or possibly some form of horticultural-themed porn. But in reality, it’s an early 2000’s slice of German Splatter, from one of the kings of the genre Olaf Ittenbach( Black Past, Premutos: The Fallen Angel, Legion of the Dead). The film regards a young woman being tormented by bloody visions of a past she can't fully remember. All she knows is that all of her family was slaughtered when she was a child.

Blood Dolls is a Charles Band film from the late 90’s, which stands as one of his most wacked out & comic-book creations. It regards a masked eccentric billionaire-come mad doctor, who decides to take revenge on competitors via killer dolls he’s created. It also features a caged girl rock band, a philosophical clown-faced painted butler, moments of spurting red gore, and a hell-of-a-lot campness. Here from Full Moon Features, as either a Blu-ray or DVD, is a release of the film, taking in a few archive extras

So High I’ve Been is a three-CD compilation focusing on the European rock scene between the years 1967 and 1973. The fifty-seven-track collection takes in a lot of sonic ground, covering most sub-genres of rock at the time, with often some neat and creative edges. There’s a good blend of known acts such as  Tangerine Dream, Magma, and Focus. Sitting alongside more obscure fare such as Alan Jack Civilization, Culper’s Orchard, and Acqua Fragile.

Here’s a double CD release of the two albums put out by Northern British band D.A.M. during the late 80’s and early 90's. Their sound primally focused on Thrash metal, but they blended in elements of Power metal, Speed metal, and Hardcore too.

Senso(1954) is an Italian period melodrama, drenched in forbidden passion and sprinkled with history and opera. It’s directed by Luchino Visconti(White Nights, The Damned, Ludwig). Here from Radiance Films is a Blu-ray release of the film, featuring a 2k scan and a mix of new and archival extras.

Here we see the very welcome return of Powerhouse’s Columbia Noir boxset series. For this 7th  in the series, the focus is on films made in Britain.  The Blu-ray set takes in six films- each receives a lovely new scans, and a selection of worthy extras. The films move between blends of caper-based noir and romantic drama, crime procedural/ courtroom drama, femme fatale melodrama noir, London mob-based noir, a blend of noir and over road adventure, and mystery-focused noir with gothic horror touches.

Iowa's Alex Nowack may be best known for his harsh noise/ HNW Boar project, but he will be turning heads with the latest under his Brutal Shift moniker, Pain Has Brought Me More Peace Than Any God. A dark and gloomy walk through the psyche and personal redemption, Pain is ten tracks of bleak ambient that craft a desolate soundscape. Although its release was timed perfectly with the spooky season and the dwindling of daylight, its strong construction and deep, penetrating drones will help bring any listener through their cold season, twilight commutes, and dark nights of the soul.

Jakob The Liar, is a DEFA film from the early 70’s set in 1944 in a Jewish ghetto, where an ex- café owner overhears a radio broadcast announcing the Soviet Army is making slow but steady progress towards central Europe.  He tells a few people, with the word quickly spreading- he sees the news gives some hope, so he decides to pretend he has a radio himself. The picture blends grim drama with moments of levity/ hope, humour, and fantasy, making for an impactful, at times moving ride. Here from Eureka is a Blu-ray release of the film, featuring a 4k scan and a mix of new/ archive extras.

In 1976, director Francesco Rosi and producer Alberto Grimaldi adapted Leonardo Sciascia’s 1971 novel Equal Danger into the hazy, gritty thriller Illustrious Corpses, a film that offers no easy answers.

This is a sidetrack from my usual viewing, but a good one; Furious (1984) is here given the Blu-ray treatment by Visual Vengeance: one disc, a slipcase, a poster, some stickers, and a throwing star shaped ‘thingy’ designed to be hung off something. The film itself is short at 73 minutes, but the disc comes loaded with numerous extras, covering a wide range of material.

Re-Animator is director Stuart Gordon (From Beyond, Dagon and Castle Freak) and producer Brian Yuzna’s (Society, Bride of Reanimator and Beyond Reanimator) first foray into Lovecraft territory. This was closely followed by their adaptation of From Beyond, another Lovecraft tale that helped rocket the pair into the horror movie stratosphere. 

Non Toxique Lost stand as one of the lesser-known, though still important bands to appear from Berlin’s early 80’s industrial scene. 026750,9 is the bands thirty fifth album, which appeared in the latter part of last year on Klanggalerie as a CD.

Here we have a collaboration between two long-active German electro-acoustic soundmakers, Asmus Tietchens and Achim Wollscheid. Apparently,  the recording was found in a drawer in Tietchen's apartment last year, and it dates back some twenty years. What we have here is a single hour-long track, based around a droning yet often highly glitching soundcraft.

Parajekt is the Austrian duo of Bernhard Hammer & Matija Schellander, who create a sort of combination between the distant past and cutting-edge modernity, sequencing the kind of primitive rhythms once played communally on skin drums with analogue electronic devices and samples, for a kind of tribal IDM.  This self-titled album is a substantial forty-one minutes, with eight tracks.

Ekin Fil, the nom de plume of Istantbul–based Ekin Üzeltüzenc, has been composing threadbare ambient works since at least the early tens, characterised by a heady mixture of field recordings, siren vocals, and reverb–laden piano. The cocktail is not unfamiliar to those who turn to Kranky label artists – Liz Harris, Tim Hecker, Adam Wiltzie, and so on – for their fix. While the elements and their gossamer dressing might be known quantities, there is something absent from Bor Boreas, Ekin Fil‘s latest offering. Not absent as in missing or lacking; absent like a void. The center has dropped out, and no amount of framing will bring it back.

The Incident is a dense, taut and tense example of the walled noise form with unsettling underbelly. The thirty-minute track from  Cincinnati’s Whore’s Breath managers to create an effectively airless & uneasy vibe, which prevails throughout the track's length.

A Tapestry Made Of Angel Flesh blends thick ‘n’ crudely tumbling walled noise, with a sinisterly warbling ‘n’ wavering ambient undercarriage.  This twenty-minute digital EP is the first release from this Alabama-based project.

Untitled Pig Collection brings together five slices of walled noise from this Old Town, Maine project, which themes all of its releases around pigs, boars, or hogs.

From 2024, The Devil's Wasteland is a zero-budget post-apocalyptic thriller/ horror.  It features very cheap/ often gore-free effects, bad-hamming-it-up acting, and a fair bit of mouth frothing punch-up. Here from SRS Cinema is a very bare bones DVD release of the film.

Moljebka Pvlse are an experimental music group from Stockholm, Sweden, featuring Hara Alonso (piano), Isabel Fogelklou (Harp), Mathias Josefson (Electronics) and Kris Kuldkepp (Bass Guitars).  They work with both acoustic and electronic instruments, as well as field recordings and found sounds, to create dark and haunting minimalist soundscapes. The band have released over a dozen albums on a variety of different labels; this is their third full-length album release for Zoharum Records. 

Now here’s a film with an interesting/ unique concept-could a car run on human blood?. Ferat Vampire is an early 80’s Czech film which sits somewhere between conspiracy thriller, dark comedy, PR satire, and body horror. Here, from the fine folks at Severin, is a Blu-ray release of the film, featuring an HD print and around five hours of extras.

Dead Sleep is an early 1990’s Australian blend of medical melodrama and mystery thriller. It stars Linda Blair as a psych nurse who uncovers suspicious deaths. The film is based on the real-life case of Harry Bailey- a New South Wales psychiatrist/ medical administrator, who was linked to the deaths of eighty-six patients during the early 60’s and late 70’s. Here from Severin is a region A release of the film.

If 2024's Megaliths allowed Llyn Y Cwn to give these mysterious stone circles a voice, 2025's reworking, Megaliths In Dub, has given them motion. Reworking his field recordings to unlock the hidden beats within, this alternative view of the magic and mystery of prehistoric stone circles furthers our fascination and exposes even more of this unseen and unknown world. Obviously, these sounds are more manipulated than the original sources for Megaliths, but the re-interpretation adds another dimension to the enigma, another view, and a different retelling of the story. While Megaliths plays like grim epic poems recalling the past, Megaliths In Dub is like the graphic novel, quickly moving, charged up, and repackaged for those looking for an alternative experience.

V/H/S/Halloween is the 8th in the V/H/S/ found footage anthology series.  As its title suggests, all six of the stories have an All Hallows' Eve setting and/or theme. Moving between a spectral-sourced frizzy drink, a deranged children's home, weird goings on/ murder in a medium’s house, a macabre alternative candy reality, a child killer stalking during Halloween, and a family-made haunt that suddenly becomes very real.  Here from Acorn Media is a Blu-ray release of the film, taking in a commentary track and a few other extra

Atrophy is nearing an 80-minute ride into thick, dense, and truly hope-killing walled noise from this Hungarian project. This is an example of the world around you blocking noise, when you just want to get away for an hour or so, into constantly churning sonic nihilism.

Here’s a thirty-minute slice of bass-affected and lightly textural skittering walled noise, with a decidedly murky aquatic feel. Vacant Algin is a Wisconsin-based project, and going from their Bandcamp, they been active since October last year, with three other releases to their name.

A project that has been releasing works for twenty-three years, Craig Varian’s 400 Lonely Things (co-member Jonathan McCall passed away in 2020) should be a haunted household name when it comes to the “pagantronic” and “ghost ambient” genres of electronic music. 400 Lonely Things is self described “Rustic Ambient Psychedelia” and “Analogue Folk Dronescape,” an amalgam of decayed samples, ethereal electronics, and detourned field recordings that conjure up a visionary, eldritch place that exists at the crossroads of hauntology and folk horror. Varian creates a sonic cosmos that fuses past, present, and future sonorities, a cinematic effect that plunges the listener into an uncanny atmosphere. While 400 Lonely Things’ recordings are indeed “hypnotic,” the music is actually quite complex and evocative, a diffuse layering of sounds, ambiances, moods, and effects. 

She Thinks She The State Department is a wonderful, unbalancing, and disconcerting collaboration between Chicago’s PBK, and Massachusetts prime cassette tape-scaper Howard Stelzer. It’s a five-track CD album, which blends disorienting textural fumblings, stuck avant-jazz bayings, off-kilter droning’s, and a general feeling of disqueting-to-unhinged sound-scaping.

Wilt is an Illinois-based project that blurs the boundaries between dark ambience, uneasy field records, and low-key/ brooding noise texturing. The projects been active since the late 90’s, with over one hundred and twenty releases to date. Mold The Earth is a CD album release from 2024, taking ten tracks.

The Fourth State is a long-form, evolving drone work from Sweden’s Andreas Rönnquist. It runs at just over the fifty-two-minute mark and features some rewarding shifts/ sonic developments.

Vampire Zombies…from Space is a cult 2024 retro sci-fi/horror/comedy film from writer/ director Michael Stasko (Boys Vs. Girls, Things to Do and The Bird Men). The film stars Troma legend Lloyd Kaufman (The Toxic Avenger, Troma’s War and Class of Nuke ‘Em High), Judith O’Dea (Night of the Living Dead, The Pirate and October Moon), Jessica Antovski (The Unbelievable with Dan Ackroyd, The Dread and Dreamcrusher), Craig Gloster (Depraved Mind and The Eternal Present) and Oliver Georgiou (Helltown, Cam_Girlfriend and The Haunted Museum).

Here’s a recent release from this highly prolific Tampa, Florida based walled noise project. The single thirty-five-minute track has a decidedly unsettling looping quality about it, which really does burn deep into ones head/ psyche.

The Eyes Of Ages is a twenty-minute track, which merges thick droning & rattling wall noise, with an eerier/ unsettling undercarriage of ambience/ woozy pitch shift.  This is a NYC based project that’s been active since the late 2010’s

Only Pain Remains True is a thirty-minute slice of crudely caustic 'n' jaggedly jarring walled noise nastiness from this new anonymous project.  

With a title like Crash And Burn, you might be expecting a road-based action film- featuring some form of vehicle in chases ‘n’ chaos.  But in reality, it’s an early 90’s sci-fi film, finding a group of characters stuck inside an industrial facility/ TV station, where a deadly synthetic human/android is hiding out.  The film's most notable cast member is Bill Mosely( The Texas  Chainsaw Massacre Part 2, The Devil's Rejects). Here from Full Moon Features, as either a Blu-Ray or DVD, the release is a reissue of the film. I’m reviewing the former, which takes in a new director/ actor commentary track and a few other extras.

From the early 1980’s, Visitors from the Arkana Galaxy is a truly wacked-out/tonally shifting mix of sci-fi, fantasy, skewed sitcom, and demented creature feature. The joint Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, and Croatia production regards a geeky/ bearded amateur author who seemingly brings to life/ earth his alien creations. Here from Deaf Crocodile Films is the region A Blu-ray release, taking in a new scan, a new commentary track, a new essay, and a selection of shorts from the director.

Nothing makes one feel the warm summer sun and breeze from the top deck quite like Yacht Rock - the audio equivalent of a cold wine cooler, warm, illicit substance tingles, and grooving with your shades on. While this micro-genre is primarily focused on the California sound or West Coast (USA) in general, never put it past the Germans and Austrians to focus in on lush grooves and make them their own. Under and Above the Clouds focuses on the Yacht Rock released in the two countries from '79-'91. Cold war but warm tunes, this compilation looks at the extremely fertile rock scene at that time, with its lens to the funky, sunny vibes we now call Yacht Rock.

Long Bright Summer pairs up English avant-garde saxophonist Evan Parker with French double bassist Joëlle Léandre, for a eight track improv collab. The release largely flirts between the taut and the fiery.

First appearing in the mid 70’s, Ja-Gan is a mellow & tuneful collection of instrumental dub reggae.  The twelve-track album blends upfront melodica (a blowable electronic instrument that sounds akin to accordion or harmonica), with organ, piano, guitar, & percussion. Here, from Doctor Bird is an expanded CD reissue of the album, taking in eight bonus tracks, and a glossy sixteen page booklet- featuring a six page write-up, single labels, studio logs, and pictures.

Libido is a mid 60’s Are-they-mad-or-not thriller, which blends in elements of psycho-sexual unease, gothic moodiness, and black-gloved Giallo. It regards a young man returning to his childhood seaside mansion home, where his father tied up & murdered a woman, before seemingly committing suicide. The film features a small, well-picked cast,  a great sense of uncertainty, mystery & unease, with a few neat twists. Here from Radiance is a new Blu-ray release of the film, featuring a crystal clear 2k monochrome print, a new commentary track, and a few new interviews

Night of the Juggler oozes the ‘Fear City’ era of 1970s New York, and being released in June 1980, it may be a significant final late entry in the neo-noir crime thriller subgenre that also brought us The French Connection (1971) and Death Wish (1974). Not, however, that many in the UK will know it as such. As the disc’s informative commentary from film historians Kim Newman and Sean Hogan notes, it was one of the first major studio films to receive a straight-to-video release in 1982, and for many years, it was only available on hazy VHS.

Delayed gratification; or, maybe no real gratification whatsoever? Strange and untimely qualities today, but with a rare acumen for presence, Periode (Andreas Reihse & Thomas Winkler), are just fine with the here and now on their new work of measured gesture and restraint, Grapes of Nothingness. Don’t let the title fool you. 

Japanese death metal band Invictus debuted in 2020 with an album called The Catacombs of Fear. This is their second album, several years later, titled Nocturnal Visions.

Dead-Wall Reveries brings together three modern chamber works from Canadian composer Eldritch Priest. Each runs between twenty and twenty-five minutes- all three have a decidedly compelling air, which moves between woozy angularity and sparse disquiet.

Je Laisse à La Nuit Son Poids D’ombre is a fifty-two-minute modern ensemble for ten players. It slowly shifts from hauntingly beautiful to discordant, dark, and at times, primal unease. The whole thing feels like a wonderfully muddying/darkening of the sonic waters.

From the late swinging sixties, The Assassination Bureau is Edwardian-set action-adventure/ dark comedy, with a star-studded cast- taking in the likes of Oliver Reed, Telly Savalas, and  Diana Rigg. It’s a decidedly Euro-trotting affair with an entertaining mix of witty banter, action, thrills, sword fighting, explosions, and more than enough camp to float a boat. Here from Arrow Video UK is a Blu-ray release of the film, taking in an HD print, and a few new extras.

Here we have a digital/  split EP bringing together two walls. One is decidedly pop/grit-bound from the UK’s  Spent Stiletto,  and the other thicker/ cruder buffeting weather-bound affair from USA’s No Fun Harsh Noise Wall. Each wall hits dead on the ten-minute mark.

With only a handful of releases spread over their twenty plus year career, Peru's Evil Damn treat us with a new mini LP from Hells Headbangers, Eons of Horror. Five tracks of classic, old school death metal, Eons mixes far-reaching and catchy death with angry, throaty vocals and propulsive drumming, capturing that old school vibe and aggression. Their first new material since their 2021 full length debut, Necronomicon, Evil Damn continue with the Lovecrafian/occult themes that pervade not only the runtime of the MLP, but are extra present in the ripping, ritualistic cover art.

Here we have a wall noise split, which is apparently themed around Orthodox Schema monk outfits. Each project serves up around fifteen minutes of crudely droning ‘n’ choppy wall matter. Featured here are Oregon’s Pink Wool, who are fairly new. And Poland’s Sado  Ritual, who have been active since 2019, releasing two hundred plus releases.

Glimmers of Hope is a recent mini-album from the Polish wall noise project Olion. Each of the two tracks featured slides in at dead on the fifteen-minute mark- both are fairly bass-focused affairs, with crackle-bound toppings.

How To Have Fun is the second release from Lea  Cummings( Kylie Minoise, Official Music Team, etc), lo-fi/ outsider folk project King Futile.  It takes in another eight tracks, and really, it sees him pushing even further the tongue-in-cheek/ glum/ sarcastic lyrical edge.

Devil Times Five is an early 70’s mix of killer kid thriller and slasher. It starts fairly campy/ soapy, before slowly but surely getting more mean-spirited/bleak, before diving into a truly nihilistic resolve. It features a decent selection of both victims and killers,  a snowy setting, and one or two fairly impressive low-fi gore effects. Here from 88 Films, as part of their Slasher Classic Collection, is a Blu-ray release of the film. It takes in both new and archive extras, including a brand new commentary track from slasher-loving podcast  The Hysteria Continues.

Well, just as I hadn’t properly heard Sun Ra before reviewing Sun Ra, I’m probably one of the few people who listen to power electronics who’ve never concentratedly listened to Sutcliffe Jugend, Slaves No More being the project that Kevin Tomkins and Paul Taylor initiated after they ended the legendary Sutcliffe Jugend. So I come to this with fresh ears, and there won’t be any comparison of the two projects, for better or worse. House Of Dolls is a two disc album, released by 4iB Records, and packaged in a card wallet covered in images and collages that clearly connect with power electronics aesthetics formally, but are slightly more cryptic and obscure than your usual black and white xerox affair. There are ten tracks, the longest being nearly half an hour long and the shortest nearly nine minutes in length. Each are titled ‘Scene I’, ‘Scene II’, and so forth.

Back in 2000, Martyn Ware (Heaven 17, B.E.F. and The Human League) and Vince Clarke (Depeche Mode, Yazoo and Erasure) formed Illustrious Company. Their MO (to paraphrase their own words) was to create new types of spatialised sound compositions using three-dimensional surround-sound systems. Collaborating with a host of digital and fine artists, world heritage sites, museums, exhibitions, live events, dance, theatre, technology, developers, researchers and educators. Up to now, they have created more than sixty sound projects that have been played, exhibited and heard across the world. It’s Always Ourselves We Find in the Sea is one such project.