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.

Here from the fine folks at Cherry Red’s Doctor Bird is another collection of tracks produced by legendary/ innovative reggae producer Lee’ Scratch’ Perry. Black Man’s Time- The Jamaican Upsetter Singles 1972- Chapter 1 is a two-CD set, and as it’s sub-title suggests, all the tracks date from the year 1972.  The release takes in forty-nine tracks, and as we’ve come to expect from these Doctor Bird compilations, we get a good/ varied selection of material, with some true gems.

Bøyning, Brytning ( Bending, Breaking) is a very fitting title for this new album from  Norwegian guitarist Ivar Grydeland. As the tracks often feel as if they are being steadily pushed, pulled, and at times twisted out into unpredictable/alien shapes.

Percolation is the third solo album from Norwegian pianist/ composer Christian Wallumrød. In the late 90’s, he started off squarely in the Jazz genre, but as this ten-track release illustrates, his sound has become much more genre mixed now, with some of the material going down some fairly surprising/ quirky sonic paths.

Recorded in a single take and spread over 4 parts, Respawning as a Pearl is a breathtaking work of sustain, concentration, and tension, expertly woven together by Androctonyx (aka Lucas Gendre). There is continuity above all else, achieved by an organ–like drone that runs throughout, but the rest is pure minimalism. Washes of glitchy filters enter like comets passing, lifting the electronic composition while never distracting from its telos

Private Blue is an early 2020  picture that sends up both 80’s/ early 90's cop films and neo noir, for an entertaining, at times wonderfully camp ride, with a great retro score. It’s a SOV affair, though it technically sits at the more competent end of the genre. Here from SRS Cinema, those resurrectors of low-budget cult fare/ SOV, is a DVD release of the film, taking in a director's commentary track, and a few other things.

Here’s a 2024 documentary looking at the life of  Harley Flanagan, who helped define the New York Hardcore punk sound and founded key crossover band Cro-Mags. Now in his late 50s, he’s lived a hell of a life- moving from being left to fend for himself in childhood, to being a drummer in a popular punk band at the age of eleven, where at times he was used & abused. Before jumping into an adulthood full of anger and addiction, which later shifted into faith and focus. Here from Lightyear Entertainment is a dual Blu-ray/ DVD   release of the film, taking in seventy minutes of extras.

Director Matt McClung, known for Gentleman's Fury (2017), brings us Inhabitants, a 2025 supernatural horror that attempts to blend psychological thriller and religious horror elements. Starring Anna Jacoby-Heron (Stranger Things) as Olivia and Josh Andres Rivera (The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes) as Francis, with Kevin Nealon (Happy Gilmore 2) as Denny and Ana Ortiz (Ugly Betty) as Lillian, the film promises much but falls flat.

Fantomas Returns! is a Blu Ray boxset bringing together the three 1960’s French adventure comedies featuring Fantomas, a blue masked supervillain who wants to take over the world. The films draw from a huge range of influences, from The Pink Panther and James Bond to Silver Age superheroes and Dr Mabuse. Each is a lot of fun, with some great moments of suspense, comedy, action, gadgets, and camp. This set is from Eureka Entertainment- each picture gets an HD scan, new commentary tracks, with featurettes and a sixty-page inlay booklet.

Despite the years old claims that physical media is dead, not only are older albums being re-released physically, but they're hitting fans on even older formats. Pita's Get Out is like Benjamin Button, originally released in 1999, getting a 12-track CD edition in 2008 (also from eMego), and now getting all of these 12 tracks released on vinyl for the first time (with an added live track to sweeten the deal). Widely regarded as an important work that moved experimental electronics in a new direction, Pita (Peter Rehberg) takes noisy, sparse electronics and melds them with melodies, adding new dimension to the pieces, and showing that noise can be more inclusive and musical than the aberrant onslaught that got many fans into the genre years prior.

The Knife is a quietly devastating procedural and psychological drama set entirely inside or around a house on one terrible night. Director and co-writer Nnamdi Asomugha doesn’t hold back with this taut tale that turns a family’s life upside-down in an instant, and has a lot to say about the state of the nation. Intense and thought-provoking, it’s a brilliantly filmed, unsettling watch.

Androctonyx's Respawning as a Pearl is a work of space ambient or drone, created with layers of synthesizer, not unlike Steve Roach's Immersion series, or Mathias Grassow's longform drone works. It is divided into four tracks, 12-20 minutes each, but is actually a continuous play, with no breaks between parts.

Veiled Erosion is the debut album from Anqi Liu- a composer, interdisciplinary/multimedia artist, photographer and filmmaker.  The CD takes in five pieces from the late 2010’s and early 2020s, with each being highly unpredictable- sitting somewhere between the composed and improvised. 

Here’s a CD bringing together two around thirty-minute pieces from Israeli-American modern classical composer Chaya Czernowin, both of which possess a rewardingly woozy/ unbalancing quality. They utilise the likes of an ensemble, double bass recordings, an orchestra, and amplified voices.

Hells Bells is a 2020 screwball horror comedy written, directed and starring Jim O’Rear (Torture Room, Nightblade and Scream Farm) and Scott Tepperman (Nightblade and the Cruel Summer movies). Starring alongside them we have Marc Price (Trick or Treat, Killer Tomatoes Eat France! and Little Devils: The Birth), Rebecca Erb (Kill Dolly Kill, Idle Girl and Death Care), Paul Von Scott (Cruel Summer, The Uncivil War: American Divided and Strange Love) and Jimmy Maguire (Unbillievable, The Mother God and Frenzy Moon).

Young Blondes, Stalked and Murdered is a 2024 film that blends elements of character study, slasher/serial killer thriller, and trying to make it in Hollywood satire. It focuses on Stacy- a young strawberry blond, who has recently set down in LA to make it as an actress, as a gloved/ masked killer is taking out aspiring blond actresses. The film has a decidedly darting/ fragment/ sleekly arty structure, which tonally darts all over the place- shifting from unease/ fearful, onto awkwardly vapid, to darkly funny. Here, from the recently resurrected Anchor Bay, is a Blu-ray release of the film.

During the late 1980s, cult director Lamberto Bava agreed to film a four-part anthology series for Italian TV under the banner of High Tension. But after the executives saw the completed features’ extreme themes, graphic violence, and nudity, their broadcast was blocked for nearly a decade, going on to exist as grey market bootlegs for many years. From Severin, here is a four Blu-ray/ CD boxset- presenting classy 2k scans of all four films, with a host of new extras.

Zu are an avant-garde metal trio formed in Rome, Italy, who have been releasing music since 1999. Ferrum Sidereum is their third full-length release for House of Mythology Records and their 14th in total. The band’s current lineup consists of Luca T. Mai on baritone sax, keyboards, synthesiser, and organ, Paolo Mongardi on drums and acoustic and synthetic percussion and Massimo Pupillo on bass, 12-string guitar, synthesisers, and keyboards.

Pushing the death metal envelope, Finnish trio Ligation unleash their brand of 'death mental' with their debut album, After Gods. Working within the confines of that cold, dark, Scandinavian sound, Ligation further their agenda by integrating uncommon, but highly welcome, elements like harsh noise and saxophones. Integrating the three tracks from their two prior split EPs, After Gods showcases the band in all their mighty glory, tearing new holes in the death metal fabric, allowing other dimensions to saunter in and wrap their tendrils on an unsuspecting audience. 

In the field of music, you don't have to look very far to find meditations of all kinds; David Shea's Meditations is something else. Taking its cues from the actual IRL act of meditating, grounded in Buddhism and the Heart Sutra in particular, the eight pieces that make up this album are born out of meditating, sometimes even musically, and are designed to accompany or engender that process. I guess that means listening and being attentive to the other performers, like those who round out the album's lengthy roster and their instruments--vibraphones, guitars, ebows, and yes, singing bowls, among others. 

For 10 Musicians is a modern ensemble suite, at its most stark and spare. The four-track work is built around spaced piano notation, with which the wind and string instruments are sometimes connected. It creates a work that is more about mood/ presence, and less about melody/ structure- though those do sometimes occur.

Les Signes Passagers brings together seven compositions written especially for the fortepiano- an early version of the modern piano, named for its ability to play both softly (piano) and loudly (forte). The works here are penned by Swiss composer Jürg Frey, and played by pianist Keiko Shichijo- who is a specialist in the instrument. The resulting album stands as one of the more pared-back/ sparse/ fragile keyboard-based recordings I’ve ever heard.

The Recordings is a four-disc set bringing together all of the 70s output from Gracious!, a Surrey prog rock band, who had an adventurous/ dramatic sound that blended blues, rock, classical, symphonic, and beyond. The set brings together three CDs and a DVD, which features the band's short set at the 1970s Isle of Wight Festival

The Maiden is a 2022 drama written and directed by Canadian Graham Foy (Paradise Falls, Mouseland and August 22, This Year) and shot on 16mm film. The Maiden is his debut feature-length film.  The cast is made up of mainly first-timers, with no previous experience in cinema. Jackson Sluiter plays Kyle, Marcel T. Jimenez plays Colton, Hayley Ness is Whitney, Kaleb Blough is Tucker Siena Yee is June, and Charlotte Clarke plays Charlotte.

Going from Emma-Lynn’s bandcamp, this is a recently formed project from Untah, with this release & one other to its name. This is around a twenty-five-minute ep, takes in three tracks that sit in the more weathered ‘n’  hope rattling side of the walled noise genre.

Bleached Bones Flayed Skin is decidedly gnarly ‘n’ ragged example of the wall-noise form. The dead on twenty-minute track finds this Scranton, South Carolina project serving up yet another example of crude & corrupted walling.

Pure Visuals is a forty-minute slab of dense 'n' cranium-churning walled noise from this highly prolific/long-running California project. The track is simple/ set in its attack and form, though it works very effectively as a world-blocking-out sonic mass, which I found oddly soothing.

My Name Is 'A' by Anonymous is a 2010 teen crime drama, which shifts liberally between brain-numbing vapidity & deeply troubling behaviour. The film blends cinema vertia,  found footage, and low-key artiness with a structure that drifts in & out of its loose plot.  Here from Wild Eye Raw’s series is a release of the film, taking in three different versions of the film, and a few other things.

You’re All Doomed is the new slasher throwback film from long-running/low-budget horror/ sci-fi director Mark Polonia. He’s been active since the 80s, with around a hundred features to his name- including SOV classics like Splatter Farm & Hallucinations. The film to hand truly is a love letter to stalk ‘n’ slash films of the 80s, with some lines/ scenes directly mimicked. Here from Wild Eye Releasing is a DVD release of the film, taking in Mark’s always worthy, interesting, and down-to-earth director's commentary track.

Dawn Of Inhumanity was the 6th, and to date, final studio album from this Oakland, California, Death metal band.  After the more creative/ moody genre mixing ‘n’ matching of some of their earlier work, this album largely focuses on a more straightforward blend of death & doom metal. Here from Peaceville is a CD reissue of the album, which adds an extra thirteen bonus tracks- featuring assorted 7”, demos, and split release tracks.

From the mid-70s, The House Of Laughing Widows stands as one of the more formally chilling, at points downright unsettling/disturbing examples of the giallo form.  It regards a young art restorer going to an isolated village to work on a decidedly macabre fresco in the local church.  The film may not feature a particularly high or creatively executed set of murders. However, it takes in some great uneasy settings, a compelling/ strange mystery, and moments of true bone-chilling terror and alarming horror. Here from Arrow US, as either a UHD or Blu-ray, is a recent release of the film. It takes in a new 4k scan,  two new commentary tracks, a new feature-length documentary, and more.

With a title like The Killer Must Kill Again, and a release date of the mid-70s, you’d imagine a gory proto slasher. But in reality, this Italian production is seen by some as a gialli, but I’d say it’s more of a straight-if-at points-suspenseful thriller. It features, in its lead, Mr Giallo himself as George Hilton, as a husband who decides to get rid of his wife, but things don’t go quite as planned. The film has a fast-moving, fairly simple but effective plot- with some great moments of tension, and light touches of sleaze & gory murder.  Here from Rustblade- is a Blu-ray release of the film, taking in an interview with the director and a few other things.

Here we have an urgent, unrelenting, and ear drum-ripping example of the walled noise form from this Cincinnati, Ohio project, who in recent years has become one of the more prolific/quality-bound projects in the scene. The single thirty-seven-minute track firmly retains both its brutal pull & intense attack throughout its length.

The Two Most Powerful Warriors Are Patience and Time is a wall noise split. It brings together Berlin’s Sebastian Tomb, and North Carolina’s Angel Brügger- both parties offer up a twenty-minute ‘wall’, each of these being decidedly battering and grey in their intent.

Here’s the latest in the series of ambient guitar ‘n’ pedal created albums from Dirk Serries. It takes in two around twenty-minute works- each track has its own tone/ feel, with an almost low-key Yin/ Yang emotional quality to the whole thing.

Kahil El'Zabar is a Chicagoan veteran jazz percussionist and composer whose works with the Ethnic Heritage Ensemble date back to the early 80's. The performers in the ensemble have changed numerous times since then, though players like Corey Wilkes (Trumpet) and Alex Harding (baritone sax) have been involved for many years.

I may or may not be the best person to review this: I have never properly listened to Sun Ra’s music. Of course, I have heard bits and pieces, but I’ve never listened to an album or listened to anything repeatedly; after this, I’m going to have to add another huge discography to my listening pile… Sun Ra passed away in 1993, and the Arkestra here is led by Marshall Allen, a longstanding saxophonist with the group. Allen is 101 years old (100 on this recording), and directs the ensemble through ten pieces which - if I have understood correctly - are a mix of compositions discovered in Sun Ra’s papers after his death, pieces built from similar notes, and old Arkestra works.

Shoot First, Die Later (aka Il poliziotto è marcio)  is a 1974 Poliziotteschi (crime drama) from Italy directed by Fernando Di Leo (Naked Violence, Slaughter Hotel and The Italian Connection) and starring Luc Merenda (Torso, The Nun and the Devil and The Violent Professionals), Delia Boccardo (Death Walks at Laredo, Massacre in Rome and Tentacles), Richard Conte (The Godfather, Thieves Highway and Call Northside 777), Raymond Pellegrin (Woman of Rome, Imperial Venus and Le Deuxieme Souffle), and Vittorio Caprioli (Giovannona Long-Thigh, Le magnifique and The Boss). 

Whether intentional or not, COVERS by CoH (Ivan Pavlov) & Wladimir Schall, unearths something about the nature of the standard musical form that perhaps goes unnoticed: the actual act of covering, as in placing a cover on something.