Appearing four years before his slasher genre-defining classic Halloween, Dark Star was the first feature-length film directed by John Carpenter.  The film is a low-budget slice of Sci-fi regarding a spaceship manned by bearded, long-haired crewmen, who spend their days in deep space blowing up unstable planets. It’s a low-key parody/send-up of the genre, blending bickering/ bored crewmates, bombs that talk back,  a red ball with claws pet alien, a ship captain frozen in ice, and the odd subtle chuckle. Here from Fabulous Films is a dual UHD/Blu-ray release of the film.  It features two cuts of the picture,  a selection of new and archive extras (including a feature-length documentary), along with repro stills and posters, and a limited edition online exclusive clamshell/o-card package with a Dark Star patch.

Deadly Friend was the seventh film directed by horror icon Wes Craven (Last House On The Left, Nightmare On Elm Street, Scream). And the mid-80s film certainly stands as his most weird and tonally unbalancing creation, as it shifts from cute robot family movie to teenage abuse drama, to mad doctor meets supernatural slasher blend. Here from Arrow Video is a recent Blu-ray release- taking in a new commentary track, and a selection of new/ archive extras.

Shelf Life is the previously unreleased final film from director Paul Bartel (Death Race 2000, Eating Raoul and Lust in the Dust). Filmed in 1993, Bartel’s final film is a dark comedy with a fairly original premise that sets it apart from most other comedies of the time. Shelf Life stars O-Lan Jones (Mars Attacks, Edward Scissorhands and Beethoven), Andrea Stein (Hard to Kill, Trouble in Mind and Lois and Clark), Jim Turner (The Lost Boys, Kicking and Screaming and Joe’s Apartment), Paul Bartel (The Usual Suspects, Piranha and Escape from LA) and Shelby Lindley (Noragami, Puella Magi Madoka Magica and K-On!).

Bringing works of William S. Burroughs to the screen alongside an experimental soundtrack from some of the era's biggest names in industrial music, 1984's Decoder stands as a cyberpunk cult classic. With a number of songs by Genesis P-Orridge & Dave Ball, as well as FM Einheit, Einstürzende Neubauten, Soft Cell, and The The, its soundtrack is a testament to a fascinating piece of cinema nestled in a distinct and equally fascinating place and time. Filmed in Hamburg and Berlin by Klaus Maeck and Muscha, Decoder uses current industrial music as a revolution, sparking subterfuge, with the hunter trying to suppress the dissent. Available on a standalone CD for the first time in 33 years (there was a DVD/CD release in 2010), Decoder can now easily be heard by the masses without turning to auctions or haggling with secondhand resellers.

Vermilion Hours is a collaboration between French pianist Melaine Daliber and British soundscaper David Sylvian. The CD or vinyl album takes in two long slices of piano minimalism/ low-key simmering ambience, with two shorter versions of the same tracks topping off the release.

For Volin and Electronics Volume II is a  CD release collecting together nine tracks where violin and electronica wonderfully meet. Irish violinist Darragh Morgan is a supremely talented & versatile player, who here adds his deft/ at times detailed string work to the work of nine different composers.

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.

Priest is a powerful and, at times, highly moving British drama regarding a young Roman Catholic fighting with his faith and the hypocrisy of the church. The mid-'90s film was controversial upon release, due to touching on subjects such as child abuse and homosexuality.  Thirty-some years on, the film remains undated( aside from some of the soundtrack cues), retaining both its emotional effect and power regarding hypocrisy uncovered. Here from BFI is a new Blu-ray release of the film, taking in a new HD scan, and a selection of new and archive extras.

Composer, Alone is a three-CD set bringing together solo piano pieces by Swiss modern classical composer Jürg Frey. The largely stark/ sparsely toned works move between pattern-based, haunting tolling/ drifting, and more darting/ abstract. All twelve pieces featured here are played with great clarity, focus and depth by Dutch pianist Reinier van Houdt.

The Willow Bends And So Do I is an hour-long piece from Stockholm-based Magnus Granberg, whose output sits somewhere between modern chamber music & gentle improvisation. This 2024 work is played by Skogen- a nine-piece collective, which features the composer him self on prepared piano.   And as a long-term fan of Mr Granberg's output, I’m happy to report this is another wholly captivating piece which seesaws between haunting, angularly intriguing, and subtle yet rewardingly noisy- with generally enchantingly creative use of textural detail throughout.

Here, from Deaf Crocodile, is a double-disc Blu-ray set bringing together two 1970s sci-fi films from behind the Iron Curtain, produced by East German state-run studio DEFA. Each film features a new HD scan and a commentary track  

Australian composer Peter Knight's latest work was inspired by the sea, sand, and wind of SE Australia, where the beaches and rivers of his childhood rekindled his passion for the area's intriguing beauty while on vacation with his family. For a Moment the Sky Knew My Name speaks to the transience of the wind, how it can shape and affect the landscape, always moving forward, but still echoing the past, much like the body will have its memories slowly blown away and forgotten. Much like the belief in Panta rhei, the beaches and rivers of Peter's youth may have familiar aspects, but they've all changed. But so has Peter. Memories are just that, immutable and in the past, and each new step in an old footprint is a brand new experience. 

Here’s a 2025 feature-length attempt at telling the story of 1970s  towering 6-foot-9 Californian serial killer Edmund Kemper, aka the Co-ed Killer, whose crimes involved decapitation, dismemberment, and necrophilia. The film is somewhat a hit & miss affair- on the positive side, the cast largely works and there are effective moments of shock/ unease. On the less positive side, it has a mixed tonal quality, some cheap period detail, and some decidedly uneven/ ropy editing. Here from Epic Pictures is a Blu-ray release of the film, with a commentary track and a few other extras.