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Dirk Serries - Zonal Disturbances II

Zonal Disturbances II finds long-term experimental mood setter and improviser offering up four slices of brooding to raw ambient guitar scaping. The CD release appears on Poland’s Zoharum, whom have been a long-term supporter/releasers of Mr Serries' work.


Various Artists - Martina Verhoeven Invites

Here’s a CD release of a set recorded in London’s Café Oto in 2023. It finds this Belgian pianist inviting a selection of kindred spirits and collaborators to create two slices of eventful and often dense improv.


Vampire At Midnight - Vampire At Midnight( DVD)

Vampire At Midnight is a late 80s film which blends elements of crime thriller, action, fanged horror, and unintentionally awkward romantic drama.  The film features a soundtrack that shifts between 80s muzak, moody synth ’n’ beats, and cheesy hip-hop, with the addition of sudden/ ill-fitting street dance scenes. Here from MVD’s classic line is a bare bones/region-free DVD release of the film.


Johannes Kalitzke - Kapitan Nemos Biblothek

Kapitan Nemos Biblothek (aka Captain Nemo’s Library) is an experimental/ modern opera for five soloists and a chamber ensemble. Spread over two CDs, the work shifts between darting & choppy modern classic tones, off-kilter/ seesawing composition, onto guitar-edged dynamics and atmospherics.


Paula Sanchez/Katharina Weber - …and discovering fishes that have their own light

When the liner notes of the album you’re about to review are written by primo avant-garde musician, Fred Frith you know you’re onto a good thing. In fact, it is Frith along with the Swiss free music scene that is largely responsible for the coming together of the seemingly unlikely pairing of Argentinian cellist Paula Sanchez and 'piano icon’ (the words of Frith) Katharina Weber. Both developed a close relationship with the Henry Cow alumni at the University of Basel - Sanchez a student on Frith’s improvisation master’s program, Weber a fellow teacher - and in amongst this the two female artists independently found a common ground centred on improvisation, sound and performative art. It is from these beginnings that Sanchez and Weber proceeded to take live experimentation to a new level, and it this art that features on …and discovering fishes that have their own light. 


Black Gravel - Black Gravel (Blu Ray)

The years immediately before and after the Second World War have largely been overlooked when it comes to German filmmaking. Seems obvious why, of course, but it does leave somewhat of a significant gap in cinema history between the German Expressionists and the 70s auteur movement of Herzog, Fassbinder, Schlöndorff, Wenders et al. So, it’s no surprise that during this seemingly barren period, there were in fact a handful of filmmakers doing good work, including one Helmut Käutner, who despite a lack of recognition outside of his home nation, gained a reputation as one of Germany’s greatest filmmakers.     


Timothy McCormack & Jack Yarbrough - Mine but for its sublimation

Mine but for its sublimation, is a sixty-minute solo piano piece- it’s a skeletal to taut affair, built around subtly shifting repetition, patterns, and atmosphere.  I guess you’d compare it to some of Morton Feldman’s works for solo piano pieces, though the work is more eventful, as well as having its own distinctive qualities.


Primeiro - Music for Horses I & II

Getting its vinyl debut, Primeiro's Music for Horses hits the scene with an expanded edition featuring three brand new tracks. Now titled Music for Horses I & II, the original four tracks tackle the B-side and Primeiro's three new pieces take on the task of guiding the listener to their equine epiphany. The sides bookend a life-altering horse riding accident for Primeiro, who uses both works to show how the boundaries blur between human and non-human, utilizing ethereal tones and arpeggios. 


Terror In The Fog: The Wallace Krimi at - Terror In The Fog( Blu Ray boxset)

Terror In The Fog: The Wallace Krimi at CCC is a recent six-film collection from Eureka. The focus of the four Blu-ray box set is the cycle of crime films – or krimis – released by CCC studios. The genre was hugely popular with West German audiences in the 1960s. The films were adapted from works of British crime writer Edgar Wallace and his son, Bryan Edgar Wallace. They combined the traditional murder mystery with horror, in which they depicted enigmatic killers stalking their victims through foggy English landscapes – from the streets of London to isolated rural mansions. The genre became an influence on both Giallo and Slasher forms.


Olion/ Dresser - Split

This is a split album that brings together two European wall-noise projects, with Olion from Poland, and Dresser from Italy. The first offers up three shorter tracks, and a nearly twenty-six-minute track from the second. 


Vilgoc & Inanition - Split

Here’s a walled noise split bringing together two around thirty-minute tracks- from two of the longer running/ ten ten-year-plus active walled noise projects. Poland’s Vilgoc serves up a slab of thick pummelling and hiss-hazed walling, and the rather mysterious Inanition presents with a slice of rolling ‘n’ reeling wall-craft.


Pierre Bastien & Michel Banabila - Nuits sans Nuit

What is the music that comes after the apparent exhaustion with all forms of sonic articulation? Pierre Bastien & Michel Banabila have managed to construct a soundtrack for such times, fueled by enervation rather than anything like an endgame or final statement. Nuits sans Nuit is the result, and with titles like, "Closing Time: The Party is Over", "Waste Disposal", and "Here Is Your New Anthem", the thematic lines are clearly drawn. The music is primarily electronic landscapes, sparse and droney, populated by various acoustic instruments – double bass, reeds, etc. Things move as listelessly as one would expect them to under such an umbrella and have the sensation that the performers are just about ready to give up. No pathos about, though, just really being done.


Latest Reviews

Dirk Serries - Zonal Disturbance...
Zonal Disturbances II finds long-term experimental mood setter and improviser offering up four slices of brooding to raw ambient guitar scaping. The CD relea...
180725   Dirk Serries - Zonal Disturb...
180725   Various Artists - Martina Ver...
180725   Vampire At Midnight - Vampire...
180725   Johannes Kalitzke - Kapitan N...
170725   Paula Sanchez/Katharina Weber...
170725   Black Gravel - Black Gravel ...
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150725   Olion/ Dresser - Split
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