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From 2024, Scared To Death is a haunted house horror blending in moments of thriller & comedy. It follows a film crew going to a house to do a séance, readying to make a film about a fake one- and things become very real. It features an ensemble cast headed up by Lin Shaye & Bill Moseley. The film takes a little while to get going, but when it does, there are some neat chills & thrills, as well as an inventive rolling 'n' snapping teeth decapitated head. Here from Jinga Films is a fairly bare bones/ region free DVD.
From the late 1950s, The Screaming Skull is a black-and-white US production that blends gothic horror and an are-they-mad-or-not thriller. The film regards a businessman taking his new wife to his southern mansion, which he left after his first wife seemingly died in an accident. The film has a fairly plodding pace & some decidedly mixed acting, but the creepy mansion setting is effective enough; there are some neat creepy moments, with the female lead displaying a decent range. Here from Eureka, featuring a new HD scan and a few new extras.
Hailing from the Granite State, Dominion show on their debut album that searing, old-school death never died; it just lay hidden, presenting itself to a select few ready to let it rage forth. Mortification of Thy Flesh sounds like it came straight out of the early nineties, flourish-free and straightforward, classic, old-school death that will make us hardened old-timers do a double take. Many acts revel in old-school death, with some having better success than others, but Dominion have the feel and sound down pat. That's not to say that others aren't of merit, but this one manages to tick all the boxes.
From Arrow Video, both in the UK and stateside, is a release of one of the classic slices of cinematic sci-fi, Forbidden Planet. From the late fifties, the film blends epic other-world backdrops, memorable sets, iconic robot design, and a wonderful ahead of it’s time/ influential electronic score. The film is set in the 23rd century, where a United Planets starship is dispatched to the distant planet to determine the fate of an earlier expedition. It’s a captivating blend of sci-fi wonder and adventure into the unknown, with a keen sense of mystery and unfolding awe. This new release comes as either UHD or Blu-ray; it features, for the first time, the original Cinemascope aspect ratio of 2.55:1 with its theatrical "Perspecta" stereo soundtrack and a new 4K restoration. With a new commentary track & appreciation of the score, and a good selection of archive extras.
The Falling Sky is a 2024 Brazilian documentary about the profound connection between indigenous people and nature, and the threat deforestation poses to their ecosystem. Gabriela Carneiro da Cunha (I’m Still Here, Passione, and Morde and Assopra) and Eryk Rocha (Pachamama, Transeunte, and Cinema Novo) directed the film.
Here’s, I believe, the second release from Germany's At War With Everything That Moves On Tracks. The project themes all of their work around train crashes and serves up a mix of wallish noise, muffled harsh noise & grim ambience.
Matriarch serves up two short, extremely searing shots of walled noise from this Oregon-based project. Each track hits dead on the ten-minute mark, and each is as intense as the other.
Here’s a recent release from Polish wall noise project Olion, which shows a harsher/ more bleakly choppy side to their sound. The single track comes in at dead on the thirty-minute mark. This is a self-released digital affair.
10426 is a recent slice of dense, texturally detailed, and atmospheric walled noise from Wisconsin’s Vacant Align. The single/ dead on forty five minute ‘wall ’ has a rather taut industrial feel to its blend of rapid bass rumbling, juddering, jangling and rattling textured noise.
Esumazione is a just over thirty-five-minute slice churning ‘n’ numbing walled noise, with a distinctive necro/ out-from-the grave feel. The whole ‘wall’ has a decidedly loose/ ill-defined feel, which is strangely engaging/ engulfing.
Delirium was the 10th film from Lamberto Bava (Demons 1 & 2, A Blade In the Dark, Body Puzzle). It’s a late-80s Giallo based around a men's magazine, where the models are getting killed off one by one- getting closer & closer to the terrified owner. It features a great use of colour, surreal head-based imagery, and soapy drama as well as a fair bit of nudity ‘n’ gore. Here from 88 Films as part of their Italian Collection is either a new Blu-ray or UHD, featuring a lovely new HD scan, a commentary track, and a good selection of extras.
Writer-director Simon Rumley’s Bangkok-set Crushed is a harrowing and unflinching film, curiously so, given the skilful way it often purposefully looks away to explore its tough subject matter. Half mystery, half moral investigation, it’s not afraid to take in the negative space around its dark subject matter and, in doing so, ask some huge and uncomfortable questions. It’s not a gruelling watch so much as an engrossing one, thanks to a blend of brilliant performances and techniques, but its core is undeniably dark.
Here we have a three-CD box set looking at the influence of Eastern sounds on Western music during the mid-60s and early 70s. The fifty-eight-track compilation brings together known/ notable projects such as the Incredible String Band, and Yes, with more obscure gems. The genres featured move between rock, prog, folk, jazz and classical music. The set appears on Cherry Red sublabel Strawberry, and as we come to expect from a Cherry Red compilation, there’s a lot of thought gone into the release to make a wholly consistent and varied collection.
From MIG here’s a double CD release bringing together the first two albums of the English-German band Message.Their first album, 1972’s The Dawn Anew Is Coming, was more of a rock/ prog crossbred. Whereas their second 1973’s From Books And Dreams was a decidedly darker/ psychedelic affair blending elements of prog/ Kraut rock.
The Nine Demons (aka The Nine Venoms) is a 1984 fantasy, martial arts, horror movie from director Cheh Chang (Five Deadly Venoms, One-Armed Swordsman and Crippled Avengers). The film stars Tien-Chi Cheng (Five Elements Ninjas, Fighting Ace and The Mystery of Chess Boxing), Li Wang (Masked Avengers, Tian Can Bian and A Chinese Ghost Story II), Fu-Chien Chang (Gold Leaf, The Masked Lover and The Solitary Sword), and Sheng Chiang (The Five Venoms, Masked Avengers and Crippled Avengers).
Date With A Vampire is an early 2000s straight-to-video example of the erotic horror genre, with things largely focusing on the softcore, fleshly side of things- though there’s a creepy/ feral basement vamp, some bickering about biting, and a few darting moments of gore. This Visual Vengeance Blu-ray release brings together a director's commentary track and other extras. Plus, a second bonus film by the same director, Blood Craving, which features horror legend Carloine Monroe.
Amityville AI is an ultra-low-budget tech horror film from Milan, Michigan, based Matt Jaissle (The Necro Files, Gobblefoot, Maws). It follows an AI expert who moves into a house in the infamous Amityville area, where an axe murder occurred in the 70’s, and now the killer has seemingly affected the house's AI system. Here from SRS Cinema is a DVD release of the picture- taking in directors commentary track.
From the mid-2010s, Revolution 666 is a low-budget blend of slasher and zombie film- with a walrus mask killer, a Manson-like cult, and a lost Beatles song. Here’s Wacked Films' release of the film on DVD.
Climate and Violence is German composer, producer, and sound designer Kai Niggemann's, sophomore solo album. Akin to his debut, Heart Murmur, the work is based on and inspired by a theatre performance, this time "Denkraum der Utopien." Utilising voice, guitar, synths (both analog and digital), concrete recordings, and various processing techniques, the album is experimental and ambitious, and even at its most chaotic, still a very engaging soundtrack. Meditating on the distinction between humans/culture and the world/nature, Climate and Violence is very timely with our world in its most dire state yet due to our reckless practices, and each spin will allow the listener a bit more time of introspection to analyze their part in all of this.
Nikkatsu Erotica: Volume One is a new Blu-ray box set from Australia’s Imprint, as part of their Imprint Asia sub-label. It brings together two rather creative, well-shot & well-acted examples of Japanese Roman porno from Nikkatsu, one of the country's biggest studios. Between the early 70s and late 80’s, they completely switched over their production to producing softcore adult films, which would become known as Roman Porno- the company produced around 800 to 1000 of these titles. This boxset features a commentary track from genre expert Jasper Sharp for each title, a few video essays, trailers and two classy ‘n’ crisp HD scans.
It’s a bold and precarious thing to try and marshal sound into a viable relationship with events, things, etc., that are not, strictly speaking, about sound. Sound is so ephemeral that it can be easily bent to whatever agenda, as score or testimony, or something in between.
Berlin-based composer Eliad Wagner, whose work with Serge modular synthesisers I have previously heard as part of the Modulisme series, is here collaborating with Werner Dafeldecker, Austrian bassist and composer, for a thirty-seven-minute album called Fray Field. It is an evocative deep listening electroacoustic work, a modern musique concrete, with an esoteric and otherworldly post-industrial feeling, and sound textures you can taste.
Heresy (2024) is a Dutch folk horror film directed by Didier Konings, a concept artist whose previous works include Stranger Things, and Thor: Love and Thunder, and written by Marc S. Nollkaemper (The Space Between Us). The film stars Anneke Sluiters (Hotel Poseidon) as Frieda, alongside Len Leo Vincent as her husband Hikko, Léon van Waas (Brimstone) as the butcher Gelo, and Nola Elvis Kemper as Sasha. Set in a medieval Dutch village, it follows a woman ostracised and accused of witchcraft when a dark entity latches onto her infertility. It's drawn comparisons to Eggers' The Witch off the back of a strong festival run. It makes its UK digital debut on 28 September courtesy of GrimmVision.
Here’s a rather roughshod, seared, and crudely cluttered wall noise split, bringing together two Italian projects. There’s Cuneo’s Spietate Agonie, and Turin’s Rumonoise- with each severing up a thirty-minute ‘wall’