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I cannot get enough of harsh noise wall, and every time I stumble upon a new release, it’s another opportunity to feed my need. Thin Mountain is a well-known harsh noise wall project hailing from the US, and is mastermind by Sean E. Matzus, a prolific noise artist known for Black Leather Jesus as well as a bunch of other, well-respected projects.
Written, arranged, performed, and recorded all by Derrik "Ghoul" Goulding of Father Befouled, THOS ÆLLA is a far-reaching and really well-done solo project. Following up 2021's Abnegation Psalms is his sophomore effort, Sempiternal Mobocracies, an album rife with enough riffing and style meshing to please even the pickiest metalhead. Impossible to pin down and wonderfully happy to evade classification, THOS ÆLLA's latest is a whirlwind of metal, happiness, and musical aplomb.
Enter the Void is a 2009 psychedelic masterpiece of cinema from Chilean director Gaspar Noé, whose boundary-pushing cinema has delighted fans of celluloid’s darker side. Noé was the man responsible for Irreversible, the difficult to watch mystery, that plays out in reverse, the erotically charged Love and his latest masterpiece, Vortex, about an elderly couple living with dementia and starring Italian horror/giallo master Dario Argento in an acting role for the first time. Enter the Void fits somewhere into his mid-period where he didn’t just break boundaries, he shattered them.
What is it about the parallels between the sound of water and the voltage-controlled synthesizer? They seem made for one another: liquid, crystalline, and prone to shimmer. In painting, you have to conjure light through contrast and sleight of hand, but with the synthesizer, at least as Vladimir Karpov (aka X.Y.R.) uses it, light comes readymade.
Works for Cello and Piano is a CD release which presents the listener with five works from Koren born composer Isang Yun. His output here moves between rapidly sliding ‘n’ tensely simmer cello and orchestrated works, onto more jagged to angular piano and cello work-outs.
Here’s a twelve-track CD bringing together four urgently seared-to-angularly scorched pieces for string Quartet from Italian composer and double bassist Stefano Scodanibbio. His compositions are both shrill, and darting- yet there is an often a keen sense of both atmospheric unease, and bounding malevolence about his work.
Yan Jun, is a conceptual sound artist and poet hailing from Beijing, China. He works in experimental and improvised music utilizing noise, field recordings and the human body as his raw materials. Interestingly enough, with his ongoing project Sleepings, where he’s asking participants to record themselves slumbering. Time Killer, Jun latest album, is connected to the said project as the artist sums its focus as “part of a continual interest of making myself (and others) sleep or be more sober”!
Sign Of Evil are a two-piece from Chile- they brew up an off-key mixture of blacked speed metal, punked death metal, and pitch wavering occult rock. With darts of gothically clunking piano tones, and two-toned vocals that move between deep guttural barks and clear shouty vocals similar to those of Carcass’s Jeff Walker. Psychodelic Horror is the project's first full-length album- after a cassette demo, and it takes in eleven tracks.
Distance Between Us is the one and only release from the extremely mysterious Don Bradshaw-Leather, an artist who appeared in the 1970’s London psych-rock scene, and then disappeared back to whence he came. The album features four lengthy slices of boundenly dark, to dramatic and wavery wonkily( largely) instrumental psych-rock - with a very organ/mellotron/ piano focus to it.
Behind the Mask of Isa is the welcome return of Polish wall noise project Sado Rituals – who hasn't released anything for a little while. The release features a darkly pressing, and subtly foreboding example of ANW- which comes in at just shy of the forty-minute mark.
Here we have a rather provocative titled two-track release from Uk’s Pain Sparrow. Each of these walled noise tracks run around the twenty-minute mark- the first of a choppy ‘n’ jittering variety, and the second a more densely rushing ‘n’ rattling affair.
Here’s the next compilation in the Lux and Ivy series- which finds MoJo’s Dave Henderson crate-digging through old 45’s. As this new release's title suggest this is somewhat of a departure from the past releases in the series, which have seen a rock ‘n’ roll, novelty pop, to easy listening focus. The thirty track CD is largely, as its title indicates, focused on the more morose side of country music- though we do get a few examples of praise the lord country too.
Shut In is a 2022 thriller that follows the plight of an ex-drug taking mother, who is trapped in an isolated and rundown house with her two children, as she's tormented by her ex & his sleazy buddy. It’s a decidedly moodily filmed affair- taking place in late rain-filled & rotten apple summer- with a good small, and largely well-placed cast with the biggest name here being infamous actor, director, and musician Vincent Gallo- which is one of the reasons I was pulled to the film. Here from Signature Entertainment is the VOD release of the picture.
From the folks at VCI Entertainment here's Santo: El Enmascarado De Plata- a four Blu Ray boxset, bringing together eight films from Mexican wrestler, superhero, and cultural icon Santo. The films featured date from between the early 1960s and the early 1970s- and they find the masked hero facing all manner of supernatural and horror characters/entities. All of the films being high with action, thrills, fighting, campiness, and 60’s-to-70 kitsch vibes.
Violator (aka Baiorêtâ) is a wonky blend of suicidal focused drama, dark comedy and lo-fi splatter. This Japanese production is certainly an often unbalancing and odd affair, though some of the pacing is out and the splatter elements don’t quite reach the levels one would have hoped. But it’s certainly worth a look if you like the idea of a suicidal dark comedy lined with splatter. Here from the guys at Wild Eye Releasing is a region free DVD release of the film.
Originally released on cassette through Old Europa Cafe in 1995, classic Incapacitants album D.D.D.D. gets a gorgeous re-release on CD through Abhorrent A.D. Although included in Pica Disk's Box Is Stupid from 2009, this AAD release allows noise fans all over a chance to own this excellent and dense studio effort from these Japanese noise titans. Built on two colossal tracks, D.D.D.D. is a must-have for Incapacitants fans and those of classic era Japanese noise.
Monster from Green Hell is a 1957 cold war sci-fi movie, much beloved of Glenn Danzig, who wrote the song Green Hell about it whilst he was still in the Misfits, and directed by Kenneth G Crane, who was famous as an editor of cult movies, however, he would only ever go on to direct four movies, The Monster from Green Hell, The Manster, Half Human and When Hell Broke Loose. This new Blu-ray edition from The Film Detectives features two different versions of the film, the first in widescreen and the second, full-frame. For the purpose of this review, I chose to watch the film in widescreen.
Joke Lanz & Mat Pogo's Untitled cassette on Nihilist Recordings collects two different live performances on sides A and B, respectively. A freeform interplay between turntables, sampled elements and vocals, this is a collision of the worlds of free improvisation and electronic music, with a tongue in cheek absurdist bent that is hilarious at times. Both members utilize electronics, but Joke Lanz is the primary turntablist, with Mat Pogo handling the vocals.
Wild Things is a twist bound and steamily edged neo-noir from the late 1990s- it features a good/known cast taking in Kevin Bacon, Matt Dillon, Denise Richards, Neve Campbell, and Bill Murry. It’s a film that will certainly keep you on your toes with its often-surprising turns/ reveals, with a neat moody setting that brings together the charmed lives of the affluent beach community, neon edge bars and motels, and alligator slithering swamps. Here from the folks at Arrow Video- both in the UK and stateside- is a new Blu Ray release of the picture, featuring a 4k scan of the film, a new commentary track, new interviews, and some archive extras.
Commit is a three-track 12”, which slip, slides, and blends sinister ambience, post-industrial texturing, and moody-to-uneasily seared noise craft. It’s a release that’s crafted with both considerable sonic skill and atmospheric flare- neatly sidesteps any mixing-genre cliches, to create a compelling, at points surprisingly record.
Originally aired on the BBC in 1954, Ninety Eighty-Four was the second small screen adaption of George Orwell’s starkly grim dystopian science fiction novel. It featured Peter Cushing in the lead role, with supporting roles from the likes of André Morell, Donald Pleasence, Yvonne Mitchell, and Wilfrid Brambell. The just shy of two-hour TV film, is as you’d expect, a fairly bleak, far from a bright ride- but it features some great acting, lo-key yet effective set design, and some fairly intense/ unsettling encounters for the 1950s. Here from the BFI is a recent dual Blu Ray and DVD release of the film, featuring a new commentary track and a few other extras.
The title of Stefan Goldmann’s latest release, Vector Rituals, discloses exactly what is at stake in his unique sonic architecture: a ritualistic engagement with the finest details of tone, noise, and rhythm.
(For your safety) Take A Seat is a new two-track release from this Cincinnati, Ohio walled noise project. With the theme being an accident witnessed on the metro, where someone got badly hurt for standing. The two ‘walls’ are suitable churning, and droningly grinding in their attack- with a rather blunt industrial feel to the tones.
Ruby features two examples of pummelling, yet cosily encasing wall-craft from Worship- who is one of the more mysterious of the recently started projects on the scene, as there’s no indication of where they are from/ who’s behind it.