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In late 2017, after they had just completed two albums- I Am A Resident! & Intruders- The Residents, instead of resting on their considerable laurels, decided to undertake a forty-plus date world tour. It was fittingly entitled In Between Dreams- and it saw the infamous avant-pop collective reimagining a selection of songs from their near 50 years back catalogue. Here from Cherry Red, MVD Audio, and the Cryptic Corp is a double-disc taking in both audio & visual recordings one of the tour's date- and it certainly shows the four-piece firing on all cylinders- with both energy & sonic oddness.
Tomb's Flowers is a release that brings together necro-bound choppy-to-shredding walled noise, with searing harsh noise mids 'n' highs. The release appeared late last year, as either an Ltd VHS packaged C40(sadly sold out), standard C40, or a digital download on Stockholm based Ominous Recordings.
Eurountation: Live, is as its title describes a live album featuring a selection of four recordings made between 2016 & 2018 by Slovenian Harsh noise project Gen 26. The noise setting here is very much focused on grainy & feasting harsh noise- which at points moves towards noise drone & walled noise, but never truly gets to either. The release appeared in the latter part of 2020 and was put out in the form of CDR on Harsh Noise London.
Kadaver is a noise project that often deliberately blurs & melds noise sub-genres to create a dense & disturbing sound that’s often difficult to peg- and with this recent(ish) C40 the project is very much doing it once again. Over the two untitled side long tracks here, we find elements of death industrial, textured noise, PE, dark ambience, industro-drone, muddy–to-seared harsh noise, and general dense-yet-unease industrial sound craft blended together, to create a sound that is equally searing 'n' unsettling ghoulish in its attack.
Kevel are a dissonant post metal band from Greece with similarities to early Mastodon, Neurosis or Isis, and a haunting dark folk atmosphere. Mutatis Mutandis is their second recording, released this year on I, Voidhanger Records, following their self released debut six years ago in 2014.
Here’s a truly special package from Gruenrekorder: a DVD and book in a neat cardboard wallet. The book is a beautiful size, more narrow than a ‘standard’ paperback (7” x 4” - your dutiful reviewer has tried and failed to find the official name for this size), and this gives me genuine pleasure as an object. Both disc and book concentrate on the works of two American composers, Christopher Shultis and Craig Shepard, both new names to me.
Five long years since their last full length, gloom and doom legends Dark Buddha Rising return with their seventh mighty slab, Mathreyata. Four thick and meaty slices of heavy duty grimness, their latest is true to form for the Finnish quintet, offering up beefy, doomy drones. Sludgy and atmospheric, Mathreyata continues on Dark Buddha Rising's quest for spreading their heavy message to the world and beyond.
The Chilean duo Gryftigæn throws us straight back into the second wave of BM with their album Graven til Måneåpenbaringer ( in English the grave of the moon revelations). And boy, this is blacked metal at it’s roughest & rawist form!
Tomoko Sauvage is a Japanese artist and musician. She grew up in the coastal city of Yokohama and has lived in Paris since 2003 after a stay in New York. Fischgeist is her new album and presents her experiments with the sounds of water. The release appeared in October last year on Bohemian Drips- it's available as 12” LP or digital download.
One Thousand Dead Swans is a noise album that sits somewhere between walled noise and wall-ish harsh noise. The five-track CDR nicely slides back and forth between seared moodiness, teeth-grinding intensity, and textural white-outs. This release appeared a month or two back on the British label Harsh Noise London- with the CDR coming presented in a DVD case, that features glitched out artwork & a paper inlay detailing the tracklisting, and the projects weblinks- this release got a numbered edition of ten copies, and as far as I can gather there are still copies of it available.
Here we have a harsh noise split bringing together two projects from London based noise-maker Ernesto Bohorquez- the projects here are Animal Machine, which is a solo project & for this release dwells in more twisting ‘n’ turning static based noise. And Clusterfuck- which is a collab between Bohorquez( electronics), and Jared C Balogh(drums), and offers up slight more chaotic/ jam type noise making.
NoScry Recordings presents Rusted Lock, the latest offering by SCARD available in both cassette and digital formats. Based in Portland, OR, SCARD is the long-running project by one J. Huston. Truth be told, despite beginning in 2001, this is my first experience with the project.
Devil In A Blue Dress was one of the batch of neo-noir films that appear in the 1990s. The largely African American cast film blends mystery & intrigue, with touches of lo-key humour & some fairly tense gunplay/ fights- all with a fairly authentic LA in the late 40’s setting. Here from Powerhouse is a recent region B Blu Ray release of the film, taking in a new 2k print & a good enough selection of largely archive extras.
Abandonment is an hour’s worth of crackle ‘n’ hiss bound walled noise- and as long-form wall matter goes it’s both entrancing & strangely lulling example of the form. This release appeared in March 2020, as both a CDR & digital download on Bangkok based Perpetual Abjection- sadly the CDR is now all long gone, but it’s still worth downloading the 'wall'- as it’s certainly a most worthy example of the long-form walled form.
There are only one or two films that truly manage to create their own unequally chilling & unsettlingly numbing atmospheres, and one such film is Crash- the 12th film from Canadian Auteur David Cronenberg. It’s a decidedly grim erotic drama/Psychological thriller, peopled by coldly perverse characters who are focus in on their own largely car connected sexual stimulation- yes it’s stark & at times deeply troubling, but at the same time oddly compelling & entrancing too. Here from the guys at Arrow Video is a well-deserved reissue of this transgressive classic- with a new 4k, and a good selection of new & old extras.
Mikey is an early 90’s killer-kid film, mixing elements of thriller, horror, and US soap-ness- all making for an enjoyable, if slightly unevenly paced example of the murderous nipper genre. Here from the folks at MVD Rewind is a collectors edition of the film- bringing together a new high definition print, a good selection of extras taking in a new feature-length doc about the film, as well as a slip-sleeve & mini film poster.
Returning with an interesting approach to indie-rock, Raoul Sinier's latest, The Dollmaker Tales, offers up ten slices of evocative and engaging rock 'n roll, complete with ups, downs, twists, turns, and all the feelings in between. Treading the thin line between radio friendly and esoteric, there are layers here for everyone, and each subsequent listen provides further takeaways. Taking on aspects of many different genres, The Dollmaker Tales is rock at its core, but the outer layers show that it is so much more.
Into The Velvet Darkness is a book that celebrates the many sides of respected US actor genre actor Vincent Price. It’s a glossy & full-colour coffee table book, which takes in just over three hundred and fifty pages. The 2019 book is from the We Belong Dead team, who brought us the books Unsung Horrors & its sequel Son of Unsung Horrors , We’re British Y’ Know!"-A Celebration of Peter Cushing, A Century Of Horror- A Pictorial History Of Cinefantastique, and of course the We Belong Dead Magazine.
Dutch trio Farer, including two members of sludge band Ortega, were formed in 2013 under the name Menhir. Then, in 2019, the shifted in the Farer name. The band emphasized on a more extreme and experimental approach to doom, eliminating guitars and using two basses. Farer's debut album Monad was released by British label Aesthetic Death as a Digisleeve CD. There is also a cassette version released by the Dutch label Tartarus Records.
How Forests Think is the third album from this Norwegian based string duo, and their decidedly moody & nature led brand of acoustic improvised music. It finds the pair deepening their bound between sound and recording spaces, with the double CD album been recorded in four different locations in & around Oslo- letting the acoustic conditions and atmosphere of each location becoming critical in both the musical composition & their creation.
KRAFFT is an example of modern orchestration, at it’s most malevolently punishing & unrelentingly thick. The piece brings together the joint power of two-chamber orchestra German collective Zeitkratzer and French Ensemble 2e2m, with a total of eighteen musicians taking part in the piece. This release comes in the form of a CD, packaged in a rather innocent-looking black, grey, blue and black striped digipak.
I know from its title this may sound like maybe a wacky-jazz fired release or something similar. But in reality, it’s a two-way walled noise CDR split from a few years back- where each artist offers up an around thirty-minute wall.
Sitting somewhere between a US army race-led period drama & a murder mystery, A Soldier's Story is a well made & well-acted early 1980’s film. Sadly it seemingly slipped between the gaps of the other military dramas of the decade, which is a pity as it’s both thought-provoking & very well realized. Here from Powerhouse is a recent welcome Blu Ray release of the film- featuring a new 2k restoration of the film, and a selection of archive material.
Roadgames is a rather charming-if-at points slightly protracted early 80’s road-based thriller, that blends in moments of sly humour, with subtle trances of dread/ unease, and fleeting action. The character actor edged film sees Stacy Keach as easy going-yet philosophical & harmonica playing lorry driver, and Jamie Lee Curtis as a hitching young heiress in the films joint lead. Here from Powerhouse is a recent Blu Ray release of the film- with a new print, and a good selection of old & new extras.