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Legendary Japanese noise acts Maso Yamazaki (Masonna) and Mayuko Hino team up for this grating slab of grim, blackened noise/death industrial. Maso's contribution is under his Controlled Death project, which is a far cry from the spastic, chaotic noise that made Masonna famous. Churing forth a thick, vile slab of death industrial, Maso shows that he's able to change and grow as an artist, and continues to impress. Hino's tracks are long, cosmic, and noisy, and an excellent complement to Controlled Death's quicker offerings.
Years ago, when I finally and suddenly got into Crass, I remember telling a friend of mine, and he simply replied, “I prefer Conflict: they sound like a Crass who are actually going to do something about what they sing about.” It took about 30 seconds of hearing Conflict’s track ‘The Ungovernable Force’ to feel that.
Here we have the first of two CD box sets bringing together the studio and live recordings of infamous & uncompromising British anarcho-punk band Conflict. This first five-disc boxset focuses on the years 1982-to-1987, which are seen as the bands most important and influential period- with the box bringing together three studio albums, two classic live albums, and a good selection of bonus material.
During the 1960s and 1970s, Michael Cain appeared in a spate of secret service focused thrillers- most notable of these being The Ipcress File(1965), Funeral in Berlin (1966), and (1967) Billion Dollar Brain- each seeing him playing Secret agent Harry Palmer. One the lesser-known/ seen of these secret service thrillers was The Black Windmill- this 1970’s film found Cain playing Maj. John Tarrant- a British agent whose son has been kidnapped. It co-starred Donald Pleasence, and it’s a competent enough espionage-thriller, with some tense-at-points-quite harrowing set-ups. Here from 101 Films is a recent Blu Ray release of the film, featuring a new print of the picture & a few recent interviews.
Collection 2 is seventy-six minute CD that brings together two out-of-print releases/ plus a unreleased track from this creative and often harrowing Oakland based harsh noise/ Industrial project. And the collection highlights both Striations difficult to pin sound, and it’s ability to move between often thought-provoking atmospherics, and back breaking-to-ear searing intensity.
Den Sorte Dod is a collaboration between two Swedish musicians - Anders Nydam (Offermose) and Daniel Silwerfeldt (Angst). They started the project in 2017, focused in on dark atmospheric music created via analogue synthesizer experiments. Earlier this year, French label Cyclic Law released Den Sorte Dod- the projects fourth full-length album. The album has been released as a either a Digipack CD, vinyl LP, or digitally.
This rather lengthily titled C20/ digital download servers up two side long slices of creatively realized and creepily moody textured noise that’s themed around one of the stories from The King in Yellow, an 1859 short story collection by Robert W. Chambers, which is seen as a classic in US supernatural horror. The Man Who Drove The Hearse is a new project from Stockholm based noisemaker Johan Strömvall Hammarstedt- Rien, Gamiani, JSH, and runner of Ominous Recordings, that put out this release.
Swedish Beauty is a new walled-noise project from Flanders based noisemaker Damien De Coene. And as it's title suggest it’s a tribute to both Swedish wall noise project Skönhet, and the said projects key focus British actress Audrey Hepburn. This release appeared in late Feb of this year on Stockholm based Ominous Recordings- as either a C20 or digital download.
From Powerhouse Films here we have a recent Blu Ray release of early US prison drama The Criminal Code. The 1930’s film is an even blend of wordy drama, and gritty 'n' sweaty in-the-slammer interaction with touches of legal procedural & romance. And considering the film is ninety-plus years old, aside from a few pacing issues, it’s surprisingly undated- covering still very relevant issues with well-painted characters. So this is very much a welcome reissue from Powerhouse, with the company’s usual great new print & worthy selection extras.
The Owners is a UK based home invasion with some good gritty-to-low-key creepy performances, nicely building tension, a few moments of effective gore, and a rewarding enough twist in its tail. Here from Signature Entertainment, is a recent release of the film-coming as either a DVD or digital release. I’m reviewing the latter.
Adding to a vibrant Italian tradition of psychedelic rock and soundtrack bands, La Morte Viene Dallo Spazio are an 'open ensemble', currently with five members, that performs moody, spaced-out jams that bring churning black metal-esque distortions and gothic pads into the more dynamic world of midtempo space rock. Trivial Visions is their second full length, following 2018's Sky Over Giza.
Come To The Sunshine is a four-disc CD set collecting together most of the output of Californian based sunshine pop/ male harmony group Harpers Bizarre. The only thing missing here is the band fifth and final album As Time Goes By, which appeared some seven years after the band had split. If you enjoy bright, buoyant, sometimes playful & psychedelic-tinged 60’s pop with a grand & often showy feel- you’ll be happy as a pig in you know what with this collection.
Wallpaper Music IV is a pressing and dense, though at points harmonically simmering example of drone craft created via the use of bowed prepared piano. This CD release appeared on Australia’s Room 40 last year, offering one long and one shorter track.
Lush and slowly oscillating like a blanket of clouds, Being Below is the latest from Celer, out on Two Acorns. Drifting and shimmering like the sky above, being below this glory is audibly captured on this EP/CD. Six atmospheric and dreamlike tracks, Being Below is a lovely, relaxing look at synthesis, decay, oscillation, and stillness.
Krzywdy is the solo project of Mateusz Szymanski, an independent Polish musician with his roots in the development of music for the demoscene and video game soundtracks. The music of Krzywdy mixes ambient/drone with folkloric aspects by combining traditional ethnic instrumentation with synthesizers to create soundscapes that journey through the darker recesses of human experience. The album title Czary is the Polish word for ‘spells’, and the album tells the story of time cycles, starting with creation and working through birth and life to death, final confrontation and finally destruction.
From Elsewhere Music here’s a CD bringing together two piano-based pieces from Swiss composer Jürg Frey. We have the extremely fragile, sparse and spaced-out notion of Toucher L’air , and the slightly lulling more melody-based, though still very sparse flow of Entre les Deux L'instant. Both pieces are for duel pianists, though from their often highly skeletal/ barren structure you may think otherwise. So this is very much for those who like highly minimalist modern classical piano composition.
From Eureka Entertainment here is a double bill of Native American/Canadian Indian focused horror films from the 1970s. We have Nightwing- which finds a New Mexico desert-based reservation been attacked by a group of bubonic plague infected bats. And Shadow Of Hawk- which sees a shaman enlisting the help of his big-city grandson to help fight evil spirits that are attacking his tribe. The release appears in the form of a Blu Ray release, with great new scans of each film, and a nice selection of extras.
Sculthorpe Studies is a curious and often moodily haunting mix of field recordings and modern composition. It finds young Western Australian composer Josten Myburgh, combing the harmonies and compositional elements taken from the work of fellow Australian composer Peter Sculthorpe, blended with bird based field recordings from the Whadjuk area in western Australian.
All English Music is Greensleeves offers up five examples of modern chamber music from young up & coming Belgian composer Maya Verlaak. The compositions on this CD date from between the years 2014 and 2020, with the tone moving between playful & wonkily grand, onto seared & wavering.
Shot in 2018, Melancholic is the directorial debut of Seiji Tanaka- it's an award-winning comic crime drama starring Yoji Minagawa, who also produced the film, alongside Yoshitomo Isozaki and Mebuki Yoshida. Tanaka managed to scoop both the Japanese Cinema Splash Best Director Award at the 31st Tokyo International Film Awards and the White Mulberry Award for First Time Director at the 21st Far East Film Awards, and the film continues to find favourable comments from critics across the world.
Where Does A Body End? is a documentary that covers the history of Swans- a band who have always rather darted though & blended genres, with the only true/simple description of their sound been emotional intensity. Here on MVD Visual is a deluxe double Blu ray release of the film- bringing together an extended cut of the doc, and a disc full of cut/ extra scenes- with each disc having a playtime that hits around the two hours & forty-minute mark.
Since forming in 2006 Norwegian trio Huntsville have been very much about blending ‘n’ blurring genres and their sonic traits- this they’ve managed in a seemingly effortless & highly atmospheric manner. Their instrumental focused sound sits somewhere between improv, experimental post-rock, and moody jam music, which mangers to sit in its own bracket. For their most recent release Bow Shoulders, the group pull in four guests musicians- who rather push the bands sound in a rather interesting, at points quite dense & abstract ways.
Originally released in the year 1990 Freak show was the 18th studio album from The Residents- it found the sonically quirky collective offering up a concept album about a selection of characters from a traditional carny Freak show. The original nine-track album was a mixture of wonky theatricals, bouncing ‘n’ darting electronica, and synthesizer orchestration- topped with a blend of male & female vocals, which went from showy, barker like, and powerfully wordy. The album stands as one of the projects more approachable/easy records, as well as the album that had the most off-shoots/ spin-offs, taking in a live show, bizarre PC game, and a comic book. Here as part of the ‘pREServed’ series is a new deluxe three CD release of the album- bringing together a newly remastered version of the original album, a host of bonus & live material, and most important for long-term fans like myself a whole disc full of early demos/ song sketchers.
France's The Scalar Process hit Transcending Obscurity with their debut, Coagulative Matter. Amped up tech death, this first outing has the quartet firing on all cylinders, blasting, blazing, and arpeggiating with technical ferocity. Timed tight enough that you could set your watch to it, Coagulative Matter is a stringed frenzy propelled by a blistering drum kit.