Loading
Originally released in 1975 Divisions On A Ground highlights the considerable talents of British recorder player Richard Harvey. Over the fourteen track album he, along with a small classical Ensemble, play work from the likes of Vivaldi, Matthyysz & Handle. And it’s a surprising varied & mood shifting album that highlights both Harvey skill and versatility as a recorder player. Here on Talking Elephant Records is a recent CD reissue of the album.
Have you ever thought it would be interesting or possibly even oddly therapeutic to walk in the shoes of someone less fortunate than your self for a time?... well that’s the jump-off point for this low budget, yet high concept Sci-Fi thriller, that follows the plight of a down on his luck & disgraced city investment who gets involved with a secret & shadowy vital reality company. Here on Arrow Video is a Blu Ray release of this 2018 film- taking in directors/writer commentary & a few other extras.
Secrets of Numbers severs up ten slices of edgy, at times darkly brooding techno focused IDM- which is fairly complex & dizzying in it’s building layers/ detail, yet sleek & controlled in its attack.
On El, follow on from their last 1960’s counter cutler compilation I’d Love To Turn You On, here’s Underground London- a three-disc set focuses in on sounds that inspired the British underground musical cultural. The sound here is much more jazz focused, with darts into modern classical, Indian music and hip spoken word fare.
Forty years after its original release, Imagination's debut album, Shake It, is getting a deluxe, double vinyl LP reissue via The Artless Cuckoo. This interesting mix of AOR and leftfield disco plays more like one's fever dream mixtape than an album, and that is meant in the highest praise. Equal parts dancefloor funk and top deck of the yacht vibes, Shake It continues to impress audiences forty years later.
Fûr Biliana is a selection of modern string chamber works, which move between haunting & grim to darting & violent. The four works here are for solo Violin, trios, and duos- with the release coming in the form of a CD on the always worthy Another Timbre Records, who put out the cream of the crop of modern composition/ modern classical releases.
The Boundaries of Intimacy is a collection of seven chamber works from versatile & creative British composer Frank Denyer. For the pieces we get a wide-ranging & at times quirky selection of instrumentation taking in flute, string quartet, voices, koto,electronics, and Denyer’s own self-built bowed ‘sneh’. With the mood/ tone over the sixty-six minute CD nicely moving between lulling-yet-unbalancing, darting & atmospheric, and quirky- to-otherworldly…so this is far from a 'formal' collection of chamber works.
Part stoner travelogue, part down-on-their-luck-musician-drama, and part lo-key, at times sweaty thriller… they really don’t make films Cisco Pike anymore. From Powerhouse films here is a very much deserved Blu Ray reissue of this quintessential 1970’s film- which features a classy cast taking in Kris Kristofferson, Karen Black, Gene Hackman, and Harry Dean Stanton, a wondering-if-appealing plot, and some great footage of LA & its surrounding areas in the ’70s. This reissue takes in a new high definition print of the film, writer/ director’s commentary, and a few other neat extras.
Following on from their 2017 release of Escape Mask, here Other Voices Records dig deep back into past/lost releases from Merzbow for Yahatahachiman- a 1983 release that sees very pronounced use of both set electro beats, more formal electronics, and guitar- years before the (for some) controversial 'Merzbeat' period.
Towards the end of the 1950s, celebrated French documentary maker François Reichenbach, took a trip to the USA- and landed up spending eighteen months there, documenting the country's different states, it’s inhabitants, their pastimes, their work, their life’s & their surroundings. As a result, he put together the hour & a half documentary film America As Seen By A Frenchman, giving his European take on the USA in this most celebrated/ iconic decades in the countries history. Here from Arrow Academy is a Blu Ray of this curio- taking in a new scan of the film, and a few extras.
The Dorf are a truly huge German orchestra/ avant-garde jazz band who regularly feature twenty-five members, but for this release are boosted to an astonishing thirty-eight players. This double CD release from the collective highlighting both their amassed droning side & their more quirky/ erratic side. The first disc features the collectives take on a track by drone legend/pioneer Phill Niblock, and the second disc is a three-track affair that sees the collective wondering all over the genre map.
For the album Writhing Treasure Feast, Butoh artists Vanessa Skantze is joined by ten musicians & sound artists from the Seattle area to soundtrack her solo dance piece based on her travels in the US, Mexico and Haiti. For the work she is joined by the following artists: Pink Void, Masaaki Masao , Uneasy Chairs, Erimanthe, Greg Campbell & Sioux City Pete, Morher, Noisepoetnobody, and Cailleach.
Class Of 1984 stands as one of the more compelling, gritty & at times brutal films to appear from the sequence of high school set films, which were released between the 1970s and 1980s. It’s an effective action thriller/drama featuring a largely great cast taking in recognizable names like Roddy McDowall, and a very young Michael J Fox(credited as Michael Fox), believable characterization, and later some fairly intense & shocking violence. From 101 Films here’s a recent dual format Blu Ray & DVD release of the film- featuring a new scan of the film, inlay booklet, and a good selection of new 'n' old bonus content.
White Fire is a 1984 film directed by Jean-Marie Pallardy, a former male model who became bored with his career choices and decided to become a film director. Pallardy was most prolific during the 1970s and early 80s as a director of softcore erotic films, he was responsible for both Emanuelle Goes to College and Emanuelle III, but White Fire remains his most famous and celebrated film amongst cult movie fans.
Dissecting The Truth sees this Serbian wall noise project offering up two half-an-hour examples of textured detailed, yet slowly corrupting & subtle altering wall matter. The C60 release appeared summer of last year on Us Botanical Dissection, who theme all of their walled noise releases around nature and mysticism.
From May last year here’s Midnight Mystery- a C60 release from Sihir, Julien Skrobek’s more minimal/ stark noise meets lo-fi ambient project. The tape features seven tracks in all, and the tone/ feel is very much about creating atmospheric noise craft- which shows this long-running French noisemaker at his most moody-yet-oddly appealing.
New quartet on the scene, Kave, sees their debut LP coming through Arjunamusic. Formed by electronic maestro Samuel Rohrer, this quartet masterfully melds their instruments in flawless improvisation and creates a sort of electronic jazz ambient sound. Smooth to the core, it comes as a huge surprise that this wasn't all planned out ahead of time. Sometimes hypnotic and sometimes shockingly soulful, Kave is the type of record that would get multiple spins in any weather and with any attitude.
The wonderfully named Cute Puke are a two-piece from Pittsburgh who sonically spew-out a blunt, messy and battering take on noise rock- that’s all about dense baying guitar & careering cymbal heavy percussion- with occasional dirge ‘n’ wonky organ work & in-joke banter. Simulated Murder Party is seemingly the project's first physical release- and it comes in the form of a C20 on Uk based Void Singularity Recordings, who is more known for releasing walled noise.
Visibilis Trans Illusio is a C20 from Russain Hash noise wall maker Shumoizolyatsiya- it features two examples of dense, yet interesting layered wall matter. The release appeared early summer last year- and surprisingly the label Uk Void Singularity Recordings still has copies left.
Stein Urheim is a prolific Norwegian jazz guitarist and composer whose latest work Downhill Uplift was released on Hubro last year.
Brighter Than I Thought is an album with two clear impulses, both foregrounded by the press sheet: firstly, it aims at creating heightened emotional states that ‘explore the surprise at finding unexpected joy even at our darkest moments when our worst fears are realized and facing the unique stresses of adulthood by retaining a sense of childlike joy,’ and secondly, it’s an album preoccupied with music technology and process. Thus Pick performs piano pieces, and processes them with a modular synth; the press sheet lists the entire set-up: ‘Mutable Ears, Reflex Liveloop, Mannequins W/, Pico dsp, 2hp Verb, Bastl Cinnamon, 2hp Pluck, Make Noise 0-coast, Ornament & Crime, Shakmat Modular Bishop’s Miscellany, Make Noise Function, and Make Noise Optomix. Tracked and mixed in Ableton Live.’
Kiertueäänityksiä severs-up two around twenty slices of swirling & searing drone noise matter 'n' electro-texturing, along each track way the pair go down some quite appealing & rewarding sonic paths. The release came out on Stockholm based Ominous Recordings April of this year- appearing as either a tape or digital download- sadly the tape is now sold out, but I’d say it’s worth a download if you enjoy eventful drone-based noise craft that nicely shifts between off angular, playful, and searingly moody.
Curling is an extremely low-key & grim French Canadian drama- that features very faint genre traces of both thriller & horror films. The 2010 film is set in rural snowbound Québec - been a sparse character study on a shy middle-aged man & his near teen daughter. From up & coming Brit art house/ indie film label Second Run- here’s a region free release of the film, featuring an interview with the director, one of his later shorts & a glossy twenty four-page booklet.
Development is characteristic of any style of music. And with the black metal, it’s fertile ground for various experiments with both sound and style mixing. Australian band Order Of Orias sever up an often darkly aggressive take on BM with more than a peppering of intense death metal flavour.