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Originally released back in 2016 as an edition of 100 copies- here’s a less ltd CD release of this ominous-yet-textural active sound work from Italian sound artists/ experimental musician Massimo Toniutt. I guess you’d describe what we here is a blend of musique concrete, brooding sound craft, and manic textural studies- so if enjoy sonic fare that is both darkly atmospheric, yet texturally active I think you’ll like what we have here.
Ricercar nell’ombra’ is a forty-six-minute journey in slowing simmering & carefully morphing drone craft- that shifts from golden & glinting glides, onto completive & wishful hovers, though to murkier & brooding tonal expanses. The works written by French composer Emmanuel Holterbach- who is more known for his musique concrete & sound art compositions, and it's played by Florence based modern classical ensemble Blutwurst.
The Full Experience brings together two late 70’s sessions from legendary & often quirkily creative reggae producer Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry- here for the first time are these rare recordings brought together for a CD reissue on Cherry Red Sub-label Doctor Bird. It’s fairly to say these aren’t the wackiest or crazed production-wise as some of Mr. Perry classic recordings- been more of a selection of largely laid back, mellow, at times rather mediocre & pop bound female-fronted reggae tunes.
The Strange One is taut & often tense drama focusing in on institutionalized bullying in a military academy. The films from the 1950’s, and it features a fine cast, a nice tight story structure, homoerotic undertones, and rewarding comeuppance in its resolve. From Powerhouse Films this is a very welcome release of this noir bound drama- featuring a new print of the film, new commentary track & a few other extras.
Known as one half of Illuha, Corey Fuller is going alone for his solo release on 12k, Break. Synthy, evocative, and emotional, this solo album captures the soul and spirit of Corey's artistic expression. With the piano often as the centerpiece of each song, Fuller is able to express his emotions with ease, as if the ivories are an extension of his own body. Purposeful and deliberate, Break is a wonderful way to dip into another's artistic energy and experience things through his being.
Hagazussa is an extremely moody, very carefully paced, at times darkly hallucinogenic period set horror film that focuses on a mother & daughter living in an isolated Alpine hut in the 15th century. It’s fair to say like a lot of what has been bracketed under ‘post-horror’- the film has got decidedly mixed press- but I must say it stands as one of the more worthy & effective of this modern sub-genre, as it’s largely darkly enchantingly with key moments of haunting grimness, very tangible dread, and shudder-inducing horror. Here from Arrow Video is a double-disc release of the film- bringing together a Blu Ray of the film & taking in some neat extras, and a CD of the films earthy 'n' brooding soundtrack.
This C40 split brings together two fairly long-running Baltic state walled noise projects- there’s Croatian based Placenta Lyposuction, and from Russian Segment Aura. Both parties offer up worthy & fairly different take on the walled noise genre- all making for a most worthwhile split.
Arizona native ambient electronic veteran Steve Roach has continued an incredibly prolific output long into his forty plus year career. Bloom Ascension is one of nine albums released in 2019 alone. While I've found some of these releases to contain more substance than others, the celestial beauty of his signature pad tones and reverberant soundspace remains intact in all of these releases.
Electric Sewer Age were the band started by Peter “Sleazy” Christopherson (Throbbing Gristle/Psychic TV/Coil) and producer Danny Hyde. Sadly, Christopherson’s death in 2010 meant that he would only appear on the band’s first album Moon’s Milk which was released the following year in 2011. Hyde has kept the project running sporadically ever since, working firstly with John Deek who would pass away in 2013 and since then as a solo project. Hyde’s experience as a producer for not only Coil but Nine Inch Nails, Pop Will Eat Itself, Depeche Mode, Chris and Cosey, and Psychick Warriors Ov Gaia highlights his knowledge and experience for creating innovative and interesting electronic music, continuing the pioneering work of Christopherson and Balance. Contemplating Nothingness is their third full-length album release- here on Hallow Ground is a vinyl edition of the release, following from last CD issue of the album on Old Europa Café.
Surroundings severs up two sides of sound craft that sits somewhere between subdued walled noise and ambient texturing- not extreme enough to be called all-out HNW, but too seared to be labeled ANW or low key static texturing. This C60/ digital download appeared on Brooklyn based Modern Tapes label in April of this year- coming in an edition of fifteen copies, which are sadly all sold out now.
Concrete is a digital split that brings together an around a twenty-minute slab of walled noise from French crude master of the form Vomir, and a manipulated field recording of concrete mixing truck from Brit sound maker & hardcore- punk-ranter Emile Bojesen. This is the second release on recently launched label Hoopoe Industries- which is run by Bojesen with it been 'home to music from a variety of disciplines, often implicitly or explicitly relating to written work.'
This is the first solo album from Chantal Dumas, released on empreintes DIGITALes, a Montréal label ’widely considered as the world leader in electroacoustics / acousmatics’ - though I’ll admit that it’s not a name known to me. Oscillations Planétaires consists of nine electroacoustic pieces built around the interesting premise that the Earth contains ’undulatory motions of extremely varied temporal scales,’ contrasting, for example, imperceivable geological shifts with the daily movements of tides. This is an interesting, provocative idea but ultimately these things stand or fall, for me, on the quality of the sounds attached; Dumas does not disappoint.
After a year or two away here's the most welcome return of Something Weird’s Racy Reels series- that uncovers more quirky, themed, or slightly twisted examples of soft-core cinema from the past. For this third Vol, we get two Danish/ Swedish co-production from the late ’60s/ early ’70s which I guess you'd class as erotic dramas/ thrillers. The region free blu ray takes in new prints of the films, a commentary track from respected critic Tim Lucas, and an inlay booklet.
Here's a two-disc CD set that offers up a selection of manic-to-atmospheric elector focused mood scapes based around Sci-fi aesthetics. With the release title 'been a play on words on Philip K Dicks Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep- which was of course what Blade Runner was based on- though the albums far from the alternative soundtrack to said book or film, using wider & more varied Sci-fi themes for its influence on the seven tracks featured here.
Krzysztof Kieœlowski, stands as one of the most respected & revered names in Polish cinema, with his key works been the early 1990’s Three Colours trilogy, & late 80’s ten TV film series Dekalo. This recent four Blu Ray boxset focuses in on the director's early films from the late 1970’s-to the mid-1980s, and all of these focus in on the realities of everyday life under communism in Poland during this period- they move between moody-to-grim social realism and political/ government focused drama with arthouse traits & arty imagery. It’s fair to say that all of the films featured here are more than a little downbeat & troubling, but none the lesser worthy & powerful works. This set appears on Arrow Academy- and as with any of the Arrow sub-labels, we get a good selection of extras & nice new scans of each film.
Australian composer/producer/performer JG Thirlwell is currently based in Brooklyn NY and has worked under a vast number of pseudonyms, releasing over thirty albums in a variety of musical styles, most notably as avant-garde post-punk legend Foetus. Thirlwell has also collaborated with a host of top names within the alternative music field including Swans, Melvins, Nine Inch Nails, and Nick Cave to name but a few. This latest collaboration is with Simon Steensland, the Stockholm born composer who has released nine solo albums and has scored well over one hundred & fifty plays in his native Sweden. The two met at a workshop in 2017 and quickly struck up a friendship which led to the recording of Oscillospira. The album features nine tracks that whilst rooted in the soundtrack style go all over the musical spectrum to create a diverse and fascinating collection of songs.
What is (currently) the final release for long time British power electronics juggernaut Sutcliffe Jugend, The Deluge shows a pretty restrained, somewhat audio book styled narration approach for the duo. Seeing their final chapter result in a softened narrative, Sutcliffe Jugend has gone full circle before ending their nearly forty year project. Restrained but still recognizable, The Deluge is an interesting and evocative album and a fitting swansong for this long running act.
Recurring Manifestations of Esoteric Lunacy is the first new work in six years from US Dark ‘n’ dense noise-ambient project Tenebrious. It finds the two-piece sliming down to the solo project of Indianapolis based Ralph Bates, though the sound here is a thick, oppressive & layered as it ever was.
SculptOr [Hepworth Resounds] offers up a series of glitch bound & pared-back electronics works that utilize the voice of respected English modernist/ abstract sculptor Barbara Hepworth. The release comes in the form of a CD which is present in a slim-line DVD case digipak, which features a pink, black & white color scheme that takes in dense scribbles & texts.
During its existence, the ambient form has evolved into many different sub-genres, each of which, in turn, has generated its own subspecies. I think one of the largest branch is the sub-genre is Dark Ambient, which is characterized by deeper, darker and lower sound. One of more recent prolific names in this sub-genre is AJNA which was founded in 2008 by the New York based Chris F- and has released ten full-length albums, fourteen singles and EP's and five miscellaneous releases in its discography. In early 2020, German label Cyclic Law released AJNA's new full-length album, Oracular. The album is presented in the form of a 4 panel digipak sleeve CD and digital format
Chordioid is a two-CD set that severs up two lengthy, skeletal, and decidedly haunting modern chamber pieces for piano, vibraphone, and violin. The release appears on the always worthy British label Another Timbre- who over the years has put out some great releases in the modern classical, improv, and lo-key electro-acoustic genres.
Verotika is the directorial debut of Glen Danzig- aka the evil Elvis who was/is the frontman, key songwriter for horror punk legends The Misfits, Death-rock meets Goth metal Samhain, and classic prime evil rock band Danzig. It’s fair to say that this film is getting a lot of decidedly mixed press- what we have here is a horror anthology picture, bringing together three tales from Verotika, Danzig’s erotic horror comic- and it’s a sort-of-rough ‘n’ ready blend of 70’s erotic horror, surreal pulp, and lots of scantly glad women. Here on Cleopatra Entertainment is a three-disc release of the film, bringing together region free Blu Ray, DVD, and CD.
Originally released back 1973 How Sweet To Be An Idiot was the first solo album from English singer-songwriter Neil Innes- who is most known as one of the key songwriters for genre-mixing & surreal humor tipped British band The Bonzo Dog Band. The original eleven track album offered up a fairly safe ‘n’ tuneful blend of pop-rock, that very much nods towards 70 singer-songwriter fair, The Beatles, old school rock ‘n’ rock fare, and generally less risky songcraft- that's lightly edged with both humor & sly sonic playful-ness. Here on Cherry Red sub-label Grapefruit Records is an expanded CD release of the album- pushing the original thirty-seven-minute album runtime to well over seventy minutes with a selection of rewarding B sides & singles.
Appearing in October of last year here we have a C90 split bringing together two particularly brutal & sludgy examples of the walled noise form- we have prolific & at times creative French project Chier, and Croatian based Placenta Liposuction- each severs up a single side-long track, and each is as nasty & sonically claggy as each other.