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Stimmenwald is the new dark ambient project from Casper van der Veen, who will be known to wall fans for his bleakly contemplative drone-wall project Uitgeschakeld. Akesis is the projects first ever release, and it comes in the form of a C60/ digital download on Uk's largely walled based label Void Singulator Recordings.
Much has already been said about the history of the Ambient, but I feel a brief excursion into the history of this genre is needed for this release. The starting point for the development of the style is considered to be 1978 ‘s Ambient 1: Music for Airports by British artist Brian Eno. However, I believe that the prerequisites for the emergence of this genre appeared much earlier, in the very late 60s and early 70s of the last century, with the development of electronic music. & experimental classical music genre. Over time, Ambient evolved, mixed with other styles of music and divided into a huge number of sub-genres- from classical ambient and dark ambient, onto light dance styles, and rather complex yet still mood focused electronic works.
This rather nonsensically titled album is a psychedelic-to-surreal journey into ambient sound-scaping, which at moments features the addition of low-key electronics & ritual percussion. The release appears as a CD on Polish label Zoharum- with the nearing seventy-minute release severing up a selection of five mostly lengthy tracks.
Endless Night is a slowly unfurling mystery/thriller, which for much of its runtime plays like a drama romance, save for the fleeting stabs of troubling imagery & very subtle touches of dread. The films a lesser-seen 1970’s British production based on a Agatha Christie novel, and here it’s getting a deserved Blu Ray reissues by the folks at Powerhouse.
Daniel Isn’t Real is a fairly inventive, though often terminal bleak take on the whole secret friend thing. Think a darker & more troubled Donnie Darko, blended with elements of Jacobs Ladder, and grim Clive Barker like fantasy- and you’ll have an idea of what we have here. On Arrow Video this is a recently released Blu Ray of the film- with the company’s usual good selection of extras.
Secret Friends is the 1991 drama written and directed by the near legendary Dennis Potter. Potter was the enfant terrible of the English film/TV industry in the 1970s and 80s, he was best known for the wealth of great TV work in which he was involved, including several well renowned BBC dramas that included Pennies from Heaven, The Singing Detective, and Brimstone and Treacle. Secret Friends was the final directorial piece of his career (and in fact the only feature film that he directed), released only three years before his death in 1994 at the age of 59.
Here’s a double-headed CD release of two grooving, charming, and at times creative reggae albums from the year 1969- both of which originally appeared on the legendary Trojan Label. From Doctor Bird Cherry Red’s Reggae sub-label here is a classy reissue of these two albums- featuring a host of bonus tracks, and a neat inlay booklet.
NâHásh is the debut album by Swedish black metal band Grafvitnir. Originally released in 2012 through Drapskunst Records, this album has now been granted a second life on vinyl and CDR thanks to the Italian Clavis Secretorvm label. To this day (five full-lengths further down the abyss) Grafvitnir has always stuck with their brand of highly atmospheric and melodic black metal. They have yet to disappoint in their delivery as well; I’ve found each release to be of at least good quality, and it’s certainly been a pleasure for me to revisit this impressive debut release.
Solo industrial act Pornohelmut hits Atypeek Music for his debut studio release, Bang Lord. Hitting all you porn lovers on Valentine's Day 2020, this oddly danceable, noisy little slab is a nice surprise. Following a timeline where Lightning Bolt inspired dance crazes, Pornohelumut adds persistent rhythms to crispy synths and some grim vocals to produce a pretty evocative album. While known for his live show, Pornohelmut shows that he's able to translate his sound effectively to studio album.
Vampyr is a recent release from French project Trou- whose work flits between walled noise & harsh noise with an often moody & uneasy edge to it. This release is a C60/digital release on respected Stockholm based label Ominous Recordings- the tape version of this sold-out fairly fast, though you can still get hold of the digital download.
After to been dominant for three to four years Étrange Crépuscule was the resurrection of Fosse- one of the many projects of respected & prolific French noise maker Julien Skrobek. This 2019 release is a C40 featuring two side long examples of atmospheric walled noise- that’s often quite building/active in their unfold.
At the dawn of the Black Metal genre, some bands added in quiet, atmospheric, majestic & largely guitar-less musical passages created with the use synthesizers….and this was the origins of the Dungeon Synth genre. The first true & pure Dark Dungeon Music project(later given a simpler name - Dungeon Synth) was Mortiis (formally of Emperor) , and in 1993 he released his debut album The song of a long-forgotten Ghost. The album was completely recorded using synthesizers and consisted of gloomy and atmospheric passages with obvious black metal / Viking / fantasy aesthetics. Over time, Dungeon Synth has developed, transformed and experienced various influences of many musical genres, turning into a large-scale layer of the musical underground structure.
The Cray Twins, comprised of Paul Baran and Gordon Kennedy, is a deep listening and musique concrete outfit which uses a variety of sound sources from instruments to analog synthesizers and field recordings. In the Company of Architects is their second album, following 2016's The Pier.
Nearly three decades on from his debut as Biosphere, Geir Jenssen is still able to throw curveballs. In fact the last three years have seen some of the Norwegian's finest material with the much loved ambient project, from the primarily choral Departed Glories to the downtempo beats and sample rich pallet of The Petrified Forest. The Senja Recordings have their antecedent in a commissioned work Jenssen completed in 2016 which was released under the title of The Hilvarenbeek Recordings. In that instance the material was composed of field recordings made from the location of a Dutch farm. For the Senja Recordings we find the composer again on the move, this time on the island which lends the record its name, about forty miles from Tromsø, in the arctic circle.
Deadly Manor was an early 1990’s addition to the old dark/creepy house sub-genre of horror, and while it’s far from a classic of the sub-genre there are some nicely effective moments of dread, original macabre twists, sly slasher touches, and a great feeling of creepy mystery running through much of the film. From Arrow Video here we Blu Ray reissue of this lesser-seen film- featuring a new commentary track, and a few extras.
From the folks at Severin here’s Byleth: The Demon Of Incest a decidedly bizarre slice of euro-exploitation. Originally released in the early ’70s the film is a uneven crossbreed between low-key gothic horror, campy period drama, leering soft-core with Giallo-style black glove killings. Here Severin presents us with the first-ever digital release of this oddity- with a blu ray offering a new 2k scan of the film, with sadly no other extras.
As a former member of legendary psychedelic, electronic pioneers Emeralds, Chicago resident Steve Hauschildt has a reputation for creating interesting and innovative music. His latest album Nonlin represents his 6th outing since he debuted as a solo artist in 2011 with Tragedy and Geometry on the Kranky label. After Emeralds called it a day in 2013, Hauschildt has increased the prolificity of his solo project.
So today I'm reviewing a vinyl reissue of a 1987 “mythical” tape from Spanish industrial project Funeral Souvenir (aka Miguel Ruiz), Who you might pretend to know about from such projects as Orfeon Gagarin and Zytospace.
Tapetopia is back with another East German, homemade tape rarity, Die Gehirne's Ihre großen Erfolge 1983-85. Die Gehirne is Claus Löser and Florian Merkel, and this is their art/punk/noise/avant-garde weirdness entry into the East German scene. Originally 35 copies handed out with others in the scene, Tapetopia brings this unheard oddity to the masses.
Under The Shadow is an Iranian film from 2016, and it stands as one of the more effective & creatively chilling films of the decidedly hit & miss Post-Horror genre, which has been very popular of late. The film focuses in on a mother & daughter who are stuck in small apartment block that's under bomb attack- it blends family drama, social realism, light war elements with building & subtle touches of horror/ thriller- that only really kicking in the last quarter on the film. Here from Second Slight is a new Blu Ray reissue on the film- which features a good selection of extras.
The Sound of a Suicide Note is as CDR featuring two bass bound, starkly battering & subtly nuanced walled noise works. The release appeared in November of last year on Bangkok’s Perpetual Abjection, and sees this Spanish based Belgian wall maker/ bleak droner presenting the listener with two grimly inward walls- that are booth numbing, yet entrance in there attack.
From the tail end of last year here’s a rather satisfying walled noise c60/digital split. It brings together Vienna based project Bruising Pattern, and Russian based Shumoizolyatsiya- with each party offering up an effective around half an hour slice of wall matter.
The Fish that became the Sun (Songs of the Dispossessed) is a startling varied, shifting, and at times wholly unpredictable piece of modern composition. The work is for forty players/ musicians- with the nearing hour-long work moving between playful darting & layered, dense & brooding, and paired back-ness that moves between moody & mischievous. The CD release appears on the always reliable British modern composition/ modern classical label Another Timbre.
Appearing in the early 1960’s Night Tide stands as one of the more bizarrely distinctive and unique genre films of the decade- it’s a heady mix of drama-romance, fantasy, murder-mystery and horror with a decidedly atmospheric seaside boardwalk setting. The film also has several firsts- it’s the first film role from Dennis Hopper, and it’s the first feature-length film from cult director Curtis Harrington- who would later go on to helm the likes of Who Slew Auntie Roo, Ruby, and The Killing Kind. From Powerhouse films here we have a double Blu Ray release of this oddity- with the set feature commentaries, extras, and a collection of short films from Harrington.