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Originally released in 2007, RMX finds a selection of The Residents back catalog receiving often electro focused rethinks/remixes. In all the release takes in fifteen tracks, from through-out these avant-pop collectives forty-plus year career.
Here we have a recent release from AGFA- and the main/ central film here is one of the more unique & bizarre movies from the 1970’s B movie cycle. It’s a decidedly haphazard mix of weird creature feature, cowboy movie, and more than a sprinkling of 70’s quirkiness/ trip-ness. The film comes in the form of a region free Blu Ray, with a pleasing enough batch of extra oddness.
Historically, Italy is home to not only a large number of respected industrial /noise projects, but also wider experimental music in general. One such project is Capricorni Pneumatici, which has been active since 1987. This is a duet of two musicians, hiding under the names of Pazuzu and Soda Caustica. The project plays gloomy music on the verge of ritual ambient, drone and concrete music.
Mayuko Hino, the "Queen of Japanese Noise," has very much earned her reputation. As a founding member of the legendary collaboration C.C.C.C, her noisy assault and bondage heavy performances, she cemented her place in not only Japanese noise, but the noise scene worldwide. Her second solo LP, Lunisolar, is two long form tracks of wonderful, noisy bliss.
With a title like Love Songs- you’d expect an album of mawkish, overly emotional, pleasing and possible lush songcraft- instead you get the complete polar opposite of what you’d imagine. It’s dark, jarring, unbalancing & often uneasy release, that blends together brooding ‘n’ building electro sound design, jarringly cut musique concrete elements, & overwhelming feel of unwell tension.
The Nolans/The Nolan Sisters have always stood as one of top draw guilty pleasures. Though-out the 70’s & the 80’s the British/ Irish girl group released a host of campy-yet- catchy pop fare, that dripped in & out of disco, synth-pop, pop-soul, and cheesy pop ballads. On Hot Shot Records (part of the Cherry Red group) is Chemistry a double-disc compilation of the sister’s finest moments- bringing together a 79 minute CD, with a DVD of videos from the group.
Tender Flesh is one of the more recent DVD reissues in Artus Film’s series of Jess Franco films. Originally released 1997 in the twilight of this euro-auteurs career, the film is certainly problematic, never really reaching the dizzying & powerful heights of his best work in the 70’s/ 80’s- but there are flashes of brilliance here & there, making this worth checking out for fans of the mans work.
This is particularly searing & ultra-intense HNW split- which brings together Serbian based Dosis Letalis, with US-based Planet Shithead. The release presents the listener with two thirty minute seas of sear, and really there is zero let-up and zero relief through-out.
Here we have the second of Vol Racy Reels, from the Something Weird vault. This time the theme is women’s liberation/ equality- and the two 1970’s films offered up here present the subject in fittingly un-pc & fairly male sexists form.
Critters sees the very welcome return of horror film obsessed US wall noise project Burial Ground. It must be coming on for three, maybe four years since this La Crosse, Wisconsin put out anything( aside from a micro/ self-released tape set from early this year)- so this really is a surprise/treat. As this releases title suggests the theme here is those razor teeth bound aliens from the 1980’s, and the four films they featured in. It comes in the form of a four business card mini CDR set, which appears on Serious Business label
Verhalten's "Corrupted Structures v.1" is the twenty-seventh release from Modern Tapes, based in Albuquerque, New Mexico (according to Bandcamp, although Discogs describes the label as being Chicago-based). This is the first time for me listening to and reviewing both the label and the artist in question. I have to say it's quite nice to be presented with opportunities like this - and to come into a release with few expectations and a totally open and clean pallette. I spend a lot of my time listening to music and noise from artists who I have a long history with and it's always refreshing to break from this chain. The release comes in a brown envelope rather than a cassette case, with the envelope closed by a sticker. With releases like these, and those that do use cases but seal those with stickers as well, I tend to use a scalpel to cut a fine line across the enclosing sticker to try and preserve the intended presentation. The tape takes in two tracks of identical size, one to each side.
Designer, artist, and musician Matt Nish-Lapidus' New Tendencies project follows up last year's Missed Month with L5 on Forking Paths Records. Composed on modular and numerous other different pieces of equipment, L5 brings forth a synthy, electronic recording that at points borders on industrial, and jumps to avant-garde dance at others. Well recorded and fun to listen to, L5 is a quick glimpse into what feels like a futuristic train ride.
Here’s a two-way euro wall noise split- this CDR brings together the bleak & windswept drone wall noise of Charles Razeur. With the searing, crude, and unchanging Harsh walled noise of infamous & hellishly prolific French project Vomir.
Chier x Kindstod is a thirty-minute walled-noise collaboration- it sees these French & German projects working together to create a subtle shifting & morphing example of moody, yet seared wall matter. The release appears in the form of a CDR on UK Void Singularity Recordings- it came in an edition of twenty copies, but as of this review the label is down to just six copies.
Svartsyn (in English - "pessimism") is a black metal band from Sweden, formed by guitarist Ornias and drummer Tormentor in 1991. Initially, under the name Chalice in 1993, the band recorded a demo called Evil Mental Cold Winter. Then, the group took the name Svartsyn and continued to exist, having undergone a number of line-up changes. In general, these are real veterans of the Scandinavian black metal scene, which of course in many ways influenced the modern bands playing in the Black Metal genre
Sala is a project born from the Lithuanian city of Utena, and masterminded by the musician, philosopher,photographer, cinephile Alas23, or to give him his real name Audrius Ðimkûnas. The album, as described in the liner notes, was recorded at the site of “abandoned Soviet machines and building materials near Utena” and later mixed in Sala’s own studio between 2013 and 2016. The album has received a limited edition CD release via Belgian label Unfathomless, hand numbered to 200 copies, it comes with a well designed fold out insert and an art card.
Tantric Doctors' "Karesansui" is a 45 minute duet for clarinet and rough-hewn analog electronics (unprecedented in my collection), presented as a single unbroken track. I was surprised to find out it is actually the work of a single musician, Adam Woolf, who has overdubbed multiple instruments himself.
Mad Mutilator/ Trepanator brings together two synth based soundtracks for ultra low-budget French horror features from N.G. Mount(Norbert Moutier)- a video shop owner/ horror fanzine editor, turned SOV horror fiend. Fans of trashy, gory & often nonsense euro-horror will be probably be aware of Mad Mutilator( aka Ogroff) as it’s one of the more puzzling & lo-fi blends of the slasher & zombie genres to appear. But less so Trepanator- which is a lesser known/ barely distributed Reanimator rip-off from 1992- if you’re a fan of the 80’s/ 90’s moody-yet-crude soundtracking you’ll surely get a kick out of this double-headed CD release.
Jack the Lad are the Geordie folk rock band formed when Newcastle legends Lindisfarne decided to splinter. Alan Hull and Ray Jackson kept the name and Simon Cowe, Ray Laidlaw and Rod Clements formed their own band with a future member of Lindisfarne Billy Mitchell. It’s Jack the Lad was the band’s debut album and a strong statement of intent, featuring ten original songs and one traditional medley. It was an opportunity for Mitchell, Clements and Cowe to highlight their songwriting skills, something they did with aplomb. Interestingly, second album The Old Straight Track which was released a year later, and is also available again via Talking Elephant, predominantly featured traditional songs a strange move when your debut is littered with strong original material?
Once again returning to the well of Edgar Allan Poe's macabre waters, Cadabra will release The Black Cat on vinyl this August. Reenlisting Anthony D. P. Mann for vocal work, Cadabra gives him a wonderful partner in Italian composer Fabio Frizzi. coming in at just under one half hour, The Black Cat is a very engaging new reading of Poe's classic.
Here’s a darkly moody & atmospheric split CD release bringing together two Polish guitar focused drone projects- we have Gdynia based Nowa Ziemia, and Opole based Echoes of Yul.
The project named Klimperei was founded in 1985 by two French musicians Françoise Petchanatz and Christophe Petchanatz. Since 2002, it has become a one-man project, headed by Christophe Petchanatz. From the very beginning, the project declared itself an unusual approach to music. People have called it toy-music, avant-gard, bizarre and so on ...
Gryphon where one of the more intriguing & distinctive sounding prog rock groups to come out of the 1970’s British scene. Initially, they embraced an ornate & playful medieval & renaissance sound within their brand of jazz-tinged progressive folk-rock, which predominately utilized bassoon, krumhorns, and recorders. Later they moved towards more symphonic rock and traditional prog with more focus of traditional rock instrumentation- but still retaining a fairly distinctive sound. Here on Esoteric Records is a double disc CD set, bringing together the bands first four albums on Transatlantic Records.
Antagonist / Agonist is the first album from Jan Warnke - the first using his own full name rather than an alias. Labelhead at Geräuschmanufaktur, Jan has operated under the J. Adolphe alias in the past and has contributed to numerous collaborations including Red Cliffs and The Dead Mauriacs - both duos make an appearance on the tape as Thorsten Soltau and Olivier Prieur present remixes of Jan's work at the end of each side respectively. The release comes as a single pro-dubbed cassette with artwork and design by Jan himself (as he has done with his entire label catalogue).