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Hilde Marie Holsen is a Norwegian trumpet player who blends her processed brass playing with the sort of noirish Scandinavian sound we associate with the likes of Arve Henriksen, Jan Bang and Nils Petter Molvaer. This is her second full length album coming after the critically acclaimed Ask from 2015.
Nachtzug is a twenty minute Ep from Ex-Resident Hardy Fox- and though merger in its length Fox covers a fair bit of sonic ground- going from dramatic & cascading electronica, creepy & quirky synth pop, electro fed gamelan & percussive world music drifts, grand & bounding soundtrack moments blended with train sound samples, snaking & shifting blends of ambience, & almost IDM moments, through to chugging avant electro fired rock workouts
Miss Leslie’s Dolls is one of the more obscure and at times effectively deranged examples of 1970’s exploitation.The film has an often dreamy and sludgy feel to it- that underlies the feeling of smoldering sleaze. And here on Network is seemingly the first-ever digital release of this thought lost slice of grindhouse grim-ness, coming in either Blu Ray or DVD
To achieve a original sound and stand out from the crowd, some musicians and bands mix different musical styles. Sometimes it works very well, and sometimes the result is not so straightforward ...
This recent double Blu Ray set from Powerhouse Films is the long-needed & much deserved 2K edition of this classic slice of British Horror- which though made in the late 1950’s feels much more modern & still effectively chilling- with its heady mix of building tension, very tangible dread, and impressive creature effects.
5 Hand Reel were a Celtic Folk rock band who achieved a modicum of success in the second half of the 1970s. Birthed in 1974 by former Mr Fox and Trees bass player Barry Lyons, fiddle and keyboard player, Tom Hickland, and drummer Dave Tulloch. After adding Scotsmen, fiddle player Chuck Fleming and guitarist/vocalist Bobby Eaglesham to the lineup, 5 Hand Reel made their debut on the live music scene in late 1974. Fleming was soon replaced by another Scotsman, Dick Gaughan, and by the middle of 1975 the band were up and running again on the live circuit. Their award winning self titled debut album was released the following year, garnering high praise in the music press, the album was voted Melody Maker’s folk album of the year.
Om Kult: Ritual Practice of Conscious Dying - Vol. I is the first step into a new world of sonic unsettlement from Austrian sound artist Rudolf Eb.er – who is one of the key minds behind the infamous Schimpfluch Gruppe collective. This recent thirty track CD brings together elements of very subtle psycho ambience, odd body sounds, backwards texts, amped-up tape hiss, drowsy siren waves, creepy field recordings, and all manner of sound unsettlement. To create a album that’s meant to present occult knowledge and techniques for the transition from life to death.
At The Still Point Of The Turning World shifts between slurred elegance, simmering uneasy, and churning malevolence. The six-track album brings together mostly unbalanced layers of strings, percussion and horn work- all to create a dramatic, but often hazed-out record that sits somewhere between dense neo- classical collaging & grand modern composition, with fleeting moments of off-kilter ambience.
Corrupted Structures v.2 is Verhalten's sequel to the v.1 release of the same name that I reviewed here on this site a while back now. It was released by the label Modern Tapes alongside a new tape from Swedish HNW project Rien, The Grey Tape, in September this year. Both releases have sold really well, with only three copies listed as available of the new Verhalten on the bandcamp site.
Intruders finds The Residents severing up a selection decidedly moody, at-times unsettling & down-right creepy tracks based around often unseen & undefined spirits, entities, or sinister interlopers. Each of the eleven tracks tells their own separate tale, and each utilizes the collective’s tendencies to mold, blend or shape musical genres into their own distinctively unbalanced & often theatrical odd stylings.
Discharge are one of the most controversial & confrontational bands to appear out of the UK Punk genre. The Stoke-On-Trent band formed at the height of the genre in 1977, and offered up a stark, battering, and speedy mix of distorted guitar work, shouty blunt vocals, and grim lyrical content. The band went onto give birth to the hardcore Punk genre, & influenced trash & other extreme metal genres- with their no-nonsense & no-hope brand of rapid metallic tinged punk.
Ghost Story is a four CDR box set from respected female wall- noise/ harsh noise project Tissa Mawartyassari(aka Monica Isabel Sanchez). It severs up a selection of mostly dense, sometimes shifting, but always moody wall-craft that’s based around the classic tale of terror Ghost Story, which started off as a 1979 book by Peter Straub, before been made into a film in 1981.
Schlock is the debut film from two cinematic legends- director John Landis, who of course went onto direct the likes of American Werewolf in London, and The Blues Brother. And special effects master Rick Baker, who has over seventy-five make-up/ effects credits to his name- going from Star Wars, The Howling, Michael Jackson’s Thriller, the Men In Black films. Here on Arrow Video is Blu Ray release of the film- offering up a new 4K scan, and some rather neat extras.
Constructionis is the debut release from Architectonicum- the three-piece collective that brings together some of the finest & most respected names in Euro/ balkan HNW/static texturing. The projects made up of UK’s Clive Henry & James Shearman(A Raja's Mesh men), Serbian Nemanja Nikolic (Dosis Letalis)- with project concept & manifesto by Jan Warnke – who is the sleazy HNW project Sacred Climax, and also runs the Geräuschmanufaktur label.
The wider Italian experimental music scene has always given a strong impetus to the development of more edgy sonic forms in other countries- and still to this day it's one of the most varied and interesting representative of the genre.
From the tail end of the 1980’s The House on Tombstone Hill is a slightly clunky though entertaining horror flick that brings together elements of haunted house cinema, zombie flick, & slasher- all tied up with a ton of blood, fairly impressive practical effects, and lo-fi campy flair. From Vinegar Syndrome- those seekers of lost or forgotten genre fare here’s a nice & shiny Blu ray/DVD combo of the film- which offers up an impressive new 2k scan of the film, and a few extras.
Here’s a double-headed satanic themed curio from Vinegar Syndrome. We have 1974’s Lucifer's Women- a rather rare occult mystery, which here gets it's first ever released. And 1978’s Doctor Dracula- a decidedly campy & muddle film that blends together elements from Lucifer’s Women, with a soap-bound & bloodless vampire plot. Both films featuring the expected classy Vinegar Syndrome scans, along with a fair selection of extras.
Georgian sound artist Rezo Glonti returns as Aux Field for his sophomore release, Square Landscapes. Using deftly layered synths, rhythms, and oscillations, Aux Field constructs an expressive and deep synthscape that further unfolds itself on successive listens. When paired with the glitchy, black and white line work on the album sleeve, the listener is brought into a futuristic world.
Experimental guitarist and experimental ambient soundscape creator Mike Fazio has been releasing his unique output through his own personal label, Faith Strange, for more than 20 years, under various aliases. The other two releases I've heard from this moniker, A Guide For Reason, were brief mini-CDrs containing spacious musique concrete-esque presentations of liquified processed guitar texture. "Iconography", however, is a hefty full length album, with 4 pieces nearing 20 minutes each.
Antropophagus stands as one of the more reserved, creepy, and bleakly moody films from notorious euro-horror/ sleaze director Joe D'Amato - though it’s still managed to get on the UK video nasty list, and got accused of been snuff movie. Here from Serevin, we get a recent region free Blu Ray of the film- offering up a new 2k scan, and some juicy new extras.
The Nightmares is a recent CD release from HNW/static noise legend Werewolf Jerusalem- the discs takes in seven tracks, and has a runtime of forty-eight minutes. The sound here is very much darkly atmospheric wall-craft, with a few dips into more dense & dark ambient waters.
This latest reissue from Talking Elephant is the fourth album from Rare Bird, originally released by Polydor records in 1973, Somebody’s Watching was their second for the label, and also their second since their shift away from the more progressive sounds of their first two albums in favour of a more radio friendly style. Unfortunately for Rare Bird, this change of style did not herald the commercial success they had craved since the moderate commercial accomplishments of their debut single, Sympathy, which charted at number 27 in February of 1970. Despite their attempts to create something with mass appeal they never managed to breach the charts again, either with albums or singles and Sympathy remains their only chart success.
Legion of Swine's 'italia' is an LP which was conceived and recorded in Naples in April 2015, using samples from Pompeii and Vesuvius, and consequently dubbed to a limited run of cassettes on the Leeds (UK) label Ojud Records.
States of Minds is the fourth album from this genre-blurring Norwegian five-piece. The double album sees the collectively liberally bending, melting & merging together elements of jazz, rock, electronica, & ambience into a selection of often twisting & turning sonic adventures that flit between build & changing song-craft, abstract improv, and playful tone poems.