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Here’s a transatlantic wall noise split themed around brooding & starkly surreal 1960’s horror film Carnival Of Souls. The C60 tape brings together US project La Crosse, Wisconsin based Burial Ground, and Serbian project Dosis Letalis.
IMI is this Oslo based experimental electronic rock band’s third full length album release. Mixing a variety of different musical styles from hip hop and disco to rock, industrial and krautrock, Moon Relay a pioneering an Avant Garde groove all their own, one that intersects such a wide variety of styles and genres with ease.
Cold Spring has a prodigious history of documenting the most exemplary gloom and doom that outsider music has to offer. “Charnel Transmissions” is another bleak offering to carry on that tradition. For the uninitiated, Tunnels Of Âh is the solo project of one Stephen R. Burroughs, formerly with the proto industrial unit, Head of David. “Charnel Transmissions”, available in CD and digital formats, is Tunnels Of Âh's fourth full length album.
Polish artist Zdzisùaw Beksiñski influenced many with his dystopian, surrealist works. Focusing on decay, death, and darkness, Beksiñski's art evokes a chilling vision of a cold, uncaring future. While his works have influenced many varied forms, the synaesthetic reaction via sound offers up a profound darkness that Beksiñski himself would have cherished.
They’re Coming to Get you, Barbara, is of course, one of the iconic lines from genre-defining zombie classic Night Of The Living Dead. And here from Connecticut based Nightmare Park is a twenty minute wall noise tribute to the film- which sees the project offering up a single twenty minute shot of dense, unforgiving static battering.
Untitled is the second release from this Florida based wall noise project. It comes in the form of a double three inch CDR package, which presents up to the listener two twenty minute examples of HNW sonic barbarism.
Scandinavia. It was here, in the early 90s, that young musicians gave a start to the most massive, extreme and at times darkly melodic style of heavy music, Black metal. Within a short time, this style found fans all over the world, with pioneers of the genre forming cult bands. As time went. Some bands, due to circumstances, have ceased to exist. Others moved away from the original style. Someone began to play a more complex, almost progressive type of black metal, some switched to playing a more commercial take on the genre... But, from time to time, bands appear that take the very uncompromising northern version of black metal as the basis of their work.
P.O.P. (Psychology of Perception) is a 4 piece experimental band who use the traditional acoustic timbres of piano, bass, french horn and violincello in an unconventional manner. "Ikebana" is my only exposure to any of the musicians involved.
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.