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Kapitan Nemos Biblothek (aka Captain Nemo’s Library) is an experimental/ modern opera for five soloists and a chamber ensemble. Spread over two CDs, the work shifts between darting & choppy modern classic tones, off-kilter/ seesawing composition, onto guitar-edged dynamics and atmospherics.
When the liner notes of the album you’re about to review are written by primo avant-garde musician, Fred Frith you know you’re onto a good thing. In fact, it is Frith along with the Swiss free music scene that is largely responsible for the coming together of the seemingly unlikely pairing of Argentinian cellist Paula Sanchez and 'piano icon’ (the words of Frith) Katharina Weber. Both developed a close relationship with the Henry Cow alumni at the University of Basel - Sanchez a student on Frith’s improvisation master’s program, Weber a fellow teacher - and in amongst this the two female artists independently found a common ground centred on improvisation, sound and performative art. It is from these beginnings that Sanchez and Weber proceeded to take live experimentation to a new level, and it this art that features on …and discovering fishes that have their own light.
The years immediately before and after the Second World War have largely been overlooked when it comes to German filmmaking. Seems obvious why, of course, but it does leave somewhat of a significant gap in cinema history between the German Expressionists and the 70s auteur movement of Herzog, Fassbinder, Schlöndorff, Wenders et al. So, it’s no surprise that during this seemingly barren period, there were in fact a handful of filmmakers doing good work, including one Helmut Käutner, who despite a lack of recognition outside of his home nation, gained a reputation as one of Germany’s greatest filmmakers.
Mine but for its sublimation, is a sixty-minute solo piano piece- it’s a skeletal to taut affair, built around subtly shifting repetition, patterns, and atmosphere. I guess you’d compare it to some of Morton Feldman’s works for solo piano pieces, though the work is more eventful, as well as having its own distinctive qualities.
Getting its vinyl debut, Primeiro's Music for Horses hits the scene with an expanded edition featuring three brand new tracks. Now titled Music for Horses I & II, the original four tracks tackle the B-side and Primeiro's three new pieces take on the task of guiding the listener to their equine epiphany. The sides bookend a life-altering horse riding accident for Primeiro, who uses both works to show how the boundaries blur between human and non-human, utilizing ethereal tones and arpeggios.
Terror In The Fog: The Wallace Krimi at CCC is a recent six-film collection from Eureka. The focus of the four Blu-ray box set is the cycle of crime films – or krimis – released by CCC studios. The genre was hugely popular with West German audiences in the 1960s. The films were adapted from works of British crime writer Edgar Wallace and his son, Bryan Edgar Wallace. They combined the traditional murder mystery with horror, in which they depicted enigmatic killers stalking their victims through foggy English landscapes – from the streets of London to isolated rural mansions. The genre became an influence on both Giallo and Slasher forms.
This is a split album that brings together two European wall-noise projects, with Olion from Poland, and Dresser from Italy. The first offers up three shorter tracks, and a nearly twenty-six-minute track from the second.
Here’s a walled noise split bringing together two around thirty-minute tracks- from two of the longer running/ ten ten-year-plus active walled noise projects. Poland’s Vilgoc serves up a slab of thick pummelling and hiss-hazed walling, and the rather mysterious Inanition presents with a slice of rolling ‘n’ reeling wall-craft.
What is the music that comes after the apparent exhaustion with all forms of sonic articulation? Pierre Bastien & Michel Banabila have managed to construct a soundtrack for such times, fueled by enervation rather than anything like an endgame or final statement. Nuits sans Nuit is the result, and with titles like, "Closing Time: The Party is Over", "Waste Disposal", and "Here Is Your New Anthem", the thematic lines are clearly drawn. The music is primarily electronic landscapes, sparse and droney, populated by various acoustic instruments – double bass, reeds, etc. Things move as listelessly as one would expect them to under such an umbrella and have the sensation that the performers are just about ready to give up. No pathos about, though, just really being done.
Direct Action was the twenty-third album from British punk band turned experimental soundscapers, Alternative TV. The six-track album paired moody experimental rock elements with noise tones/ textures, with an atmospherically seared production. Here from Fourth Dimensions is a recent CD reissue of the 2023 album, adding a bonus track that melds anarchic spoken word with surreal soundscaping.
Theme started off in the late 90s, as a spin-off from UK noise rock collective Splintered, with a mind to do less rock-focused sound, and instead hone in on textures, drones, and abstract sounds. Meditations on Space, Volume One is the project's seventh album, and the first volume in a two-part set. It consists of one piece of music (lasting around 40 minutes) which is broken into seven parts. If I were to compare the album to anything, I’d say Michael Gira’s The Body Lover’s project. As it engagingly shifts from pared-back psycho ambience, to more detailed looping & droning material, onto denser and more dramatic work, all making for a rewardingly varied sonic trip.
Early 90s Nottingham-based industrial metal pioneers Pitch Shifter entered the BBC's Maida Vale studios on two separate occasions in April 1991 and March 1993 to record sessions for legendary BBC DJ and general underground music expert John Peel. This set compiles both sessions on one disc, six tracks in total, three from each session. "Gritter", "Tendrill "and "Dry Riser Inlet" from the 1991 session and "(A Higher Form of) Killing Radio Phuque Edit", "Diable (Wayco Survival Mix)" and "Deconstruction (Reconstruction)" from the 1993 session.
Here we have the score for Symptoms- a slow-burning psychological thriller/ come horror film. Like the movie itself, the score shifts between the lush and pastoral, and discordant and disquieting
Feasting On Craved Remains is a recent five track EP from Torsofuck-a organ gurgling death metal three piece from Finland. The project has been active on and off since the mid 90’s to present day- never comprising/ diluting their nasty/ lo-fi sound.
Dachra comes to Arrow Player with an impressive pedigree. The Tunisian horror was chosen as the closing film for International Critics' Week at the 2018 Venice International Film Festival and won the Scariest Film Award at The Overlook Film Festival the following year.
Transmission is a 2023 film focusing on a lost/ cursed movie & a missing horror director. It’s structured/ presented in a rather creative manner- as if someone is channel hopping late one night- blending true crime mockumentary, news reports, several films with the film, parody adverts, etc. Here from Jinga Films is a bare-bones region-free DVD of the film.
Up! was the twenty-second feature-length film from large-breast-obsessed Auteur Russ Meyer. The late 1970s movie stands as one of the director's more scatterbrained, wacky, at times playful stream of consciousness-bound creations. The small lumber town based feature blends elements of soft-core sex comedy, murder mystery, and nazi parody/ send up- with lots of out in nature bonking and playful perverse narration/ Greek chorus from a nude Kitten Natividad- all topped with moments of violence and splatter. Here from Severin, as part of their series of reissues of the Meyers work, is a new release of the film, taking in a wonderfully new bold ‘n’ bright print, a new commentary track, and an archive interview.
Jack The Ripper is a late 1950s cinematic adaptation of the infamous Whitechapel Murders of 1888. The black and white film sits somewhere between whodunit, period drama, and hammy mystery, with some nice eerie to tense street-bound shots, and light touches of nudity and violence, with a bloody colour climax. Here from Severin is a double UHD/Blu-ray- taking in European and US versions of the film, both with a new 4k scan, a commentary track, and a few extras.
A Day At The Beach is an early 70s film regarding a manipulative, devious, at times charming alcoholic, taking a young girl, who is either his niece or daughter, to a rain-washed and seen better days Danish seaside town. The film mixes glum drama, character study, and addiction melodrama, with moments of dark humour, fearful tautness, and grim quirkiness. Here from Powerhouse-both in the UK and stateside- is a Blu-ray reissue of this little-known/ seen film, which features a screenplay penned by none other than Roman Polanski, who also produced the film. And it also features a brief cameo from Peter Sellers.
In an epic, genre crossing event, two of extreme metal's all time legends bring their experimental solo work to Cold Spring. Iggor Cavalera and Shane Embury (best known for Sepultura and Napalm death, respectively) unleash side-long pieces for this release, mixing brooding, dark ambient, industrial, noise, and all manners of uncomfortable sound in between. While no strangers to experimental music (Iggor's Petbrick and Shane's Dark Sky Burial, for example), the two use their own names for this release, giving their work a more personal feel.
Here’s a recent four-track mini-album/ EP from Sebastian Tomb- the Berlin-based project, which takes a more moody-to-creative take on walled/ textured noise form. Each track mixes experimental ambient elements with minimalistic/low-key wall craft.
Trinity of Wisdom is a new two-track album from this highly prolific/long-running Californian walled noise project. Both tracks roll in at the thirty-minute mark, and both are exercises in ball-busting/dense/ unforgiving HNW.
Deaf Center are the duo of Norwegians Erik Skodvin and Otto Totland, existing since the early 2000's. This new album, Reverie, is the first release in six years. The two-track release a live album, performed at the anniversary show for their label, Sonic Pieces- with each track hitting around the seventeen mintue mark.
Here’s two tracks of electronic noise from RDKPL, on Inner Demons Records; I’m reviewing this via a download code for Bandcamp, so there’s no packaging to consider, but I like the simple, diy, ‘bedroom’ packaging that I’ve seen on other Inner Demons releases. Both tracks are ten minutes in length, and both play with similar sounds.