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In January 2017 Slomo, the Yorkshire duo of Holy McGrail and Howard Marsden finally released their fourth album Transits. A shimmering, ambient, psychedelic happening that thrilled and delighted fans of the band. Over a year on from that and the band released Super-Individual: Collective Ritual, a collection of 12 remixes of the track Super-Individual by a varied and interesting selection of artists hand-picked by the band to remix this epic twenty-three-minute slice of electronic drone. They chose a diverse array of talent for the purpose, from Teleplasmiste, to Gnod, and Andrew Liles to Teeth of the Sea, each has deconstructed the ambient cosmic drone of Super-Individual, rebuilding it in their own style. The twelve tracks are spread across two discs and vary in length from a mere four minutes (Teeth of the Sea) all the way up to the epic twenty four minutes of Gnod’s remix.
Between 2001 and say 2006 I thought of Autechre as one of my favorite & most personally influential projects. The British two piece basically got me into the idea of noise, their later albums like Confield, Draft 7.30 & Untilted literal blew my mind- showing the true possibilities of complex electronic compositions. And their early-to mid-period albums like Amber, Chiastic Slide & LP5 really were/are benchmarks on how to create original & wholly distinctive electronica records- that both pushed the envelope, yet also offered up rich & emotional atmospheres. Sadly at the release of 2008’s Quaristice my interest started to drift & falter, as it seemed the project were moving away from the more complex & often lengthy composition they were known for, towards still edgy–but-slightly more approachable, and often shorter sound craft.
Insect Cult is three CDR/digital download that brings together six half-an-hour tracks that blend together often very subtle textured noise & subdued simmer ambience. The release appeared last April on Russian label Reason Art Records- and as of the publication of this review the label still has physical copies.
Refiorms is a two CDR/ digital download, which finds two projects in the more ambient side of the noise offering up a disc a piece of material.The work goes from moody wall-noise/ textured noise matter, through to dense brooding weaves of murky drone matter & slurred noise detail. This release appeared late summer last year, in a physical edition of twenty copies- and as of this review, the Reason Art label still have copies left.
Molecules of Motion, one of Steve Roach's many recent works, strikes a balance between his more composed, directly melodic Berlin School derived works (such as Skeleton Keys or Emotions Revealed) and the undirected vaporous chordal ether of his space ambient pieces. In this way, it is similar to such albums as Arc of Passion from 2008 and Spiral Meditations from 2013.
Gruenrekorder, the ever reliable label for all things in the realm of field-recording based sound art, presents Voll.Halb.Langsam.Halt by Gregory Büttner. This release is available in both CD and digital formats.
Third Coast Ensemble are a sixteen-piece jazz/ improv collective- bringing together members from both the US & France. Wrecks is seemingly the collective first ever release- and as you might expect from such a large ensemble the sound here is rather varied. Going from more melodic & building, through to densely weaving, onto playful & jiving, though to slightly more difficult & angular- all laced with the occasional performed & spoken word elements.
The Baby is a fairly pedestrian & soapy-though-at-times queasy shot of shockploitation from the 1970’s.The film blends together dysfunctional family drama, low-key hag horror, thriller, with a few fleeting moments of violence & sleaze. The film has been out of print for a few years, and has never had a Blu Ray- so here from Arrow Video, we get a new 2k reissue of the film.
It’s fair to say that as a form black metal can be a fairly diverse. Some bands adhere strictly to traditions, while others liberally stretch & almost break the genre. But sometimes with-in quite a traditional black metal, you can get subtle interesting touches and nudges- that gentle push the genre in rewarding ways…and that’s what exactly what we have here.
In simpler times, disco took the world by storm and managed to paint itself into every corner of the globe. Not surprisingly, synth loving, beat driven Germany celebrated its open parameters and supreme danceability. This during a time when Neue Deutsche Welle, thrash, and industrial music were on the rise as well, showing how diverse a music scene there was in Germany during this time.
Hailing from the city of St Louis in Missouri, The Lion’s Daughter released this their third full length album in July of this year. The band were formed in 2007 by vocalist/guitarist Rick Giordano, drummer Erik Ramsier, and bassist/vocalist Scott Fogelbach. Extreme in nature, the band utilise influences from across the metal spectrum, and have an excellent reputation as a live act, having played with such legendary bands as High on Fire, Behemoth, Pig Destroyer, Nachtmystium and Dark Funeral to name just a few. This latest release marks a new chapter in the band’s development as they take on board new ideas and augment their sound further with the inclusion of keyboards, a move that often sucks the life out of extreme metal bands, however in this instance it has done quite the opposite. Let’s get down to the review.
"Crackling Worship" by Serbian HNW project Dosis Letalis is a 5-CD set out on the inimitable Altar of Waste label. Frequent readers will recognize the name of both, with Nemanja having given an interview here on this site before and with many, many releases from the AOW catalog having appeared here in the past as well. The reputation of both the artist and the label cannot be overstated.
Body is the twenty-fourth album from Australian three-piece The Necks. It sees the trio offering up a single fifty six minute track that blurs the boundaries between minimalistic & trance inducing jazz, subtle-yet moody improvising, jangling atmospheric rock scaping, and slowly simmered noir tipped- ambience.
Momentary Encounters offers up a selection of fragile, languid, & often extremely sparse examples of modern composition from Canadian composer Alex Jang. The four tracks utilize a relatively varied – but often paired-back sonic pallet that moves from blends of field recordings & wood wood, mixes of percussion, string & woodwind, and guitar.
Released on the cusp of the 1970’s Horror Of Malformed Man is a deliriously deranged & unpredictable slice of fever- dream fuelled horror. The film remained banned in it’s native Japan until last year, and it’s safe to say it’s one of the more unusual horror films to appear in either the 60’s or for that matter the 1970’s. On Arrow Video this is first ever Blu Ray release of the film- which offers up a wonderful crisp & defined new scan of the film, as well as a good selection of extras.
Appearing late last year Maximum Perversum is a four CDR set/ digital download from ultra-prolific French wall-noise project Chier. The set brings together a fairly varied selection of different types of wall-craft, going from heavy, blurred-yet shifting. Onto brutal, focused & often interestingly textured, though to moodily perverse & horror filled.
The Lime Twig is a recent C120 cassette/ digital release from Big Hole- the fairly scene popular HNW project of Denton Texas-based Christopher Charles Robinson. The release features two hour long walls, and as we’ve come to expect with this project- we get two subtle shifting examples of wall matter, which taking in both dense, heavy though interesting/creative use of texture.
The Extreme experimental music sub-genres of Power Electronics and Death Industrial are often closely related to each other, & at times the boundary between these two genres, sometimes blur & ceases to exist. However, Death Industrial is a deeper, lower-frequency and meditative genre than PE. Palinodie (Anticinéma) is an album that is squarely selling its self between these two genres.
Hailing from Berlin, sound and media artist Jana Irmert returns to Fabrique Records with her follow-up to 2016's End of Absence, Flood. This texturally impressive sophomore effort is inspired by Chyngyz Aitmatov's novel The Mark of Cassandra. Presented in three distinct parts, Flood is a flowing, moving work based on drones, oscillations, and deeply altered field recordings.
Coming at the end of the summer, perfect to partial those post-sunshine blues here’s a decidedly wacky and at times frankly schizophrenic summer creature feature from the mid 60’s. The Horror Of Beach Party blends together corny rock ’n’ roll soundtracked beach drama, amusing aquatic monster action, with moments of fairly extreme gore and nightmare fuel imagery. On either Blu Ray or DVD from Severin Films here is the first ever uncut release of the film.
There Will Always Be A Reason is a CDR box set that severs up four unwieldy brutal, terminal bleak & hope- crushingly stark examples of the walled noise form. Each CDR presents the listener with a single slab of HNW, and each is as unrelenting & crudely unbreakable as the next- all making this a release more for the seasoned wall-head looking for a true sonic brutalizing.
Finnish Black/Death Metal legends Archgoat were originally formed in 1989 by guitarist Ritual Butcherer and bassist/vocalist Lord Angelslayer. The band were initially active until 1993 when they disbanded after a disagreement with their record company over the terms of their contract. Fortunately the band returned to action in 2004, and have been pretty prolific ever since releasing four full length albums and numerous EPs and splits. The Lucifer Crown is the band’s fourth full length and the first to feature Diabolus Sylvarum on keyboards, and Goat Aggressor on drums.
Veteran sound creators Strafe F.R ("Strafe Für Rebellion") have existed since 1979, with a sporadic release pattern. Their music exists on the boundary between industrial and musique concrete/avant-garde. The Bird Was Stolen is their first album since Sulphur Spring in 2014. This is my first exposure to the group's music.
The latest album from Clive Henry's 'House Mother' alias, "Chant", comes as a 4-CD set housed in a glassy blue plastic case - as far as casings go it's not one I've ever come across before and so feels very unique and identifiably self-released, with no allusion to label affiliation anywhere on the exterior. There is artwork pasted on to both the back and front of the case, black and white symmetrical full body shots of a man in staunch poses, no text at all - the impression I get is as though these are images taken from a fashion photography shoot, something immediately bizarre to see paired up with a noise release but also comes with its own flood of connotations and reference points. I'm reminded of Opaque's HNW fashion obsession and various other "unorthodox" topics that a very particular circle of the HNW realm has taken on in the past. Clive is no stranger to taking on such unusual thematics and from all of the outward signs, it appears as though this project is no exception.