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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).
Doom Asylum is campy, humor edged & often self-satirizing slasher from the tail end of 1980’s. From Arrow Video( Uk & US) here we have a recent Blu Ray release of the film- taking in the first ever 2k scan of the film, two new commentaries tracks, and a nice bunch of other extras.
Here we have a double Split CDR release from two US wall noise projects- with each artists offering up a single hour-long track. The projects here are Crawling Yeast from Crystal Lake Illinois, and I watched You Die from Dubuque, Iowa.
Frank Zappa officially released over 60 albums during his career (1966-1993), if we take into consideration official bootlegs, and posthumous releases – and Ulrich does – that number rises to over 100 releases. Frank Zappa was prolific, of that there is no doubt, he gave himself over to his music right up until his death in 1993 from cancer.
From the tail-end of the 1970’s Sinfonia Erotica is one of the more experimental & disorientating films from the king of euro sleaze Jess Franco. The film is a country-house set period drama, fed through with off-kilter & hazy soft-core, weird camera angles/ tricks, and an often jarringly soundtrack that moves from romantic & lush piano-led classical orchestration, onto atonal & discordant unfolds. Here on Severin films is the first-ever release of the film- which can be brought as either a DVD or Blu Ray edition- I’m reviewing the Blu Ray version of the release.
Finnish power electronics heavyweights STROM.ec team up with Norwegian atmospherist Kristoffer Oustad for New Devoted Human. Under the moniker Stromstad, this Scandinavian collaboration brings forth eight tracks of grim electronics. Mixing gruff crunch with spacey soundscapes, Stromstad brings together two unlikely genres in classic fashion.
When two artists put out a lengthy collaboration /box set, lasting several hours, it’s always an intriguing proposition. But if said artist working in different styles, then it definitely deserves ones close attention. This split is from two French artists working with-in different sub-genres within the wider experimental genre.
Gutted is another highly worthy trip into progressive- yet-intense walled noise from this Seattle Washington project, who theme all their releases around gentrification & soulless building developments. This release appeared in May of this year- as both a physical C64 release with rather neat junk packaging and a digital download.
Centralian Fume is a truly intense, lengthy & unrelenting journey into walled noise brain-battering from this Hungary based project. With the release either coming as a CDR or digital down- and it offers up a single slab of seventy-two-minute wall-matter.