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Frederick R. Friedel is one of the more note-worthy, creative & distinctive directors to come out of the 1970’s horror/ exploitation cinema. This excellent, wholly fascinating & truly extra heavy Blu Ray & CD set brings together three of his films- Axe, Kidnapped Coed, & Blood Brothers. Plus on the CD soundtracks for both Axe & Kidnapped Coed
Here’s a smartly presented CDR from Palinopsia Recordings, wrapped in a colourful, almost psychedelic, card inlay. Despite the colours, the depicted silhouetted trees predict the darkness to be found within. The album has five tracks, ranging from a short five minutes to a long 20 minutes; all stand in the territory of HNW, but it’s borders are played with and stretched.
Stand Up is the next in the series of deluxe & hardback book reissues of Jethro Tull albums on the Crysalis label. The album was the bands second album originally released in 1969, and it saw them expanding their sound from its original blues-rock setting, to add in elements of folk-rock, early metal, & jazz. Along with slight hints at their future more playful prog rock sound, though this is in very embryonic stages here, and is no way as fully formed & realized as on albums like Aqualung & Thick As A Brick.
Cold Spring Records presents a reissue of the long out of print debut album by Trepaneringsritualen.For the uninitiated, Trepaneringsritualen (or TxRxP) is the blackened ambient/death industrial (I know that’s a bit of an over-simplification) project of one Thomas Ekelund. Influenced by the occult and other esoteric themes, Ekelund has become rather prolific over the years releasing a near decade’s worth of material on labels such as: Hanson, Release the Bats, Harsh Head Rituals and Cold Spring (in more recent memory).
Following up 2014's Inked In Blood, legendary Floridian death metallers, Obituary, are back with their eleventh full length, Obituary. Changing the formula a bit from Inked, Obituary finds their sound returning closer to that of their roots, which helps the self titled album quite a bit. Adding more proof that classic death will never go out of style, Obituary's thrashy, buzzsaw approach will be a welcome not to those that were let down by Inked In Blood.
Here we have a recent reissue of two early 1980’s album from Deodato (aka Brazilian composer/ arranger Eumir Deodato). And what’s offered up here is a selection of easy-going, memorable & grooving funk-pop, light jazz- funk fusion, and 1980’s disco music. This certainly isn’t for those looking for high-brow & experimental fusion, but if you dig bright, tunefully & good-time funk/pop fare you’ll certainly find this right up your street.
Since the early 1970’s American composer & keyboard player Erik Lindgren has created a truly huge genre varied body of work. Moving though: numerous variations of different rock ‘n’ pop, Contemporary classical composition, soundtrack music, quirkily electronica, easy-listening, bizarre radio plays, avant & angular composition that blends together elements of jazz & rock, and beyond.
Anoxia is the second album recorded under the name of L.A.N.D. by composer/ sound designer Daniel Lea. Following on from 2012s debut album Night Within. The album was mixed by Ben Frost at Greenhouse Studios in Reykjavik, and mastered in Berlin by Rashad Becker at D & M.
The second in GT Series Archive is the album entitled "Chrz¹szcz brzmi w trzcinie" (A beetle buzzes in the reed - a Polish tongue twister), originally published on a CDR on Tochnit Aleph in 2006. In a short time it was sold out and practically unavailable until now.
Here from Arrow Video is the first ever Blu Ray release of 1984 sorority slasher The Initiation. The film blends together 80’s campy atmosphere, often quite brutal killings, a likable enough cast, and in the second half of the film an effective mall setting.
Zos Kia's 1983 live recording "Transparent" is known because it is commonly considered to be the first Coil recording, despite the fact that much of the sound on the album can be attributed to one John "Zoskia" Gosling. Following this performance, Coil ceased to collaborate with Gosling, and didn't play live for many years, and there is very little about this album that bears similarity to anything in Coil's discography.
Here’s a tape from Ominous Recordings; 60 minutes of harsh noise walls, presented on a purple tape. The inlay, as you might guess from the project name, and title, is a close up of some legs, clad in stockings, and bound at the ankle. Anonymous Masturbaudioum gives us two long tracks of obliterated walls, Untitled I, and Untitled II.
Originally released in 1977 Body Love is one of the more bizarre, though at the time popular additions to the discography of this highly respected & inferential German electronic music composer and synth wiz. The album was the 7th release from Mr Schulze, it was his first soundtrack album, and the bizarre & unexpected side of it all, is that it’s the soundtrack for a porn movie- which really when thinking of Mr Schulze’s work is the last thing you’d think of.
L'empire Des Sens( English translation The Empire of the Senses) offers up a taut ‘n’ tightly knitted slice of brutal HNW from this French wall-noise project. The release comes in either a cassette or digital download, and appeared last year on spokhand Washington based Lost Light Records .
Prolific American sound artist, Z'ev, once again sees his creation released on Cold Spring Records. Eleven Mirrors to the Light is eleven tracks of droning soundscapes that bounce between light and dark, airy and earthy, and soft and rough. Z'ev's ability to create these soundscapes out of percussion instruments challenges the way most conceptualize droning experimental. This is funny, because Z'ev has been recording in this fashion longer than many artists have been alive. When looking at it this way, Z'ev isn't the exception, but the rule.
The Infernal Depths is a suffocating yet atmospheric blend of lose, blunt & pummelling wall-craft, with bleak ambient industrial texturing. The release comes in the form of a C30 cassette on Russia Reason Art Records, featuring one track per side of tape, and as of writing this review the label still have copies available.
From September last year here we have a C90 split- bringing together two lengthy slices of walled-noise, one from French scene legend Vomir & the other from up & coming Russian wall project Train Cemetery . The release came in an edition of ten copies, which are now sadly all sold out from the label in physical form, though it can still be downloaded in digital from the labels bandcamp.
Ufosonic Generator are a doom metal band from Italy. The Evil Smoke Possession appears to be their debut album, there doesn’t seem to be a great deal of information available about the band so we shall dig straight in to the music.
Aborym is an industrial/experimental metal band formed in Taranto (Italy) in 1992 and based in Rome. Since its genesis, founder & frontman Fabban has always played the first fiddle, while rest of the line-up went through several transformations. The band's early albums are considered as milestones of the industrial metal genre while Aborym itself established its position as a forward thinking industrial band that never stood still. Industrial/electronic metal plagued and combined with rock, alternative, noise, IDM and electro-harsh music. Heavy use of synthesizers, modular programming, custom modular machines and experimental noise…..
Well here’s a real surprise release from late last year, the first album of new material in 30 years from Uk avant-pop/ (off) world music two piece Renaldo and the Loaf. Gurdy Hurding sees the pair returning to the distinctively strange & quirky sonic waters of the past, yet adding in a few new twists & turns to their sound- all to make an album that is both pleasing familiar yet oddly fresh too.
To be honest, when I first got wind of Factory Photographs, I knew it wouldn’t take much convincing that this was something I needed to hear. I love David Lynch and I mostly like Xiu Xiu, so on paper this sounded like something right up my alley. For those unfamiliar, Factory Photographs by Hexa, available as a digital download and LP on Room44, is essentially a soundtrack to the artwork of David Lynch.
Hanakisasage is another recent addition to this Japanese noise legend truly huge discography. The release comes in the form of a CD, and offers up two length slices of dense & shifting noise craft that brings together elements psychedelic & roasting electronics, layers of squalling & searing harsh noise, and often a feeling of lose jam based composition.
The original Blair Witch film remains one of my favourite horror movies, and I’m always surprised at the amount of people who are indifferent or dismissive of it - though I can very clearly see why The Blair Witch Project is a divisive topic. For better or worse, it really launched the ‘found footage’ horror genre, but curiously didn’t launch a Blair Witch film franchise, as it threatened to. There was a second film, which wasn’t very memorable, and more enticingly a prequel, proposed long ago by the original writers, which seems to have been forgotten.
OGROFF(aka Mad Mutilator) is truly derange, ultra lo-fi, and bizarre blend of slasher & zombie genres. The film is French, from the early 1980’s, and it’s a real brain frying experience, which moves between shock ‘n’ gore, and puzzlement ‘n’ oddness. I’m reviewing the region one DVD release of the film which appeared not so long back on Canadian retro focused DVD & VHS company Videonomicon.