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Aught offers up two nine minute slices of creative & detailed static texturing/ walled noise from the always worthy Train Cemetery. The release comes in the form of a C20 cassette, and early in 2017- sadly the physical tape is all gone now, but you can still download the release from Hallucination Tapes bandcamp label.
La Jaula De Concentratión 69 severs-up two extremely searing, at times shifting, yet un-complex examples of brutalising walled noise from this Spanish project. This C40 is the fifth release from the project.
This is the third album from Kentish folk rockers Green Diesel, and the follow up to 2014s Wayfarer’s All album. Mixing traditional acoustic folk instrumentation with a more modern electric sound really pays dividends for this vastly underrated band, who represent for me one of the gems of the folk underground. The album was recorded at Roundel Studios with producer Roger Cotton, to whom it is also dedicated, a sure sign of his worth in helping to shape the sound of this beautiful new record. The CD was released earlier in 2017 and is currently available through Talking Elephant Records.
Planning For Burial, the brainchild of Thom Wasluck, present their latest album, Below The house. This is a mix of shoe-gaze, doom, 90s alt rock and drone. It is a return to form of sorts to Planning for Burial’s beloved first album, 2010’s Leaving.
Here we have the first ever DVD release of two ultra obscure SOV ‘horror’ films from the 1990’s. And as the genre goes each film here is fairly rewarding- bringing together a mix of low-grade effects, stilted dialogue-to over acting, 90’s cheese, often wonky/ campy synth scoring, and the odd surprising plot twist.
The 26th studio album from The Melvins arrives in the form of a sonically disparate double LP, the first in the band’s lengthy history. Comprised of the more formally familiar-sounding “Death” (a “proper” Melvins album) and the expansive and experimental score “Love” (crafted for a short film by Jesse Nieminen, which the band also helped produce), “A Walk With Love and Death” also stands as the first Melvins full-length to feature newest bassist Steven McDonald, not counting his four-song appearance on 2016’s “Basses Loaded” LP. The two albums stand in stark opposition to one another and embrace both sides of the Melvins’ aesthetic: tight, metallicized sludge riffing anchored by Dale Crover’s always incredible and powerful drumming, and bizarre, disorienting, occasionally twee “what the fuck” style pastiches of collaged sound and warped studio-as-instrument aural wreckage. As a set, the two records don’t really play off of one another in any meaningful way, but they do offer the Melvins devotee a fairly enormous amount of confounding sound to get lost in.
Here’s a strange little package from See Through Buildings… Two CDRs in a card wallet, housed in a plastic picture frame. The frame itself shows off a drawing by Charlotte Skrobek. So, it’s unusual packaging, and I think the first time I’ve seen a frame used. Both discs are dominated by wall noise, and textural pieces. There are seven tracks, with four long works at 20:01 minutes, and one short one at 5:24.
Anima Nostra is a ritualistic, dark ambient release from Henrik Nordvargr Björkk and Margaux Renaudin. Coming from industrial juggernaut Cold Spring, the duo crafts a thick, hypnotic soundscape that unfolds further with each successive listen. With a prolific catalog already behind him, Henrik Nordvargr continues to add impressive releases to his resume with the likes of Anima Nostra.
VOMIR ::: is a recent C40 from the prolific, always intense & unforgiving French wall noise legend Vomir. Each side of tape features a single slab of seared noise-craft, and each is as punishing & crude as each other.
Monument Filth is the very first release from this Mexican noise project. And it certainly lives up to its title as it offers up seven slices of thick, brutalizing, and grimy noise-matter that blurs the lines between harsh noise, bleak ‘n’ overloaded synth-craft, extremely muffled/ slurred beats, unwell industrial elements, and buried ‘n’ searing-yet depraved vocal elements.
Jacek Doroszenko is an artist active in the area of visual and sound arts. The core of his practice is to treat sound phenomena as a legitimate material of a field of visual art. Soundreaming has been produced through a framework of Artist-in-Residence program at Hangarin Barcelona, Spain. Inspired by location, experience and memory and motivated by the inversion of the traditional roles of photography and sound in the media and art worlds.
Principal Edwards Magic Theatre where one of the more colourful & creative bands to appear from out of the UK in the 1960’s. The project mixed together an often wordy & psychedelic blend of folk & rock, with trippy & theatrical live performances. This recent three-disc set brings together the band's two albums from the late sixties/ early seventies, plus a third disc of demos, live recordings, and BBC sessions.
Placid Faces brings together elements of off-colour post-punk, wonky 80’s synth pop, Garage Rock, Riot Grrrl like vocals, and a keen sense of trying to entertain-yet-unbalance the listener. The Staches are a four piece from Geneva, Switzerland- bringing together two guys & two girls. Placid Faces is the bands second full-length release, after their 2014 debut & a few Ep’s.
Witchfynde are one of the bands who rose to prominence during the heady days of the NWOBHM scene in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Alongside such luminaries as Iron Maiden, Def Leppard, Diamond Head, Witchfinder General and Venom, Witchfynde made a name for themselves through their brand of occult tinged heavy metal. The band were formed as early as 1973, recorded their first demo tape in 1975, and released their debut album, Give ‘Em Hell in 1980. This box set brings together that debut and the two albums that followed it, 1980s Stagefright, and 1983s Cloak and Dagger. All three have been lovingly remastered and expanded with bonus tracks, including a BBC Friday Rock Show session recorded for Tommy Vance in 1981.
Cupio Dissolvi sees the most welcome return of this Brazilian project, who summons up a horror themed blend of atmospheric & sometimes progressive walled noise/noise texturing/ANW. This release comes in the form of C60 tape- featuring one track per side of tape- it appeared on Swedish noise label Ominous Records early 2017.
Here’s a smartly designed cassette from Sumbru and Ciel Bleu Et Petits Oiseaux Records, with an inlay printed on nicely textured card, utilising a couple of ancient woodcuts. The release has two tracks, both harsh noise walls, and both around the 20 minute mark - though the tape itself is a C60.
Phurpa is a prolific Russian group that plays ancient Tibetan spiritual music from the Bon religion. They have existed since 2003. This music is characterized by gutteral resonant throat singing in unbelievable low registers, mesmerizing single note chanting separated into odd, asymmetrical phrases. This new double album "Gyer Ro" on dark ambient label Cyclic Law is one of several releases in 2017.
Following a demo and two EPs, French death metal duo, Skelethal, unleashed their debut LP on Hell's Headbangers this June. Channeling old school American and Swedish death, Skelethal's Of the Depths... pummels the audience with no frills, classic death metal. Don your leather, strap on your bullet belt, and thrash your way through this solid debut LP.
Nightbringer were formed in Colorado in 1999 by vocalist/guitarist Naas Alcameth and former guitarist/drummer Nox Corvus. Terra Damnata is their fifth full length release, however the band have released a number of splits with the likes of Aluk Todolo, Dodsengel and Abigor to name just a few. Their last album 'Ego Dominus Tuus' was heavily influenced by the big guns of the Scandinavian Black Metal scene, and whilst those classic influences remain, they have toned their sound into something more uniquely their own.
Ayreon is the brainchild of multi-instrumentalist Arjen Lucassen. This, their ninth and most recent album, The Source represents the latest in the Forever/ Planet Y saga that was originally thought to have reached its conclusion with the album 01011001, which was released in January 2008. The Source is best described as a prequel to that album and is the first album in the saga chronologically.
Five tracks, one minute per track made up of noises from guitar pedals and the mixing board. My first thought prior to hearing this was “this is Soliloquy For Lilith, as covered by Napalm Death”. And that thought was correct, and its good. However, this is apparently part of a series (five in five) from the label Silber Records, and just the latest release in that series.
June 2017 sees one of Norway's long time metal stars (Ivar Bjørnson of Enslaved) changing gears and releasing an ambient album. Under the moniker BardSpec, Ivar's transcendent vision is brought to the world by By Norse, which is his own label, too. Ambient has many flavors, and because of this, often times artists making the jump often eschew the subtleties and miss their point completely. Fortunately, Ivar's passion can be easily seen on Hydrogen, and the drifting, zoning out with pleasure that comes along with good ambient is very present.
Here’s a pro-printed and (I presume) pro-duplicated tape from No Rent Records. The front cover has a close-up of an eye, whilst the inside features a nicely confused photo of what looks like a ruined building. This sense of microscopic viewing, but also obscured vision, is something that carries over to the contents of the cassette. The release has two long tracks, one each side, amounting to about 30 minutes of music.
In keeping with Gruenrekorder's pedigree in curating immersive multi-media experiences centred on field recordings, Angus Carlyle's In the Shadow of the Mountain does not disappoint. The work consists of fifty 100 word texts and 33 split page photographs (presented in two accompanying booklets) and a composed series of field recordings captured over a three year period in the Picentini mountain area of Southern Italy.