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This is a very smartly presented package: 2 CDs in a fold-out digipak, complete with a glossy booklet. The Westerlies are a brass quartet, two trumpets (Mulherkar and Hensler), and two trombones (Clausen and de Koch), and the discs contain a mix of compositions from the individual members, plus pieces by Ellington and Ives (for example).
Mother of Abominations, Angelic Foe’s second album, follows the critically acclaimed debut Oppressed by the Heavens released in 2012. Written by Annmari (Arcana and Sophia) and video games sound designer Samuel Lidström, this nine track album sountracks a dramatic and melodious invitation to worlds of mysticism, haunted by otherworldly creatures.
Cadabra records continues its pummeling release schedule this month with their recording of Robert W. Chambers' The Yellow Sign. Once again teaming up the vocal talents of Anthony D.P. Mann and the musical skills of Goblin's Maurizio Guarini, The Yellow Sign is once again resurrected through current media. With both the retail and deluxe versions containing liner notes from scholar S.T. Joshi, this release is sure to please any horror fan.
Originally released in 1981 Madhouse was Italian produced US shot slasher film, which here gets it’s first ever blu ray release from Arrow Video(both in the UK & US). It’s certainly a curious, though not completely successful blend slasher, euro gore, deranged priests & killer dogs with a US southern gothic setting. Oh and it also landed up on the UK's video nasty list in the 80’s
The Chap are a British avant pop rock band formed in 2000. Their 8th and most recent album, "The Show Must Go" came out in 2015. This is my first time hearing the band.
The Doctors Of Madness where a 1970’s British band that never really fitted in, with their heady & often haphazard blend of art rock, proto-punk, & pub rock. So as a result during their initial lifetime (between 1974- 1978) they never got the recognition or praise they truly deserved. Perfect Past is a recent CD box set that remedies this issue as it brings together the band's first three albums, plus bonus tracks, and a fairly thick inlay booklet
When you think of animation- what comes to mind?-maybe the many films of the Disney studios, or possibly the more edgy & cult out-put of Japanese anime. I’m sure when you think of animation you don’t think of shock, horror or revulsion. Sure you had adult cartoons like Fritz The Cat, and of course the more extreme horror anmie of the likes of the Urotsukidoji series or Wicked City- but at the end of the day these lightly shock, and in reality they where just cartoons, which as a art form does seem somewhat removed from both shock & any feeling of reality. Where The Dead Go To Die, is a feature length animated film, that bloody rips-up, brutally rapes, then spews–up what you expect from the form, and creates one of the most unrelenting, disturbing, and wholly depraved things you’ll ever have seen.
Another release from the sound-art side of Germany's Gruenrekorder, Komplex is a collaboration between saxophonist Roger Döring and electronic improviser Konrad Korabiewski. Recorded over two years in a variety of locations and different acoustic spaces, Döring, who also improvises on c clarinet, provides the material which Korabiewski manipulates into unfamiliar shapes or adds to with mostly subtle electronics and field recordings.
Bubba the Redneck Werewolf is a 2014 film directed by Brendan Jackson Rogers, also known for a host of spoof comedy short films including Jurassic Job Hunt and Baywatch of the Caribbean. The film stars Fred Lass as Bubba, Malone Thomas as Bobbie Jo and Mitch Hyman as the devil, and is only Rogers’ second attempt at a full-length film after his feature length debut Flashback in 2011. Bubba is certainly the more interesting of the two features, however his shorts have thus far eluded me. The film is based on Mitch Hyman’s long running comic book series and Hyman himself, as already mentioned, stars as the devil.
Masami Akita’s Merzbow needs no introduction to anyone who has even the slightest passing interest in the industrial or (japa)noise scenes. With coming on for 300 albums released in a 30 year period Akita has proven not just his longevity as an artist, but also he’s continued to develop creatively.
The Autopsy of Jane Doe brings together elements of classic haunted house horror, unreeling mystery, realistic-though-never overplayed gore, a great cast, and a very tangible feeling of both dread & fear. All to create one of the more distinctive, downright unsettling, and original horror films I’ve seen in some time.
Here’s a four CDR set from The Ebony Tower, taking the novel Dance, Dance, Dance by Haruki Murakami as its theme. At this point, your reviewer will confess that they’ve never read a word of Murakami in their life, so… The front cover has a human figure with a ram’s skull, sat reading, and drinking a cup of presumably tea or coffee. This has no meaning to me, but no doubt readers of Dance, Dance, Dance will nod knowingly. The set has four discs, each with one long track, ranging from a short 38:39 minutes, to a much longer 1:12:06 minutes. All are fine works of wall noise.
Gruenrekorder has been one of my favourite labels of the last few years. Their output traces a line from socio-political academic works like Hein Schoer's remarkable The Sounding Museum to documentary style field recordings and in this case, complex, composed works of sound-art. The blurb for R.Schwarz's The Scale of Things notes its distant relationship with classic musique concrete but emphasises the transformational approach taken by Schwarz and his combining audio processing with modular synthesis. The result is a rather dark and engaging suite of pieces that attempt to capture something of the chaos and indeterminacy of the natural environment, amplifying it through studio techniques and electronic sound. The cover art gives some indication to the compositional approach, eschewing the type of formal style associated with music concrete; instead, presenting a confusing collage of monochrome environments and magnified elements that could be insect, plant or otherwise.
Making Summer more wondrous for the third year in a row, How Do You Are? gives the world the fourth volume of Too Slow to Disco (can't NOT count their Ladies edition). Yet again, DJ Supermarkt culled the crates for slow, grooving, aural sunshine. Whether slow disco, or sun-drenched yacht rock, the tracks on Too Slow to Disco, Vol 3 bring about a bright, fun vibe that continues for eighteen smile inducing tracks.
Eerie Lurking On The Sensors is a C90 from late 2016, and it features two side long slices of seared, extremely thick, and multi-layered walled noise themed around doomed astronauts trapped out in space.
It’s fair to say for the most part the walled noise/ static noise/ noise texturing genre often focuses in on darker, bleaker & grimmer sound & themes. So it’s always nice to see a project that’s trying something a little different. Here we have the first release from this Paris-based project, and it blends together static noise elements with often moody-yet- occasionally tuneful synth matter.
Sogra is another project from the highly prolific Russian industrial/noise/ambient artist’s Vitaly Maklakov(Light Collapse, Kromeshna, and Obozdur). Here we have 2017 CDR releases, which feature three twenty plus minute examples of weathered & atmospheric walled-noise.
Beneath The Roots offers up three textural creative examples of walled-noise from Elektrostal Russia-based project. The release comes in the form of a C90, coming in an edition of ten copies, and as of this review, the label still has copies left.
This deluxe 45th anniversary edition of the classic debut album by British progressive rock legends Nektar is a 3 disc set packed to the gills with amazing music. The first disc features the original album and includes a 5.1 surround mix, whilst discs 2 and 3 feature a complete 2 hour plus live recording of the band from Bessunger Turnhalle in Darmstadt, Germany, in November of 1971.
Italian progressive rock is a subgenre that tends to tick a lot of boxes for myself. Ingranaggi Della Valle are relatively new band who I am hearing for the first time with this their second album. Their debut In Hoc Signo, was recorded in late 2012, and released in May of the following year. Over the next two years the band went through various lineup changes before heading into the recording studio in 2016 to record this their second album Warm Spaced Blue. The album features a guest appearance from Goblin’s Fabio Pignatelli on bass guitar.
Gruenrekorder presents REPREMONTIUM, the second collaborative venture by Artificial Memory Trace and Porya Hatami. Available digitally in MP3 and FLAC formats, this massive single piece is a follow up to the duo’s 2015 release EVOLVA 5.
Italian dark ambient /industrial newcomers Vacuum Aeterna present their debut album Project:Darkscapes. This is the first instalment of their unfolding aural journey and consists of nine tracks, spread over 56 minutes. Throughout this journey you are treated to a melee of ritual tribalism, eerie and cryptic soundscapes over-wrought industrial noises, and a tonne of reverb.
Originally recorded between 1996-1997, and only available as a ten track limited edition of three hundred & twenty LPs when it was released by Horizonte Espectral. This new cd edition, on the label Other Voices, comes with one additional track.
Here’s another trip into the archives from Noise, this time being a double CD digipak summary of Kreator’s work for the label. The discs contain 30 tracks from six albums, and are helped out by a booklet that briefly details the band’s existence during the years covered by the compilation.