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Night Terror doesn’t waste time making us think the horror might all be in the characters’ heads or, for that matter, their dreams.
Father son duo ZD Grafters are dropping four new tracks of improvisational, jazz based experimentalism, crafted with synth and drums. Starting with a single chord and going outward, Dave and Zac are able to keep together through their unwritten journey and deliver a rich and fulfilling mix. Working with repetition to add stability instead of chaos, Chop Club On Road shows a team that is in step in both playing and thought, keeping the pieces coherent and unified, all while allowing the wonderful tumult of improv and jazz to shine through.
During the 1980s,a fair few films locked into heavy metal themes/ concepts, be they horror, comedies, or documentaries- one of the most successful/memorable of these was Trick Or Treat. The mid-80s film blended elements of revenge-focused supernatural horror, high school angst drama, with light touches of comedy & satire. Its plot is fairly simplistic- shock rocker Sammi Curr( Tony Fields)- a Alice Cooper/ Blackie Lawless crossbreed- dies in a fire, but manages to come back to electrified life via raven-haired/bullied teen Eddie, played by Marc Price, who is most known for his role in US Sitcom Family Ties. Here from Synapse Films is – either a UHD, Blu-ray, or DVD release- taking in a new 4k scan, new audio commentary, a lengthy new doc, and a few other things.
The Sweet House Of Horror was the second of two films Lucio Fulci made for Italian TV in the late 80s. It's a tonally haphazard blend of children’s fantasy, haunted house horror and murder mystery, with playful visual effects, and a few moments of brutal gore. Here from Cauldron Films is a recent region-free Blu-ray of the film, taking in a new 2K/uncut print of the film, with a new commentary track by genre experts, and a mix of new and archive extras.
Skullcap is a trio that plays dark folk rock with a heavy emotion and room for the players to solo and improvise. Lightly distorted blues rock fuzz guitar meets a vibrant, expressive folk lead cello, with a drummer who plays with a jazz subtlety. Snakes of Albuquerque is the band's debut album
German Kosmische legends Can have a reputation for being innovative musical pioneers. During the late 1960s and 1970s, they released a number of groundbreaking records and were renowned for their live performances. Held together by the metronomic drumming of Jaki Liebezeit, and the supreme bass playing of Holger Czukay, the band forged a career built around a solid, faultless rhythm section. This allowed guitarist Michael Karoli and keyboard wizard Irmin Schmidt to unleash their creativity over the top, with occasional vocals from original vocalist Michael Mooney or, later and more significantly Damo Suzuki. This recording was captured slightly later in their careers in 1977, and by this time, they were performing long jam-style pieces without a vocalist and had added former Traffic bassist Rosko Gee on bass, thus allowing Czukay to step away from the bass and mess about with shortwave radios and tape loop
Zonal Disturbances II finds long-term experimental mood setter and improviser offering up four slices of brooding to raw ambient guitar scaping. The CD release appears on Poland’s Zoharum, whom have been a long-term supporter/releasers of Mr Serries' work.
Here’s a CD release of a set recorded in London’s Café Oto in 2023. It finds this Belgian pianist inviting a selection of kindred spirits and collaborators to create two slices of eventful and often dense improv.
Vampire At Midnight is a late 80s film which blends elements of crime thriller, action, fanged horror, and unintentionally awkward romantic drama. The film features a soundtrack that shifts between 80s muzak, moody synth ’n’ beats, and cheesy hip-hop, with the addition of sudden/ ill-fitting street dance scenes. Here from MVD’s classic line is a bare bones/region-free DVD release of the film.
Kapitan Nemos Biblothek (aka Captain Nemo’s Library) is an experimental/ modern opera for five soloists and a chamber ensemble. Spread over two CDs, the work shifts between darting & choppy modern classic tones, off-kilter/ seesawing composition, onto guitar-edged dynamics and atmospherics.
When the liner notes of the album you’re about to review are written by primo avant-garde musician, Fred Frith you know you’re onto a good thing. In fact, it is Frith along with the Swiss free music scene that is largely responsible for the coming together of the seemingly unlikely pairing of Argentinian cellist Paula Sanchez and 'piano icon’ (the words of Frith) Katharina Weber. Both developed a close relationship with the Henry Cow alumni at the University of Basel - Sanchez a student on Frith’s improvisation master’s program, Weber a fellow teacher - and in amongst this the two female artists independently found a common ground centred on improvisation, sound and performative art. It is from these beginnings that Sanchez and Weber proceeded to take live experimentation to a new level, and it this art that features on …and discovering fishes that have their own light.
The years immediately before and after the Second World War have largely been overlooked when it comes to German filmmaking. Seems obvious why, of course, but it does leave somewhat of a significant gap in cinema history between the German Expressionists and the 70s auteur movement of Herzog, Fassbinder, Schlöndorff, Wenders et al. So, it’s no surprise that during this seemingly barren period, there were in fact a handful of filmmakers doing good work, including one Helmut Käutner, who despite a lack of recognition outside of his home nation, gained a reputation as one of Germany’s greatest filmmakers.
Mine but for its sublimation, is a sixty-minute solo piano piece- it’s a skeletal to taut affair, built around subtly shifting repetition, patterns, and atmosphere. I guess you’d compare it to some of Morton Feldman’s works for solo piano pieces, though the work is more eventful, as well as having its own distinctive qualities.
Getting its vinyl debut, Primeiro's Music for Horses hits the scene with an expanded edition featuring three brand new tracks. Now titled Music for Horses I & II, the original four tracks tackle the B-side and Primeiro's three new pieces take on the task of guiding the listener to their equine epiphany. The sides bookend a life-altering horse riding accident for Primeiro, who uses both works to show how the boundaries blur between human and non-human, utilizing ethereal tones and arpeggios.
Terror In The Fog: The Wallace Krimi at CCC is a recent six-film collection from Eureka. The focus of the four Blu-ray box set is the cycle of crime films – or krimis – released by CCC studios. The genre was hugely popular with West German audiences in the 1960s. The films were adapted from works of British crime writer Edgar Wallace and his son, Bryan Edgar Wallace. They combined the traditional murder mystery with horror, in which they depicted enigmatic killers stalking their victims through foggy English landscapes – from the streets of London to isolated rural mansions. The genre became an influence on both Giallo and Slasher forms.
This is a split album that brings together two European wall-noise projects, with Olion from Poland, and Dresser from Italy. The first offers up three shorter tracks, and a nearly twenty-six-minute track from the second.
Here’s a walled noise split bringing together two around thirty-minute tracks- from two of the longer running/ ten ten-year-plus active walled noise projects. Poland’s Vilgoc serves up a slab of thick pummelling and hiss-hazed walling, and the rather mysterious Inanition presents with a slice of rolling ‘n’ reeling wall-craft.
What is the music that comes after the apparent exhaustion with all forms of sonic articulation? Pierre Bastien & Michel Banabila have managed to construct a soundtrack for such times, fueled by enervation rather than anything like an endgame or final statement. Nuits sans Nuit is the result, and with titles like, "Closing Time: The Party is Over", "Waste Disposal", and "Here Is Your New Anthem", the thematic lines are clearly drawn. The music is primarily electronic landscapes, sparse and droney, populated by various acoustic instruments – double bass, reeds, etc. Things move as listelessly as one would expect them to under such an umbrella and have the sensation that the performers are just about ready to give up. No pathos about, though, just really being done.
Direct Action was the twenty-third album from British punk band turned experimental soundscapers, Alternative TV. The six-track album paired moody experimental rock elements with noise tones/ textures, with an atmospherically seared production. Here from Fourth Dimensions is a recent CD reissue of the 2023 album, adding a bonus track that melds anarchic spoken word with surreal soundscaping.
Theme started off in the late 90s, as a spin-off from UK noise rock collective Splintered, with a mind to do less rock-focused sound, and instead hone in on textures, drones, and abstract sounds. Meditations on Space, Volume One is the project's seventh album, and the first volume in a two-part set. It consists of one piece of music (lasting around 40 minutes) which is broken into seven parts. If I were to compare the album to anything, I’d say Michael Gira’s The Body Lover’s project. As it engagingly shifts from pared-back psycho ambience, to more detailed looping & droning material, onto denser and more dramatic work, all making for a rewardingly varied sonic trip.
Early 90s Nottingham-based industrial metal pioneers Pitch Shifter entered the BBC's Maida Vale studios on two separate occasions in April 1991 and March 1993 to record sessions for legendary BBC DJ and general underground music expert John Peel. This set compiles both sessions on one disc, six tracks in total, three from each session. "Gritter", "Tendrill "and "Dry Riser Inlet" from the 1991 session and "(A Higher Form of) Killing Radio Phuque Edit", "Diable (Wayco Survival Mix)" and "Deconstruction (Reconstruction)" from the 1993 session.
Here we have the score for Symptoms- a slow-burning psychological thriller/ come horror film. Like the movie itself, the score shifts between the lush and pastoral, and discordant and disquieting
Feasting On Craved Remains is a recent five track EP from Torsofuck-a organ gurgling death metal three piece from Finland. The project has been active on and off since the mid 90’s to present day- never comprising/ diluting their nasty/ lo-fi sound.
Dachra comes to Arrow Player with an impressive pedigree. The Tunisian horror was chosen as the closing film for International Critics' Week at the 2018 Venice International Film Festival and won the Scariest Film Award at The Overlook Film Festival the following year.