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Stadium is the most recent release from this Australian sound artists & field recordist. It comes in the form of a CDR, and offers up eleven tracks taking-in field recordings captured over a five year period in & around the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG) stadium.
Snake Goddess is a C60 split bringing together two Euro walled-noise acts. We have Toulouse based Chier, and Stockholm based Gamiani- both acts are fairly new additions to the scene with Chier starting in 2015, and Gamiani starting last year. The tape features a single track per side, and each are dense/ layered examples of HNW.
Opollo's "Stone Tapes" is the debut of a new alias of melodic guitar drone/ambient musician Jarek Leskiewicz, a former member of Echoes of Yul (whose album "The Healing" I also reviewed on this site last year) and other projects such as Blurred City Lights and Naked On My Own. This particular album is themed after space exploration, and more specifically the moon landing, with pictures of astronauts and the surface of the moon all through the packaging.
Bill Moseley has been a hero of mine since the first time I watched The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 as an impressionable teenager. His character Chop Top remains my favourite member of the crazed Sawyer clan. His appearance in the movie sporting a metal plate in his head and experiencing what can only be described as some of the most wicked acid flashbacks, endeared him to myself and thousands of other young gore hounds. His recent revival under the guidance of Rob Zombie was a pleasure to see, starring in the messy but fun House of 1,000 Corpses and the eminently more impressive Devil’s Rejects seems to have brought him back into vogue.
Here we have the third in the series of reissues of early releases from Austrian industrial innovators Allerseelen-this new CD release follows on from 2014’s Schwartzer Rab, and 2015’s Requiem.
Steel Hook Prostheses have been knocking about the death industrial scene for 15 years now – a fact that makes me feel bloody old! - and have belted out 9 albums during that period.Calm Morbidity, their latest 10 track release, takes their level of despair to an otherwise unfounded level.
Bloodshock is the second chapter in the American version of the Guinea Pig series- which of course started off as a sequence of short Japanese of films back in the 80’s. Featuring extreme & intense special effects, prolonged torture, and little or no story. As a long term fan of all forms of extreme art( be it music, sound, art, or film)- I was aware of, and had read about the series. But had never really felt the urge to investigate them, due to the real lack of story/point to these films…so when I read Bloodshock was attempting to inject more story/ depth into the series I decided I’d give it a look.
Floodlines is the document of a live performance by former Slowdive member Simon Scott at Cafe Oto in January of last year. Despite the beloved status of his former band I can't help but feel Scott has by now earned the right to be defined in relation to his own quite considerable body of solo work. Starting out with two gloomy dark ambient cum shoegaze records on Erik Skodvin's Miasmah label, Scott's recent output has focussed more on processed field recordings, minimalism and even sound ecology.
Well, here’s a monster tome from Mural: a three CD set, in a fold-out digipak. It documents a performance at the Rothko Chapel in Texas, in 2013, which lasted over four hours. The trio consist of: Jim Denley - wind instruments, Kim Myhr - twelve-string guitar, zither, and Ingar Zach - gran casa, percussion.
La Proie Pour L'Ombre is a two way split bringing together two tracks a piece from two of the most respected & praised acts from with in the French walled noise scene. The release appeared in the form of CDR back in October of last year- it’s sadly now sold-out in physical form, but is well worth downloading from the labels bandcamp, or searching for on discogs, as it offers up four well made & appealing slices of wall-matter.
From September 2016 here we have a C60 release from Serbian walled-noise project Dosis Letalis. The tape takes in two side long slices of taut, suffocating, and thickly weaved wall-matter. The release came in an edition of 15 copies, and as of writing the label still has 5 copies left.
Though this once highly prolific Serbian walled noise project stopped creating new work in early 2016, there is still a large backlog of unreleased material. And this C20 tape on Swish noise label Ominous Recordings is one such release. On offer here are two side long slices of unforgiving, brain-drilling, & stark walled noise.
Returning to Cold Spring for the third time, Tunnels of Ah's Surgical Fires sees the project change direction slightly and head for darker vibes and less vocal interference. Following pretty hot on the heels of their last release, Tunnels' newest is eight tracks of low, creeping misery. Dark and fairly hypnotic, Surgical Fires will draw the listener into a bleak world on the edge of destruction.
Formed in 1998 and inspired by such luminaries as Abruptum, Gnaw Their Tongues, Sunn O))) and Wardruna, T.O.M.B. are a US based, occult, blackened metal project, who have birthed a total of 13 different releases including splits, E.Ps and LPs during that time. The band recently signed to Peaceville Records and this, their most recent release, Fury Nocturnus, was released in October of 2016.
Sam Kidel is perhaps better known as a member of Bristolian abstract techno outfit Killing Sound, whose superb 2014 eponymous EP on Blackest Ever Black has sadly yet to be followed up. Outside of his duties with Killing Sound Kidel spent much of 2015 researching the notorious Muzak corporation, now rebranded as the suitably dystopic sounding Mood Media. As Kidel's sleeve notes emphasise, the corporation produces music to be deployed by companies towards clients, employees and the public at large to encourage co-operation and an upbeat attitude.
Female Japanese art ambient composer Sawako Kato's 2014 album "nu.it" is a gentle, understated record. Though her first album in 3 years, it is the continuation of a long string of more than 10 albums dating back to 2000.
Killing for Culture is an extremely thorough, at times unsettling, yet often fascinating book about the history of death on film. Covering both simulated & real deaths- taking in Mondo movies, Snuff, televised deaths, internet killings /executions, films, books(about snuff), video games, fetish porn, and beyond
Here we have a ltd & deluxe CD/7inch vinyl/ box set of rare material from respected & cult Italian musician Paul Chain; whose known for his fairly unique & distinctive mix of doom metal, psychedelic rock, and gothic flavoured experimentation.
Jana Irmert is a Berlin-based sound and media artist. Being interested in the vague, irrational, less tangible aspects of existence. Having produced both solo pieces and numerous collaborations, her work features electroacoustic multichannel compositions, audiovisual installations and joint projects with filmmakers, dancers and visual artists.
The Four Stages of Enlightenment is a four disc CDR set, with each disc offering a lengthy submersion in dense wall- craft from this up & coming Dutch project. Fitting the releases title, the theme behind all the ‘walls’ here is ancient Eastern philosophy & mediation.
This concise little album holds a whole world within. The professionally printed, and pressed release is colourful without being garish - and that applies to the sounds as well as the artwork. We have three elements here, all entwined: sounds, image, and text - and all revolving around the figure of Richard Hugo.
Continuing to release at a break-neck pace, Cadabra Records just unleashed another limited LP of spoken word horror. Their third Clark Ashton Smith vehicle, The Muse of Hyperborea sees 18 of Smith's poems deftly read once again by horror literature scholar S.T. Joshi. Paired again with the sonic meanderings of Theologian, Smith's poems are given a vibrant new life by this focused and inspired label.
It’s fair to say that Howling II: Your Sister Is a Werewolf has to one of the great OTT, campy, & fun horror movies of the 1980’s. Here we have a reissue of the film from late 2016 on Arrow Video.
Loscil, is the ambient/electronic project of prolific Canadian producer, Scott Morgan. “Monument Builders” is the 16th album of a career dating back as far as 1999 at which time he released his debut as Loscil, “A New Demonstration of Thermodynamic Tendencies.”