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Well, this tape is a good, old-fashioned, homemade job: a colour, printed inlay, holding a Maxell blank tape, with handwritten titles. I think this is the most notably diy release I’ve reviewed for a long time, and it’s nothing but refreshing. The tape has two tracks from each project, with both sides amounting to 45 minutes each. Cannibal Meat Holocaust is another persona of Ivan Sandakov - the figure behind Sleep Column, Oasis of the Zombies, the Wall Noise label, et al; whilst Ataraxy is the long-standing project of Gag, the man behind Vomit Bucket Productions - so we’re in safe hands, here.
New York synth trio Forma returns with their third full length, Physicalist. Released by kranky, in either a CD or double LP format- it comes in a gatefold jacket designed by Robert Beatty. The surreal landscape on the cover is a hint at what lies on the inside, and helps the listener get closer to the kosmische and synth that Forma delivers.
Here’s the second in the new batch of the ‘Neon-Wall’ releases from Lurker Bias. This time around we have two wall’s from the always worthy French wall-noise project Chier. And the C32 offers up two side long slices creatively textured wall-craft from the project.
Here we have the first in the new batch of ’Neon Wall’ releases, put out by Lurker Bias- each release finds a new or more seasoned HNW artists offering up two sides worth of tape. The initial series featured ten releases, and this new set offers up yet another ten tapes. This first release in the new set comes from London Uk based project A Raja's Mesh Men, and offered up here we have two slices of constricted, often dense, yet interestingly layered wall-craft.
Following on from the likes of Dead Body Collection & Raven, Dosis Letalis is another highly prolific walled noise project from Serbia. The project seemingly stared in October of 2015, and has so far amassed coming on for twenty releases in just under a year. Perpetual Panorama Of Wane is a cassette/ digital download on New York noise/dark ambient label Endless Landscapes Of Decay- it features two quarter of an hour tracks
Self Hate is the first wall-noise release from hermit- a Californian based noise project that’s all the work of the mind behind the Grey Matter Productions label. The release came as either a cassette release( with a whole extra side/ track), or a digital release. I’m reviewing the cassette version- which is sadly now out of print.
In the mid 1980s a young Dutch director Alexander Oey set about capturing something of the strange sub-cultural music scene centred around London which had grown out of the breech created by Throbbing Gristle and the first wave of Industrial music in the 1970s. The groups he chose to work with were Coil, Foetus, Current 93 and Test Dept. The result was a collection of interviews and live footage released on VHS in 1988 called The Sound of Progress which Cold Spring have now seen fit to give a remastered DVD release.
Cornucopia della Morte is the latest album from American doom legend John Gallo. Originally recorded in 2013 and shelved whilst Gallo worked on his solo project John Gallow, whose debut album Violet Dreams was also released on I, Voidhanger Records.
On this their third album for Cyclic Law, Beyond Sensory Experience have produced an enjoyable and immersive musical adventure filled with lush yet unsettling melodies and that wonderful sense of darkness that pervades much of Swedish culture. BSE are the Dark Ambient project of Swedish duo Drakh and K. Meitzer from Uppsala to the north of Stockholm and have been making music together since 2001.
Wolvserpent hail from Idaho. Using drums, guitars, violins and vocals this “metal” (apparently) duo are writing some of the most intense, dark and eerie music I have heard in a very long time.
This might be Troller's second album, however it’s my first experience with the project. And given the press release I was really looking forward to checking it out. Here’s a snapshot of said press release “Lush, lugubrious sound ...heavy synths, slow-motion rhythms...haunting vocal melodies... brooding blasts of dark pop...the songs seemed to emanate from some cavernous subterranean chamber.” So does it live up to the claims made? In my opinion sadly not. On the whole the album smacks of the year 1982, with it’s sub-standard light-goth & hint’s at prog rock.
Receiving The Approaching Memory is a new composition from British minimalist/modern classical composer Bryn Harrison. The work is for Violin & Piano, and is built around an entrancing & subtle shifting selection of interweaved notation patterns.
Tales of the Scissor Killer comes in a slim DVD case, with no-nonsense, black and white graphics and design - though the thing that will catch your eye first (fittingly), is the cover image: a pair of scissors, nestling points first between someone’s thick eyelashes… The CDR contains three tracks, with the shorter, second piece - 10:38 minutes - bookended by first and last tracks around the half hour mark.
Dave Ball & Jon Savage's collaborative album "Photosynthesis" is a synthesizer odyssey with a deep underlying warmth, a resounding low end that comfortably drones as dramatic intervals are struck like ominous horn calls. It has the reassuring consistency of a machine steadily running for hours and hours and all night, the hum of the motor persisting even in the darkness. It brings to mind patiently scrying for anomalies in a softly shifting bed of static, and long planetary orbits.
The Glittering Thing On The Mountain brings together a selection of fascinating, beautifully recorded, and varied field recordings made in one of the more remote & untouched jungles of Japan.
Synopsis:…is the latest selection of dense ‘n’ depraved sonic noise fruit from this mysterious collective from Northern England. The release comes in the form of a three C90 set, offering up four & a half hours worth of perverse noise-craft. The set moves between: dense blends of grey pummelling harsh drone & soured harsh noise. Unmoving & crude walled noise, and blends of both harsh noise & HNW.
This rather wonderfully named and seemingly quite mysterious project brew-up a heady & subtly genre mixing sound that moves from: drifting ‘n’ psychedelic, onto smoky/ filmatic, through-to-moody-yet taut, onto quirky & loosely Avant-grade. Ectopic Apiary is the project’s debut release, & it comes in the form of a CDR released on UK's Reverb Worship in an edition of 50 copies
Geräuschmanufaktur presents Ate Gena, a full-length CD by Miguel A. Garcia & Alfredo Costa Monteiro. Released earlier this year, Ate Gena is the first offering by this collaboration of multi-media artists. I wasn’t at all familiar with either artist, but Geräuschmanufaktur has released a pretty solid slate of releases over the years, so color me intrigued.
Now legendary noise/industrial outfit, Controlled Bleeding, released their debut, Distress Signals I, on Broken Flag in 1984. Having never been properly reissued on CD or vinyl, this tape debut became much sought after and very hard to find. Working with Paul Lemos, Artoffact reissued Distress Signals I, and also unearthed an interesting tidbit: this wasn't what was originally intended for Broken Flag. Lemos had a second version that has been unheard to this day. This version will also be released later by Artoffact.
In recent years there has been a glut of horror films trying to recapture both the vibe, plot, character make-up, and setting of slasher films from the early 1980’s. And these have worked to varying results, Lake Nowhere is one of the more successful of these ‘tributes’ to the golden age of the slasher. As it almost perfectly replicates the feel, look, & atmosphere of said slasher's, yet adds in it’s own creative & darkly arty twists to the formula- making it rise above it’s influences.
Here are two short, but highly effective shots of walled noise barbarism. This C20 takes in two side long slices of crude, suffocating, and totally nihilistic wall-craft. Featured here we have the master of unchanging wall-nastiness Vomir, and scene newcomer Polish project Pudren…with both parties offering up suitably crushing 'n' searing slabs of HNW bleak-ness.
Tera-AntiQu presents Kapot, an 80 minute full-length cassette by Uitgeschakeld. This Dutch wall noise project has been kicking it for a couple years now. I reviewed their Die Zwei Großen Europäischen Narkotika cassette a few weeks back and wasn’t exactly floored by it. That said, time has passed and with a clean slate I approached Kapot.
Painkiller (John Zorn, Bill Laswell and Mick Harris) is somewhat of a legendary outfit among John Zorn fans and those who enjoy extremely aggressive free jazz. While I can't say I ever really feel like listening to it, I have respect for the ferocity of their initial 'jazzcore' EPs, "Guts of a Virgin" and "Buried Secrets". Across the rest of their career, however, my opinion diverges from many, as I find Zorn's blatant, snarky aggression to be increasingly at odds with Laswell's relaxed new age and dub aesthetic.
The Glowing Man is the third and seemingly last album from the present line-up of the Swans. Just like the two previous albums, 2012’s The Seer, and 2014’s To Be Kind, it’s another double CD affair. And once again it features mostly very lengthy tracks, that are taut/ tensioned in their repetitive sound. Also their is often quite amassed orchestrated sound to proceedings; which blends together elements of noise rock, apocalyptic rock, & post-rock.