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Naked Lunch Records presents Metaplasie, a full-length collaborative effort by Maurizio Bianchi & Pharmakustik. Released in 2014, this pro-pressed CD-R comes in a full-color digipak. Bianchi and Siegmar Fricke’s Pharmakustik have worked together a number of times, through mail collaborations I’d gather. So what do we have going here? The back cover has a statement mentioning to the “abnormal environment of electro-cells” and the “sounds for stratified squamous metaplastic emotions,” which truthfully sounds like academic gibberish and means absolutely nothing this intellectual lightweight. So I’ll let the sounds speak for themselves.
Following closely on the heels of their release of Lovecraft's "The Hound" and "The Music of Erich Zahn," Cadabra records offers up a limited 7" featuring 7 of Lovecraft's poems. Again read by Andrew Leman, this release shows the lesser known side of Lovecraft's work. Quick and elegant, this is a fun little listen that will definitely add atmosphere to any Halloween (er, Hallowe'en?) gathering.
Piano, violin, Viola, Cello was the final piece composed by Morton Feldman- one of the great minimalist/modern classical composers of the 20th century. And fittingly for a last work it’s suitable sombre & slow in both it’s pace & atmosphere, with this version of the piece coming in at the seventy five minute mark.
American Horror Project Vol 1 brings together three relatively obscure, often arty, & moody American horror films from the 1970’s. The set features six discs in all- one blu-ray, and one DVD for each film- added to this we get a 60 page booklet, & each film has it’s own case with the whole set coming in a sturdy thick card slip case.
Unter Grund is a two part composition originally produced as a sound installation for the NOW / Parallele Welten festival in 2014 at the Zollverein coal mining site near Gelsenkirchen. The choice of location was apt as the material which makes up this recording is principally derived from underground sources involving mines, pumping stations and other machinic locations associated with the Ruhr area which have some connection to water.
I think it’s fair to say that Morton Feldman stands as one of my favourite modern classic/minimalist composer, as his mostly pattern based compositions managed to really capture haunting moodiness, angular atmospherics, felt emotionality, & creativity . Here we have a 2016 release of one of his pieces from the early 1980’s, and really it works as a great snap-shot of the scope of his work.
Veteran jazz pianist and composer Wayne Horvitz has returned with a new band of players called 'The Royal Room Collective Music Ensemble', and a brand new album of his sweetly melodic jazz compositions, with their generally light and upbeat tone, and flambouyant, almost cinematic expressiveness. The attitude of his music could not be further contrasted from the jaded anti-musicality and genre parody performed by Zorn's Naked City, ironically still the group for which Horvitz is most often recognized.
Here’s a good, old-fashioned jewel case cd (it’s been a while), from the Touch label. It features the work of Bruce Gilbert and BAW (A. David Crawforth and Naomi Siderfin); whilst BAW are new to me, Gilbert is, of course, the Bruce from Wire - the seminal 1970s punk band. Here, the three collaborate on an album of subtle, low-key electronics; mixed in with field recordings and more rhythmic passages. There’s seven tracks, ranging from around nine minutes to over thirteen, and they run into each other; so it’s a lengthy listen.
Thomas Ekelund’s (Trepaneringsritualen) Beläten label presents Deceivers, the debut album by Swedish duo Alvar. Released in the summer of 2015 on cassette, you can all be rest assured that this mini album has already gone the way of the dodo. However, it can still be acquired digitally through the label’s bandcamp site. Isn’t the internet a wonderful thing? So in case you’re wondering, the name Alvar is the name of a mysterious spectre found to haunt a barren plain off the east coast of Sweden. Spooky right?
Formed by Autopsy guitarist Eric Cutler, Necrosic is a five piece made up of members of Impaled, Scolex, Ascended Dead, and Gravehill. Proving that solid, no frills, riff centered death metal always entertains, their debut EP, Putrid Decimation, will hammer its way into your heart through skillful guitar work, pounding drums, and rough vocals. And, at under twenty minutes, you can fit a listen into even the tightest of schedules.
Akagi is a recent release from prolific & respected one man Us ambient project Celer. It comes in either the form of a CD, or a digital download, and features just a single seventy nine minute slice of soothing, golden, and life affirming ambience.
Here we have the DVD/Blue-ray release of Theory of Obscurity- the rather wonderful & justifiable praised/ celebrated documentary about the mysterious sound & art collective known as The Residents. And just to clarify I’m reviewing the DVD version of the release- so I’ll be discussing the extras etc of this version of the release.
Rapoon is the ritualized soundscape project of Robin Storey, veteran of industrial/surrealist sound collage group Zoviet France. His music is known for its primitivist 'found music' feeling, and highly evocative, transporting quality. Zoharum is re-issuing Rapoon's 1999 album "What Do You Suppose? (The Alien Question)" in deluxe form, with an extra disk of material included as well, titled "Project Blue Book".
I reviewed a Tim Olive collaboration a while back, on 845 Audio, and Dominion Mills comes packaged in a similar manner: a cardboard wallet, sparsely printed, with a simple drawing of concentric circles and the barest of details. The cd inside contains three pieces, all towards the shorter side of things - by improv standards - and all cut from the same cloth. Here, Olive plays ‘magnetic pickups’, whilst Jacques performs with ‘rotating devices’ - if this sounds obtuse and austere, well… you’d be right.
Japanese ambient pianist Ryuichi Sakamoto has paired with art ambient soundscape artists Iluha and Taylor Deupree for something of a 12k supergroup. "Perpetual", the resulting album, is a rich and complex sound environment, containing a deeper density of sound and wider range of timbres than most 12k releases.
To most extreme music fans, the Swedes have become pretty synonymous with death and black metal. Their tell tale tones have influenced many while making a sound that is clearly their own. Growing alongside these movements was the Swedish industrial scene. Much like their metal counterparts, these acts created a sound uniquely theirs, and boldly inspirational. Stemming from legendary labels like Cold Meat Industry, this sound continues today, and is still a large part of the death industrial genre. Analfabetism's newest continues the strong Swedish industrial tradition of cold, grim, rough music.
This is a recent release from one of less frequent projects of respected, prolific & multi project linked French wall-noise maker Julien Skrobek. For this project he focuses in on old school yet moody walled noise with a homicidal theme. And for this C30 release the theme is Jess Franco’s 1976 movie Jack The Ripper, which saw respected yet often unbalanced German actor Klaus Kinsk taking on the role of the Whitechapel murder who butchered five women in Victorian London.
Here we have a double CDR release from Widow Park; which is one of the walled noise projects of Australian based noise maker Shaun Mack-also of Morte Cammina, Girl On The Bridge, and Bleak August. And runner of the great wall noise only label Needle & Knife, who put out this release.
Twine brings together two Us based purveyors of electro-acoustic ambience. The seven track CD is a journey into instrumental loop based ambience & sonic mood setting, which is alive with micro tonal detail & pleasing yet subtle noise elements.
This album arrives in a cardboard wallet, with a very nicely painted front cover; I can’t really do it justice, but it combines fiddly detail with a more abstract, formal approach, to make something incredibly eye-catching. Interestingly, the back cover played a bit of a trick on me: basically, it’s designed so that ‘Philippe Petit’, ‘Multicoloured’, and ‘Shadows’ are spelled out in capitals down the sleeve, with one track title/description under each word. This had the effect of convincing me that it was a three way split between these three capitalised projects… However, it turns out to be all Petit’s work: three tracks, with the last being divided into parts 1 and 2.
Cold Spring Records presents Outstretch Your Hand For The Impress Of Truth, the new full-length CD by Colossloth. Colossloth is the one-man project of Wooly Woolaston based out of Leicester, UK.
Here we have a C30 release from this English walled noise project, who themes all of its release around us pop singer Katy Perry. The tape takes in two 15 minute tracks, and these are both themed around "Birthday"- which was a 2013 single from Ms Perry.
Coloured Walls Part 2 is a CDR release from this prolific Russian walled noise project, and it appeared in January 2015. The disc takes in four creative & fairly varied sounding examples of wall craft, and each runs between seven & nineteen minutes.
Feral House is well known as a publisher of esoteric and fringe subjects, probably best recognised in musical circles as the name behind theLords of Chaos book on black metal. Here, it presents the words of Robert Forbes and Eddie Stampton, on an equally maligned area of rock music: ‘nationalist skinhead rock’. I realise that’s a very weak definition, but it essentially encompasses the vast majority of the bands within: some are nationalist without being ‘Nazi’, and musical styles range from oi to hard rock, with some folk and electronics around the edges - the skinhead part is pretty spot on, though: there’s not a lot of hair to be seen in the many photos! This is a serious tome: over six hundred pages, listing hundreds (thousands?) of gigs, and probably hundreds of bands; illustrated throughout with grainy black and white photos, and crumpled flyers.