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Here on Minotauro records we have another welcome reissue from the back catalogue of cult Italian musician Paul Chain. Ash is a just under thirty minute Ep that originally appeared back in 1988, and here it’s expanded to a full length with the addition of two extra tracks. Sound wise the material here moves away from the more doom & psychedelic rock feel of much of Mr Chains work, going for a more trash/ speed metal tinged feel- though it still has that distinctive & creatively unhinged Paul Chain flare about it, that helps it stand apart from common garden examples of the genre.
Haudattujen Valvoja is the tenth full length release from this Finish dark ritual & ambient collective. It finds the bands sound at it’s most sparse & experimental- focus in on pared back blends of un-harmonic ritual horn bays, thin chugging mats of doom focused experimental guitar textures, very subdued drone drifts, and highly skeletal ritual elements.
Crónica presents Everything Emanating from the Sun, a single track CD by Yiorgis Sakellariou. Sakellariou is a long-running experimental composer and musician based out of Athens, Greece. On this outing, he receives some additional sounds courtesy of Simon Whetham and John Grzinich. This release marks the first in a series called Corollaries, compiling works produced during the Active Crossover: Mooste, a cross-cultural collaborative residency curated by Simon Whetham during April/May 2015.
The Operating Theatre is the first book of poetry from New Jersey based Christopher Ropes. Mr Ropes will be most known to long time M[m] readers as the mind behind Nighttime In The Abyss, which blends together disturbing spoken word, blacked noise, power electronics, black metal, and dark ambience into a distinctive & highly troubling sonic strew.
Ohio death metal band Embalmer is pretty well known, despite the dearth of output over its long career. Numerous breaks haven't kept the band down, and their follow up to 2006's 13 Faces of Death shows the band's return to their brutal roots. Closer in tone to their 1995 Relapse debut There Was Blood Everywhere, Emanations From the Crypt is a thick, dark slice of death that should please your ears and dampen your spirits.
"An Evolutionary Music" is a collection of recordings made in the years 1972-1979 by Parisian born musician Ariel Kalma. Most of them are circular, repetitive melodic loop pieces made primarily out of organ (and other instruments) and analog delays. As a result, they sound inevitably similar to Terry Riley's similarly constructed "A Rainbow in Curved Air".
Here’s another release from the prolific Altar Of Waste, presented, as ever, with laboured over artwork and packaging. I say ‘another release’, but this is actually rather old: it’s catalogued as AOW 154, and the latest release is AOW 378… Anyway, ‘Epidermal Nevi, Neoplasms, & Cysts’ arrives across three discs; all decorated, like the inlay and booklet, with pinkish, medical imagery of cells - very striking and deceptively simple. The thirty-three tracks are all named with medical terms, to a level that Carcass would be proud of. Particular favourites include: ‘Lichen Planus’, ‘Marjolin’s Ulcer’, ‘Giant Solitary Trichoepithelioma’, ‘Squamous Cell Carcinoma’, and, tied for first place, ‘Ciliated Cyst Of The Vulva’ and ‘Epidermolytic Acanthoma Of The Scrotum’. The release straddles the worlds of Harsh Noise and Harsh Noise Wall, sometimes falling into an unrewarding spot between the two.
Regler returns for their latest installment Regel #4; a full-length CD released by co-conspirators: At War With False Noise, Rapid Moment, Pilgrim Talk and Decimation Sociale. For the uninitiated, Regler is collaborative project featuring Mattin (Basque experimental musician known for his collaborations with Phillip Best, Junko, Bryan Eubanks, and others) and Anders Bryngelsson of Brainbombs fame. The concept of the project according to Mattin, is to “set up rules and try to do different genres of music with rock instruments.” In Regel #4, the duo set out to tackle Harsh Noise Wall.
Here we have a split walled noise release on French label Required Rate of Return, and it features a track a piece from two of the longer severing & respected members of the worldwide HNW scene. The release features intense & humanity hating Quebec based project Bleak Existence, and often suicidal themed Italian project Nascitari- each party offers up a twenty six to thirty minute ‘wall’.
Italian noiser Venta Protesix sees a 20 track compilation from AD AAD AT in Anni Di Masturbazione. Armed with only a laptop and a bombastic mission statement, VP aims to take the noise world by storm. Whether he completes this mission or not is definitely up to the individual listener, but the career spanning tracks contained on Anni Di Masturbazione should give a good indication of Venta's output.
Austin Texas Clint Coker is a guitarist and noise experimentalist, but with-in the walled noise scene he’s most known for his old horror movie focused HNW project Nightmare Castle. Fragments, as it titles suggests is a collection of sonic-off- cuts, experiments, and blends of guitar work & experimental texturing from Mr Cokers various projects.
Diyu is a c90 release from French husband & wife wall noise duo Absurde(Charlotte and Julien Skrobek), which appeared in 2015 on the pairs own label. And it offers up two side long slices of dense & fairly fixed yet rewarding wall-craft.
Niton's "Tiresias" is a collection of dramatic instrumental soundscapes with anticipatory march-like rhythms, vintage 70's synthesizer wails and verb washed cello. The group's 3 members are all credited with 'electronics', and two with 'strings' as well.
Here's a 2015 release from Finnish dark ambient label Aural Hypnox. It's a combined re-issue of two of Aeoga's out of print early releases, the CDr "Triangle of Nebula-Devourers" and cassette "Palace for Vultunales", both originally released in 2005 in the label's characteristic highly limited editions. I was excited to hear this re-issue, as Aeoga's other early works such as "COAV" and "Zenith Beyond the Helix Locus" are among the most vividly intense visionary tools of their kind.
Well, here’s a two cd set from a name quite unknown to me, which is surprising, given the life that he has led… I’ll be lazy, and quote at length from the press spiel:
Here’s a six disc CDR set that offers up six hours worth of dense, punishing yet often texturally detailed walled noise from this Greeley Colorado project. As with pretty much everything put out by this project the set is themed around works of literature, and this time the focus is 1Q84- which is a series of three interconnecting novels written by highly respected Japanese Magic realism/ modern surrealist author Haruki Murakami.
Eolian Empire presents Black Haze, the new vinyl LP by Tiny Knives. The Portland punk trio of Ursula Morton, Jamey Anderson, and Jai Milx have been kicking for 6 years
Between new albums, collaborations, and re-releases, the past few years have been great for Troum fans. The legendary German drone duo is back on Cold Spring with their latest, Acouasme. Taking a drastically different approach from the close of the "Power Romantic" trilogy closer, 2013's Mare Morphosis, Acouasme works its way into the listener's brain with darkness and misery. And, since you're reading this on m[m], you realize that's a good thing.
Paul Jebanasam’s recorded output is regrettably small. This, the follow-up to 2013’s Rites - an album of liturgical music for the post-dubstep age – is only Jebanasam’s second full length record, released as its predecessor was on his own Subtext label. Like Rites this new work is a concept album and this time round the scope is on an even grander scale than before.
Italian imprint Sincope presents Ultrasonic Bathing Apparatus, the latest full-length CD by Simon Balestrazzi. Balestrazzi is a long-running sound artist and composer and leading figure in the italian post-industrial scene. During the 80’s and early 90’s, Balestrazzi was active in groups T.A.C. (Tomografia Assiale Computerizzata), Kino Glaz, and Kirlian Camera. His lengthy resume also includes collaborations with: Damo Suzuki, TH26, Uncodified, VipCancro, Z’EV, and Francesco Paladino to name a few. Along with his solo work, Balestrazzi is currently active with groups: Dream Weapon Ritual, Candor Chasma, Sarang and the improv ensemble A Sphere Of Simple Green. Yes, he seems like a busy guy.
This live performance comes packaged in a professionally printed digipak, on a pro cd. ‘Calibrated Contingency’ consists of one long track, just over forty-seven minutes in duration, and was recorded at Kunsthaus, in Graz, in 2011. The entire affair is founded on plenty of conceptual baggage. Both Wollscheid and Schreiner play very simple set-ups - computer and boundary mic, and computer, induction coil and radio, respectively - and performed somewhat unusually: ‘The speakers were positioned on a straight line facing the audience, the players were separated by a wall, each of them playing one stereo setup.’. The cd itself, presents a ‘stereo-mix’ of the event.
Apparently a holdout from the 20 years previous previous generation of digital technology, Lost Fairy Realm's clearly home printed "Demo CDr 2015" lists an email address for contact, but no record label or website. A search on the internet for this group reveals nothing. The cover features a low resolution nature photo surrounded by curiously clashing pixelated pink noise. The only liner note included is 'Composed by Emanuele Lago'. The packaging lists 15 songs, but the last 3 are apparently unreadable on my copy, regardless of which device I'm using to listen to the CD.
Stop Freeze Wait Eat is the second solo album from respected Norwegian guitarist, improviser, and composer Ivar Grydeland- who is most know for his work with genre mixing three piece Huntsville. The album is an often skeletal, but always compelling ride that blends together elements of lo-fi & moody guitar craft, abstract & sparse electronica, & haunting improv.
Over the last few years this Missouri based one man project has become most know & respected for it’s for it’s rather distinctive, often angular ,odd time signatures lined, & unbalancing polyrhythm based back metal. But for Dialectctics the sound setting is a blend of off- balancing & often bleakly moody electrioncia/IDM.