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Night Of The Bloody Antler is first low-budget feature film from Scottish noise scene duo Lea Cummings & Sarah Glass. The film is a 66 minute mix of micro budget horror, dread filled psychedelic imagery, and the bleak-ness of the Scottish countryside. This two disc set brings together the film on a DVDR, and the films soundtrack on a CDR.
Mectpyo/Blut is a 2015 double CD reissue of two early tape releases from respected Italian noisemaker Maurizio Bianchi. The release takes in four twenty minute plus tracks from the year 1980, and each is a prime example of lo-fi, crude & dense tape loop & noise based sound scaping.
Here’s a 2015 DVD reissue of a US 2008 documentary about Snuff. The film runs for around seventy five minutes, and features a selection of talking heads, infamous movie footage, and discussion about possible real snuff films.
Here's a late 2015 release from prolific veteran ambient electronic musician Steve Roach. The faint, cosmic scale space ambience found on this recording strikes a contrast to last year's "Skeleton Keys", which was a tapestry of interlocking melodic arpeggios owing much to the original Berlin style of ambient as created by Klaus Schulze. Roach has many albums of this kind in his long discography, however, notably the "Immersion" series.Roach has historically been a very patient musician, unafraid to dwell for long hours in cloudy, nearly static tonal spaces, with countless albums containing unbroken 70 minute tracks.
Infinite Fog Productions presents Ritualer, Blot & Botgöring by Trepaneringsritualen. Released in the waning days of 2014, this full-length CD is a reissue of Trepaneringsritualen’s (or T x R x P x for short) first album. Originally released in 2008 as a cassette on Harsh Head Rituals imprint and later on vinyl, this particular reissue gets the fully remastered treatment along with two bonus tracks not found on the first go around. For those unfamiliar, T x R x Px is the moniker of Thomas Ekelund, Sweden’s dark master of ritualistic death industrial music. I was completely enthralled by his previous works Veil the World and Perfection & Permanence, which both ended up on my best of list for the respective years they were released. Needless to say, I’ve been following this artist quite intently over the last couple years, so a this album in my review stack was eagerly received.
Here’s a cd from Dragons Eye Recordings, presented in a cleanly designed card wallet. It’s austere without being overly formal: there’s something a little bit polite about it, actually. The album contains three long tracks; the shortest is ten minutes, the next longest twice that, and the longest nearly half an hour. ‘Drones’ are the order of the day.
Brooding, droning, dark ambient legends Yen Pox & Troum see a long awaited, re-mastered re-issue of their 2002 collaborative release, Mnemonic Induction. Coming to us on an 8-panel digipack from Transgredient Records, this lush, sonic dreamscape captures two brilliant acts working together from 1996-2002. With only four tracks making up this 63+ opus, one is invited into a churning, slowly moving, skillfully evolving LP that will allow the mind to roam and explore previously undiscovered caverns of the subconscious.
Santos Productions presents yet another full-length CD-R by the ubiquitous Sleep of Ages. Released in 2012, Failure Made Flesh is an early entry in the SOA cannon. Based out of São Paulo, Brazil, Elias Cheika Jr. has been releasing “low budget exploitation harsh noise” since 2011. Cheika also toils in HNW under the Carrion Black Pit moniker and industrial/power electronics as EXU. Any avid reader of this publication will have seen his name and projects bandied about quite liberally. I actually spun this a while back, but since I had reviewed his Bleeder album recently as well as a 4-way split that CBP appeared on, I thought I’d meditate on this one for a bit before putting in my 2 cents.
Here’s a monstrous six cdr set from Black Matter Phantasm, on Ensemble Vide Records. It arrives in a large, painted envelope, with a stuck on cover depicting a circuit diagram for a white and pink noise generator. Beyond the title, we are offered no other information regarding the six tracks - each on one disc and coming in at around fifty minutes in length, at the shortest; and just shy of an hour, at the longest.
The self titled album by "The Twentieth Century" is 37 minutes of music, one lengthy piece divided into 3 movements. The greyscale photographs of hurricane annihilated houses and dirty garages pair well with the desolate and lonely, yet quaintly beautiful soundscapes on the album.
This C90 tape brings together two lengthy, punishing, yet rewarding slices of walled noise, which are themed around the films of euro sleaze master Jess Franco. The release appeared in September 2015, and as of writing copies are still available from Ensemble Vide Records website.
Here’s a C40 tape from this UK based walled noise project - it appeared in late summer 2015 on Australian noise lable Palinopsia Recordings. The tape offers up two twenty minute slabs of entrancing, oddly comforting, yet brutal wall craft.
This split CDR offers up four slices of brutalizing & battering walled noise from these two Russian based HNW projects. Each project offers up two tracks a piece, and each of these last between nine to twenty one minute mark.
Here we have a rather sleazed walled-noise/ perversely atmospheric noise release. It offers up both solo and collaborative tracks from the two contributing parties- we have Italian project Anonymous Masturbaudioum, and Mexican project Wehrmacht Lombardo.
Legendary Japanese noise outfit, Hijokaidan, brings their brash, jazzy sound to Cold Spring for the first time to close out 2015. JOJO, Junko, Mikawa, and Futoshi Okano are all in top form on this 4 track, limited 12" studio release. Along side of this onslaught are two, long CD live tracks. Put on your dancin' shoes and groove, but be forewarned, this isn't your grandfather's jazz!
Renaldo and the Loaf are a British two piece who conjure up a bizarre & surreal blend of: avant-grade pop, wonky (off) world music, tape loops, and general sonic quirkiness. The band originally existed between 1975 & 1988, and have recently re-grouped again. Here is a two CD reissue of the band’s infamous first (official) album from 1981, and really if you enjoy weird, wonky & unwell music this really is something you must check out.
Lawrence English and Stephen Vitiello have both been involved in making avant garde, deep listening and ambient music for more than a decade, English being the founder of the Room40 label (often compared to 12k or Touch). They released an album of field recording derived art ambience entitled "Fable" on Dragon's Eye Recordings in 2014.
Here’s a cd from the Line label, presented to its usual, very recognisable, standards and design. The front cover is a hazy wash of turquoise, which, after careful inspection, reveals itself not to be the flat, uniform spread of colour it first appeared. It would be cute to grab that as a metaphor for the album, but actually ‘Days’ - perhaps unusually for Line - is rather open and ‘uncomplicated’; there’s no sense of the (verging on academic) allusion to ideas, that many other Line releases have.
Lee Bartow's Theologian is back with a long, dense slab of low, creeping industrial. Released on his own Annihivs Power Electronix imprint, Dregs is a slow burner built to leave you feeling cold and ruined. Capping off 2015, this one should prepare you for the tough winter ahead.
Here Goes Nothing offers up a seventy minute dose of dense, crude & totally un-relenting walled noise from one of the masters of the form. The release comes in the form of a pro-pressed CD, coming in edition of 200 copies- so all been well you’ll still be able to hook a copy of this.
Follow The Signs Of The Times sees this Italian project progress from a solo project into a fully fledged three piece band. Past work from this project has seen a often quirky & wonky blend of doom metal, moody horror to space fed 80’s styled synth fare, woozy psychedelic ‘n’ kraut rock grooves, and mournful ‘n’ creepy cinematics. Now as a full band affair the sound is still fairly similar, but it has a much more formal song structure to it- which has its good & bad points.
From late 2015 here we have a double CD reissue of one of the late 1980’s releases from respected & cult Italian musician Paul Chain. As the title suggests this set takes in a series of improvised tracks, & these sonically move from: doomy yet churning psychedelic rock, punchy slightly punk metal jams. Onto expansive rock metal jamming, through to soundtrack like church organ & synth lined rock jams, and jammy synth pop meet light rock, and beyond
Arachnidisc Recordings presents III by Uvesen. Uvensen is a collaborative effort by Norwegian experimental artists: Andreas Brandal and Børre Myklebust. While I’ll admit to being unfamiliar with Myklebust’s body of work, I am on the other hand I’m quite a fan of Brandal’s solo work. I became hooked on his Turning Point album, with it’s Goblin-esque soundscapes colliding with flourishes of noise and further became intrigued by his harsher fare in Flesh Coffin. That said, Uvesen is a different beast altogether.
"Oslo Wien" is an improvised album of Norwegian free jazz by trombonist Henrik Nørstebø, drummer Raymond Strid and double bassist Nina De Heney.