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Stavros Gasparatos plays a spacious, minimalist and thoroughly considered style of modern classical music, sure to lull the mind into a restful, contemplative state. The album title "Expanded Piano" brings with it expectations of new usages or creative realms from the piano, and therefore brings to mind prepared pianos and John Cage.
Here is a two way CDR split between two of the more interesting & creative projects operating with-in the US walled noise/ static noise scene. Each artists offers up a thirty five minute track, and each track is equally nerve- grinding/brain-searing excise in taut static texturing/ wall-craft.
Star Wars: Chaos Theory is a C100/ C80 two tape set that brings the audio component of an experimental film/gallery installation, that took place in Milan in 2013. The idea of the project was to bring together all six films from the Star Wars Saga, and layer batchers together to create a shifting sonic/ visual installation. As I’m not too much of a fan of the series of films, I’m not sure what film is mixed with what & which tape, but I can certainly say that this tape set is a oddly compelling sound journey, which shifts from layered & psychedelic, to moving & haunting, onto quirky & playful. The project brought together- Roadside Picnic( for the sonic elements) & Piratehairwaves( the visuals)
Here’s a very simply packaged CDR from D.S.W.A.C.V (Distorted Souls Within A Corrupt Vision), representing part III of the Flora Series. The card insert has the barest details on the back, whilst the front depicts a painting of a woman partially submerged in blossoms - I suspect it readily signifies a certain artist or movement, but my ignorance prevails here. Hera is one long 70 minute track of harsh noise wall, plain and simple.
Door Four is the third release from this Gloversville, New York based project, which produces dense industrialized walled noise. The release comes in either physical form as a CDR on Australia’s Knife & Needle Records, or as a digital download from the projects bandcamp site- I’m reviewing the downloadable version.
Zoharum presents Last, the appropriately titled, last album by Genetic Transmission. Last is Chapter 9 in Zoharum’s IYHHH series. I couldn’t quite discern what the acronym stood for, but the theme of the CD series is to present unusual Polish sound artists in unconventional ways. Genetic Transmission is the moniker of long-running industrial artist Tomasz Twardawa, who on this recording, focused on creating sonic miniatures from acoustic/electro-acoustic sound sources.
Cadabra Records, the spoken arts label, presents five of Clark Ashton Smith's poems set to audio for the first time. Read by literary critic and novelist S.T. Joshi, Inferno follows in the footsteps of previous Cadabra releases by featuring a score by Theologian. Released in a limited run of three color variants, fans of the label would do well by snapping this up as soon as they can.
Argentinean Lalo Schifrin was most known & respected as a soundtrack composer in the late 1960’s through to the 1980’s. Composing classic US TV themes such as The Man from U.N.C.L.E & Mission Impossible. And celebrated & recognisable soundtracks for the likes of the Dirty Harry films, Enter The Dragon, The Amityville Horror, Bullitt, and many others. Here we have a reissue of two of his none soundtrack albums from the late 1970’s, and they are great/ classy blends of disco, jazz, and fusion.
Dorei Recordings presents Negative, the fifth full-length album by L’eclipse Nue. Released in 2015, this pro-pressed CD was recorded while the artist was living in Japan. I’m fairly familiar with this project of Daniel Sine’s, who has released a couple splits with artists in my neck of the woods, namely: Tree and Lovebird. While in Japan, Sine collaborated (both live and recorded) with a number of heavy-hitters including: K2, Hiroshi Hasegewa, and T. Mikawa. Sine is now back in the states to continue their noisy activities.
Debuting on limited vinyl and wav DL, drøne comes to Pomperipossa Records with Reversing Into The Future. Making use of modular synths, field recordings, and even short wave radio, Mark Van Hoen and Mike Harding combine their talents to make a luxurious soundscape that captures our modern era. Desolate but still somehow comforting, reversing into the future is a slow burner that grows with repeated listens.
Toronto Drummer Harris Eisenstadt and his band play an immediately pleasing variety of smoky, chilled lounge jazz centered around his drumming and the complimentary voices of saxophone and vibraphone, an instrument with a luminous timbre that is always welcome to me. This album "Canada Day IV" is the 4th in a series which began in 2009. Eisenstadt has a vast number of albums dating back to 1999.
The Count Yorga Collection brings together two early 1970’s Vampire movies from the US drive-in circuit. The release comes in either Blu-ray or DVD format, and features a selection of interesting extras, which really enhance & inform ones viewing pleasure.
Grosshouse is a ultra-low budget exercise in bad-taste/ trashy cinema- it blends together elements of early John Walters, Troma movies, weird fish 'n' peanut butter obsessed humour, and quirkily perverse energy. Here we have a pro DVDR double disc set, that brings together Grosshouse, with a whole full length bonus film from the same sick minds behind Grosshouse.
Here’s a tape from the consistently interesting Geräuschmanufaktur label, and one that flew under my radar. The cassette has two tracks of expansive noise, with both being around ten minutes in length; and it comes wrapped in a sombre, black and white inlay, with two cryptic, and iconic, images: the ruined torso of a sculpture, and a hole of some description.
Here’s a recent CDR release from this Pig product themed project from Florida, & it offers up searing yet shifting slice of noise intensity. The hour long piece on offer here blends together elements of HNW, dense harsh noise & junk metal abuse to create an enjoyable assault on ones sonic senses.
Here’s a very nicely presented HNW split bringing together two respected names from the French wall noise scene. The release comes in the form of a C62, with the same two tracks( one apiece) on each side of tape, so in reality you only get just over thirty minutes of noise.
Obsession is a c28/ digital release from this new Swedish HNW project- featured here are two slices of feministic wall craft, based around women’s legs/ tights. This tape is seemingly the first cassette release from this project, which has also put out a handful of digital only releases.
Here we have four C40 wall noise cassette box set on Danish noise label Moral Defeat. It features eight tracks from eight different wall noise acts, and like most compilations it’s a decidedly mixed affair, with great-ness sitting along side less satisfying/ run-of–mill HNW.
3Leaves presents Ancient Pulsations by Dutch Poet Ralph Koper. Anyone familiar with the 3Leaves imprint, knows they are one of the premiere outlets for global field recordings. On Ancient Pulsations, we are treated to a nearly hour long CD culled from the sounds of Varanasi (a city in northern India near the banks of the river Ganges).
Dumbsaint are an Australian instrumental post metal band who play intricate, powerful and emotional songs that move through a wide variety of moods and ideas. "Panorama, in ten pieces" is their 3rd album, their debut having been released in 2012.
Formed in 2014 by Stevo (Impetigo), Ash Thomas (Vladimirs), and Billy Nocera (Razorback Records), Surgikill sought to capture the vibe of fast, heavy, 90's death but with their own spin. Two years later, their debut, Sanguinary Revelations, sees it's vinyl release on Hell's Headbangers. Housing 10 songs of vile, pounding death metal fury, Surgikill's release will sate your old school lust while making you pump your fist for the future.
Composer James Saunders' piece, titled "Assigned #15", is performed here by the ensemble Apartment House, of which Saunders is also a member. Presented as classical music, the swampy, uneasy soundscape on this disk is as brooding, haunted and unsettling as any ominous 80's industrial recording.
Play Struvé & Sneff was the first embryonic & strange sonic fruits of Renaldo and the Loaf- the British avant- grade two piece from Portsmouth. It originally appeared in 1979 on the projects own label as a cassette , and saw the pair mixing up a highly dada & plainly odd blend of: mangled & wonky instrumentation, tape loops, wavering sing-song vocals, and general sonic strange-ness. This is a double CD reissue of the album- featuring the original release, plus a second disc taking in a live recording from 1980, and a selection of morphed remixes.
Here we have the 3rd(and at present) final release in this series of Feldman releases on German classical music label MDG Scene. Each volume in this series sees highly respected German pianist Steffen Schleiermacher tattling later piano works of Mr Feldman. And for this release we get two relatively short( by Feldman standards) tracks in the form of Piano from 1977, and Palais de Mari from 1986.