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Here’s a professionally printed and pressed CD, from two unknown names to me: Tobias Preisig, and Stefan Rusconi. Their depiction on the front cover, summarises much that you need to know: Rusconi sits at a church organ, Preisig saws away on a violin, and in the background, an intricate stained glass window. The album was recorded in a church in Cully, Switzerland, in 2014, and features nine tracks. These vary from a long, near-fifteen minutes, to a short one and a half minutes, and would appear to be overwhelmingly improvised. Pleasingly, the album covers quite a lot of ground - though some parts are more engaging than others - and is certainly not a collection of dry, difficult improv
Japanese death merchants, Defiled, are back again on Season of Mist, this time, with their fifth release, Towards Inevitable Ruin. Taking the form of twelve short bursts of pounding death fury, this tight four piece uses machine gun drums and quick, effective, compact riffs to bring their art forth. Five years since 2011's acclaimed In Crisis, Defiled offer up a manic slice of death metal that is sure to please fans waiting for their next bit of Tokyo terror.
Here from Arrow video we have a DVD/ Blu-ray reissue of a long out of print supernatural tinged slasher with a snowy setting from 1984. Satan's Blade is very much a low budget regional affair from the USA, featuring an cast of (still) unknowns, and a one time director.
Here’s another release from Lurker Bias Neon Wall series, and this time around we have two tracks from Newcastle Upon Tyne based HNW act Shurayuki-hime. The C32 release came in an edition of ten copies, and featured neon pink sleeve that takes in a photo of a young oriental women in granny glasses.
Void Immersion is Cory Strand’s addition to the Lurker Bias Neon Wall series, and it sees him offering-up three examples of wall-noise/drone blends. Mr Strand should be well known to fans of either the wall noise scene, or the experimental noise/drone underground- for his prolific output( under his own name, or under project banners such as Lethe, Fantome De Sang, Dejection, etc). Or for his highly respected HNW and dark ambient/drone label label Altar Of Waste, which has released around just over 400 releases in it’s four year existence.
Here’s a monstrous, pro-printed and pressed two CD set from Rudolf Eb.er - the driving force behind the Schimpfluch Gruppe collective. Eb.er is known - if not notorious - for visceral performances and recordings that often concern themselves with the immersing of the body and mind in unsettling situations. Whilst these often flirt with, and transgress, taboo subjects, they are nearly always delivered with an earthy humour and awareness. There’s increasingly a sense of Eb.er as occupying a shamanic territory, and Brainnectar makes that link very explicit.
Sumbru is the new project from respected & prolific French wall artists Julien Skrobek, and this C40( and digital download) release is the debut release from the project. It’s also the first release on new French label Rapture Records.
REV. Laboratories presents World News, a CD EP by Janek Schaefer. Schaefer is a London-based sound and installation artist, and quite an accomplished one at that. Over the span of 20+ years, Schaefer has won multiple awards for compositions, was a Visiting Professor at Oxford Brookes Sonic Research Unit, and has a lengthy discography of albums and art installations under his belt. With such a prestigious background, I feel that I should know this artist more. So to rectify that, I immersed myself into World News.
Synthy space dwellers, Contact, are back with their sophomore effort, Zero Moment. Following up their regarded debut EP, First Contact, is no easy task, but, thankfully, A.E. Paterra and Paul Lawler are well seasoned and handle themselves accordingly. Although not too far sonically from their first outing, Zero Moment still shows that well played and well written songs are the bedrock for music. This may not be the album you get drunk and rope all your friends into listening to, but it's very solid. And, hey, if you have to rope your friends into anything, are they really your friends to begin with?
Here we have a well deserved re-issue of three classic & much loved easy-listening albums from the late 1960’s. All three albums are a great blend of spoken word (themed around the sea, sky or earth), and lush/ mellow easy-listening music, which touches down in smooth jazz, romantic orchestration, sentimental & light 60’s string led pop, moody yet soothing piano work, big-band/ swing grooves, and beyond.
And the Posters' "The Prose Stand" is a cryptic, homemade looking CDr release of lo-fi electronics which range from verbed out drifting soundscapes to grim industrial flavored downtempo. Every one of the 17 tracks is rather amusingly titled with a different anagram of "And the Posters", some of which are quite creative.
Lana Trio is a purely acoustic Norweigen free jazz ensemble consisting of a piano player, a trombonist and a drummer, who released their self titled debut album in 2013. This disk, "Live in Japan" is a recording of a live performance from 2014 at Jazz Spot Candy in Chiba, Japan.
This large, six CD set comes in a DVD case, adorned with suitably bleak, black and white imagery of a woman seemingly trapped in a room. We know that she is indeed trapped in a room, because the release’s title is the same as a book by its dedicatee: Hubert Selby Jr.
Harsh Noise Wall staple, Black Matter Phantasm, returns for another slab of static noise with Persian Black Magick. I’m no stranger to Joseph Szymkowiak’s work, which occupies a choice spot in my HNW collection. Based out of France, Szymkowiak also does ANW as White Matter Phantasm and ran, until recently, Nahàsh Atrym Productions. While he publishes quite a bit of his own work, this full-length CD-R (released in 2015) comes courtesy of Tera-AntiQuo.
Here’s a self titled split C30 that brings together French walled noise act RRR, with Italian project Nascitari. RRR is relative new comer to the scene having only started creating HNW in the last year or so, while Nascitari has been a respected member of the euro wall noise scene since 2011.
The Necrophiles is a C60 split release offering up three slices of punishing & perverse walled noise. The split brings together Serbian wall noise legend Dead Body Collection, and Seattle based Masturbatory Dysfunction- each project offers up a single solo track, and then the pair collaborate on a track together.
Cabaret Du Neant (Tavern of the Dead) is another double CDR’s worth of bleak & darkly perverse walled noise from this Toulouse based project. It follows up from last years Nature Morte- which also appeared as a self release available in both CDR & digital form.
Continuing their line of bringing H.P. Lovecraft stories to life, Cadabra issues their latest, The Lurking Fear. As with their previous releases, narration is handled by actor Andrew Leman, and the score is done by Theologian. The longest of their releases to date, Cadabra's version of 1922's "The Lurking Fear" captures the stark terror of H.P. Lovecraft through adept reading and ominous tones.
For many years Charles Bobuck was one of the main songwriters/ creative minds behind avant pop collective The Residents, in late 2015 he announced he was giving up the band due to ill health. And This is a compilation/collection of some of the best (mainly instrumental) work Charles did with the project(and solo) in the last six years.
Well, here’s a blast from the past: a project and a label that I presumed were both dead - or resting. Both Carrion Black Pit and Urine Soaked Rag produced some superlative HNW some years back, but both seemed to disappear. I haven’t been able to find anything that suggests this is a new release - or even re-issue - so it’s entirely possible that this has been hiding down behind the MM cupboard for a while… Anyway, however it’s arrived here, it’s very welcome. The tape has six tracks split across the two sides, and comes adorned with filthy xeroxed artwork.
Echoes of Yul are an eclectic ambient electronic rock band with a desperate apocalyptic tone not unlike Nine Nails, Massive Attack or Godspeed You, Black Emperor. Since their self titled debut in 2009, the project has shrunk from its original duo line up to become the solo project of Michael Sliwa. “The Healing” is one of several new albums from Sliwa within the last couple of years.
Tocando Fondo brings together two taut ‘n’ airless slices of elector acoustic improv for trumpet & sinewaves. The collaboration brings together Viennese based Klaus Filip(on Sinewaves), and Argentine based Leonel Kaplan(on trumpet)- both parties are season improvisers, and this release sees them creating great edgy tension with the two tautly snaking tracks with-in.
Sonikillage Volume 2 is the second slice of sonic wackiness & crazed retro collage from this Scottish project. Much like the first volume this second CDR release offers up twenty seven tracks that blend & meld together all manner of sonic flotsam & jetsam. This time taking-in a shifting sonic canvas of the following elements: snippets of lo-fi 80’s electronica/ gabba, retro J-Pop, dramatic yet melted film scoring with beats added-on, space invader sounds, melted TV channel themes from 70’s/ 80’s, oriental advert jingles, bland US TV jingles, news samples from around the time of the JFK assignation, and moon landing and all manner on quirky ‘n’ melted sonic silliness .
Here we have another release from this up & coming Denton Texas based walled noise project. The release comes in the form of a CDR, and takes in two thirty six minute slices of moodily simmering & searing walled noise, which is seemingly themed around the Heaven’s Gate cult who committed mass suicide in 1997.