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I’ve seen the moniker Distorted Souls Within A Corrupt Vision (D.S.W.A.C.V.) mentioned on the usual noise forums and internet channels, though I can’t recall if I’ve given this U.K. wall artist the time of day or not. However, affiliations with solid physical and net labels such as: Altar of Waste, Maniacal Laugh, and Nahàsh Atrym Productions, certainly had my interest piqued. Sophia, Flora Series ~ Part II is a self-released CD-R that I’m assuming is part of a series dedicated to plants from different geographies or something (the artist’s website didn’t offer much information).
Prolific American experimental musician Mark Bradley is back with his latest from Reverb Worship. A History of Silence is nine tracks of ambient, electronic joy that explores synthesized textures, drones, and other sonic noodling goodness. Focusing on a whole and going for atmosphere over bleeps and bloops, Mark's latest is a thoughtful approach to electronic composition.
Yui Onodera is a soundscape composer active since 2005, with a sporadic stream of releases. This new Baskaru release "Semi Lattice", as well as two other new albums in 2015, break a 4 year silence. This is my first experience with Onodera's work.
Sincope presents Primitive Future, a full-length cassette by Jabber Garland. Sincope, based out of Italy, has produced quite a number of top notch releases over the last few years. I always get a little giddy to see one of their releases in my review pile. Admittedly, Jabber Garland was not a project familiar to me. After some quick investigation, I see that this is one of Andreas Brandal’s many, many, many side projects. One this collaborative venture, he teams up with Norway’s Sindre Bjerga.
This meticulous compilation details some of the rock music recorded by Nigerian bands, in the years following a devastating civil war which lasted thirty months. This material is collected up in a nice package - a cd in a hardback book, or a double vinyl album with softback - however, I’m reviewing a digital version here. The booklet is quite a tome: over a hundred pages of band histories and discussion, as well as endless amazing photos of the bands, their records and the people of Nigeria.
Composed of ex-members of Death Squad, Pulverizer, Deifecation, Bloody Remains, and Caedere, the Netherlands' Rotten Casket spew forth unabashed Swedish, HM-2, death metal worship. Emerged From Beyond sees both of the band's sold-out cassette EPs remixed and presented on one disc. While no new ground is being broken, the drums are pummeling, and the riffage is tight, so the experience is enjoyable, even if it's a bit familiar.
Gorguts' new release, the first since the well received re-union album "Colored Sands" in 2013, is an EP with one lengthy, epic song on it, in the tradition of Meshuggah's "I". "Pleiades' Dust" is even longer than "I", at 33 minutes, and is easily as densely composed and intricate as any other Gorguts material.
This tape from the reliable Flesh Coffin, comes simply and starkly presented by the Imperial.Noir label: an all black inlay, with xerox-esque falterings into grey and white, and the barest of album/recording details. The tape has two tracks, one on each side, both just short of the 20-minute mark. The material itself is actually quite old, recorded in the winter of 2010-2011.
Hen Llan Recordings is the latest release from respected British folk singer/songwriter Sharron Kraus- it’s a Ep, both in physical CDR form on Reverb Worship, and digital download from Sharron’s bandcamp
Now here’s a collaborative release that has one of the more unusual & slightly queasy concept I’ve come across. The four tracks here are all a blend of field recordings taken from inside a four separate women, and (mainly subtle) static noise texturing/ pared back walled noise.
Here’s a 2014 CD reissue of Chrome’s second album from 1977 Alien Soundtracks, plus its sequel album Alien Soundtracks II from 1988. The project were a San Francisco collective whose Sci-fi themed & often muddled blend of chaotic ‘n’ chugging punk riffing, space-rock, synths, electro beats, and sonic flotsam & jetsam was both very distinctive & a big influential on industrial rock.
Ghost is one of the projects of highly prolific & respected French wall-maker Julien Skrobek. Here we have a 3inch CDR release from late 2015-which is the first release from this project in a few years.
San Francisco based doom/drone collective, Common Eider, King Eider, makes their Cold Spring debut with the beautifully haunting Extinction. Industrial tinged, reverb laden drones work together to create a four song, 40+ minute set of eerie, subterranean, ceremonial magic that will transport the listener in time and space. Beautiful and creepy, Extinction is a wonderful new release from Cold Spring.
Yasunao Tone, Talibam! and Sam Kulik have joined forces for a three way collaborative album titled "Double Automatism". I'm unfamiliar with these musicians, aside from having heard Yasunao Tone's "Solo For Wounded CD" years ago, an album I'd describe as grating distorted digital refuse, closer to the most abrasive sounds accidentally generated by malfunctioning equipment than a composed piece with human thought behind it.
Here we have a duel DVD & blu-ray release of one of the more raved about examples of ‘bad’/ ‘distinctive’ film making in recent years. Dangerous Men is an often puzzling, quirky, yet always entertaining blend of 80’s/ 90’s action film, female revenge thriller, cop film & biker movie.
Here’s an unusually packaged CD, wrapped in layers of entangled card inlays. Pulled apart, they reveal an outer card slipcase, an inner card inlay - both covered in texts and largely abstract imagery - and an odd little piece of card that holds the CD itself. The texts reveal recording details, as well as annotating the pieces themselves, of which there are five. The tracks, all recorded between 2008 and 2012, vary in length from around twelve minutes to over twenty. All five are rigorous, ‘hard-boiled’ electroacoustic works.
It’s fair to say that Divine was one of the most known & celebrated drag queens of 1970’s & 1980’s. He first came to notoriety in the film’s American transgressive/cult film maker John Walters- appearing in titles such as Pink Flamingos, Female Trouble, Polyester, along with more mainstream Walters films such as Hairspray. But he also had a singing career which ran from the late 1970’s til his death in the late 80’s, which saw him score a few hits along the way. This two disc CD set brings together all of his singles, along with a selection of album tracks & rarities.
Here we have a new CD ep/ digital download from respected & highly prolific Us ambient project Celer (aka Will Long). The twenty four minute work takes in a single piece, split into 10 parts. And what have here is slowly revolving, fading, and growing slice of organ based ambient.
Christian Fennesz is a veteran artist in the 'art ambient' scene, creating texturally exact and melodically expressive works, most often with a combination of guitar, piano and electronic processing. OZmotic is less familiar to me, an Italian soundscape duo comprised of a soprano sax player and a percussionist, who both utilize electronic processing.
A year after the release of the wonderful Too Slow to Disco Vol 2 comes the follow-up, The Ladies of Too Slow to Disco. Featuring 19 tracks of delightful, super catchy, female driven pop, this compilation is a very worthy addition to the Too Slow to Disco series. And, although there are some well known acts on here like Carly Simon and Carole King, this entry keeps true to form and highlights a lot of lesser known artists.
This is Italian Valerio Tricoli's first record since his monumental Miseri Lares on PAN in 2014. That double LP cemented Tricoli as one of Europe's premier experimental electronic musicians specialising in classic techniques of musique concrete brought up-to-date with a dark modern sensibility.
Here’s a truly monstrously long walled noise release from this London based project. The release comes in the form of ten CDR box set, which offers up nearing ten hours worth of playing time- but instead of a collection of separate ‘walls’, this is really just one long wall split up into ten selections, with a interesting twist.
Here we have an fairly progressive & atmospheric walled noise split between Uk based Roadside Picnic & Russian project Light Collapse. It comes in the form a pro CDR release, and finds each party offering up around 30 minutes of noise each- with the split having a total running time of 71 minutes.
Here’s a very nice, handmade, little package from Big Hole: a small boxset containing three mini-CDrs and insert. All held together with two rubber bands, and labelled with handwritten words. Each disc comes in a separate plastic wallet, with an insert decorated with track information and a xeroxed photo. This photo, of a man’s face (who I think is probably Mr. Big Hole), becomes increasingly bleached or washed out with each disc. The set has three tracks, one on each CDr, and is dedicated to the artist’s wife.