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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.
As I’ve gotten older and wiser I’ve come to recognize several immutable truths about our lives and universe: everyday the sun rises and falls, somewhere in the world there is a child being born at this very moment, and with most glaring regularity...I will always find a K.K. Null release in my review pile. On this outing the Nux Organization presents another long form CD entitled Edging.
Here’s the first in a series of CDR releases from this Newcastle Upon Tyne based walled noise project. This project likes to often use quite thought provoking themes for its work, focusing in on works of literary, mythology, and legends etc. For the Flora Series the theme is feminism with-in mythology, and each of the three releases are themed around a certain goddess or female entity. For this first volume the focus is Saraswat (Sara for s-hort) which is the Hindu goddess of knowledge, music, arts, wisdom and learning.
Out To The Great Silence offers up taut & cleverly detailed slices of static texturing/ jumpy wall craft. The C20 tapes features two tracks, and each is a rewarding & subtle shifting excise in masterful static noise craft.
From late summer 2015 here we have the first release from The Girl On The Bridge- a new project from up & coming Australian wall noise artists Shaun Mack(also of Morte Cammina, Widow Park, and runner of the excellent HNW only label Needle & Knife). The release comes in the form of a C52 tape, and came in an edition of just ten copies.
Steve Moore seems to be everywhere these days. If it's not a Zombi release or tour, it's solo. His latest comes to us in the form of a motion picture soundtrack. Considering Zombi's roots and influences, this makes perfect sense, and is a bit surprising it took this long to happen. The aforementioned film, Cub, is a Belgian horror flick about a deranged poacher that decides to switch his focus to poaching young kids. I have not caught the flick yet, but if Steve's score is any indication, it'll be cold, grim, and unsettling.
Current 93's previous album I am the Last of All the Field That Fell: A Channel was a watershed in more ways than one. Critically it drew a line under the project of publishing David Tibet's mass of prose poetry which finally appeared that year in a collection titled Sing Omega. With that line drawn and his entire written corpus condensed into a single volume one might be forgiven for wondering whether the great mystagog of the East Sussex coast was about to retire to his books and study of ancient languages. Thankfully Current 93 have returned with this splendidly packaged oddity that revives the horror inspired spirit that produced late 90s records like In a Foreign Town in a Foreign Land and I have a Special Plan for This World.
Brutal Penetration severs up forty one minutes worth of scuzzy, raw, lose yet thick walled noise. Please Kill Me is a HNW project from Seattle, Washington, and seemingly all of their work is themed around female prostitute & violence/ murder of women.
Here’s another brutal & straight-for-the-throat slice of ranging walled noise from this French project. The release comes in the form of a CDR, and offers up single track worth of crude ‘n’ battering wall-craft.
Salt Lake City noiser, Jeff Shell, and his noise project, AODL, are back with a fun new C22 from Forever Escaping Boredom. With two comforting tracks of static and pulses, Grandview Manifesto tickles the ear without overdoing it. Not minimal by any stretch, but steering clear of Incapacitants-esque levels of sonic decimation, AODL finds a nice, noisy balance somewhere in the middle, like Cheez-Its for the soul.
Here we have a much deserved re-issue of the one classic Merzbow noise works. Originally released on ZSF Produkt(Merzbows' own label) in 1987- this reissue appears in the form of a CD & double vinyl set on respected Italian noise/ industrial/ experimental Menstrual Recordings in a edition of just 250 copies.
It's been eight long years since the former Coil and Spiritualised member, and formerly prolific Thighpaulsandra last put out a record. So long in fact that one would be forgiven for wondering whether he had in solidarity followed his erstwhile colleagues in Coil by falling into silence. Thankfully the hiatus has ended and indeed The Golden Communion represents something of a culmination, not just of that eight year gap but of the artist's entire output to date.
Basil Athanasiadis is a Greek pianist and composer of modern classical music. His use of silence, stripped down instrumentation and nightmarish tension is similar to 20th century atonalists like Schoenberg, Ligeti, and Boulez. This disk "Stray Cat's Dream" contains a number of his pieces, many of which have several sections, resulting in 17 total tracks.
Ákos Garai’s 3 Leaves imprint presents Things That Were Missed in the Clamour for Calm by Mark Vernon. 3 Leaves is a label that is synonymous with expertly crafted, field recording-based releases. This full-length CD is no exception.
Chilean death metal trio, Nar Mattaru, are back with their second full length, Ancient Atomic Warfare. Reviving slow, dirgy, old school death, this album churns with a melodic grimness often passed by these days in an effort to maximize speed. The six tracks of tremmed out guitar ritual will bring the listener to an ancient time to watch a battle for universal supremacy.
Here’s a truly huge, multi faceted, yet always fascinating & intriguing set from highly respected US label Dust To Digital (in collaboration with University Of Wisconsin Press). The release takes in a 456 page book, 5 CDs, and a DVD.
Eleganza is a CDR release from September 2015, and it offers up two 15 minute slices of layer active & progressive walled noise from this Italian project.