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Here’s a three inch cdr from this Denton Texas based walled noise project. The release offers up a just under twenty minute slice taut, searing, & sadistic yet rewardingly detailed wall making.
Vialca's "A l'Abri des regards indiscrets." is the CD release of a somewhat avant garde musical theater performance, packaged in a rough fabric-bound 54 page book.
Here’s a three track digital release that brings together eerier wall craft with an under carriage of uneasy ambience. Static Park is another one of the projects of high prolific & multi project linked French noise maker Julien Skrobek (Ecco, The Killer Came From The Bronx ,Ghost, The Sandman Wears A Mask, Ruine, Butch Bag, Gasp, Ruine, etc)- and with this project he adds in more experimental elements to his wall craft, such as ambience, beats, ect.
Following his 2013 debut, Lost Corridors, Steven Burroughs once again teams up with Cold Spring to release a droney, looped, fuzzed out dark ambient album. Showing a lot of growth since his first release, Tunnels of Ah have upped the ante on the musical front. However, the common pitfalls of looping and emphasis on creepy vocals and lyrics are still present, and, much like Pitfall Harry, Steven still times his jumps improperly from time to time, and lands fully in the alligator's mouth.
I love bands that can release material with titles like Grinding Christian Flesh with a straight face. Uncouth black-thrashing maniacs Infernus are of this special breed. Hailing from Portland, Oregon, Infernus just recently released their second album through Moribund under the moniker Grinding Christian Flesh, a 40 minute barrage on all that is holy. Previously unbeknownst to me, this blasphemous outfit has left an impression far greater than most black/thrash groups. Refusing to lean on tired, recycled riffs, these Americans have forged a strong blade, poised to spear the heart of any Christian foolish enough to stand in their way.
Snuff Prom is one of the many projects of highly respected & influential Texas based noise artists Richard Ramirez- the project has been active since 2002, and describes it’s self as a Harsh noise project of various members. But for this release it’s seemingly a solo venture, with Ramirez offering up three slices murderous, moody, yet searing noise matter which brings together walled noise with yet thick murky drone matter.
Asleep In The Lake is Massachusetts based project who creates atmospheric walled noise with gothic horror & dark legend themes. This CDR release on Tera-AntiQu is the projects first full length physical release, after a few splits & digital albums.
“Transmissions” comes in a card wallet, simply and elegantly adorned with a close-up of machinery workings; this is very apt, since thats precisely the content of the disc, too. The cd has four tracks, ranging in duration from near three minutes, to a mammoth near-forty. All the pieces use the sounds of machines: “Part 1” and ”Part 2“ utilise loom sounds as source material, whereas “Part 3” and Part 4” are more broadly based on “machine-tools sounds”. This truly industrial material is fashioned by Delplanque into collaged constructions, flitting between raw sounds and processing.
This c80 tape offers up a searing yet creative walled noise tribute to infamous video nasty Day of the Woman ( aka I spit On Your Grave). It was released back in 2014 in an edition of 50 copies- so hopefully you’ll still be able to get your hands on a copy.
When one thinks of walled noise, they don’t normally think of types of skin disease- but that’s exactly the theme/ focus of this five track CDR. Extreme Chafing is another project from Florida based Joe The Stache whose known for a few quirk themed walled noise projects such as: Hoggle( based around 80’s puppet fantasy family movie The Labyrinth), Pig Shrapnel (based around pork products & their preparation), and Heavy Metal Vomit Party(which sees classic 1980’s hair/glam metal fare, converted into a dense, searing, truly overloaded & intense walled noise).
Kartet is a Parisian quartet with a long history of live performance and a discography including several albums of dense, cerebral albums of highly composed and technical jazz.
Trepaneringsritualen, Sweden's master of dark industrial meditations, returns with a new offering on Cold Spring. Entitled Veil the World, this offering is actually not a new recording, but a CD reissue of the limited edition cassette originally released in 2011 on Kosci. The reissue is handsomely presented in a 6 panel digipak and fully remastered. I've been a huge fan of Thomas Ekelund's project since last year's massive Perfection & Permanence album, so I've been eagerly awaiting another Trepaneringsritualen (or TxRxP for short) album to fill the void. Veil the World is yet again another grim and caustic blend of occult inspired ritual industrial and power electronics, deeply blackened to the core.
Ah, classic death metal...is there anything more comforting? While a lot of the comfort comes from the nostalgic warmth of discovery, there's something to the tight, brutal simplicity of good old, Tampa-styled death. Sitting outside on a nice spring day with a pipe, a cup of tea, listening to death metal while being pelted from above by inchworm droppings really makes one happy to have been exposed to lots of life's simple pleasures.
I’m really starting to get sick of occult, riffless black metal that seems to be in vogue: bands that would rather spend a quarter of their album chanting, playing little ritualistic drum beats, and looping dark ambient tracks than laying down the metal law and bringing the riffs. What’s even more puzzling is that these bands are ostensibly worshipping Satan. Everyone knows that Satan is more pleased by neckwrecking riffs than incense and occult triangles; someone needs to let these guys know that they’re screwing up. Achterontas is a Greek band playing in the aforementioned style, preferring to let their general occultness and nonmetal portions of their music do the Satan worshipping for them, while the neglected metal potions languish by the wayside.
Here’s a cdr from the reliable Bored Bear Recordings label, featuring the work of Sleep Column. “Scar” is one long track of wall noise, just shy of fifty minutes. The photocopied sleeve comes adorned with grainy pictures of gnarled hands - an appropriate image for the sounds within.
Gordon Sharp's Cindytalk began as an industrial/post punk crossover band with a full band line-up in the 80's, but since reactivating in 2009, has been a pensive ambient noise solo project. His new album "touchedRAWKISSEDsour" is a colorful firestorm of sharp and visceral psychedelic distortion, arranged into undulating loops and hypnotic near-repetitions.
We're far enough out of the 80's now for the young folk (said as a older than my time codger) can look longingly at a time before their births and wax nostalgic about an era they never saw. Taking inspiration from music and movies of the era, the trend in modern retro is toward coldness of synths with horror flourishes (well, the ones that come across my desk, anyway). Michigan's GosT is no exception. Simple in execution, Behemoth hits quickly and gets the head nodding, but doesn't really provide a lasting impact.
Bored Bear Recordings presents Cold Water/Withering Life by GRY SMK. The was released as an extremely limited edition CD-R (12 copies) in the Spring of 2014, so I’m thinking you might have to dig a little to find a copy. As with most Bored Bear Recordings I’ve come across, there’s little details available about the artist or the particulars of the release. I suppose it’s part of the label’s mystique. GRY SMK is the moniker of Alex Pearson based out of Nova Scotia. In addition to GRY SMK, Pearson is the man behind In Negatives and D/A A/D, acts I can’t say I have any familiarity with.
Tony Tears are a Italian project who brew up a quirky sometimes wonky mixture of doom metal, moody horror to space fed 80’s styled synth fare, woozy psychedelic ‘n’ kraut rock grooves, mournful ‘n’ creepy cinematics, with the odd foray into more experimental fare. This three CD box set brings together a selection of rare & out of print work from the project from between the years 2000 & 2014
K. Leimer is often seen as a slightly more experimental & American version of Brian Eno- due to his ability to create varied, creative & memorable sonic fare that mixes together elements of ambience, synth craft, early electronica, world music & beyond. This rather excellent collection focus in on his work from between the years 1975 & 1983, and it’s a most rewarding, varied & highly consistent release. It comes in two formats- either a double vinyl version, or a single cd version- I’m reviewing the cd version.
With Drudkh’s slump extending from one to two albums with the release of Eternal Turn of the Wheel in 2013, I was just about ready to write the band off. Drudkh going post-black metal/shoegaze was not something that should have happened in any universe. But happen it did. And although I was disappointed with the band going out with a fizzle instead of a bang, you can’t fault the band for releasing a half-dozen quality albums over half a decade. Well, this was all before the release of A Furrow Cut Short. Against my better judgement, I gave the preview track a listen when it dropped. It was OK. Better than the last two albums, that’s for sure, and that was enough to get me looking forward to this release. While A Furrow Cut Short doesn’t reach the heights of the band’s earlier material, it’s certainly a promising step up from a low point in an otherwise respectable career.
Here’s a rather pleasing, majestic, and dramatic drone release from this long time & highly prolific US based project. The CD takes in eleven tracks that move between lush slow-mo strings based ambience, and short slices of field recordings from Japan.
Klaus Lang is an Austrian composer, concert organist, & improviser. This vinyl release offers up two twenty to twenty five minute pieces of thickening & slowly shifting sonics for the organ.
Since the early 1980’s this Belgium based project have carved out their own distinctive take on ritual music, which moves between ambience, surreal primal-ness, and tribal electro industrial music. This recent release on Zoharum is part reissue/ part new release- as it takes in 1991 EP The Ritual Should Be Kept Alive (1) , with three tracks from the same period, and expands the releases running time to around 70 minutes.