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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.
'Terra Prosodia’ comes in a shiny digipak, with liner notes from Vowinckel and Christina Kubisch. The album has eight tracks, all to the shorter side of things: the longest, nearly eight minutes; the least, just over two minutes. The pieces have all been constructed from short recordings that Vowinckel has collected, of disappearing European dialects.
Here’s the second in the series of reissues of early releases from Austrian industrial innovators Allerseelen. Requiem originally appeared in cassette form back in 1989, and it showed the band in a very primal, murky yet highly atmospheric sonic setting.
GTR were a short lived AOR/ pop prog project that brought together two of the key figures in British prog rock- Steve Howe(guitarist from Yes) and Steve Hackett( the Genesis guitarist between 1970 & 77). Here we have a 2015 reissue of the bands one & only self titled release- which comes in the form of a double CD set, that takes in alternative versions of album tracks along with full live set from 1986.
This split 62 cassette tape offers up two side long slices of dense & unrelenting walled noise that is themed around Haruki Murakami’s The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle- a series of three novels that follow the adventures of one Toru Okada who loses his job, cat & wife, then goes on a often surreal journey to find his wife( and cat) meeting along the way a series of bizarre characters.
Voicehandler's "Song Cycle" is an immediate entrancing and intense album of Gamelan-esque percussion and chant-like singing, repetitions of small, simplistic sequences of notes which gradually build to higher and more intense positions on the scale. There is a sense of ritualistic, powerfully sharp mental focus throughout the album. Quiet as it sometimes is, a formidable tension permeates the entirety. It's not an album you can sleep to, or one that will bore you. Voicehandler approach this performance with warrior ferocity.
Møster!, with an exclamation point, is a 4 piece instrumental band formed by the group's namesake, Norwegian saxophonist Kjetil Møster. This album, "Inner Earth", adheres to a subterranean theme with the stalactite formations pictured on its cover and titles like "Descending Into this Crater", the 4 movement piece that makes up most of the album. It's come out on Hubro, an often fantastic label which specializes in exploratory Norwegian instrumental music.
No Brain Productions presents a 4-way split CD-R of harsh noise and wall noise courtesy of: 886VG, Carrion Black Pit, Zero Gravity Funeral, and Nitts. Other than Carrion Black Pit, I confess to not being familiar with any of the artists on board. I also admit that I have received enough unmarked CD-Rs in simple fold-over covers through the years to not be overly enthused to give this a spin. I can’t knock the DIY spirit that inspires such releases, but more often than naught, they tend to be rather lackluster, both in quality control and sounds presented. I admit it’s my bias, but there is such an oversaturation of noise releases, that it takes a little extra effort to grab my attention. With that said, does this humble 4-way split confirm my bias or leave me with egg on my face?
British Power Electronics powerhouse Iron Fist of the Sun returned in 2015 with We Can Yield Our Own Footsteps from Cold Spring. His latest offering of cold PE and stark death industrial may have been released in Spring, but it's definitely all Winter. These seven tracks of electronic misery will definitely make you reconsider the type of day you're having.
Here we have a C6o compilation that celebrates the giallo & murder themed walled noise of highly respected Texas based noise artists Richard Ramirez. The release offers up four tracks, from four separate Ramirez projects ( both solo & group projects), and the theme fitting yellow cassette comes in a classy yellow, black & red A5 sleeve.
This cassette, on Gerauschmanufaktur is unusually colourful - for a Vomir release. The nicely printed and designed inlay, is a mix of sombre black and white, and translucent, almost trippy, bright colours. There’s a richness and saturation to these hues, that suggests both intensity and indulgence. Vomir is a name that I’ll assume you know, while Kikuchi is a drummer; together, they both simply do their thing - with no compromise to the other. This results in two tracks, across two sides of tape; both untitled.
Autistic Campaign presents a new-ish split cassette by a couple of international heavy-weights: Raven and Astro. Raven is the alias of one Djordje Miladinoviæ. Hailing from Serbia, Raven toils with harsh noise mixed with an Anarcho-punk aesthetic. Active since 2011, Djordje Miladinoviæ has released a dizzying stream of releases in a few short years, enough to give the Merz a run for his money. Astro, a staple in the Japanese noise scene, began in 1993 as the solo project of Hiroshi Hasegawa (C.C.C.C.), but has been a duo since 2013 with collaborator Hiroko Hasegawa.
German wall noise project Die Reitenden Leichen has been one of the longer running & consistent projects to appear from within the euro HNW scene. The project has been active since 2009, and while it’s not as prolific as some, it’s slowly but surely released a flow of quality release over the years that focus in on often dense, but often subtle layer shifting wall craft. This CDR release from summer 2015 appeared on the Breaching Static label, and it offers up two walls that each fall between the ten & fifteen minute mark, with a release total running time of twenty seven minutes.
Here we have a five CDR release from French husband & wife walled noise duo Absurde. The set offers up five walls that each run between thirty to forty minutes a piece, and for the most part it’s a brutal yet appealing collection of wall craft. The theme for the whole release is frustration- in it's various forms.
Anonymous is/was a mysterious euro walled noise project, which focused in on fixed HNW themed around historic battles and war atrocities. Gaines's Mill was the last (final?) release from the project- it appeared in October 2014, and came in the form of CDR on Irelands Bored Bear Recordings.
Iron Bonehead winds down 2015 with the debut demo release of Ripping Death, Tales of the Ripper. This limited edition tape shows that old school death never dies, and Ripping Death fly the flag proudly. Though brief, the three originals and one cover churn and burn with a nice, old ferocity that make the runtime fly by, and beg the listener to hit play as soon as the fourth track finishes.
Over the last few years Uk based label BGO have been doing a stellar job in reissuing the back catalogue of The Incredible String Band- a late 60’s/ early 70’s band who brewed up a very distinctive & one-off blend of: psychedelic folk, world music, and genre mixing. Here we have the next chapter in their reissue series, and it comes in the form of 1968’s Wee Tam and the Big Huge- which saw the band offering up a more concise & controlled selection of tracks that highlighted both the bands ability to write a good memorable tune, yet also create surprising & creative song craft.
From late summer 2015 here’s Konchuuki- an album of new material from one of the noise scenes most renowned & respected names. The release comes in the form of a CD, which offers up four tracks & just less than sixty five minutes of play time. The release title means ‘insect machine’, and the theme of the release is the study of insects.
Technomancer is an album that blends together elements of 80’s & 90’s dance/electronica to create a work that seems to exists its own distinctive retro future styled sonic reality.