Loading
Oxykitten is a fun synth project from Portland, OR. With a handful of cassettes released on Field Hymns over the past three years, Oxykitten adds another release to their catalog with Escape From New Amsterdam. My hatred for hipsters and their cassettes aside (though, the pics I saw of this tape are really cool), I'm glad they're doing their best to bring back the 80's. I don't mean when they dress like goofball extras from some never filmed breakdancing episode of Miami Vice, but with their love of fat synthesizers and movie soundtracks.
After an absences of three or so years, “Return Of The Shamatari” sees the return of German HNW legend Cannibal Ritual. This release appeared back in late September 2013 in the form of a five track digital download album, and really it finds the project returning to the simplistic yet extreme brutal & lo-fi walled noise of it’s previous releases.
“An Imbalance Of Serotonin” is a just a under half-an-hour excise in intense, ultra thick & unrelenting walled noise from this veteran West Virginia based project. The release appears on the projects own Bane Records label, and comes in the form of a free download.
This ten CD box set from early 2013 offers up a look into the lengthy,more improvised & at times fairly musical side of the Japanese master of noise Merzbow. The nearing eleven hour collection sees the project as a two piece, bringing together Masami Akita & Kiyoshi Mizutani, and over the twenty one tracks we see the pair creating dense, layered & active slices of sonic fare that sit somewhere between improvisation & noise.
The flat rural landscape of the Fens of the East of England is the focus for this third release from Simon Scott. Being "cartographically below mean sea level", as the release's accompanying notes indicate, the area was originally a vast marshland that has been drained for hundreds of years to make way for agriculture.
Pelt Part Wild Gate is a collaborative group comprised of members of Pelt, Part Wild Horses Mane On Both Sides, and Gate. Ordinarily creators of noise music, they have decided for the purpose of this LP release, titled "Hung on Sunday", to use nothing but Gamelan instrumentation.
Naxal Protocol is the resurrection of Italian Power-Noise act Cazzodio. Power-Noise? Cazzodio? Well, it's the 90's (no it isn't) and we're here to learn thanks to the internet. For those that are unfamiliar with the genre (like I was a few minutes ago), Power-Noise is beat oriented noise. The name sounds like an overstatement, as it's more industrial than noise and not really powerful. However, I've only heard a few acts, so I'm no expert. Noisex seems to be the power-noise legend. Thirteen or fourteen years ago, I was looking for some noise with a beat, and was suggested Noisex. I could only find one song on Napster (oops) and ended up getting into Winterkalte instead. Naxal Protocol doesn't seem to fit the Power-Noise description, but, again, I'm no expert.
Avalanche recordings presents Everyday I Get Closer to the Light From Which I Came, the latest offering from British post-metal band Jesu. The brainchild of Justin Broadrick (Napalm Death, Godflesh), on Everyday… Jesu weaves a com plexweb connecting a variety of styles from shoegaze to metal...from ambient to orchestral. Despite having a slew of releases on labels I’ve quite enjoyed over the years, namely Hydra Head and Robotic Empire, I never quite got around to delving into Jesu’s catalog too deeply. So I was eager to see if Everyday… would make a good entryway into the Jesu lexicon.
This CDR release offers up Crown Of Bone’s searing, moody & mainly sonically overloaded tribute to 2005’s harrowing & stark Australian horror movie Wolf Creek.
""1989 Confessions, Vol. One" finds Lethe once again focusing in on infamous & charming American serial killer Ted Bundy, with the release offering up two length walled noise & ambient tracks built around confessions from Mr Bundy in 1989. The projects very first ever release in late spring 2012 was “Theodore Robert Bundy”- a four CDR set that was based around the crimes of Mr Bundy, and sonically mixed together HNW, industrialized harsh noise & brooding drone.
"Dans La Nuit Vampirique” is the 2nd release from Cory Strand’s Les Legions Noire influenced black noise project. For those not in the know - Les Legions Noire where a collective of French underground black metal/ dark ambient projects that existenced between 1993 & 1997, which have gone on to have somewhat of a cult following
London band Glassglue have existed since 2003, but only just now recorded their debut album, "Fantods". Their sound takes the angular rhythms and atonal riffs of Birthday Party-inspired math rock and mellows down the timbres, focusing on simmering electric piano tones, understated percussive funk guitar figures, and awkwardly crooned confessional lyrics.
Well, this is quite a tome: a two disc archive of THU20 recordings, spanning nearly twenty-five years (1986 − 2008). I’ll admit straight off to knowing nothing about THU20, beyond recognising the name “Frans de Waard”; but just reading the origins of each track in the liner notes, shows the depth of work here. It would be fairly futile to try and neatly summarise such a body of work, but it should soon become apparent that this is a release you should hear. The compilation is divided into two discs: “Studio Works + Live In Bordeaux” and “Early Live”.
Technical death metal legends, Gorguts, are back after a twelve year hiatus. After some tragedy, the band broke up in 2005, but reformed a few years later for their twentieth anniversary. No stranger to line up changes, this iteration of Gorguts features Luc Lemay (y'know, MR. GORGUTS) on vocals/guitars, Colin Marston and Kevin Hufnagel of Dysrhythmia on bass and guitar, respectively, and John Longstreath of Origin on drums. With a roster full of musicians well versed in technicality and hailing from well respected technical bands, the return of Gorguts was in very capable hands. However, fans have had a lot of quality metal released since 2001, so can Gorguts still give 'em what they want?
Steve Hauschildt was one third of electronic scene darlings, Emeralds. The band may have split earlier this year, but as all members currently have their own projects, we're probably not going to miss much. During their run from 2006-2012, they released five albums, and a couple dozen EPs, cassettes, and splits. In this same period, Steve Hauschildt released four albums and four cassettes. While this may seem like a lot of material, it's not all of it...there's even more! S/H is a collection of unreleased and rare tracks from 2005-2012. Oh yeah, it's two discs, too.
Relapse presents the 4th studio album from the hardcore juggernaut known as Weekend Nachos. Hailing for Chi-town, this long-running quartet has been weaving the powerviolence, fastcore, hardcore/punk thread for a near decade now. It’s no surprise really. Coming from an area that spawned such acts as: Charles Bronson, MK Ultra, Kungfu Rick, and Hewhocorrupts, they had much fertile ground to cull from. Over the years they’ve honed their sound, tightened things up, become more nuanced, yet have retained their viciousness.
Neige Et Noirceur (meaning snow & darkness in English) is a one man Quebec based project who since 2002 has dabbled in ambient black metal, doom drone, and moody dark ambient/creepy cinematic. This 2013 compilation brings together a selection of the project more ambient & darkly moody soundscapeing side, with only slight hints at the projects more blacked metal side.
This self titled release is the first release on African Audio Documents- a new French HNW label that themes all it’s releases around the violence, dubious politics, twisted sexuality, & mass killing that takes place on the African Continent
'Selected Realities', released by the Viennese label Moozak, is the debut from Tattered Kaylor, the nom de plume of Tessa Elieff, sound archivist/curator of the National Film & Sound Archive of Australia. Across a CD and DVD, it presents four works that all seem to explore the meeting point between recognisable field recordings and acousmatic music to reveal the changing qualities lent by site-specific configurations.
“Wesieni Wainajat” is the first sonic offering in four or so years from this mysterious project, who create ritual themed & charged ambient music. This new release offers up three tracks built around simply yet deeply entrancing & dread filled organ drones, subtly manipulated eerier field recordings, and a few minimal traces of other subtle sound matter. It comes in either CD or cassette format- with the CD coming in a edition of 350 copies, and the cassette in an edition of 50 copies. I’m reviewing the CD version of the release.
On paper, this is xmas come early - improvisations recorded by a trio of Audrey Chen, C. Spencer Yeh and Nate Wooley, processed into an electro-acoustic work by Todd Carter. Carter is a new name to me, but I’ve enjoyed individual works by the original trio; so as you can imagine, this is a release with a lot of promise. The original recordings were sent to Carter (of TV Pow) for mixing and mastering, but instead he returned with this construction: five tracks covering about thirty-five minutes. (I’m reviewing an mp3 version of the vinyl album.)
Cronian, the project of Norweigen / Swedish symphonic & viking metal veterans Øystein G. Brun and Vintersorg (of Borknagar and others), plays a form of stately, ethereal romantic metal, very operatic in tone, heavy on keyboards and clean vocals. They've returned with their 3rd album "Erathems". I enjoyed the pure, triumphant sound of Borknagar on several occasions in the past, so I had high hopes for this.
“Mush-room” sees these avant-garde genre hoppers, bizarre theatrical show markers, and strange pop stars creating the soundtrack for a seemingly equally odd modern dance/performance art show themed around Fungi.
“Paunch” presents the listener with just over an hours worth of grimly yet creatively & subtle shifting walled noise from this irish project- who since 2009 has released both harsh noise, synth based industrialized sounds, and of course HNW.