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Bored Bear Recordings presents Ondes Pures(meaning Pure Waves in english ) by minimalist French drone artist Alois Richter. I couldn’t really find much info on this mysterious act other than this is a project by ½ of the HNW outfit The Sandman Wears a Mask. On Ondes Pures, Alois Richter offers 4 “textures” clocking in at around 80 minutes.
“Jerusalem” sees this Uk based progressive HNW/ ANW project offering up a textural detailed & subtle shifting slice of dense textured noise-making. The release is themed around 1099 of Jerusalem, which claimed the lives 11,000 of the 13,500 crusades.
"This Star Teaches Bending" is a manipulated field recording release that’s themed around incurable diseases. And it takes influence from both the sound recordists personal experience (his mother was diagnosed with terminal cancer), and that of Expressionistic & cubism Swedish artists Paul Klee- who died in 1879 from the rare skin disease scleroderma.
It is no secret that the last decade has brought music and recording away from the studio and into the bedroom. This paradigm shift has had the wonderful effect of democratizing music and truly putting it in the hands of the people, and for this I am grateful. Yet there is a downfall to this scenario, all musicians who have participated in this shift have involuntarily become recording engineers. While at first this does not seem a problem it has lead to an overall decrease in sonic quality and I would argue that the time spent by musicians to learn this highly skilled craft has taken away from the time that at one point would have been used to learn the instruments being recorded.
This latest work from Australian artist Lawrence English was created as an homage to John Cage and originally began as a re-scoring of the film "One11". Somewhat ashamed I must admit that I am less familiar with Cage's work than I should be, but I do have the distinct impression from familiarity with some of his work that one composition differs form the next as much conceptually than they do sonically. That being said although the catalyst for the creation of this album was the centenary of Cage it is not reminiscent of any of the Cage works of which I am familiar, and pleasantly surprised by this was able to view the album without this preexisting filter, such a danger for any tribute work.
Scandinavia is known for its black metal scenes yet we don't hear much from Iceland. Apparently the same themes run deep no matter what part of the world you come from. Norse and Christian mythos all wrapped up into one misanthropic roar with lyrics unintelligible yet filled with philosophy, one that takes the back seat to the sheer power and fervor of blast beats and thunderous guitars.
Phelios is back with with his much anticipated follow up to 2010's Astral Unity. Martin Stürtzer picked up where he left off and didn't miss a step. Gates of Atlantis comes to us on the continuously awesome Malignant label, and it's a well thought-out dark ambient with industrial flourishes. The almost primordial drumming and the interstellar drone give the listener strong soundtrack vibes. This is good, too, because it plays as a loose soundtrack to H.P. Lovecraft's "The Shadow Out of Time."
Upon first glance, I thought this disc was just a CD sampler that fell through the cracks of the Musique Machine office. It was published back in 2010. However, after some further investigation, I discovered this release is part of GX Jupitter-Larsen’s massive Zelphabet series.
Sub Rosa presents as part of their Framework series, Fog Horns by Luca Forcucci. The Framework series is dedicated to: concrete, electronics, and noise. Fog Horns is the 14th installment of this series. Mr. Forcucci is a long-running bi-national Swiss and Italian composer and artist, known for both sound and visual art.
It’s been some six or seven years since this Uk based avant black metal, darkly experimental, and sinisterly atmospheric project last released anything new. Back in 2008/ 2009, I reviewed the two excellent collection of old material- Abortions (on Autumn Wind Productions) & The Dark Bleeding Gods (on GoatowaRex), and each of these releases showed the project brew-up a distinctive blend of free-form, lurching avant grade blacked metal, and quite damned wonkily cinematic. This new tape sees the project really pushing it’s sound even further away from blacked metal, towards a mix of slowed experimental dark rock, spiralling 'n' aged sinister synth drift, marching yet slurred synth hazed beat-scapes, and beyond.
“From Destruction Comes Rebirth” is series of 3inc CDR’s put out by Florida based noise/ experimental label Forever Escaping Boredom. Each release in the series brings together two noise/experimental projects who each present an around ten minute track a piece- this forth volume brings together one intense & pounding wall noise track, and one searing slice of harsh noise.
“From Destruction Comes Rebirth” is series of 3inc CDR’s put out by Florida based noise/experimental label Forever Escaping Boredom. Each release in the series brings together two noise/experimental artists who each present a ten minute track a piece- for this first volume we have two walled noise projects.
“Moon Pix: A Reinterpretation” finds Minneapolis based Cory Strand offering up another extreme remix/ deconstruction release. And this time he’s focused in on the work of Cat Power(a.k.a. American singer/song writer Chan Marshall), and in particular the projects 1998 album “Moon Pix”- which became a big break-through release for Ms Marshall. Strand’s reinterpretation comes in the form of a three disc CDR set, in which finds him stretching out the albums original 11 tracks to epic lengths.
This is a ridiculously lavish affair from Gruenrekorder, with the cd accompanied by a small book containing words and pictures concerning the project. The focus of this project, are two farming families who work the land in Sanrizuka, Japan; though their farms are anything but ordinary - the soil they tend actually falls within the territory of Narita international airport. The airport was built in the early 1970s, and was the scene of intense confrontations between police and a coalition of local farmers and activists - objecting to the forced evictions of the farming community. By the time that Angus Carlyle and Rupert Cox undertook this project, there were only two farming families left - working land at the end of runway B, completely enclosed within the airport.
“III” is a CDR release from this UK based progressive HNW artists, and it was released back in late summer 2012. The release features three tracks in all, & they move from tense & punish yet creative walled noise, onto more unsettling ambience/ experimental sound-making.
“Silent Treatment” is anything but silent- on offer here is a forty one minute track of dense & truly suffocation walled noise from the mysterious Nar project.
Mathias Delplanque is an artist who made his debut in 2006, and released several full lengths since then as well as a number of single tracks. The music found on his new album "Chutes" is a sort of loosely organized ambient flotsam of liquid metallic instrumental timbres, often skipped, warped, or blurred into reverberant soup. Pondering that it was (according to the liner notes) improvised in real time, it starts to sound like some kind of lethargic, electronically augmented freeform lounge jazz.
Partikel III is the third and final part of the Merzbow/Nordvargr collaboration that began nine years ago. All three Partikel releases have been on the well known and respected Cold Spring label, which is very fitting for a collab between two experimental music giants. This release, like the two before it, was recorded in both Sweden and Japan and the resulting recordings were sent to the other for the addition of their own sound. A collab done in this style leads to a subtle but noticeable difference in song composition, while keeping a similar tone throughout.
Italian label Sincope presents the cassette Night Conference by European duo Crystal Plumage. Ostensibly named after the Argento film, Crystal Plumage is a collaboration between Benjamin L. Aman from France (guitars and electronics) and Sean F. Barrett from Germany (electronics & synth).
Brazil’s Carrion Black Pit returns for a new micro release on Lorenzo Nascitari’s imprint Claustrophilia. This 3” CD-r entitled “If These Walls Could Talk,” contains a single track of very “human” sounding HNW. For those unfamiliar, CBP is the moniker of Elias C. (also of Sleep of Ages and EXU) who hails from São Paulo, Brazil. CPB is known for creating horror-themed HNW/ANW, but personally I’ve always been drawn to an inexplicable natural/earthy quality that feels present in the walls Elias produces.
In 2010 metal fans had a reason to be cheerful, when it was announced that ‘Exhumed’ were going to reform after a long hiatus. Exhumed is a death metal band from California. They originally formed in 1990. Their early albums were heavily influenced by bands like ‘Carcass’ with gory lyrics full of medical jargon and a ‘muddy’ sound that has since been termed ‘deathgrind’ (or goregrind). There is a great compilation of their early material called ‘Platters Of Splatter’ on Relapse, which is highly recommended!
Well, here’s a joy to review: an eight hour long mp3 on a cdr. Its from loopool, and its packaged very simply with a card insert. This insert contains the following warning: “…Oddly with today’s formats and the ever expanding possibilities of length, it seems that the attention span of the public is growing shorter. Since the beginning of recorded music the maximum length of the medium dictated popular taste and how music was written. Somehow all this changed. This album is an attempt to bring the two together again.”
Technical death metal band Revocation's self titled album is their 4th full length album since their debut in 2008. Fans of the band have often described them as thrash influenced, but I just don't hear much of that on this album. Instead, I hear traces of modern bands like Between the Buried and Me, Burnt by the Sun, Botch, and other denizens of the ferocious technical hardcore scene.
“Helgoland” finds Lasse Marc-Riek (German sound artist & field recordist) visiting the island of Helgoland (Germany’s only ocean island)to make a series of captervating, primal, sometimes haunting and alien sounding field recordings.