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The Outside Agency are a Dutch duo who brew-up a dark ‘n’ brooding mixture of: Hardcore techno, dub step, break core & crossbreed(a mix of hardcore and drum & bass). Though the project has been in existence since 1996, release around 50 singles & EP’s, 2012’s “The Dogs Are Listening” is the project first proper full length.
“Canal Trip” is a double CD anthology that celebrates the work of highly creative Danish collective Burning Red Ivanhoe. The project mixers together elements of :jazz-rock, R&B, blues, psychedelic rock, early prog rock, and 60’s pop rock into heady & highly addictive brew.Though the band are still in existence today, this two disc set covers their most creative & inspired period 1969 to 1974.
I'm all for comedy in metal. It seems that of all the genres, metal takes itself the most seriously, so comedy is a welcome sight (sound?). When reading about the Dutch band The Monolith Deathcult, the first thing mentioned is their sense of humor. Being unfamiliar with their previous three releases, I was ready to experience Tetragrammaton and all its metal and comedy glory. The metal is definitely there, but where is the comedy? Maybe I'm too old to understand the vocals or maybe I just wasn't paying close enough attention. Maybe I'm just simple. Gimme S.O.D. or Cannibal Corpse any day. I get those jokes.
This new LP from Nihilist Recordings features the pairing of sonic oddities, Pod Blotz and Auk Theater. Pod Blotz is the solo project of multi-media artist and photographer Suzy Poling. Auk Theater is the brainchild of longtime experimentalist and professional entomologist, Irene Moon. I will be upfront in admitting from the outset that I have a penchant for weird split records. The stranger the pairing, the better (at least in my mind). Of course, I’ve been burned before by artist pairings that sound good on paper, but in actuality were a pretty terrible idea. With both hope and trepidation I proceed.
"Julianne" is a shot of US country pop themed walled noise from this British project. And it's safe to say this has some of most elaborate packaging I’ve seen for a noise release in sometime.
Have you ever wondered what Slayer’s brutal Trash classic "Reign In Blood" would sound like if played together in a mass?. Well "I Will Be Reborn" answers that question. This CDR release finds Minneapolis based HNW/ stark ambient artist Cory Strand, taking this classic album & melding it into a mostly intense & totally over-whelming mass of sound.
Abyzm is a US project from Kansas City, who offer up a mixture of drone, HNW, and ANW. Seemingly “From The Depths” is the projects first full length CDR releases, after a few splits & mini CDRs. The project started at the start of 2013, though the person behind the person behind the project has been making noise under a few different names since 1997.
“The Hunters In The Snow” offers up four slices of fairly active & changing walled noise from this Scottish based project. The release comes in the form of a pro pressed CDR release, that comes in a clear DVD case which features a colour sleeve, and single inlay sheet.
“Morbid Beginnings” is a two CDR set that offers up four slices of oppressive, dark, tense, yet extremely brutal walled noise. I Watched You Die is one of the projects Dubuque Iowa based noise artists Alex Nowacki(Boar, Phantom Rib, Centuries Behind A Gate, Polyester Pants), and this project has been in existence since 2011, releasing around six CDR & cassette releases thus far. The project has always focused in on low-end, crushing & bleak walled noise.
I’ll start by confessing that ever since my mid-teens, I’ve been a Voivod fan. The three album period which saw them create “Killing Technology”, Dimension Hatross” and “Nothingface”, at the end of the 1980s, marks them as one of the most creative and innovative metal bands ever. In my teens, they were an amazing thrash band; but my older ears hear that they were so much more.
Space: the final frontier. While this is the case for Earth dwelling adventurers, it's not quite the case for musicians. Since the late 60's, musicians have had their sights on the stars and used their guitars and synthesizers to travel there. Space based music is nothing new, but the depth and scope of the universe allows for seemingly infinite ways to sonically interpret one's journey through the cosmos. The latest such journey comes to us from Ken Camden. Ken is a member of the Chicago quartet, Implodes, and this is his second solo effort.
Starting with the beginning of the band in the early 80's, Legendary Pink Dots front man Edward Ka-Spel released a string of solo albums in parallel to the Pink Dots' already prolific output. "Tanith and the Lion Tree", in 1991, was the 8th of these, and the first release not to the contain the words "China Doll" in its title. This Cold Spring re-issue came out last year in 2012.
After a pair of vicious EP’s, Atlanta’s vegan straightedge killing machine Dead in the Dirt return with a proper full-length on the always reliably heavy Southern Lord Records.
This review will start with a disclaimer, and probably continue in that vein to the end. Put simply, therefs very slim pickings here if you donft have a good understanding of German. The cd contains a radio broadcast from 2012, on Deutschlandradio Kultur; celebrating John Cage and in his particular his most famous work 4.33 (for the uninitiated, the piece requires the performer to make no intentional sounds for the duration). The broadcast combines recordings of the piece with soundbites from Cage, as well as further examples of gsilenceh in sound works.
Saltland is the new solo project of Rebecca Foon, a cello player who has previously played with Esmerine, A Silver Mt. Zion, and Set Fire to Flames. Her first statement under this new name is a 38 minute LP titled "I Thought It Was Us But It Was All of Us", a lush and immediately imposing river of sombre art rock sound.
Oh jeez, another "mysterious" band. I dunno, I guess it's interesting that someone can stay anonymous in this day and age, but c'mon. Whatever. I do know, though, that Nihiti is from New York and this is their second LP. Without further ado...
“Death Fetish” is a truly crushing, suffocating & bleak slice of black-as-night walled noise. The just over thirty two minute track on offer here is both tense & oppressive, yet also oddly hypnotic & kind of haunting too.
Over the years there have been many albums claiming to be truly raw & uncompromising examples of blacked metal craft. "Forest Poetry" (which I know sounds more like the title of a nature based folk record) is possible one of the most unrelenting examples of the raw black metal form in existence, and it's truly one of the most stark, battering & unforgiving things I’ve heard.
It’s fair to say that 1995’s “Village of the Damned” is one of the lesser known & respected films made by US cult director John Carpenter. I have very vague memoires of the once or twice I’ve seen the movie over the years, but I do recall been very underwhelmed & disappointed by it. So I approached this recent soundtrack reinterpretation by Minneapolis based HNW/ stark ambient artist Cory Strand, with certain amount of apprehension.
Now in its second edition of 500, Aurora Liminalis is the second collaboration from these East Coast minimalists. Whereas the three untitled pieces produced by the pair in 2003 blended their solo experiments with the Voyetra 8, an analog synth module of the early Eighties, this new release, consisting of a single 45 minute piece, offers no such information on its ingredients nor intent.
Here’s a very smart double cassette compilation on the reliable Worthless Recordings label. Presented in a dual tape box, with pro-printed inlay, inserts and tape stickers, the release’s imagery is all very funereal: skulls, graveyards and decrepit mausoleums. The cassettes contain fifteen tracks, from a variety of projects; some new to me, some not. I don’t feel that there’s any over-riding theme or concept to the collection, so we may as well just go through each tape in turn.
Agarttha is the name of a mystical place in ancient Vedic mythology where the leaders of the Underworld live and control events on the surface of the Earth and now also the brainchild of Italian artist Francesca Marongiu, also of Architeuthis Rex. The title of the album is a tribute to "A Water Which Does Not Wet Hands", a book by Sendivogius, a Polish pioneer in alchemical studies which deals with Jungian archetypes, in particular with the apocalyptic dreams and premonitions of the daughter of one of Jung’s friend , an 8 year old child who dreamed about death symbols and drew them in a small book before dying of an fatal illness.
Four Italian experimental/psychedelic/folk musicians, including Rella the Woodcutter, whose rather sloppy album "The Golden Undertow" did have some kind of woodsy pagan charm, have joined forces for a stripped down drone recording in the self titled debut of the "Eternal Zio" project.
Originally released in 2005 “Live On The Riviera” takes in one of the last performances by legendary free jazz saxophone player Albert Ayler & his band. The disc has recently been reissued as part 50th anniversary of the influential & respected free jazz label Esp-disc.