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Extreme metal is at a crossroads. One path leads toward newer sounds, faster speeds, and interesting new themes. The other toward classic sounds refined to play to the modern metalhead. While both approaches are valid, the former seems to trip itself up with the need for speed. Not every new idea works. Thankfully, to quote George Romero, "there's always vanilla."
“Punk Slime” sees the return of this mysterious & unhinged US project. As always this new release is a wonky, off-colour & deranged mixture of various musically styles merged & mixed together to create that distictive & unwell musical sound that could only be Pumpkin Buzzard.
Saturn Form Essence is a space bound noise/drone project from Ukraine, they create moody & dark soundtracks for doomed intergalactic travel, or sinister planet exportations. The project has been going since 2009, and has released around 50 releases, taking in split tape/ CDR releases, and stand alone tape/ CDR releases. Behind the project is Rivne based Pr. Sergiy, who is most known for his ambient black metal/ raw black metal project Moloch.
Uk based Clive Henry is one of the most truly progressive artists working with-in the Harsh noise wall, or static noise genre. Each of his releases is a cleverly conceived & detailed themed journey into textured noise & walled noise matter, that weaves in elements of sound art & field recordings, ambience, experimental texturing, and what ever else he fancies.
Originally released in May 1975, “Warriors On The Edge Of Time” is seen as not only one of Hawkwinds most balanced & consistent albums, but also a space/ psychedelic rock classic. And it’s easy to see why, as even from the first track, there’s a wonderfully feeling of focus, epic yet approachable composition, and imaginative musical texture layering. The rest of albums original nine tracks follow a similar inspired, head expanding & consistent path; making this one of those rare beast, the perfect album.
Editions Mego presents the new album by Korean born cellist/composer Okkyung Lee. Now living in the State’s, Lee has had an interesting career collaborating with artists as varied as: Laurie Anderson, David Behrman, Douglas Gordon, Vijay Iyer, Christian Marclay, Jim O’Rourke, Evan Parker and John Zorn. No doubt influencing the highly imaginative and complex album I have before me.
A simple but professional package, here, from Handmade Birds: a neatly printed inlay card, with introductory notes from Zeh; and a red cassette with on-body printing. The tape contains one long track on each side, both based around recordings of the electromagnetic fields produced by tape machines. Zeh picks up these fields using telephone coil mics, which convert them into audio signals. My small experience of using these mics, has normally resulted in pretty static, crackling drones and hums; so I’d wager that Zeh is achieving his sounds from mixing and layering his multiple tape machines’ fields, as well as eq-ing.
Compoundead are a noise drone duo from Italy. The project has been active since 2008, and so far has released around ten releases taking in CDR & tape splits, and stand alone tape/CDR releases. This full length CDR release appeared sometime towards the end of 2012, and it offers up three fairly lengthy journey's in to grey drone drift that’s ebbed with mostly subtle noise texturing.
“Dedicated To Nothing” is a two disc CDR collaborative HNW release- it brings together the highly prolific & mostly brutally unforgiving 'walls' of Serbian based Dead Body Collection, and the brutal yet often sonically descriptive ‘walls’ of Canadian based Horrible Mess.
Texas based Snuff Film offer up a brutalizing, suffocating & unrelenting take on the walled noise form. “Bone Collection” is a CDR release on Iowa based HNW/ Noise label Breaching Static( which is run by Alex of Boar, I Watched You Die, ect)- the CDR presents the listener with a single forty five minute slice of truly intense & overloading HNW.
“Cold Water Ordeal” is a 18 minute slice of dense & battering walled noise themed around the 15th to 18th century judicial practice of submitting a person to water to determine whether thier guilty or innocent of witchcraft.
“Fickle Blade” finds this often industrialized Maryland based Hash Noise Wall project giving the listener a dense yet consistently churning serving of walled noise. The release comes in the form of a CDR, which comes in a PC colour printed art work.
Second release for half Swedish, half Norwegian quintet Brutus and here we have an album firmly entrenched in the early Black Sabbath mould. No computers here as the band plough through 9 tracks of classic seventies metal.
Burning Tree's "Lammergyer" is a true endurance test of an album if I have ever heard one, a recording that would compel 99% of listeners of even the most abrasive free jazz and noise music shut it off before its 42 minute were up, myself included. While listeners of John Zorn and Borbetomagus are undoubtedly familiar with the piercing, physically revolting sound of an altissimo saxophone squeal (one of the few sounds more abrasive than a raw human scream) it is unlikely most have ever listened to an entire album of unrelenting, unchangingly shrill shrieks from a player with apparently inhuman stamina. There is scarcely a rest between these blasts, and these frequencies are among the most physically painful for virtually all listeners. It's much like a tea kettle boiling over.
Stormfield and Monster X are both known for their breakcore projects. They eschewed their standard M.O.'s when they teamed up to form Fausten. This collaboration shows a departure of form, but not of intensity. All the breaks have been shattered and fused into an industrial soup with little beat meatballs floating around. It's a pretty tasty bowl.
Avant-garde, experimentalists Zs return with a new EP entitled “Grain” on Northern Spy Label. Much has been said and written about Zs new line up of Sam Hillmer, Greg Fox and Patrick Higgins and their seemingly new sound. Though I don’t have a basis for comparison. Truth be told, my experience with Zs is thin at best. To my recollection the only piece of music I ever owned of theirs is the 7” on 31G. Of course, sometimes going into a review with a clean slate is not necessarily a bad thing.
It's surprising to discover that 'Tutuguri' is Felipe Otondo's first collection of sound art. He has been exploring the acoustic world for well over a decade, from his experimental theatre work of the nineties in his homeland of Chile, to today's post in the UK as lecturer at the Lancaster Institute for the Contemporary Arts. Along the way he has received several awards for his compositions that, heretofore, could only be heard in performance settings.
“The Great Silence” is a long form piece of subtle changing field recording composition, created purely by the use of nocturnal recordings made in forest of New South Wales Australian. Jay–Dea López is an Australian field-recordist and sound-designer. He originally trained in classical performance and composition, but he now works purely with field recordings- both in raw and modified form. He also owns & writes for sound art & field recording Webzine soundslikenoise.org
This C20 split brings together two slices of HNW from two French walled noise acts. On the first side we have a track from relative scene new comer Logical Fiend, and on the second side a track from black bag wearing legend of unmoving walled noise Vomir.
This collaboration comes in a red cd case, spray-painted with “Sada Abe” in jagged lettering. The inside has the cdr, and paper inserts taped to the walls of the case; normally, this would be perhaps ugly, but it seems to make good aesthetic sense here. The cdr has an hour long track of wall noise, made by the combined efforts of Karkastix, Nascitari and Poseitrone; one of the inserts reads “wall created by use of secretions/Desire, Eviration, Semen”, which will have to remain a intriguing mystery…
‘Dismal Radiance’ by one-man project KAVE is 49 minutes of floating dark ambience. Although the albums divided into 8 tracks, it is really one long piece which slowly evolves over its duration.
Kwaidan is a new trio belonging to the arguably modern phenomenon of drone rock bands which includes Andre Foisy of similarly arrhythmic ambient black metallers Locrian. Though they utilize typical rock instruments such as distorted guitar and drumset, they rarely play a riff, choosing instead to focus on balances of timbre to create dusky, primordial ritualized environments of the kind typically found on isolationist ambient records. "Make All the Hell of Dark Metal Bright", an LP containing 6 tracks, is their debut album.
Less is more.Variety is the spice of life. The above are definitely hackneyed platitudes, but they have some truth to them. These came to mind while listening to the new split between Total Life and Deceh. Overlong, 90% static tracks may work for some, but they don't with others. Music is highly subjective. I prefer a more dynamic approach, and this split provided the opposite.
AX is the brainchild of Anthony Di Franco, known for his work in such legendary acts as: Ramleh, Novatron, Ethnic Acid, JFK, and Skullflower. Despite being established in the 90’s, I will admit that AX is Mr. Di Franco’s work that I’m least familiar with.