Loading
Through And Through stands as one of the more bleakly distinctive and often tonally unbalancing films based on a true crime. The early '70s Polish film blends unpredictable editing, up-close & personal drama, arty & disorienting visuals, and jarring blends of music & sound. Here from Radiance Films, both in the UK & stateside, is a recent Blu-ray release of the film. Taking in a 2k scan, a new interview, and a collection of the director's short films.
Ride A Wild Stud is a haphazardly made roughie western from the late 60s. It’s a fairly loosely plotted affair, where much of the time, it’s unclear who is who, aside from a few key characters. Though there’s an effectively unpleasant & crumby-looking lead bad guy, and a fair bit of uncomfortable sleaze present. Here from Dark Force Entertainment is a bare bones Blu-ray release of the film.
Here’s a CD release bringing together three compositions from Italian modern classical composer Osvaldo Coluccino. All of the pieces mix electronics with acoustic instruments- for an often volatile, darting, and at times moodily uneasy ride.
Zone Grise brings together three pieces by French modern classical composer/pianist Didier Rotella, whose work shifts between the jagged/darting & the ambient. Two blend electronics with formal instrumentation, and one is for a string quartet.
Released in the year 1968, Succubus, aka Necronomicón, was one of the first drives into the more dreamily kinky and hallucinogenic side of Jess Franco's filmography. It told of an S&M-focused nightclub performer who loses her grip on reality. The picture is often seen as one of the Eurocult auteur's most notable/ respected films. So, with that in mind, here we have the latest edition of PSP’s Publishing Midnight Movie Monograph series, which finds highly respected cult film commentator Tim Lucas doing a deep dive into the film and all that surrounds it.
From 2023, Perpetrator is a heady, though often confusing, mix of female coming-of-age drama, fantasy, and serial killer thriller with an overt focus on blood. Here from Arrow Video, both in the UK and stateside, is a Blu-ray release of the film, taking in both new and archive extras.
Out Of The Clouds is a drama played out over a twenty-four-hour period in London Airport, which changed its name to Heathrow in 1966. The mid-50s British film is both a charming and rather fascinating affair, as it weaves together several( largely) engaging character stories and gives us a look at the early days of UK jet travel. Here from Powerhouse, only in the US, is a Blu-ray release of the film, taking in two cuts of the picture, and a selection of new & archive extras.
Austrian improv trio, Phenomenal World, release their debut through Rock Is Hell on LP this month, having hit the downloadable scene a couple of weeks back. Consisting of Michael Fischer (vox, reeds), Didi Kern (drums), and Philipp Quehenberger (keyboard), the group presents an engaging, noisy slab of funky experimental music that is as easy to get into as it is to bob one's head along with the beat. Recorded just shy of two years ago, Same is an energetic work that highlights three musicians in sync with their visions and talents.
Here we have a wall noise split- bringing together work from projects from Bangkok and Cincinnati, Ohio. Each serves up around thirty minutes ‘wall’- with each sounding fairly different.
Sketches 1-17 is a two-disc set bringing together pared-down guitar compositions. The material moves between drifting ambience, slowed-down blues/ jazz motifs, and generally atmospheric/ felt guitar scaping. It’s an album very much to sink into and drift off with.
Successive Actions takes in sixteen tracks built around recordings of motorised devices, sourced from obsolete consumer technology. Track lengths vary between one and eleven minutes, with the recordings moving between textural studies, erratic blending of several different elements, and all-out/ intense sound crafting.
Loop And Again is a CD album themed around magnetic fields. It blends recordings of said fields, drone texturing, sudden pitch rising detail, and general field recordings. The three tracks featured are eventful, moody, at times atmospherically jarring- with a sound that dips in electro ambience, pressing drone texturing, and even droned out avant jazz.
Giuseppe Ielasi & Riccardo Dillon Wanke are two avant-garde guitarists with a Morton Feldman-esque idea of minimalist composition. For the purposes of this recording, titled With Time, We Learned to Ask Less, Wanke plays the electric piano. Here they can be heard playing disconnected, delicate melodic fragments in a reverberant space, with a few seconds of silence between each, hinting at chord-like structures before dissolving them again into a soporific emptiness. You might call it a free jazz-informed instrumental ambient recording.
Sitting in the subgenre of folk horror, 2023's The Seeding is a barren, intense film that puts its protagonist through the wringer. Here on the Arrow Video Player is a VOD release of the film.
The Naked Witch, aka The Witchmaker, is a cult 1969 exploitation horror movie written, produced and directed by William O Brown (Brown only made one other movie, the beach comedy One Way Wahine). The movie stars Anthony Eisley (Wasp Woman, Frankie and Johnny and Hawaiian Eyes), Thordis Brandt (Funny Girl, In Like Flint and The Green Hornet), Alvy Moore (Green Acres, A Boy and His Dog and Intruder) and Shelby Grant (The Pleasure Seekers, Fantastic Voyage and Our Man Flint).
Here’s a pro-printed and duplicated CD in a digipak case, complete with a large booklet, featuring around 40 minutes of vocal pieces from Ruth Wilhelmine Meyer. The tracks are constructed from layers of vocal performances, and the booklet and label spiel take great pains to loudly point out that the works are free of processing, an odd claim to my mind, but we’ll get to that later.
Joe Meek-A Curious Mind is a three-CD box set that looks at the more quirky, playful and experimental side of 1960s English pop producer Joe Meek. Over the collection, we get a total of seventy-six tracks, which highlight his wacky, but often ahead of his time sonic talents, which darted in & out of different genres/ themes.
Seth Thorn is a violinist and coder – not necessarily two things that traditionally jibe – though today is certainly not traditional, by any stretch of the imagination. Thorn is a live improviser, and his first album, a curious doubling of terms, parades all of his talents, of which there are many. Things begin rather peacefully, the violin taking centre stage, but quickly the larger field in which it appears becomes populated by the machinic, in Thorn's terms. Similar experiments follow, including a church organ ringing out on "taking to heart", though the lo-fi tape flutter reminds us we are definitely not in the pews. The track concludes by submerging all of this under synthetic oceans, drowning any vestiges of the organic beneath its waves.
Trouble Every Day is a slowly unfurling, glum and troubling mystery drama- edged with moments of both shocking sexualized violence and body horror. The early 2000s centres around a newlywed American couple, Shane (Vincent Gallo) and Jean (Tricia Vessey), on their honeymoon to Paris, and how obsession/ perversion taints their time in the city of love. Here from Eureka, as either a UHD or Blu-ray, is a new reissue of the film, taking in a 4k scan, and a selection of new & archive extras
Divine Love is a late 2010 Brazilian film that blends martial drama with dystopian sci-fi with a lowercase D. It regards a female bureaucrat who revels in bringing back those from the ledge of divorce, and with her florist husband, is part of a cult that believes in pure love ‘n’ god- via dance parties, ritualistic group bonding, and pink-lit orgies. It’s certainly a thought-provoking, if slightly vapid film, that’s well-scoped/realised, often edged with neon colourings. Here from Second Run is a recent Blu-ray release of the film, taking in a 4K scan, and an interview with the writer/ director
Anyone who has been into death metal at all during the past forty years has no doubt had an encounter with Deceased, one of the longest-running death metal bands around. King Fowley has seen it all in his time at the helm of the band, steering them through the shredding chaos of the early days and tape trading clear through to today's infinitely connected world of websites, streaming, blogs, vlogs, podcasts, and myriad other sources of information. While the world has changed immensely in the past five decades, King and company have always stayed true to themselves and to their metallic aims, even if it meant changing stylistically, and because of this truth, we're presented with the wonderful and diverse 2CD set, March of the Cadavers - 40 Years of Death Metal From the Grave.
Here’s a self-titled release that focuses on dense, dissonant, at times maniacally playful improv/ non-music. The CD release takes in six tracks, which shy away from formal structure and shape to create a sort of blunt jam/ haphazard improv vibe.
Talent Should Be Rewarded is the latest release from Sebastian Tomb ( aka Berlin’s Joris Martin Sabinius)- one of the most creative projects to appear from the euro wall noise scene in some time. This new digital-only EP sees the project pushing the genre envelope even more- with elements of sampled/ manipulated field records, synth tones, etc added into the mixing pot- to create a release that is still in the walled noise/ textured noise genre, but is always keen to experimentation/ expand the form.
Odieux serves up two eighteen-minute slices of hope-numbing & seriously nihilistic HNW from this Bordeaux-based project. With each wall being as sonically searing & audibly roasting as the each other.