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Automating, the bleak ambient project of Sasha Margolis, has existed since 2007, and released more than 10 CDrs in that time. This album "Givens", released in 2012, is a lengthy lo-fi industrial noisescape which blends from one track to the next.
Black/doom act Nahar is back with its third album. The two piece was formed in 2000 by Sorghal, a member of many French black metal bands. I'm not sure how Nahar compares to Sorghal's other bands, but Nahar puts forward a solid black/doom/sludge effort on The Strange Inconvenience.
Dethscalator are a Noise Rock/Sludge Metal grindcore band formed in 2008 in Hackney, London, and ‘Racial Golf Course No Bitches’, 5 years in the making, is their debut album. Imagine Motorhead crossed with Whitehouse with a good dash of added Sabbath and you’re somewhere near the awesome power of this 35 minute release. The 10 songs here represent some of the most insane psyched out riffing I’ve heard for years, all recorded in crystal clear, ear bleeding fidelity.
Here's a deliriously chunky slab of lathe-cut vinyl, from Lighten Up Sounds. It contains two tracks from Men Of Science - the nom de plume of a collaboration between Andreas Brandal and Matthew Himes - Mr. Lighten Up Sounds himself. The slab-like nature of the release, further emphasized by being cut to a square shape, is initially softened by the artwork: weathered pictures of nurses, possibly from old romance novels; but the viewer soon becomes aware of the staring eyes of the masked nurses, which assume a haunting dread...
NDE is a pretty obscure Belgian death industrial duo, with an extremely narrow discography and a good old crust of disinformation and ambiguity around them. In an era when we're overloaded with futile information from our favorite artists, this approach is very welcome.
Jim Haynes is multi-media artist, who has a theme of “decay” running through his work, regardless the medium. Released on the avant garde label Editions Mego, “The Wires Cracked” is an amalgamation of atmospheric drones, electro-acoustic manipulations, shifting static and feedback.
More often than not, one-man black metal bands tend to be the affair of slightly depressed youngsters who harbour romantic ideas about self-sacrifice, leave their dungeon-looking bedroom less than is generally deemed healthy and consider ‘Hvis Lyset Tar Oss’ the pinnacle of musical achievement.
This three disc CDR set is the next in the series of John Carpenter movie soundtrack reinterpretations by Minneapolis based HNW/ stark ambient artist Cory Strand. For his re-take on this classic & iconic horror soundtrack Strand has decided to go completely ambient highlighting the brooding dread of the first Halloween movie.
“Light The Fires!” is the 4th full length album from Chet Scott’s (of Ruhr Hunter, Elemental Chrysalis and Glass throat records) metallic & folk/rock project Blood of the Black Owl. And it finds him offering up another earthy ‘n’ woodland spirit bound release that mixers in elements of 1970’s prog rock, country tinged folk rock & flute bound shamanistic tribal influences with more metallic fair.
"Ultrealith" is a very lengthy album of field recordings, featuring pleasing color-coded artwork featuring an orange and black winged insect contrasting with a peculiar arrangement of sewing buttons in primary colors. Artificial Memory Trace apparently have a vast back catalogue of releases, dating back to 1994, but I have never heard, nor heard of any of their recordings prior to now. Over the years, their productivity has, if anything, increased: this album is one of at least 8 releases they have put out in 2012.
Zone Tripper is an American harsh noise band, featuring members of other nicely named projects like Vasectomy Party or Rectal Hygienics.
“Hellraiser: A Tribute” is a c85 tribute to the first two Hellraiser films in HNW form. This collaborative release brings together La Crosse Wisconsin based Burial Ground- who often offers up a dense yet detailed take on the HNW sound. And Indianan based Crown Of Bone- who often go for a more blacked metal/ blacked noise tinged take on HNW.
This C60 split tape offers up two brutal & wall noise based celebrations of Edgar Allan Poe’s poem “The Conqueror Worm”. On side one we have a track from São Paulo, Brazil based Carrion Black Pit, and on side two a track from Italian based Nascitari.
Oranur III "The Third Report" originally appeared back in 1995, and has since been heralded as one of the key dark ambient albums. This reissue on the always dependable & quality bound Cold Spring records sees the album getting a slight re-worked & re-mixed, and also adds in a few new bonus tracks too.
Alex Zhang Hungtai (b. September 4, 1980, Taipei), known by his stage name Dirty Beaches, is a Taiwanese-born Canadian musician based in Montreal, Quebec who started off as a one-man band in 2005. His previous releases include music ranging from drone instrumentals to film scores, and mutated American music like blues, rockabilly, soul, R&B and hip hop, often changed to a point of unrecognizability.
Serbia has become quite a force in the international noise scene, producing such acts as Raven, Dead Body Collection, and Srdjan Eftimovski’s, harsh noise project Nundata. I became a convert of Nundata’s work after hearing his 2010 album Carousel, so I was quite excited to see this release appear in my review queue. Released on James Killick’s (Love Katy, Small Hours) now defunct Sweet Solitude label and advertised as HNW made with walnuts; I was even further intrigued. Walnuts are known as one of nature’s most potent sources of omega 3 fatty acids, but are they also nature’s most potent sound source for harsh noise?
Hair Police return for their first proper full-length since 2008’s “Certainty of Swarms”. The trio of Mike Connelly (aka Failing Lights), Robert Beatty (aka Three Legged Race) and Trevor Tremaine have been crafting punishing industrial noise for over a decade now. While many of their contemporaries have abandoned ship for dance club beats, Hair Police pride themselves on keeping things grimey.
This exquisitely packaged, pro-pressed cd comes in a book-like digipak; with laboured over artwork that reminds me very much of a certain artist - but I forget which one (!). The digipak is adorned with pictures that suggest a story to the release: some kind of friendship or relationship between a schoolgirl and an alien being; and whilst Twinsistermoon certainly deal in psychedelia; the sounds on the album aren’t of a sci-fi bent.
Frédéric Nogray is a French self-taught musician, composer and sound artist who has being producing work since the late 1990’s. BUITI BINAFIN (déambulation à la lisière du monde) is fifty five minute sound diary of his trip to the north coast of Honduras in May 2012.
It’s always difficult/sad when one of your favourite projects or bands announces their giving up making music or sound, but it’s even worse if said band or project just seems to stop putting out stuff, and your none the wiser if they’ve given up or not…and you’re just left hanging. Such a thing happen with Akercocke- the English progressive blacked/ death metal band. In 2007 they put out one of the best albums of their five album career “Antichrist”, which perfectly mixed together the bands brutal/atmospheric side with their more progressive/experimental side. But since then all there has been is rumours, and no real confirmation one way or another if the band is no more or not….and this is where Voices come in.
Jeff Gburek's "The Watermark" is an album of sparse, loosely structured ethereal 'neofolk' guitar playing, backed by an organic carpet of bioluminescent improvisatory ambient electronics. He has been around since 2005, but this is my first exposure to his work.
Deathchain. Deathchain. Deathchain. Deathchain. This name makes no sense, and it's not due to the semantic saturation I just subjected myself to. I guess having "death" in your name is to death metal what "goat" is to black metal. Just do it and watch the kids drink it up. This is Deathchain's (haha) sixth full length release in ten years, and first on the diverse Svart label. So, without mentioning the band name again, let's check out what these Finnish metalheads have put out, eh?
This split C30 tape brings together a track a piece from two US based HNW project. Side one features a track from Richmond, Virginia based Ritual Stance. And Side two features a track from Oregon based Wet Dream Asphyxiation.
“Paura” is a C30 tape that collects together two 15 minute slices of decidedly brutal & unrelenting walled noise from this highly prolific Serbian project.