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Patrick McGinley (aka Murmer) is an American-born sound, performance, and radio artist currently based in Europe. Since 1996, he has travelled the European countryside armed with recording equipment to collect found sounds that are then amalgamated and manipulated into musical pieces.
As soon as I saw the cover of "In Durins Halls (Return To The Mines Of Moria)" I knew I was in for a fun listening experience: the extremely cheesy artwork with badly photoshopped mountains and a chain-mailed guy in transparence plus the Lord Of The Rings thematics create a potentially dangerous mix, but what I found definitely exceeded my expectations.
The final track on this CD, KTL's first release in four years, could be said to return to their source. It sees Editions Mego boss and electronic composer Peter Rehberg poised alongside polymathic metalhead Stephen O'Malley to once more produce an evocatively bleak soundtrack to the transgressive theatre of Gisèle Vienne and DennisCooper.
The fact is worthy of mention in a predominantly male-dominated scene, Lamia Vox (Lamia being the name of a child-eating, serpent-tailed creature of the Greek mythology immortalized by John Keats in a poem of the same name written around 1820) is the pseudonym of a young Saint-Petersburg-based Rose McDowall-lookalike – or at least a younger and lighter version of her – whose ritualistic take on the dark ambient canon brought to the attention of Russia’s premium dark experimental label Der Angriff, responsible for the release of her first full-length album, the suitably-titled ‘…Introductio’, in 2010. She has now traded the vast, frozen Russian expanses for… the vast, frozen Canadian expanses that are home to Frédéric Arbour’s Cyclic Law, without a doubt the most respected industrial imprint north of the Niagara Falls.
"Kad Te Moja Čakija Ubode” comes in a box, sealed with a sticker; containing a tape and an A6 booklet inside. The booklet tells us that the compilation celebrates a documentary by Bosnian director Krsto Papiè, and gets its name from the same source. This short film is a gritty exploration of murders carried out in villages, with drunkenness and knives featuring heavily. There’s a mundanity to the murders, that makes the documentary all the more horrifying. The tape contributors are split geographically, the first side belonging to Balkan noise projects, and the second to Lithuanian projects.
“Huutoja Hiljaisesta Huoneesta”(Screams from a Silent Room) offers up a selection of rather mellow, atmospheric, and often memorable slices of song craft that mixes together elements of 1970’s classic rock, moody retro pop rock, low- key 80’s tinged euro pop, pared down mellow prog rock tendencies, euro folk rock, and a few sprinkle ‘n’ shakes of other genres too.
After nearly 2 decades of kicking it, post-punk trio Dial return for their fourth full-length entitled “Western Front.” Dial comes from a respectable experimental rock lineage featuring members who have done time in such outfits as: God, Ut, Furious Pig and Het. Being a self-described band of nomads, spending time in the United States, France and Great Britain over the years they seemed to have picked up a variety sounds and genres to pull from.
“Tales From the Ultra Tribe” teams up American ambient legend Steve Roach with ethic percussionist Byron Metcalf for an entrancing & hypnotic journey into electronic/ organic shamanic sound-scaping that’s lined by moody ambience.
“For Blood, For Honour" offers up two lengthy shots of drilling ‘n’ droning HNW that’s themed around the comic book & cartoon super-hero’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
"Performs the Songs of Bacharach and David" sees this UK HNW/ANW project doing it’s walled noise tribute to the easy listening pop music of Burt Bacharach & his song writing partner Hal David. Each of the six ten minute tracks on offer here start out with a sample from one of the pairs classic & cheesy pop songs, and then morphs it’s self into HNW texturing.
Philip and Myste French are the current iteration of Nite Lite. Their first release on Desire Path Recordings, Megrez, comes in a ltd. 300 LP. If you've never heard these guys, avoid the press release. It's wild, over the top, and it may convince you not to check out this album. I can see the trouble with describing an album that is as unconventional as Megrez, but crazy bombast is more of a detractor than a selling point.
Backward Music is a new label started by Forward Music Group, based in Halifax, on the east coast of Canada, and this first release is a compilation of ambient and experimental instrumental works, by Bing and Ruth (led by New York’s David Moore), percussionist Joshua van Tassel and Tim Crabtree, an exiled Englishman who makes ambient folk under the name Paper Beat Scissors.
Veteran deep listening sound artist Steve Roden released multiple recordings in 2012, one of which was "Berlin Fields", a single 40 minute piece largely composed of field recordings.
Gribberiket is a Norwegian black metal band formed in 2008, but as far as I know this "Knefall" tape, released by Oslo-based label Records Of The Fleshgod, is their first physical output.
Mika Vainio's "Fe3O4 - Magnetite" is an album of patient and measured, though not necessarily quiet, deep listening experiments that continues with many of the same threads explored in the doom metal influenced drone album "Life... It Eats You Up" that came out in 2011. There are no rhythmic elements or beats that would harken back to his work in Pan Sonic.
A good old-fashioned jewel case holds the cd for Cut Hands, with a glossy booklet containing pictures and words. These words are texts for each track, but not lyrics - the only voice to be heard on “Black Mamba” is a female voice in the short introductory piece “Witness The Spread Of The Dream”. There’s twelve tracks in all, over about forty minutes.
On the influence of seventies British comedy on today’s music review writing or how Monty Python’s Holy Grail got in the way of writing this piece: it is most unfortunate that the subject matter of ‘Already Drowning’, Canadian bulimic composer Aidan Baker’s newest album, namely myths and folktales about female water spirits, immediately drew unintentionally funny associations with watery tarts and moistened bints because it was a couple of days before I could even start listening to it without breaking into uncontrollable laughter.
Chaudelande is a compilation CD of the two Chaudelande LP’s that came out on Tamed Records last year. The limited edition CD digi-pack (Launch054) will be available on the 25th of February and users who buy it via download get an extra bonus track which wouldn’t fit on the CD.
South of the Border is an audio documentation of Aki Onda’s travels in Mexico. As a child, Mr. Onda grew up with a very fantastical and surreal impression of Mexico. These impressions were largely informed by old videos his father took as a visiting member of the Japanese National Hockey Team in the 68’ Olympics and Alejandro Jodorowsky’s film El Topo. In 2005, he finally had the opportunity to travel to Mexico and see for himself if this was in fact the fantastical land he dreamed of as a child.
“Bathory” sees this Louisiana based HNW projet paying it’s sonic tribute to one of the more bloody & macabre figures in world history. Countess Elizabeth Báthory de Ecsed, was a Hungarian noble women who tortured & killed hundreds of young girls in the 1600’s. She was meant to have bathed in the blood of her victims to keep her youth, and her crimes are said to be a influence on Bram Stoker's Dracula, and the vampire myths in genreal.
“The Iron Man” offers up a collection of junk & mechanical sound layered active walled noise. This release is themed/ based around the classic & deranged man turning into a machine movie “Tetsuo, the Iron Man”. Carrion Black Pit is a São Paulo, Brazil based project that mostly specializes in horror movie themed releases that utilize both HNW & ANW to create a brutal yet atmospheric sound.
“Eyeliner Into Nylon Back Seam” finds this Canadian harsh noise/HNW legend offering up a single shot of dense & pummelling walled noise, which is seemingly themed around women’s tights/ stockings & British fashion model/ actress Emma Watson who appears on the releases front cover.
Species at War is the seventh EP from Finnish grinders Rotten Sound. That's not to say seventh release, as in their 20 years, they have released six full lenghts, seven EPs, three splits, one single, a DVD, and a compilation track. The boys have been busy! Thankfully, though, they've avoided the common genre problem of being TOO busy and releasing more crap than quality. Their latest, Species at War, is an aural assault and a very worthy addition to their catalog.
This split from February 2012 brings together two love/loss themed slices of European walled noise. We have a track a piece from: prolific & often battering Serbian walled noise project Dead Body Collection, and often creative 'n' detailed UK wall noise maker Clive Henry.