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A colourful, gatefold sleeve holds this album from Dead Western; not a name I’d heard before, and not one I’ll be looking out for in future. I can’t pretend to have got much from this; but in it’s defence, a lot hinges on your reaction to the vocals - so you may find the following criticism a recommendation. “Everything, Eternally” has ten songs, working in the area of indie/americana; with a tweeness that brings to mind Mercury Rev’s “Deserter’s Songs” - though with a much more morose atmosphere.
Chances are very good that if you're reading reviews on Musique Machine, you know who Merzbow and Kapotte Muziek are. If you're one of the rare few, no worries, you can catch up on your history after reading this review. Korm Plastics has compiled and released the collaborated works of Merzbow & Kapotte Muziek from 1987-1993 in a 3 CD set. It seems like there's a new Merzbow related release every week, but don't let that taint your opinion of this release. This is classic noise from two giants. There are no laptops, no "save the animals" messages, and no nonsense.
Rudiments of Mutilation” is the new full-length by american hardcore attack squadron, Full of Hell. Hailing from Pennsylvania and Maryland, the four-piece have made quite a name for themselves in relatively short span of time, releasing a slew of splits with the likes of: Code Orange Kids, Calm the Fire, and The Guilt Øf. However, this is their first full-length since 2011’s “Roots of Earth are Consuming My Home”. Released on Baltimore’s A389 Recordings, home to many other extreme hardcore luminaries, such as Integrity, Gehenna, and Pulling Teeth; Full of Hell has a lot to live up to. Lucky for us they can hold their own and then some.
Sickness of Snakes was the collective name for the brief collaboration between Coil (Jhonn Balance and Peter Christopherson) and Non (Boyd Rice) in the mid-eighties when both were fledgling post-industrial provocateurs. The results, a mere ten minutes long (taking an equally mere nine hours to record), reconstituted a shared influence of Italy's Futurist movement that celebrated the sounds of war, machinery and conquest, thanks to the groundbreaking sampling technology of the time.
Abismo is a noise/drone/experimental unit, active at least since the late 2000's. This "Sendero Luminoso" tape immediately caught my eye because of the title ("Sendero Luminoso" is an infamous communist/terrorist organization from Peru) and for the filthy xerox artwork, reminiscent of many South American noisecore releases.
Grumbling Fur is the project of Daniel O'Sullivan, who is known for being a member of prog rock band Guapo as well as numerous other projects, as well as a shifting lineup of other collaborators. The line up has now expanded to include British psychedelic folk singer Alexander Tucker, which is a comfortable choice considering O'Sullivan appeared on Tucker's last couple of records already.
Not to be confused with the Master Musicians of Jajouka, MMOB are playful ethnographic music fakers from Seattle whose name actually derives from a pornographic pastime invented by the Japanese and taken to extremes by the Germans!
Jute Gyte's take on the black metal form has always been complex, daring, sometime off-angle, but always creative & mostly rewarding. This new release sees the one man Missouri based project warping ‘n’ bending his black metal craft into very discordant & ugly shapes, yet still keeping the dense & complex composition structure of his past work.
The origins of this release are explanatory as to the motive behind it and its subsequent execution. ‘Tiefschlaf’ is, of course, a self-evident title for this project. A project whereby Martin Sturtzer (Phelios) and Christian Stritzel combined their talents during a ‘sleep-concert’ at the Phobos Festival in 2011 - the results of which are captured on ‘Tiefschlaf’.
This is the first, limited seven inch in a series from Fratto9 Under The Sky and Kinky Gabber; featuring two new names to me, not pursuing wildly different areas. Luminance Ratio and Steve Roden both present rather frail, intangible constructions on these sides; and both prioritise sound and timbre above other elements.
These are the last recordings to be released by Chet W. Scott under the Ruhr Hunter moniker. The EP comprises of three tracks, two from 2002 and the remaining one from 2003.
“Necronomicon” is a two disc CDR set that offers up a selection of H.P. Lovecraft themed slices of HNW & ANW, with elements of moody synth texturing, samples & experimental mood making sound craft mixed in. Carrion Black Pit is walled noise & ambient wall noise project of São Paulo, Brazil based Elias (Sleep of Ages & EXU). This is the projects second Lovecaft themed release, after the truly excellent “Mythos” CDR release, which appeared in 2011 on Bored Bear Recordings.
“Condemned To Life In Captivity”( is it me or does this sound like a Napalm Death album or song title?!) is seemingly the second release from this Cacak, Serbia based HNW project. Behind the project is one Djordje Miladinovic, who has seemingly been a lot more prolific with his other drone/ HNW project Raven which has amass around 70 releases since it started in 2011.
“Ghost Colored Halo”, is the 10th album by long-running shoegaze/ambient duo, Lovesliescrushing.
Svikt are a black metal band hailing from Norway, and "I Elendighetens Selskap" is their debut CD. What we have here is not very surprisingly classic nordic black metal: fast, unforgiving and pretty well put together. The mix of demonic vocals, grim guitar, dirty bass and drums is effective, even if doesn't add much to the history of the genre. Their songs are quite catchy and show lots of variety in pace and riffing, making this record very easy to digest. All their lyrics are in Norwegian, making them probably incomprehensible for most people, but on the other hand more kvlt than stupid fools that sing in English.
Kenzo Deluxe is a six-stringed parade of Americana boiled down to its sparest essence, so instead of being a flag waving, ticker tape raining celebration, it feels like an introspective campfire lecture where folk, blues and rock styles converge.
Tompkins Square have unearthed another archive of rarity; this time specific almost to the point of absurdity. This detailed release, with informative booklet, contains recordings of cajun music in south-western Louisiana, from 1929 and 1930 - like I said, specific… This brief snapshot of history, rescues these recordings from the forgotten, cobwebbed realms they have been unfairly condemned to: you may recognise the compilation dates as the period of the Great Depression in the USA, and as a consequence, these recordings sold very badly. Thus, despite being very well considered in their own time, and indeed by cajun music devotees ever since, the featured artists have been largely invisible in the wider domain. So, “Let Me Play This For You…” collects up these rare vinyls, dusts them down and introduces us to Angelas LeJeune, Percy Babineaux & Bixy Guidry and Blind Uncle Gaspard & Delma Lachney.
After three self-financed albums, Dark Buddha Rising is back with a fourth, but this time put out by Finnish label Svart. And, like most doom bands, DBR doesn't know the meaning of restraint. Dakhmandal is released as 3x12" EP and 2xCD. Is there really an hour and twenty minutes worth of quality material here?
Cthulhu Detonator is the moniker of Canadian Noise artist Eric Hogg. “Frequency Of The Multivibrator” is the second release from this project, following last year’s “Infernal Machines”. It’s extremely limited to 25 tapes with art by Derek Setzer. Truth be told, I was a little underwhelmed by Mr. Hogg’s debut album which I found to be rather uneven. However there were enough interesting nuggets on “Infernal Machines,” for me to give Cthulhu Detonator another try.
Franck Vigroux is a pretty well known sound artist and multi-instrumentist with lots of important collaborations (Mika Vainio, Zeena Parkins and the infamous Kenji Siratori for example) on his shoulders. I'm usually a bit sceptic about this "genre" and I often find its products pretty boring and unrewarding, but I hope my prejudice will not influence my review too much.
The Tokyo-based "psychedelic solid free attack group" Mainliner first emerged in the mid 90's. The lineup included Kawabata Makoto of the Acid Mothers Temple, and Koji Shimura on drums, both of whom are still in today's incarnation, which they are calling 'Kawabata Makoto's Mainliner'. The original bassist/vocalist Asahito Nanjo, who played with them until they disbanded in 2001, does not appear on this new release, "Revelation Space", being replaced instead by Taigen Kawabe.
Forms of religious worship, and the places where they take place-in are varied & sometimes unique- from the scared & mystical, to the arcane & timeless, onto the seemingly mundane yet still intriguing. “Sacred & Profane” finds British sound artists & composer Iain Armstrong offering up a collection of fifteen field recordings made in various religious sites around the world over a twelve year period.
Horrible Mess is a Canadian based HNW/Harsh noise project that has been active since seemingly 2011, putting out around twenty or so releases- which take in split tapes, compilation appearances, and a few stand alone tape releases. "The Well" appears on American wall noise label Breaching Static, (run by Alex Nowacki of HNW/HN project Boar), and the release offers up a rewarding selection of moody, brutal & often quite sonically descriptive HNW, oh & it’s also the first stand alone CDR release from this project.
House Of Bats is a collaboration between two dependable figures on the noise scene: Andreas Brandal (Flesh Coffin, Hour of the Wolf) and Robert Meldrum (Unearthed, Spider Tapes); and this first release, on the equally dependable Lighten Up Sounds label, is a c40 cassette of slurring, creepy horror music. Horror music in the sense of taking its cues from horror soundtrack devices and sounds, and horror music in the more literal sense of being full of dread, unease and approaching violence. Its packaged in the usual, colourful Lighten Up Sounds style; with a cover possibly taken from some old, trashy horror novel - very reminiscent of the Men Of Science lathe cut I reviewed recently, on the same label. The tape has four tracks of slow-burning, lo-fi, horror drones.