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Joe Panzner is half of experimental duo Scenic Railroads. With four solo releases in seven years, his output is sparse. However, they're well reviewed, so a few well done records inspires more confidence than sub-par saturation. Also, Joe's first solo release was on the now defunct Gameboy Records. Gameboy was putting out a lot of awesome releases when I starting to get more serious about noise/experimental. These are good omens for Ol' P McP.
“Live At The Filmore 1968” offers up a 10 track live set from the highly influential and respected psychedelic folk, world music tinged and mixed musical genre Scottish project The Incredible String Band.
“Insecta: The Birth Of Gods” offers up a very disorientating, highly uncomfortable & at times searing sonic journey into a mixture of : grey improv tinged drone matter, unbalancing & noised-up field recordings, stark & soulless rhythmic textures, and dwell/ bursts in suffocating & enclosing noise matter.
This CD is a reissue of a 1966 free jazz release, which was the first album from Alabama born jazz tenor and soprano saxophonist Marzette Watts. Marzette was a fairly key figure with-in the 1960’s American free jazz movement, and was known most for his loft parties where the likes of Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor, Don Cherry, Archie Shepp, and Pharoah Sanders played. “Marzette Watts & Company” original appeared on the legendary free jazz label ESP Disk, who have now reissued it again.
Black Beast of Arrrghhh is the noise project of Floridian Zachary Short. “A Night at the Dollar Theatre” (a play on Queen’s “A Night at the Opera”) is the follow up to last year’s Noise Doctrine. An indelible fixture on the Suncoast Florida noise scene, Mr. Short’s output runs the gamut from crushing noise walls to spoken word musings to his duo work with Mayan Apocalypse. Known for his range and wide palette of sounds, some of his recent work seem to explore the marriage of noise with classical music. “A Night...” is Mr. Short’s first widely available physical release (that I know of) intertwining these these two seemingly disparate musical genres.
E-Musikgruppe are Pertti Grönholm (synthesizers, samplers, sequencers and rhythm machines), Kimi Kärki (guitars and effects), Jaakko Penttinen (synthesizers and sequencers), Ismo Virta (Memotron, guitars and effects).
Dawnrider is a doom metal band from Portugal, and this live recording celebrates their eight year of activity. I'm no expert of modern doom metal, and I have to confess that I had’nt heard of this band before but the extremely cheesy artwork with its classic and naive metal band pictures caught my eye from among the stash of releases to review.
Wolf Eyes return with their new umpteenth millionth album, entitled No Answers: Lower Floors. Arguably, noise’s most recognizable group, Wolf Eyes has remained amazingly consistent with their output over the years. I’ve always had a soft spot for the group, being the first live noise act I ever had the chance to witness...on tour with Sonic Youth no less. It was pretty precious to see the looks of recoil on many of the attendees’ faces, likely expecting some local indie rock openers for the legendary SY. Even as they lost some of their fans with their Sub Pop debut (the calls of jumping the shark were not surprising), I’ve greatly enjoyed their later material. Would No Answers continue that streak?
Given the tide of the ongoing social and religious upheavals in Iraq, which ripples through the land like a shockwave, it is inevitable that the residue of strife and conflict will be absorbed to varying degrees by the country's general populace. One of whom is Erragal: one man who expresses himself through an outlet of ritual dark ambient and abrasive Black Metal distortions.
“Eclipse” is a retro styled shot of 1980’s moody electrioncia/up-beat ambience that brings to mind the likes of Tangerine Dream, Jean-Michel Jarre & Jan hammer, and mixers in memories of 1970’s & 1980’s electrionic horror sound tracking by the likes of Fabio Frizzi & Goblin . Oscillotron is the synth based side project of David Johansson, who is also the guitarist/ vocalist in three piece Swedish sludge/ doom metal band Kongh- this is the projects debut release.
“II” is the second release from this Dianna Agron /‘Glee’ themed HNW project. Behind the project is Netherlands based Sven Klippel (of Panic & Horsing), and like the projects first release this comes in the form of C30 tape.
Immaculate Affection is another more pop culture themed HNW project. It’s themed/obsessed with the US actress Dianna Agron, who plays Quinn Fabray in American musical comedy-drama television show ‘Glee’.
Goosebumps is new project from Oregon based Ques C who is known most for his dense, detail & intense Wall noise project Wet Dream Asphyxiation. This new project is a HNW tribute to Canadian TV kids drama show of the same name that dealt with supernatural & horror fed going on’s .
"Un Año Tranquilo" finds British sound artist, field recordists & drone maker Simon Whetham creating one long sonic travel log which sees him collecting together recordings from around the world to create a morphing piece of sound art that takes in everything from water & environment recordings, people chatter, ethnic music, bland muzak mixed with field recordings, foreign pop music, insect sounds, traffic sounds, animal recordings, religious chants, ethereal drone matter mixed with boat creaking’s, & other sound matter which is sometimes not easily identifiable- and for me that is one of the key downsides of this release.
TranceFormation (not to be confused with Tranceformation, side project of Ajja S.F. Leu) is a trio of string bass, piano and whose improvisatory noodlings fall prey to every new age cliche imaginable. The pretention that permeates this music could only be the result of a directionless liberal arts education (something I understand firsthand). This album, a live recording, is their only release as far as I can discern.
Finnish death metal duo Lantern arose from the ashes of Cacodaemon in 2007. Proving you can't keep a good metaller down, Cruciatus got former bandmate Necrophilos on board and started working on material. After two demos and an EP, Lantern released their first LP, Below. Two piece death metal acts tend to skate on the thin sounding side, but Lantern avoided this common mishap. With Cruciatus on the instruments and Necrophilos handling the vocals, the boys manage to put out a full, solid album.
Astro aka Hiroshi Hasegawa aka Mortal Vision is one of the founding members of legendary psychedelic noise band C.C.C.C., and he's been relentlessly churning out noise for about twenty years. It's safe to say he's one of the most active and respected people in the Japanese scene.
‘Mind Control’ is the third album by Uncle Acid and The Deadbeats following the ultra-limited CDr ‘Volume 1’ and 2011’s ‘Blood Lust’.
If the many and varied music styles presented here sound dated it is, in a way,testament to Konrad Plank's innovations in engineering and production. The vast range of music he recorded at his Cologne studios throughout the seventies and early eighties all bore his idiosyncratic enthusiasm for sound regardless of whether it was made on standard instrumentation, evolving synth technologies, or even using objects and field recordings (and sometimes combining all the above). While merging avant garde manoeuvres with rock and pop styles was certainly unusual in those days, time has normalised his approach to an extent. And so, just as Hitchcock's Psycho is hard-pressed to scare audiences as much as it did upon release thanks to its influence on pretty much every horror and suspense film that followed, this compilation goes some way to highlight how Plank has had a similar effect on popular music.
“Crimes Of Passion” is a four way HNW compilation/split that is themed around various murder cases. The c90 tape brings together Brazilian based Carrion Black Pit, Minneapolis based Lethe, Texas based Folter, and Mayfield based Hearse Fetish. Each project offers up twenty to twenty one minute track.
“Barbarella” is the new disc by Insomnia, co-released by Mandarangan Recordings and Rarefazioni Uterine (Italy). Truth be told, this is my first introduction to Insomnia. After a little investigation, it appears to be the harsh industrial noise project of Jason Vizmanos based out of Chicago. Chicago seems to be fertile ground for scummy electronics these days, and as someone who has an affinity for noise from the windy city, I must say I was intrigued to give this disc a spin.
Lifting their name from J.R.R. Tolkien's oft troubled Deep Elves, Noldor's latest release 'In the Woods of Elfes' continues to see their instrumental themes, inspired wholly by the fictional works of Tolkien, realised.
Comprising of the primal aspirations of members Deathkvlt Prayer and Human Antithesis, 'Thy Kingly Mask' is the first full-length release from Kvlt of Hiob.
'Rage inside the Window' is the first full length release by the solo artist, Rasalhague. Taking inspiration from the plight of Danielle Crockett who was famously imprisoned by her mother at a very early age into a life of festering solitude; cut off from society until her eventual release.