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“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.
“Worms Ritual Dance” is dense & grimly inescapable mixture of HWN & murky death ambient. This CDR collaboration brings together two Italian noise acts: MDT (Museo Della Tortura ) who started in 2003, and has over the years offered up a mixture of Dark Ambient, Power Electronics & beyond. And Nascitari, who started in 2010, and has always offered a bleak & suicidal themed take on HNW.
"Krypteia" is the debut full length album by Entartung , a young German black metal duo. Quite appropriately for a kvlt underground black metal act, there is not much information available about them besides their cryptic monickers, but judging by the quality of their work in offer here I assume they're not complete newcomers.
Great Howl at Town Haul commemorates experimental composer, performer and inventor of the Deep Listening practice Pauline Oliveros' 80th birthday by presenting recordings from her band's weeklong residency at Town Hall Seattle in January 2011. But it is a bittersweet commemoration as it also captures David Gamper's final performance with the Deep Listening Band (DLB) as he died about eight months later from heart disease. He joined DLB in 1991, helping to develop their Expanded Instrument System that uniquely contributes to improvisational performances by feeding back some of the live sounds, often in a modified way, to create a further dimension for players to react to and play with.
“What Knowledge Have The Dead?” is a 3inch cdr that offers up a slice a active walled noise/ wallish harsh noise. Death Frees Every Soul is a relatively new project from Scotland, and so far they have released a couple of split releases along with some D/L net releases.
Dawn is slowly breaking upon the Northern marshlands as the first rays of the mid-summer sun reflect upon the myriad of mosquito-ridden lakes that dot the countryside. Illuminating the crown of the birch trees as it solemnly rises above the horizon, the nascent solar star composes an irradiating symphony of light which accentuates the opaline hue of the lichen fields and lends the surrounding woodland a pleasantly soft atmosphere, enhanced by the welcome promise of a warm day. Strangely, not a single sound emanates from those vast expanses, as if time itself was holding its breath for the imminent arrival of a new, mysterious and deeply elemental soundtrack.
"The Void...It Creeps” is the debut full-length by punk/post-punk trio Permanent Makeup. If they were from D.C., this album would no doubt be the current pride and joy of Dischord, but since they’re from the Sunshine State this slab of wax is available from No Clear Records (also available on CD via New Granada Records). Permanent Makeup consists of guitarist James Bess, bassist Chris Nadeau and drummer Susan Dickson-Nadeau. No strangers to the DIY underground, members have also kicked it (or are currently kicking it) in a number of Tampa Bay area bands including: Blast & the Detergents, Egos, Dumbwaiters and Insect Joy.
A very minimally packaged cdr here, apparently self-released. The computer-printed inlay wraps around three untitled tracks, all of which are exactly the same length - just shy of nineteen minutes. Given the title, the uniform track lengths and the abstract artwork, the listener might well expect a release full of formal, concentrated, static textural explorations; but whilst there are elements of this, its a much more wide-ranging album.