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“Tout Oublier Pour Tout Reapprendre” (roughly translated to forget any re-learning) is the 16th release in the Infinity series- an identical artwork based collection of releases put out by Uk based Sweet Solitude label. Each volume sees a different worldwide HNW act attempting ambient and experimental forms of walled noise. This release features a single near on hour long track that boils up a mixture of guitar drone textures with harsh noise wall to create a huge pounding, throbbing & brooding wall of sound.
I'm sometimes tempted to submit a review that is nothing more than one word. The initial draft of this review simply said 'beautiful'. James Blackshaw's ninth record, and his second for Important, is a collection of pieces for classical guitar and grand piano that feature all of the hallmarks of Blackshaw's sound, refined as ever. Without a note out of place, Love is the Plan, the Plan is Death is as captivating as one could hope from forty minutes of music.
Circadian Rhythm Disturbance, a 20-minute piece created through a cross-Atlantic collaboration between Birmingham, UK’s Mick Harris and New York’s Carl Pace, was first released in 2008.
“De Eerste Steen” (meaning the first stone in English) offers up a rewarding slice of defined layer bound walled noise/ textured noise. Ikodora '65 is a Dutch project, that started off in a more a mixed HNW/ Harsh Noise vein- but this new release suggests more subtlety shifting HNW/ textured noise sound. The project is all the work of Behind Jelle Koning- who also runs the great HNW and experimental label Muzikaal Kabaa, and is also behind the hypnotic & oddly soothing HNW project Chantal
“The Entrance” is the second slice of urgent billowing bound walled noise from this US HNW project, which themes all of it’s releases around 1986 Jim Henson family fantasy puppet/ live action movie The Labyrinth. Behind the project is Santa Fe US based Joe The Stache whose behind HNW/Harsh noise projects Pig Shrapnel & Extreme Chafing, and he also runs noise tape label Hair on My Food Tapes & Records
Rella the Woodcutter is an Italian artist who creates a bluesy psychedelic folk, by all appearances aspiring to be something like Italy's Devendra Banhart, where every crack and quaver of his voice seems intended to sound wise, woodsy and mysterious: relying heavily on charm and atmosphere. "The Golden Undertow" is his latest album, a very lo-fi affair, likely recorded on a 4 track tape recorder or comparable device.
Marcus Fischer is a purveyor of evocative minimal ambience; the seven pieces featured on Collected Dust are polite, warm, detailed, and deep. Kindred spirit Taylor Deupree, with whom Fischer has collaborated and for whose label 12k he records, refers to this kind of music as “microscopic sound,” and it is easy to hear why. Fischer demonstrates a remarkable ability to flesh out slight music—so barely composed that it could be entirely randomized or automated—with snippets of field recordings and other unique sonic details. His sound design is memorable even when his amorphous pieces flow by like water spilling out of a cup: momentum in all directions yet no particular destination.
The press release for Anro tells a lot about the name, which means 'dark path', but nothing at all about the music or the project involved. I decided, then, to approach the review blind: only knowing that this is a single 37 minute piece about dark paths. This is what I thought whilst listening.
A very cleanly packaged tape, here, on Razzle Dazzle; all black on white. To be precise, its mainly black text on a white background and this gives it a serious, academic feel. It’s as if the tape were taken direct from a laboratory store cupboard, full of research and data. The vast majority of the data presented on the inlay of the tape is in German; and whilst my basic knowledge grants me the gist of some of it, I can’t pretend to fully understand what’s being said.
As you probably know if you're reading this review, The Incapacitants are one of the most long-running japanese noise bands, with thirty (!) years of experience, they're widely and rightfully regarded as Gods of the noise Olympus and inspire total, unconditioned love andadmiration in their supporters (me included).
“From Enslavement To Obliteration” really needs little or no introduction to fans of extreme music/sound- it was the second full length album from UK grindcore originators Napalm Death. It was originally released back in 1988, and it was seen then as one of the most extreme & brutal records ever recorded, it still is one of the most intense sonic experiences your likely to have. This new reissue finds the original masters been remastered in Full Dynamic Range- so in theory this is an even more head battering, whirlwind screaming, and avalanche ripping slice of grindcore.
The Boats' "Ballads of the Research Department" is an album of fragile and ethereal 'slowcore' or ambient post rock that never rises above a very relaxed energy level, a patient, resigned feeling like watching the rain pour down through the window, recalling the phrase "the serenity to accept the things I cannot change"... Each of the 4 songs is over 10 minutes long, and goes through sections of beautifully orchestrated piano and strings, vocals (a whisper or faint croon), and pulsing, crackling electronic ambience, full of analog warmth. As with other such bands, they play simple, repeating riffs, but the overall soundscape becomes very complex.
The New York art punk/funk scene of the mid to late eighties first saw Mike Fazio playing guitar alongside a few friends and acquaintances to form a small network of bands including Chill Faction, Black 47 and Life with the Lions. After a seemingly inactive nineties he remerged as orchestramaxfieldparrish, a solo project where he developed his guitar playing into nebulous, ambient waves, adding synthesised layers to form lush, ambient orchestrations. But little of this background is discernible on this new project of Fazio’s recorded in June 2009, which blends an array of field recordings with idiosyncratic electronics to form six compelling collages.
“Deconsecrated and Pure” offers up a heady & spiritual fix of bright, religious, renaissance & medieval tinged atmospheric ambient music. This is the first solo release from Italian ambient- acoustic sculptor Stefano Musso in some twenty years, through he has been active in-between this & his last solo release putting out all manner of collaborations.
“Necromanteion” heralded the first appearance on the underground metal scene of polish one man black/ pagan metal project Graveland. This reissue brings together the projects original demo tape, along with other early demo tracks.
It is not uncommon for bands to have radically different live and studio sounds: the first time I saw Six Organs of Admittance's intense psych rock live show I was expecting a set of lengthy folk pieces, and shoegaze experimentalists Bark Psychosis were renowned for their noisy live shows supporting the likes of Extreme Noise Terror. For Dawn in 2 Dimensions, Eternal Tapestry have taken the approach of combining the two perspectives, coming up with an album of rhythm heavy psych jams, as a contrast to their more subdued studio records of late.
This self-titled tape comes wrapped in what I assume is the standard Lake Shark Harsh Noise packaging: a folded piece of card with the label logo on the front, and a woman adjusting her stockings on the back. Sharks and stockings: two well-documented interests of Sam McKinlay, best known as “The Rita”, who runs the Lake Shark Harsh Noise label. Inside this outer, we have a pro-printed cassette and a paper insert with two landscape paintings on it; images which could well serve as guides to the Harsh Noise Wall terrain of Vast Glory.
This second volume of ‘Music for Piano and Strings by Morton Feldman’ brings together two fairly lengthy pieces for piano & Strings. Both pieces on offer here date from Feldman’s latter work in the mid to late 80’s, and both pieces here are played with wonderful precision, feeling & angular grace by pianist John Tilbury & The Smith Quartet.
‘Zopalki’ is the second album from locked rock groove, genre mixing and highly prolific Finish project Circle. The album originally appeared back in 1996 on the Bad Vugum, and this new reissue presents it to the masses for the first time in many years. And I must say this is another great, great Circle release- up there with some of their best work…so this really is a very welcome reissue.
As the owner of an exquisite voice, Kathryn Williams is still struggling to be heard in a world where texture, subtlety, and gentleness are continuously devalued by the larger, TV-driven music industry. Her voice is so silky smooth and encapsulating that she could essentially sing the grocery list and still sound captivating. Perhaps best known as a covers artist, and for her years on the edge of the commercial radar more than a decade ago when she was nominated for the Mercury Prize, she now delivers a new project of original material under the name of The Pond with close friends Simon Edwards and Ginny Clee that ultimately straddles the line between coffeehouse folk music and gothic pop. It is music completely out of time and independent from any scene, and anyone but the most jaded and judgmental music listener would have a hard time resisting its allure.
This split CD from 2011 brings together two harsh-noise junk metal lined projects: Maaaa from Russia/Poland, and K2 from Japan.
There isn't much that can be said about Steve Roach's new double-album release on the Projekt label that hasn't already been said about is past releases. Roach, a pioneer of the space ambient sound forged in the 80s, has possibly the longest career making this kind of music – however not with much variety.
Where The Corpses Sink Forever is the third full-length in the discography of this Dutch symphonic black metal act, an album which marks an attempt to distinguish itself as a continuation of the bands development toward an increasingly “theatrical” approach. I daresay this descriptor is a bit empty however, unless perhaps it is intended to describe their live performance (which I have not seen) or maybe the lyrical content of the album (which I have not evaluated). If this “theatrical” term is meant to regard the music itself, however, I feel that it is misdirected at best and self-aggrandizing at worst.
Asmus Tietchens, the Hamburg-based acoustician and experimental electronic composer, follows up his recent collaborations with Richard Chartier (or ‘Fabrications’, as they put it) with a set of solo recordings for Chartier’s Line imprint.