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For nearly a decade, the Ad Noiseam label has been the home of and a nurturing force behind the Larvae act (Matt Jeanes). Stretching back to the release of their initial full-length in 2005, Larvae have slowly moved away from a hard downtempo style (somewhat similar to the later Gridlock records) into their present excursions into combining minimal beat music with pristine, studio-centered outsider post rock-isms.
The first thing I noticed about this tape is, as usual when dealing with Phage Tapes material, the excellent design: a pretty complicated cardboard jacket decorated with heavy engine machinery that perfectly fits with the theme and mood of both Bonesfield's and Facialmess's noise.
“Neuron Beast” is another derange, wonky & unwell multi genre mix of sonic styles from the mysterious ‘n’ unhinged US project Pumpkin Buzzard. And for me this is one of their most rewarding/ re-playble releases thus far, as it seems to balance almost perfectly the projects quirkiness ‘n’ unease, with musical genre mix ‘n’ match, and song memorability.
“Soundtracks To The Sickness” finds this São Paulo based noise/ HNW project offer up six tracks of dense ‘n’ searing noise texturing mixed with brooding synth dwells 'n' dirges, and dips into atmospheric/experimental texturing.
“Murdered And Raped...” is a grim, and particularly nasty compilation of murder, death, torture and rape themed HNW. The two disc CDR set offers up a selection of ten tracks from eight European & American walled noise acts, and it’s safe to say the whole release is a searing ‘n’ bleak attack on ones sonic sensors.
Hate Mail Records is a new label from California set up last year to release The Black Scorpio Underground’s experiments in noise and power electronics allied with stalwarts from the scene such as The Haters and Werewolf Jerusalem. For this 40 minute cassette, the first side is given to Endometrium Cuntplow, a solo sonic art project of David Lucien Matheke that seems to have amassed way over 100 releases in the last six or so years. Whereas this represents The Black Scorpio Underground’s eighth release, their founder, Joe Truck, is by no means a new-comer having been in various glam/punk/metal bands since the late Seventies. However, do not expect to encounter any traces of rock ‘n’ roll on this release.
The Thrill Jockey label is best known for nearly two decades of “post-rock” releases, usually contemplative and/or instrumental genre fusion experiments wherein bands that would otherwise bash out punk rock instead explore their muso sides to come up with any number of variations on rock-jazz-country-electronica.
Stormhat is undoubtedly an expert sound engineer. He blends natural and defiantly artificial sounds so organically that he almost seems to have secret surveillance equipment tapped into an alien realm. That being said, Turned On is neither cosmic nor otherworldly; this is the soundtrack of previously unseen inner space, and while there is no voice narrating the various occurrences that we hear, it is not hard to imagine Sir David Attenborough revealing the strange mating or feeding habits of these odd sonic creatures while we watch, fascinated at behavior to which we don’t relate but still try to personify.
Clocking in at under 33 minutes, El Resplandor: The Shining in Dubai re-imagines King-via-Kubrick’s seminal haunted hotel story in the shiny capital of modern Arabia’s excess. Its primary conceptual failure is that such a creative and ambitious side project, from New York’s DJ /rupture (Jace Clayton), was afforded such a limited runtime.
Ah, a new Sutcliffe Jugend record. I'd better prepare. Make sure my girlfriend's out, preferably in the day when there aren't many neighbours in either. I try my hardest to avoid pissing people off with loud music.
There's something about the bowed saw which immediately makes me think of ghosts. Probably the instrument's similarity in sound to the theremin, which was somewhat overused in horror film soundtracks shortly after its widespread availability. Either way, its liberal use is not out of place on Rolling Bomber, an album which emits a spooky, haunted vibe throughout. Yet this is no dark ambient record, nor does it subscribe to the 'dark' music clichés (everything here is fully tonal!) often employed to create such a mood. After all, the album is named after the wooden drum kit formerly owned by a free-jazz musician that forms the core of the record.
Within experimental music, collaborative releases are common, and the results are often an intriguing chance to try and work out exactly where one artist's input ends and the other begins; split releases, on the other hand, allow for a broad listening experience of two halves. For this release on Gruenrekorder, however, Terje Paulsen and Ákos Garai have provided individual pieces which highlight the differences and contrasts between their own approaches, while retaining the track sequencing of a single album.
"A Little Bit of Big Bonanza" is an album of instrumental, blues oriented heavy jam rock by Bushman's Revenge, a band which I'd never heard of before. According to my research, they usually record jazz, and have several albums under their belt. Seeing it on the shelf, this album certainly looks like a jazz album, with its minimalist / suprematist two-tone cover art. It turns out to be a misleading image, as the band does everything they can on this record to separate themselves from the aloof sophistication of jazz on this album, with mixed results.
“Symeta” has seven tracks of what we used to condescendingly call “intelligent dance music”. At times, it reminds me of an updated, harder version of Warp’s “Artificial Intelligence” releases; not a bad thing, since I consider those early Warp albums to be beautiful creations in every respect. Byetone’s tracks share a similar sense of “anchored” futurism: the forward-looking feel and atmosphere, is tempered by the use of sounds recognisable from the present - if not past. So, to take the first track, “Topas”, as an example: after about three and a half minutes of stuttering, austere, clipped percussion, with modulating and panning blips overlaid, a one-finger synth riff appears - with the whole thing sounding remarkably like the first Nine Inch Nails album (again, not a bad thing!).
There must be something out there in the desert. The southwestern region of the United States has a decades-long history producing some of the world’s premier ambient and drone music stretching back to the early 1980s shift from sequencer-driven progressive synth to space ambient by longtime resident Steve Roach. Continuing this evolution from the 1990s to today is the duo Voice of Eye, calling to mind the more shamanistic elements of Native American life in the desert (a sort of earthy alchemy realized through the use of their home-made instruments). Hailing from New Mexico, William Fowler Collins’ reflects some of the darker and more sinister elements of this arid landscape on his newest full-length, The Resurrections Unseen.
Over the last decade or so, the convergence of the extreme fringes of black metal’s overlap with the experimental, industrial and harsh noise underground has not come entirely as an unexpected development although it has produced some highly varied results.
Pain Is Pain: The Complete Death Trip 1988-1994 compiles the complete discography of this Finnish punk/ doom quartet into one handy hour-long compact disc.
Hair Stylistics is Masaya Nakahara's follow-up to his legendary Violent Onsen Geisha unit. The project started in mid-nineties if I'm not mistaken, and in the last few years he has been very active despite the fact that most of his releases haven’t left the Japanese borders. "Hustler Power Electronics Convention" LP released by Belgian label Ultra Eczema is a good chance for us westerners to easily get top notch material by one of the best and weirdest Japanese noise acts.
“Sharpened Lust” offers up another slice of low-end, walled noise brutality from this project of US HNW scene veteran Alex Nowacki (also in HNW projectcs Boar, Centuries Behind The Gate & Phantom Rib).
Stoned To Death is a relatively new HNW/ ANW project from Dallas Texas, and it seems as if “The Sky Opens” is their first full length CDR release. The project has put out download albums, and appeared on a comp or two since they stared the project back in mid-to-late 2011.
Dhusk is a new(ish) project from the man behind the dark, dense, hopeless & crushing HNW of Griz+zlor. This is the projects first release and it comes in the form of a c30 tape.
“I Would Be Your Girl” finds UK based Love Katy offering up a c45 worth of Katy Perry influenced/ obsessed HNW. The tape was recorded around the period Ms Perry split with Mr Brand( check celeb news around the start of 2012, if you don’t know what I’m talking about), and offered here are two side long ‘walls’ that mix together the pop sweetness of Ms Perrys work with atmospheric static texturing to battering bass bound wall-making.
“Take Her To The Woods” offers up three slices of fairly vaired yet often atmospheric walled noise from this highly prolific Texas based walled noise project. Behind the White Gimp Mask project is one Robert Newsome, whose also part of: Black Leather Jesus, The Girl In The Wooden Horse Torture, Streetmeat & Four Flies.
“Stereo Biodissector” is the second release from this walled noise/ static textured meets machine drone project. Niezwyciê¿ony brings together Italian based Fabrizio De Bon (of HN/HNW project Fukte & runner of Toxic Industries label). And Sarajevo based Neven Misaljevich ( of chilling HNW project Smrznik, and one of the three minds behind the Zvukovina label.)