Loading
Machinefabriek is Rutger Zuydervelt, an eclectic Dutch sound artist who combines avant garde and minimalist classical composition with field recordings. The result is fragile but powerfully immersive sound environments that pay tribute to the world around us, natural and artificial, and inspire its re-examination. Intensely personal sound choices (and juxtapositions) render his pieces true sonic diaries, as well. This Cold Spring release, "Veldwerk", is a compilation of tracks previously released individually as short, highly limited 7" vinyls and 3" CDrs. Contrasted in sound but similar in mood and pacing, these tracks seem to naturally belong together.
Here’s six long tracks of droning noise rock, packaged with the usual care by Handmade Birds. The shortest piece measures seven and a half minutes long; the lengthiest, eleven and a half - and songs tend to finish as they started.
I’ll have to admit that I wasn't aware of the existence of Rella The Woodcutter, even through he's an Italian artist, so shame on me for my ignorance. "I Know When It's Time To Get The Fuck Away", which has such a great title, is a twenty-two minutes E.P. paving the way for a forthcoming (and his third if I'm not mistaken) full length.
For many years “Green Desert” was the great lost Tangerine Dream album, it was originally recorded back in 1973, and was to be their first release on Virgin records-but for various reasons it didn’t get released until 1986. This new 2012 reissue fully remasters the album, and adds in a new 16-page booklet which includes numerous often rare photos, and an essay written by respected journalist Malcolm Dome about the albums history.
“Morricone Kill” brings together a selection of tracks from various Spaghetti Western soundtracks composed by Ennio Morricone between 1967 & 1973. The collection offers up a mixture of tracks from the more known soundtracks such as A Fistful of Dynamite and The Big Gundown, as well as more obscure & lessen known Spaghetti Westerns too.
“Kiruna” offers up six slices of brooding, mostly un-well sounding, sometimes slured synth scaping & dark electronica. The album seems pitched perfect for either getting lost ‘n’ creeped-out in huge & oddly angled modern architecture, or as the soundtrack for some pitch black yet stark neo lined sci-fi movie.
'Orchestramaxfieldparrish' is one of the primary projects of the under-recognized Mike Fazio,a New York musician dealing mostly in sophisticated soundscapery. I am lucky enough to have heard the previous release, the masterful double album "To the Last Man / Index of Dreaming" (technically released as ÆRA, 'presented' by Orchestramaxfieldparrish), as well as his concise 3" CD release under the "A Guide for Reason" name "VII - VIII".
The Residents have spent most of their forty years existence releasing albums that break/ twist the rules-“Coochie Brake” sees them once more pulling the rug from under the listener, with one of the biggest twists they've done in some years. The Resident's normal & fairly constant singer(Mr Skull or Randy, as he now likes to be known) is replaced here by a Spanish singer called Carlos, who mumbles, whispers & sometimes sings in Spanish through-out the whole album.
A curiously packaged cdr here, from Muzikaal Kabaal; which reproduces Leonard Cohens’s album cover for “Songs of Love and Hate” - except that Cult Of The Smiling Jesus have renamed it “Songs of Hate”, and put some devil horns on Mr. Cohen. The back cover of the half-sized dvd case, has a crucified woman surrounded by acid house smiley faces. No, I have no idea what this all means…
Portugal hides a few gems of modern and rough black metal, like the great Morte Incandescente, and from the little I know it seems like it has a pretty active scene. Pair this with the ugly noise filth and obscure ambient of the Narcolepsia and Cerebro Do Morto labels and you get a quite interesting picture of Portuguese underground music.
“Collapse” comes in the form of a 3inch CDR, and on offer here are two track of meaty, dark & brutal HNW. The Bad Algorithm Project is from Raleigh, NC USA, and the project started in early 2012- to begin with Bad Algorithm was a mixed HNW/ Harsh Noise project, but over there last couple of releases they’ve become mainly HNW.
By using the term ‘audiosculptures’ in the title of this release, the elusive German artist Detlef Funder, AKA Konrad Kraft, prepares his listeners for an experience in which ones expectations of musical motifs, melodies, harmonies or rhythm are allayed in place of shapes, textures and densities in space. And yet, perhaps partly due to conditioning and partly down to Funder’s teutonic techno output in the nineties, one cannot help but find musical matter, particularly rhythmic, in many of the seven audioscupltures and two “proto sculptures” that follow.
“Temporary Relief” is an active, layered, at times haunting & at other times damn brutal slice of rewarding HNW. Extreme Chafing is another project from Santa Fe US based Joe The Stache- whose behind HNW project Hoggle, HNW/Harsh noise project Pig Shrapnel, and also runs the noise tape label Hair on My Food Tapes & Records.
“Arduous Wall” in a 3 inch cdr from English walled noise project Acerbitas. Behind the project is one Michael Ridge- who is more known for his experimental noise project Zebra Mu, and also runs DIY noise label Quagga Curious Sounds.
“The Erection Section” finds this creative ‘n’ offten quickly Irish based harsh noise/ HNW project offering up a small, but effective slice of multi layered walled noise & taut drone matter.
“Fruiting Bodies” is the third in series of twelve monthly three inch CDR releases that are to be put out through-out 2012 by Ireland's Bored Bear Recordings. Each release in this new series offers up a debut release from one of twelve new projects that are been put together by highly influential & respected Texas noise artist Richard Ramirez.
Illuha is the electronic/ambient project comprised of Corey Fuller and Tomoyoshi Date. The duo both live in Tokyo, but Shizuku was recorded in a 100 year old church in Bellingham, Washington. This produced sounds that featured natural acoustics and resonance from the aged timber. In addition to synthesizers and piano, a variety of instruments and field recordings were utilized. This is their debut cd for the 12K label.
A very tastefully packaged cd on 12k, here; it’s design suggesting that electronica hides within. Instead, we find eight tracks of pastoral, reverb-drenched songs, with an acoustic guitar and vocal. I may as well be upfront from the off, that I didn’t encounter much joy with “Quite A Way Away”; whilst it can take a while for me to “click” with singer-songwriter projects, the fact remains that my ears couldn’t find a lot to charm them here. Thats not necessarily any indication of “quality” whatsoever, its just not an album that grabbed or resonated with me.
Mats Gustafsson is an avant-garde jazz saxophonist with an impressive discography I can claim no familiarity with. "Bengt", named after a primary influence of his, is his latest album, a 40 minute, completely freeform solo improvisation for saxophone. Releasing an album like this is a bold move, to be sure, and all the more bold because Gustafsson seems to be in no hurry, and not at all striving to impress, or entertain. The album is as naked, intimate and exploratory as if he were practicing by himself late at night, playing with the sound and feeling it out as he went along.
The "Kali-Yuga Karma" CD is a collection of three sold out 10" releases from 2003/2004 plus an entirely new collaboration between The New Blockaders, Merzbow and Hypnagogia's founder aNoMali (aka Paul Coates).
“X” finds ghoulish French HNW act Bördel Noïr offering up 66 minutes worth of dense, brutally oppressive & truly inescapable walled noise, which seems to suitably encase you in a grim, airless, yet hypnotic state.
This 7inch split brings together a track a piece from two of the most known & recognisable names in the HNW genre- Black bag wearing French master of crusty ‘n’ crude noise Vomir. And atmospheric textured noise/HNW project Werewolf Jerusalem, which is one of the most known projects of highly prolific & multi project linked Texas based noise artist Richard Ramirez.
Francisco López usually obscures urban or rural field recordings to produce unidentifiable sound objects of intense contrasts and meditative properties, but having whet his listeners’ appetite with recent work that uses traditional instrumentation as its source (from Phill Niblock’s orchestrations to a large collection of thrash metal drumming samples), the Spanish sound artist has now composed a work for prepared piano. But while the sounds produced on this most conventional of instruments are subject to López’ studio processes revealing a surprising array of sonic jewels from the single sound source along the way, the first movement is a straight live recording of López original composition providing a rare glimpse of the raw unmanipulated sounds he chose to work with.
The highly motivated Lea Cummings, owner of the great DIY CDr label Kovorox Sound and celebrated creator of noise under the aliases of Opaque and Kylie Minoise, is back again with this new release under his own name, the 4th in his "Revelations from the New Silence" series, which he has titled "Human Potential Movement". The series represents the gentler, more reverent side of his work, and the five synth-sourced drones herein could be described as tools for pondering the great mysteries of existence.