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Dominick Fernow is probably better known for power electronics and extreme noise exercises under his Prurient guise, here, under the new pseudonym Vatican Shadows, Fernow reigns in the harsher side of his psyche and turns his attention to weaving bleak atmospherics and old school Industrial sensibilities with undertones of deep, abstract techno.
This collaboration between Nihilist Assault Group and Blue Sabbath Black Cheer is very smartly packaged; with nice, detailed drawings on either side of the album sleeve, and a card insert. One side depicts NAG as gentlemen of noise, listening to a fiery gramophone; resplendent in an archaic library room which is also aflame. The other shows BSBC as charred bodies in display cases, in the same room; with the gramophone and record now smashed on the floor. (Though, saying this, there are only two charred figures and yet BSBC are listed as a trio on the insert, so…?)
Your ears will need a moment to settle as they are treated to the many dizzying blasts of brain-scrambling instrumentation and florid compositional precision that buzz throughout the fifteen elegant vignettes that comprise Head Boggle's aptly self-titled first full length vinyl. Presented by Spectrum Spools, a great Cleveland, Ohio based label that also supports Hive Mind, Driphouse, No UFO's, and Bee Mask among many others, the album is a self-described hodgepodge of moogs, harmonica, banjo, harpsichord, irish Harp, EMS synthi, violin, drums, clavichord, serge modular, field recordings, and de-tuned piano, among other samples of unknown origin. 


I think Andreas Brandal is one of the most under-rated noise musicians working today. He has been recording stuff now for a long time, and he has released a very wide range of different material- from straight out harsh noise, HNW, onto delicate ambient, and drone while remaining somewhat a hidden treasure in the vast sea of noise. With "The Beast Won't Go To Sleep" from his Flesh Coffin project he’s reached one of its peaks.
“B” is the second release of dense ‘n’ muffled HNW from this Netherlands based project. Behind Chantal is Jelle Koning- who also runs the great HNW and experimental label Muzikaal Kabaa, and is also behind the Harsh noise/ HNW project Ikodora '65.
This split CDR brings together two horror theme HNW projects for a track a piece of brutal yet chilling walled noise. Taking part here we have Louisiana based Nightmare castle, and São Paulo Brazil based Carrion Black Pit.
Pumpkin Buzzard's sleepy romp of an album, Identity Undeclared, is self-described as a veritable hodgepodge of punk, new wave, industrial, dub, metal, '90s alternative, damaged blues, and blissful indie pop. These 16 tracks recall some of the early Scott Walker ballads, Beach Boys surfer rock, and even the Flaming Lips as much as they do Modest Mouse and other glistening cream off the top tunes from the days of grunge and yesteryear.
Named after those whose job it is to treat a boxer’s injuries, waiting until the end of each round for the opportunity to patch up their prize fighter, The Cutmen’s ‘Seconds Out’ pushes its listeners into the ring to do battle across thirteen rounds of punishing home made post-industrial percussion. The team is formed of four highly experienced experimental multi-instrumentalists: its leader, ‘M’ AKA Reeve Malka, who is part of the current line-up of neo-folk pioneers Sol Invictus and co-runs the Tursa label with their founder Tony Wakeford, has selected jazz drummer Stephen Flinn, founder member of the Penguin Café Orchestra Giles Leaman and ritualistic performance percussionist z’ev to join him at the side of the ring.
“I’m So Lonely I Could Die” is the first release from this new dense ‘n’ bleak bass heavy walled noise project of Frenchman Julien Skrobek ( Ghost, Ruine and The Sandman Wears A Mask). The release comes in the form of two c45 tapes, offering up a total of 90 minutes worth of enclosing & hopeless walled noise that’s themed around isolation & loneliness of cites & large areas of housing like tower blocks or estates.
“Trypanophobia” is quite a departure from the normal dense, unrelenting & normally bass seared Walled noise work of Serbian based Dead Body Collection. This two track CDR offers up a pair of taut & airless slices of Ambient walled Noise that still have more than a little bite to them.
Scandinavia's Schnaak is a new project that just released their debut "Wake Up Colossus", a fine statement of smooth, fluent and groovy 'math rock' with tastefully integrated tinges of jazz, stoner metal and hardcore. Their angular guitar stylings recall the unpredictable rhythms and irreverent, out of the box thinking of bands like Deerhoof, Melt Banana, and Ruins, but the focus is clearly on songwriting rather than gratuitous technicality. Impressively, this band is a duo, something I did not realize at first because of the fullness of their sound.
This cdr on Sweet Solitude, with one long track of Harsh Noise Walls, is very simply packaged indeed. It consists of a folded piece of paper, with the same image back and front: a close-up of Rutger Hauer’s head from the iconic rooftop scene at the end of the film Blade Runner. The bare minimum of information about the release is printed on the back, in a font perfectly befitting a cd inspired by the aforementioned science fiction classic.
The inner circle of the Glasgow Subway system doesn’t immediately suggest a venue for ritual. Its modern carriages merely ensure busy people reach their desired destination efficiently, unaware of their precise location until a big, clear sign rushes in to view. It’s a collectively ignored experience, an interim between A and B, where most seem encouraged to block out the environment by book or rag, phone or ad, as they’re herded beneath the city surface.
This delightfully nasty little CDr release is spewed forth via the Glasgow based Kovorox Sound label, helmed by the infamous (and equally unsavory) Lea Cummings aka Kylie Minoise. Real name Sarah Glass, her alias Grimalkin555 has been a mainstay of Cummings D.I.Y label for a good number of years now, hitting hard with a mixture of out and out noise, warped punk rock sensibilities and lashings of audio detritus, indeed Minoise has collaborated with Glass twice, first on the ‘Kill Baby Kill!’ release back in 2009 and more recently with the ‘Ceremonial Bludgeon!’ split release which saw the light of day in 2011 (both also released on Kovorox).
Any release that features a naked lady with a cross stuck up her vagina on its cover is fine for me, so I was anxious to listen to this split CDr as soon as I saw it.
Aelter are a Idaho based project who create a very hypnotic, bleak yet often darkly dreamy mixture of analogue synth scaping, droney yet mainly mellow & stripped doom, stark acoustic guitars, and brief dips in dark wave/ shoe gazing male/female vocalizing. This double cd release brings together the projects first two out of print vinyl only album releases.
“Fulcrum/Hardwire” offers up two extremely dense & searing slices of noise that fall somewhere between HNW & very dense noise drone. The release comes in the form of a cdr in a brown card slip case, and each track hits dead on the 18 minute mark.
With Orgelpark Color Chart, minimalist composer Tom Johnson presents us with a one-tone piece for four organs, performed at Orgelvark which is situated within the Parkkerk (church) monument in Gerard Brandtstraat in Amsterdam. Just as the title suggests, each organ is treated like a color within four corners of a field.
KK Null's Cryptozoon 1 is a playful, energized combination of beat driven sound textures, structural shifts of otherworldly, atmospheric scrabbling, and straight up joyful integration of electronics with field recordings of nature, inspired by time well spent collaborating with Chris Watson on the album Number One (TONE-24, Touch, UK) in 2005.
In his 2010 release "Harbour", German sound artist Lasse Marc Riek presents unedited field recordings of (you guessed it) a harbor. They've been arranged into 8 bite size chunks, 2 - 5 minutes in length
“Sorcerer” was the first soundtrack album recorded by German electronica /ambient innovators Tangerine Dream - over the last thirty years or so the band have gone onto record another 31 soundtrack albums. The original album came out in 1977, and this reissue gives the album a new remastering, restores the original art work, and adds in illustrated/informative booklet that features a new essay about the album by respected music journalist Malcolm Dome.
Loops4ever sees Rome-based flautist Manuel Zurria continue to showcase minimalist composition as a means to exhaustively explore the sonic properties of flutes of all sizes. In 2008 he released a mammoth three CD set, Repeat!, where he selected twenty-one compositions from the latter half of the twentieth century, taking in both work scored specifically for flutes as well as repurposing pieces designed for other instruments. And loops4ever features a further twelve such selections ranging from fellow Rome-based composers Giacinto Scelsi, Alvin Curran and Frederic Rzewski to the American minimalism of Alvin Lucier and Terry Riley along with a couple of more curious selections from sound artists John Duncan and William Basinski.
Harold Budd supposedly retired in 2005. His farewell performance was a lavish event held on a beautifully balmy day in Brighton England. As it transpired Harold wasn’t yet ready to close the piano lid on his forty plus year career, and since then has produced over half a dozen releases, including three volume collaborations with both Robin Guthrie and Clive Wright. His influence on what came to be known broadly as ambient music is well known. Few musicians working in electronic music will be untouched by his work, either through his own huge back catalogue or via the numerous collaborators (most notably Brian Eno) who have taken his minimal aesthetic into every corner of contemporary composition. To my mind the pieces on his first ‘proper’ album The Pavilion of Dreams - recorded in the early 1970s - still stand as some of finest modern composition ever committed to tape. It’s somewhat surprising then given all this that Lost in the Humming Air is the first tribute album dedicated to the master of the minimal that I’ve ever encountered.
Simplicity, when deployed well, is always a winner; and the packaging for this album on Urashima speaks volumes for that approach. The LP sleeves are decorated minimally, with monochrome, silver on black prints; whilst the stark insert has the barest of information, underneath a photo of a snow-covered church. There are four tracks here from Josh Lay, over about half an hour.