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This Untitled release offers up two slices of European walled noise in arty & well presented bit of packaging. We have a track from the king of crusty & unrelenting French walled noise Vomir, and a track from relatively recent scene newcomer Uk based Clive Henry.
"Eternal Turn Of The Wheel" is the first new Drudkh full length after almost two years of silence, and uninterestingly enough it's the second Ukranian black metal release I reviewed recently.
Ysengrin is a French dark metal band that has been existence since 2005. Theirs is another name to add to the never-ending list of bands who have emerged from the metal scene is France. Ysengrins sound combines the intense vocals of black metal, with the intricate compositions of death metal and the melancholic atmosphere of doom. The band is the creation of Guido Saint Roch and here he is joined by Aboth (drums), Fureiss (guitars) and additional musicians Kalevi Uibo and M.
In 2009 Cold Spring released a much expanded version of Annie Hogan’s Kickabye EP that was recorded in 1985 with fellow alumnis of the Some Bizarre school: Nick Cave, Marc Almond and Jim Thirlwell. The label have now followed this with Mountain, which features over an hour of new piano-based compositions from Hogan recorded this time with Gerry McNee (AKA Itchy Ear, frequent collaborator with Soho poet Jeremy Reed), and subsequently “re-imagined and remixed” with Robert Strachan, music lecturer at the University of Liverpool and member of The Hive Collective, a local promoter of electronic musics. The original piano recordings were influenced by the spiritual and surreal novel ‘Mount Analogue...’ by René Daumal (that also inspired Jodorowsky’s hallucinatory film ‘The Holy Mountain’), before the album evolved into more of a travelogue to the conquests of mountaineer Cathy O’Dowd whose photographs adorn the sleeve and footage provides the 30 minute film put together by fellow Hive Collectivist Bob Wass found on the reverse side of this dual disc.
“Poisucevamachenille” offers up a single, shifting often playful & quirky track that dips down in: violin, glockenspiel, water sound and off-kilter percussion based improv, jaunting early Residents like toy town marches, wavering ‘n’ wonky 70’s euro pop vocalising, organ drones, swells of harmonic ‘n’ bouncing yet off kilter horn work, bent & melted pop rock, dripping & wonky singer song writer fare, layers of wonky vocals, and all manner of jaunting playgroup like sound making.
“With Extreme Prejudice” is a violent, deranged, unsettling, and often darkly creative joinery into overloaded electronica, atmospheric modern electronic composition, power electronics, wavering ‘n’ sour drone matter, and dense muilt-layered noise matter. The album finds the project steping further away from it's original power electronics bracket into a undefined sonic place that is purely of their own deranged & unsettling invention.
This split CD offers up two great ‘n’ lengthy shots of woodland bound atmospherics ‘n’ dark psychedelics from these two Pacific Northwest US based projects that are linked to the excellent Glass Throat Records.
The Zeitkratzer ensemble joined forces with German ambient artist Terre Thaemlitz in 2008 to create a work of modern classical / new music modestly titled "Electronics". The proves a very strange name for this album, which contains very few electronics, certainly far fewer electronic sounds than acoustic sounds. The six 5-12 minute pieces found here are written an augmental orchestral instrumentation.
Dodecahedron are one of the newest signings to emerge from the ever prolific Seasons of Mist label, drawing upon the more avant-garde aspects of post-black metal championed by luminaries such as Blut Aus Nord, (late) Mayhem and Deathspell Omega. Dodecahedron attempt to build upon the general framework laid down by these acts and experiment with what this particular strain of black metal has to offer.
A split cdr from Small Doses, featuring the work of Ekca Liena, and A Death Cinematic; two solo guitar droners… There’s one long track, divided into three, from the former, and four from the latter; about an hour’s music, all told. The packaging is essentially simple, but with very fitting images; I say “essentially”, because the outer card wallet is wonderfully cut with little circular holes - windows on the card inserts within.
The Swedish multi-disciplinary artist CM Von Hausswolff visited Harar in Ethiopia in 2010 on a commission to produce music for a play based on the life of Arthur Rimbaud. The French poet lived in the city for the last seven or so years of his life where, according to Hausswolff, his “presence persists” to this day. While it is not clear how these bold tones, brimming with intense energies, works with the play (‘Jag är en annan’ written by Michael Azar and directed by Ulrich Hillebrabd), it offers a powerful and poetic experience in its own right.
White Hills is a highly revered psychedelic rock band from New York. Being such, of course I had absolutely no idea they existed before I was handed out their new album to review. so I suppose this review will be as candid as it gets.
“Shadows” presents the listener with a subtly shifting & varying slice of very quiet & ambient HNW. The just over half an hour piece is split into eight index points, but really this is one long flowing, oddly melancholic and soothing slice of ambient walled noise or very quiet textured noise.
Inanition is a mysterious & anonymous project that summon up a mixture of damned drone based walled noise & horror sci-fi singed ‘n’ slow harsh noise texturing. The project conists of possible three or more noise makers that come from both the states & Europe. ‘Antonym’ is the project 6th release, and the project have been putting out material since 2009.
“Sepolcro Saturo” offers up a forty minute slice of fairly active ‘n’ bleak HNW from this Italian project who themes most of his work around suicide & funerals.
Hoggle is the new HNW project of Santa Fe US based Joe The Stache whose behind HNW/Harsh noise project Pig Shrapnel, and he also runs noise tape label Hair on My Food Tapes & Records. This CDR is the first release from this new project, and it offers up a moorish slice of unmoving HNW that comes in at just over the half an hour mark.
British experimental black metal band, The Axis of Perdition, have been around since 2002. Since then they have released a handful of full length albums, each having a distinctly moody and subterranean black metal meets industrial atmosphere. They are also part of a group of black metal musicians that are constantly pushing the boundaries of the black metal “sound”. While listening to Tenements of the Anointed Flesh bands like Emperor, Blut Aus Nord, Gnaw Their Tongues and Deathspell Omega easily come to mind.
"MagneticFlights" may at first seem to be a poetic title, but it turns out to beliteral: veteran New Music composer Christina Kubisch's latest album wascreated from 'electromagnetic field recordings' made before, during and afterairplane flights. Airports, apparently,have "extremely dense magnetic fields", which Kubisch describes as a"parallel world to discover" in her liner notes. The "special wireless headphone" used to translate the fields generates glassy digital tones with quivering andwavering imperfections, mostly in the middle and lower frequency bands.
Three tracks here, from PCRV; all “untitled” and all around the twelve/thirteen minute mark. The packaging stakes an allegiance to the Fluxus movement, which I can’t pretend to be an expert on; but I know that it was very anti-art and very d-i-y. This, combined with the movement’s utilisation of mail art, makes it a clear (if sometimes lurking or unacknowledged) influence on contemporary d-i-y noise artists, labels, methodology and ethics.
While having an overly ridiculous south American metal name, Nunfuckritual is a (mainly Norwegian) superband, comprised of Dan Lilker of Nuclear Assault, Andreas Jonsson, Teloch, Espen Toressen Hangard and even good old Attila Csihar at additional vocals.
“Morricone High – The Trippier Side Of The Morricone Genius” brings together a selection of sixteen tracks from the 1960’s & 1970’s that highlight some of the more laid back, psychedelic & tripped-out sides of this great film soundtrack composers work.
“Boar Live” brings together a varied & often surprising collection of live recordings made by American HNW/ Harsh noise project Boar. The recordings come over the last few years as the projects toured around the states with different noise acts.
Rauhnacht is the one-man black metal band started in 2006 by Stefan Traunmuller (also a member of Wallachia, Golden Dawn and Sternenstaub). Vorweltschweigen (which roughly translates to Silence of the Ancient World) is the debut full length. Rauhnacht is another black metal project that skillfully fuses black metal music with folk and pagan regional history (think Kampfar, Sear Bliss and Negura Bunget).
Seadem's debut album, Skhôlè, was recorded three years' ago by Ombeline Duprat, a French singer and multi-instrumentalist, and subsequently released last year on the Israeli label, The Eastern Front. It firmly ploughs a neo-classical field, ripe in piano-based folksy arrangements gaudily decorated with synth strings and bells, clarinet, flute and light military drum programming.