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The name Conrad Schnitzler should be familiar to anyone who is a lover of electronic music. For the uninitiated, Conrad Schnitzler was a German musician and composer. He began as a member of Tangerine Dream, and then went on to found bands Kluster and Eruption. He also released his own solo works, many on cdr through his website. Sadly Schnitzler passed away August 2011. His prolific work and back catalog live on though.
Anti Realist is the third volume of live recordings by Cages from Buffalo, NY, who describe themselves as creators of unstructured, post-noise, post-music. Each of its seven tracks sees Nola Ranallo pitch her vocals against David Bailey’s guitar and noises with semi-frequent embellishments from bass player Patrick Bolger and saxophonist Steve Baczowski.
“Death Tape” is a c36 split tape which offers up a side a piece of obsessive, grim & punishing walled noise from two US noise projects. On the first side we have an untitled track from Missouri based Oblive, and the second side we have an untitled track from Texas based Screamin' Fetus.
“A Love Katy Christmas” offers up just two ten minute tracks of semi-xmas themed HNW/ AHNW from this controversial uk Walled noise project that’s themed round US female pop-ster Katy Perry.
“Wash My Soul” finds this French progressive & ambient HNW artists offer up four nineteen minute ‘walls'-these follow a fairly fixed AHNW path that’s both entrancing & a great textural immersive ride for CDR's 80 minutes playtime.
Maybe it’s all the pre-Christmas cheer or that I have been listening to a lot of Harold Budd lately, but Othon’s Impermanence just is not my cup of tea.
For "It All Falls Apart", a 43 minute tape release I would hesitate to call a full length, Adrian Aniol delivers a foggy 25 minute sound zone on side A and its stripped down remix on side B. His take on 'dark ambience' is a murky hodgepodge of muffled, unchanging synth tones, billowing wind effects and a synthetic high frequency crackle I initially mistook for tape hiss.
This is a very simple review to write, but thus also incredibly difficult for the same reasons. “This is a great release.” There it is. I now have to pad this out to reach the word limit….
Bahimiron are a four piece Texas black metal band who create fast, unholy and ugly yet memorable blacked metal that runs with subtle yet effective & grimly atmospheric elements. Though the band have been around since early 2000’s this is only the projects third full length release.
Satans Host brew up a heady, slightly cheesy yet often enjoyable mixture of power metal, speed metal, NWOBM, thrash, and satanic tinged theatricals. I guess if you can imagine a collusion between Iron Maiden, Dio, a more Satan loving Manowar, a pitch of Slayer, and another pitch of Mercyful Fate and you’ll get an rough idea of what expect here.
A very strange thing happened when I first started listening to Emme Yas’ most recent cd, Atavistic Dreams and Phallic Totems. While concentrating intently on the sounds that were emerging from my headphones, a pack of coyotes decided to start howling not so far off in the distance. For someone trying to interpret an already intense piece of work, the natural element that was brought in (whether the coyotes were aware or not) made everything fall into place.
Winter Ghost is the latest cassette to be released by Handmade Birds, a new label run by R. Loren of Texan post-rockers Pyramids, that in its first year has released new work by the likes of noise connoisseur The Rita and the folksy ambient debut of Preterite to reissuing music from industrial martialists Der Blutharsch and 4AD dream rockers His Name Is Alive. This release features two new compositions from Kentucky’s Josh Lay and Morgan Rankin who together run Husk records, a similarly small label dedicated to the more experimental tributaries flowing out of doom and black metal’s turgid river banks.
Hailing from Texas, U.S.A., Nivathe bring us a nasty chunk of putrid black/doom metal. Everything from black on black cover art to joyful titles like "Decay" or "Writhing, Collapsed Flesh" screams depression and horned hand gestures.
I listened to some Blue Oyster Cult and Moss this past weekend….. apologies to those of more finely-tuned musical sensibilities…..and was re-reminded of untold aeons in human music where occult elements have been a haunting presence; anthropologically, music has been a part of our more esoteric practices and rituals from the very beginning. In part this can be attributed to fear (think about it) or because it provides listeners an exciting sense of something beyond the claustrophobic sophistries of self. That’s entertainment folks! This means the ineffable is of deep interest to some and naming your musical project after a Thelemic deity is certain to arouse a modicum of curiosity. And pause.
“Maciste in Hell (Barbariccia)” finds this São Paulo based project focusing their often mixed noise genre/ cut-up Peplum soundtracking sonic attack into a more straight HNW attack.
“Hors” offers up just under eighteen minutes worth of meaty, earth ‘n’ rock crushing walled noise from this crypt & bones obsessed French HNW project.
“Nightmare Rendezvous” is the 11th in the series of twelve monthly 3 inch CDR releases that are been put out through-out 2011 by Ireland's Bored Bear Recordings. Each release in the series celebrates, pays tribute and chronicles one of the many projects of highly influential & respected Texas noise artist Richard Ramirez.
The perhaps inanely named US black metal band Nightbringer released their third full length, "Hierophany of the Open Grave" in 2011, an earnest attempt to create a dense, cerebral epic within the black metal idiom. They bring a polish and class to their craft which few in the genre possess, something that could potentially turn off fans of DIY or stripped down black metal.
A very nicely packaged tape here, on Scorze Records. A painted cassette, wrapped in a card cover and tied up with string - simple but beautiful. The front cover is a still from the great 1966 Czech film “Daisies”, whilst the inside image is an enigmatic photo of a girl hiding behind an antlered skull; both are alluring, mysterious pictures, which draw the viewer in. So, in terms of packaging, there’s really nothing bad to be said. The sounds are provided by RedSK on one side, and I Dreamt Of Her Beautiful Tentacles on t’other.
At first glance, with its psychedelic flower-power nudie cover, this CD looks like an Acid Mothers Temple release but its contents couldn't be more far away from the Japanese collective's noise psych rock. Instead Barrikad is a pretty well known industrial noise act, with usually politic thematics and a very ample range of sounds. Each of the three tracks on "We Make Nihilists Smile Again" features the support of another artists.
Adam Kalmbach, the man behind Jute Gyte (and for the matter the owner/creator of Jeshimoth Entertainment) is one industrious person. Verstiegenheit is his tenth full-length release (although this is Jute Gytes third more black metal focused release). Looking through Jute Gytes list of work it appears that they have issued five different full-length cds in 2011 alone!
This fiftieth release from Kiev’s Quasi Pop label, which has recently seen releases by Andrew Liles, Lasse Marhaug and Merzbow on its expansive and eclectic roster, is from label owner Edward Sol. Although he seems to have worked extensively with various Ukraine-based groups in the rock and electronic mould (most visibly in Biblioteka Prospero), his training as a sound designer for film and television seems to have come to the fore more recently on his solo releases where he fuses Foley with field recordings to create concrète dramas of which this 30 minute cassette is no exception.
“In Darkness” offers up a single just under 25 minutes worth of head pummelling ‘n’ gut hitting low end ‘n’ crunchy based HNW. This is the second release from this relatively new project of US HNW scene veteran Alex Nowacki whose also in the other following HNW projects Boar, Centeries Behind The Gate & Phantom Rib.
“Lost & Found” brings together two twenty minute slices of ambient walled noise, textured static and HNW that’s created by using only a cooling fan as source material. Small Hours is one of the projects of Uk based James Killick whose also behind Love Katy- a Katy Perry influenced HNW project & runs the great British HNW label Sweet Solitude.