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Mortualia, from Finland, is a solo project by the ever-prolific Shatraug ( of Horna & Sargeist), and maybe his most obscure one. This self-titled CD is a re-issue of a 2007 tape release, with the welcome addition of a bonus track.
Prolific and elusive, Nundata graces us with their release Carousel in 2010. Born form the mind of Srdjan Eftimovski, the vague project is a mix of noisy ambient and drone. Yet it is a little more than easily explained. Using that noisy foundation Nundata produces a psychedelic, frightening and but still fascinating creation.
Last year Baltimore’s Rainbow Bridge offered these two west coast noise artists a side each of this c27 providing a canvas measuring 13 minutes and nine seconds for each to paint their dark and overwhelming sounds while also providing the title for the split release. And keeping all things even, each artist has chosen the same title, ‘Fucked’, for their different takes on the notion.
Over the last year or two this Santiago based noise project has steadily released five or so releases that have touched-down-in and mixed together elements of Harsh noise, HNW, junk noise, and general noise bound mayhem. “No Point” finds the project offering up a selection of subtle active, sometimes rhythmic licked and trance inducing slices of HNW.
The 8th house is an oppressive, grim & intense transatlantic collaboration between Texas noise artists Richard Ramirez( Black leather Jesus, Werewolf Jerusalem, Fouke, Nurse Unit & many more), and Uk London based Robert Meldrum (Corpse Candle, Unearthed & Ghoul). The projects sound is a bleak mixture of churning 'n' ghoulish HNW, dark & drilling Industrial drone expanses, and genreal oppressive & airless noise drone matter. This self titled two C40 tape box set is the projects first release, and each side of tape features a single side long track of weighty, grim and dark/caustic drone matter
“The Joy That Never Ends” is the third album to appear on Important Records by Dutch lutenist Jozef Van Wissem. And like his other releases it once again finds him setting his lute playing in a modern, emotional, atmospheric sonic place.
“In The Rheidol Valley” is a vinyl lp release that offers up a heady, earthy and times unnerving/ eerier mixture of improvised folk and field recordings. The album brings together dark English folk singer/ song-writer Sharron Kraus(solo work, Rusalnaia and Tau Emerald) and uk based guitarist and composer Michael Tanner(United Bible Studies, Pantaleimon, The A Lords and solo work)
Peat Bog was often responsible for the more overt and authentic rock elements that peppered Nurse With Wound’s atypically groovier output throughout the mid-nineties. His deft didgeridoo, psyche guitar and funky drumming that could be found throughout Rock ’n’ Roll Station and An Awkward Pause has since been given the freedom to plough its own path under the guise of Earthmonkey.
Kuwayama Kiyoharu, also known as Lethe, has an impressive discography of non-music dating back to the late 90's, although this new release, "Dry Ice on Steel Tables", is my first time listening to his material. The release is a single track (actually recorded in 2003), which portrays the title of the album quite directly: it's an unedited and unhurried 43 minute improvisation, in which Kiyoharu coaxes as many different contact sounds as possible from the two materials, resulting in what often sounds like a sort of metalized whalesong.
This vinyl album arrives with truly the barest of details; one of the reasons I let it rot at the bottom of my review pile for so long. From what I could tell, I imagined it might be some kind of gabba-breakcore-electro-hell: the kind of thing I sometimes need a run up for… Well, I was wrong - but at the same time, I think my preconception works as a nice context for the record.
Moon is a Australian one man ambient black metal project who darkly brew up a blurred, musty and grim mixture of muffled and sinister guitars, smudged & swirled blacked keyboard ambience, and processed growls/ choral drifts. “Caduceus Chalice” is the projects first full length album after an excellent 3 way split “The Haunting Resonance” that also featured fellow Australian black metal projects Nekrasov & Nekros Manteia.
“The Road Eternal” offers up an enjoyable and rewarding mixture of: expansive ambience, soaring atmospheric guitar textures, lite-techno ambient beat scapes, and genreal melodic & atmospheric ambient electronics.
This c30 tape finds the French master of crusty ‘n’ unrelenting walled noise releasing his wares on Usa based RRRecords which is ran and sonically curated by one of the godfarthers of the USA noise scene Ron Lessard.
Little known outfit Charnel House have recorded "The Leprosy of Unreality", a powerful example of minimal black metal which functions as a portal to a nightmarish and foreign spirit realm. Technique and complexity are abandoned for an extra-dimensional delirium which deepens upon each repetition of the short, simple riffs, which are 3 chord mantras.
So many artists just refuse to have downtime. Vargrwulfs Joseph Gates falls into this category. He not only is the creator of Vargrwulf but is involved with many projects such as Peiiste, Slaughter-Fetus and L’Exorcisme. Add to that the two tape labels he founded; Violent Revolution International and Human Ignorance and you have one busy individual.
Zionist is the new textured harsh noise/HNW project from Louisiana based Joseph Gates (Vargrwulf, Slaughter-Fetus, R.S.P, Peiste and runner of Violent Revolution International). This C30 tape is the projects first fruits and it features densely noise-up & peddle altered natural and man-made field recordings made in Hammond, Louisiana during various solar rituals.
“Priestess” is the fourth release from this progressive French HNW project whose obsessed with African tribal culture, myths, magic and voodoo. On offer here is a full length CDR that features four untitled tracks that each hit dead on or near the twenty minute point, and each track creates a dense, creative and often detailed/hypnotic maelstrom of HNW.
"Juracán” is the first release from this weather & storm influenced Puerto Rico based HNW project who went on to put out the excellent Torrential - which made M[m] album of the month early on this year. This first release comes in the form of a double CDR set that features four twenty five minute plus tracks of often quite active weather bound HNW, Hash Noise and thick/active textured noise.
The creative Christoph Ziegler returns once again with another release from Vinterriket. 2010’s EP Zwischen den Jahren (roughly translated “Between the Years) finds Ziegler performing in a black metal style as compared to 2009’s Horizontmelancholie. Yet with Vinterriket we know that the music will be an inspired mix of black metal, dark ambient and acoustic music.
“Rush” is the most succinct and suitable of descriptions for this otherwise bewildering release from Osaka’s Utero Zzzaaa, a one-man sonic assault squad blending distorted gabba and drill ‘n’ bass beats with loops of speed metal, TV theme tunes and the explosive sound effects of warfare while angrily screeching and rallying in the style of Discharge’s long-serving vocalist, Cal.
One long track here, from Dissecting Table; packaged in a simple card slipcase. The graphics which adorn the case are of the “computer-graphics-design-and-processing-program-gone-amok” type - forms and colours bent and slurred, swirled into abstract patterns. It looks curiously outdated. The colours remind me slightly of the kind of graphics I sometimes used to see in the more psychedelic end of dance music; but here they are processed to the nth degree. Which brings us nicely to the sounds within…
Geir Jenssen, also known as Biosphere, is a Norwegian ambient veteran responsible for accessible, melodic 'arctic ambient' classics such as "Substrata", as well as great lesser known records like 2005's jazz-tinged "Dropsonde". He's taken a sidestep with his latest, "N-Plants", and created a repetitious, soft and reserved yet tightly structured fabric of lazily rolling 4/4 pulses, droning quarter note basslines and hazily hinted melodies, as if a minimal techno record were playing quietly a couple rooms away, and a few speeds too slow. The chosen theme for the record is nuclear power, according to Jenssen, and each track is named after a Japanese power plant. This explains the stylistic shift away from flowing, organic sounds.
An exquisitely packaged seven-inch, here, from Le Petit Mignon records. Designed and drawn by Zeke Clough (who has also done work, most notably, for Skull Disco records), the record has three pieces of card covered in his wonderful creations - half of which are black and white, and half of which are embellished with garish pink and blue. The overall effect reminds me of the Evil Moisture LP on Quick Latin Handful; and, to further the comparison, the Pato side of the seven-inch has similarities with Evil Moisture’s aural methodologies.
Panic is a Netherlands based one man HNW project who specializes in dense, suffocating and darkly violent walled noise. This C30 tape is the projects third release, before this they put out: a 32 second floppy disc(!) and c40 tape.