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This is the first collaboration between the Japanese composer and multi-instrumentalist Yui Onodera and prolific Californian duo Celer. And a first release for the Two Acorns label that’s run by Will Long of Celer.
Wooden Stake is the New York/Texas duo of Vanessa Nocera (vocals and bass) and Wayne Sarantopoulos (drums, guitars and keyboards). Vampire Plague Exorcism was the debut EP for 2010. Now since then, merely a year ago, there have been various EP’s, splits and even a full length album released. Here we concentrate on Vampire Plague Exorcism.
Torba’s a relatively new Berlin-based noise artist whose broken circuits and contact mics seem to have completely replaced the guitar drones of his debut in 2009. Recorded last December, Armageddon Polaroid is the latest among the 14 or so CD-Rs and cassettes Torba has released to date, comprising five short postcards from the apocalypse.
Uk Doom meet psychedelic sludge outfit Bong brew up a deeply heady, dense & weighty mixture of lo-fi, stumbling and stoned guitars, bass and drums, with the added tripped out featuring of twanging sitar & mumbled vocals ‘n’ chants added into the thick doomed mix.
“Christ-The album” was the third album by revolutionary Anarcho-punk/experimental collective Crass. The album originally appeared in 1982, as a double vinyl release- one disc of new studio recordings, and one disc of live recordings.
The Human Quena Orchestra bring to the table their third full length offering entitled ‘A Natural History of Failure’ on Wisconsin based Utech Records. Following on from their 2009 release on Crucial Blast, ‘ANHOF’ showcases their own unique blend of doom/drone wrapped around intricate layers of dissonant noise and creeping dark ambience.
Despite the playful exterior of this cdr, the sounds within lean towards the more serious and measured side of things. “Half Girl, Half Biscuit” is presented in a bright pink card inlay, concealing a cdr spray-painted pink. The front cover has a picture drawn by Nicola Vinciguerra (the mind behind Fecalove and Turgid Animal Records Italian Division), which depicts a chap being trampled on by a pair of high heels…with biscuits on his stomach - on a background of biscuits. I think, seeing this, I expected some harsh shit-noise or something; but instead Hardcore Biscuit comes at things from pretty much the opposite direction.
For their debut as a collaborative unit, German composers F.S. Blumm & Nils Frahm have recorded an album of improvisation so refined, the tracks could as easily be loosely rhythmic classical pieces as free jams. "Music For Lovers Music Versus Time" is 9 tracks, similar in sound and pacing.
“A Low Life In high Heels” is number seven in the series of twelve monthly 3 inch CDR releases that are been released through-out 2011 by Irelands 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's Richard Ramirez.
The Dynamites were a late 60’s Japanese garage rock band who where meant to be Japans answer to a mixture of The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and The Monkess, but as with most western music reinterpreted by eastern minds their sound was more than a little quirky, edgy and often more experimental than their original influences. “Young Sound R&B” is the first ever reissues of the bands one and only album out side of Japan, and this reissue also features various non album singles too.
“Stagnation” is the first release in about a year from this Croatia based HNW project. And on offer here is a single forty five minute track of dense, suffocating and unrelenting Walled noise that’s constricting yet very moorish & entrancing.
I have to confess I didn’t have very high hopes for this album when I read inside the sleeve of it that it was a concept album based on Current 93’ Nature Unveiled album from 1984. Albums based on other people’s albums or dedicated to particular people are one of my pet hates but I was pleasantly surprised by how good this actually is.
Sometimes with listening to new music (or listening to an artist who’s not necessarily “new”, but new to your ears), it’s best just to jump in and listen. No looking for background on MySpace, last FM, or discogs, just play the cd and listen.
“Kamadhenu” is the first of the new Merzcow trilogy albums from the Japanese king of noise Merzbow, and if this opening chapter is anything to go by us Merzheads are in for some of the most rewarding & consistent work Merzbow has produced in quite a few years.
“Nordik Battle Signs” is the third in the series of reissue of classic MZ.412 albums by Cold Spring Records. The album original appeared back in 1999, and it offers up a mixture of satanic sample heavy bombastic & blacked industrial work-outs, dark ambient dwells, dark chant lined electro broods, and genreal dark, noisy & brooding sound-scraping.
Zeitkratzer, the pan-European new music ensemble, are arguably best known for their interpretation of Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music where the swirling harmonics of Reed’s feedback were unbelievably transposed for orchestral instrumentation. While they have continued to pick up gauntlets of other ‘unplayable’ musics such as their recent triumphant reworking of a selection of Whitehouse tracks, they have also taken care to remind us of their roots with their ‘Old School’ series of live recordings of selected works by 20th Century avant-garde composers. So far the series has included James Tenney and John Cage and it now turns to Alvin Lucier with which the ensemble had the opportunity of working in 2008. While it would seem that no one’s work poses a challenge for Zeitkratzer, Lucier’s scores can be so loose that they represent more a scientific experiment that opens the door onto a new form than a reproducible piece of work, as his intent is often just to discover the acoustic properties of objects and rooms.
As mighty a noise group as the New Blockaders are, admittedly I never expected to see as massive a tribute to their works as "Viva Negativa!", the third volume of which, two disks on its own, I am examining in this review. It is devoted exclusively to artists from the USA, whereas Vol. I covers artists from the UK, Vol. II covers Europe at large, and Vol. IV features artists from Japan. The lineup is almost entirely made up of influential, seasoned artists who work I find to wildly inventive, endlessly fascinating and strangely beautiful. The tracks here are original compositions inspired by TNB, rather than remixes or reinterpretations as found on some Merzbow tributes, and each undeniably showcases a unique and idiosynchratic conception what it means to create 'noise'.
This tape, delivered to you by New Forces in an edition of fifty, is a fantastic slice of Maronite Power Electronics. (It’s not often you get an opportunity to make statements like that, so you have to grab them when you can..!) It’s packaged simply, in black and white, with the somewhat austere exterior complimenting the sounds within.
Most Harsh Noise wall projects take on darker, troubling & more inward looking themes as there subject focus; but Uk based Love Katy take a brightly, though possible perverse tinged theme of amercain female popster Katy Perry as it’s theme. “Rainbow Haired Starlet” is the projects third release, and to my mind it’s the most rewarding & consistent release the project has put out thus far.
“Those Tiny Eyes Were Beautiful And...Dead” is a C60 cassette release from late last year which offers up two sides of grim, numbing & extreme walled noise from this highly prolific & ghoulish subject themed Serbian project.
"La Puissance De L'Erreur" is a 7inch vinyl release that offers up two sides of crusty, brutal and total unrelenting HNW from Vomir- the French king of unforgiving & unchangeable walled noise.
Gil Melle was an American artist, sculptor, jazz musician and film/TV composer. From his jazz beginnings, he flourished into a composer. Most noted is that he was one of the first film composers to not only utilize electronics in his recordings, but develop and build his own electronic instruments. To these he added traditional instruments such as bass, woodwinds and percussions, giving his compositions a far away yet human feel to them.
I think in order to be taken seriously you have to make an effort. If you send a CDr promo in with the title scribbled on it in barely legible handwriting and wrap it in a colour print of the cover you’re putting yourself at a huge disadvantage to start with. If you have some pride in what you are producing and want others to realise that then show it. The cheapness of music technology and the ability to reach into millions of homes with the advent of the internet has made it so easy for albums to be recorded and released that you have to stand out and marketing arm of Cronica needs a swtft kick up the arse if they want themselves to be taken seriously.
"Svart” is the third release from one of Andreas Brandal (Flesh coffin, Hour Of the Wolf, Drevne Bolesti, and Museums of Sleep) more recent projects. And the four tracks on offer here mix together battering and rapidly storm shifting bound HNW, buried atmospheric touches, and cinematic Harsh noise/ junk metal sears.