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“The Urge To Love Or Destroy (Marebito)” is a single sided C90 cassette release from last year by one of Richard Ramirez most know & respected projects. And on offer here is a great slice of atmospheric & addictive walled noise.
Historians and worshippers of English folk tradition The Owl Service released "The Burn Comes Down" in 2010, this collection of simple, age old songs livened up through lush, quasi-modern orchestration. The album is an exercise in pure timbres, relaxed tempos, smooth bel canto style singing and repetitive yet strong melodies placed in linear song structures wherein each verse is simply followed by another verse.
Here’s a cryptic cdr… The confusion starts with the packaging, which at first glance looks a little “shonky”: a folded insert, behind a front piece. This front piece is a rough square cut from very thin sheet metal, with artwork taped onto it; the fact that its actual sheet metal is nice, but the fact that the artwork is taped on somewhat cheapens it - maybe I’m being overly picky. The insert, though, is very elegant indeed - a two-sided sheet with rather beautiful imagery. One of these images looks a bit like someone photocopied a pile of rusty nails; the other looks like an old futurist painting - both are black and white, and filthy. The genius of the insert lies in the way its folded. Maybe I’ve had a sheltered life, but its the first time I’ve seen this done; its nothing spectacular, but its a very simple solution to holding a cd, in a sheet of paper, in a cd wallet.
'City of the Living Nightmare’ is the skewed musical vision of John Gallo under the very apt Blizaro moniker. The entire album pays homage to Gallo’s obvious love of old Italian horror flicks infused with a classic doom metal influence, complete with eccentric keyboard sections and an all-encompassing psychedelic haze. Goblin and Black Sabbath are the obvious comparisons that spring to mind on first listen, Sabbath famously sourced their title from the old Italian horror film of the same name so the connection between the two may not seem as farfetched as it first sounds…indeed the final track on the album is a cover version of Goblins most renowned work for the Dario Argento classic ‘Suspiria’.
Bones is a mysterious digital based HNW project whom I presume are/is from France( Slow Death records are based in France), and this untitled album is the projects first release. And what we have here are four mid-length 'walls' (between 13 to 20 minutes) that move from dense & impenetrable variety towards glitching almost rhythmic atmospheric yet taut texturing.
“Moving Target!” finds this Serbian based walled noise project offering up a single hour long slice of intense, taut and densely unforgiving HNW. As with everting put out by this project there’s a WW2 theme running though the ‘walls’ sound & artwork.
'Spirits' is the seventeenth release in seven years from Dead Man's Hill, the solo project of Belgian musician Bart Piette. Wearing its heart on a sleeve bearing a busily montaged selection of forest, flames, ghosts and ghoulish masks, the track titles appear to be suggesting a fantastical flight from a 'Road to Sweet Waters' leading to encounters with the Antichrist, the Spirits of Nature and an alternate reality no less, before returning home.
Wolfskin is the solo project of Portuguese artist Johan Aernus .He’s been recording as Wolfskin for about 15 years but announced that he was stopping both recording and also running his own label, Reaping Horde, a few years ago (the label ended up being taken over by one of his collaborators). This album was actually released 2 or 3 years after that announcement so I think we have to assume it was recorded sometime before it finally made its way onto CD.
Niezwyciê¿ony is an intense & unrelenting walled noise meets machine drone collaboration between Italian based Fabrizio De Bon of HN/HNW project Fukte & runner of Toxic Industries label. And Sarajevo based Neven Misaljevich of chilling HNW project Smrznik, and one of the three minds behind the Zvukovina label.
“Family Meeting” presents the listener with three shots of heavy hitting yet creative & varied walled noise matter from this always rewarding Iowa based HNW project- the projects all the work of one Alex Nowacki(Centuries Behind A Gate & Phantom Rib).
“Within The Womb of Satan” offers up 15 tracks worth of semi groovy, wonky and tribal beat heavy & simplistic blacked death metal laced with up-front growled and echo chamber heavy cookie monster vocals. The album mangers (often at the same time) to sound dark, morbid, silly and more than a little darkly quirky.
@c immediately caught my attention with the picturesque row of palm trees on the cover of their latest album, "Music for Empty Spaces". Listening to the album, I find it's as masterful a piece of 'new music' as ever I've heard. I would describe their style as lush musique concret intertwined with restrained, minimalist instrumental playing that speaks to the intense silence and monotony of solitude. The sound sources are widely different from track to track, broadening the scope of the overall album.
Two long tracks here, which uncompromisingly explore electronic soundscapes; albeit very different ones.
Rorcal, the adoration of this band is spoken in hushed tone, yet for many fans of doom metal they are an unknown entity. The band was formed in Geneva, Switzerland in 2006 and since then has been releasing music and playing live to enthusiastic reviews.
“Cariddi” is the second release from self proclaimed ‘Black Static Funeral Noise Wall’ project Nascitari- who is a one man project from Italy. And on offer here is a single & unrelenting slab of raging walled noise.
Phantom Rib’s "Untitled" is the sixth volume of the Infinity series- an open ended and identical artwork based collection of releases put out by Uk based Sweet Solitude label. Each volume sees a different world wide HNW acts attempting ambient and experimental forms of walled noise- Phantom Rib is the new project from Dubuque Iowa based Alex Nowacki (Boar & Centuries Behind A Gate), and what we have on offer here is best described as taunt almost rhythmic based static texturing.
“Infest” is the second release from this highly consistent & rewarding Russian Federation based HNW project. This mini album consists of two ten minute plus tracks that mix together HNW with subtle hints of creative and brutally overloaded electronica, lo-fi industrail & beat bound electronic textures.
"Ciclón" is the second full length release from this weather & storm influenced Puerto Rico based HNW project. On offer here is a single just over half an hour track of slowly shifting ambient HNW.
‘Girl Echo Suns Veil’ although subtitled ‘Rarities and Ephemera 1990-2000’ is a selection of 16 pieces culled from three 4-track recording sessions, one per year from 1990 to 1993, with the exception of one additional track from 2000. It follows guitarist Scott Cortez as he moves from North East America (Michigan) to the South West (Arizona), picking up vocalist Melissa Arpin along the way, as he experimented with a fusion of Glenn Branca’s walls of guitar resonance with the then more recent distorted indie pop of My Bloody Valentine.
Noel Wessels is one busy artist. Already known for his work with The Outside Agency and as DJ Hidden; Wessels created Semiomime in 2003. “From Memory” can be described as a soundtrack for a non-existing film. Musically it’s a combination of IDM, ambient, drum and bass, glitch and bits of modern classical.
Ramesses was founded by Mark Greening and Tim Bagshaw, former drummer and bass player respectively from the massively popular and influential doom metal band Electric Wizard. For those who are unfamiliar with Ramesses sound, they are an uncompromising and heavy as hell outfit, still playing around in the realm of doom/sludge metal akin to their former band, but don’t pick up this album expecting anything similar to Electric Wizard at all.
Dan Fröberg's "The Existence Of Do-ti-la-so-fa-mi-re-do Is Everything!" is a true experimental release, 48 minutes of sound (in a single track) that never once skirts near any kind of familiar musical structure, and also could not accurately be described as noise or drone. What we have here is a protracted, impenetrable metallic shimmering, obviously acoustic in origin and therefore texturally rich, full of tone but without actual tonal root. It's too dissonant, cold and meandering for meditation purposes, and the title of the album must be irony, as there's not a single discernable sequence of scalar pitches to be found.
There’s two ways of coming at this album by Stephan Mathieu a prolific musician from Germany. You can go in blind and listen to what appears to be a masterful piece of drone work, engrossing and enjoyable enough to warrant repeated plays. You can come to the conclusion that Remain is a 60 minute piece that sounds as if Stephan is perhaps using some synths and some occasional field recordings in a very predetermined manner. Or you can go to Stephan’s website www.bitstream.de and read up on the method and execution of the piece and come away even more amazed than you otherwise would have been.
Here’s two short tracks of Harsh Noise Walls from Die Neue Zeit. As far as I can tell, these were released on cassette in 2009, and then re-issued as a download on the Smell The Stench label.