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“Searching For Paradise” is the second release from Iowa based Alex Nowacki(of Boar, Phantom Rib & I watched You Die) new, mysterious quite primal sounding & story based HNW project Centuries Behind A Gate.
Now this is an interesting thing. An attractive cloth bound box containing a CD, a booklet of philosophical essays and five little ball bearings. What could it all be about? The spiel reveals it to be a collaborative effort combining Hecker’s psychoacoustic experimentation with philosopher Quentin Meillassoux’s concept of ‘hyperchaos’ – the absolute contingency of the laws of nature. Meillassoux (a former student of French Philosopher Alain Badiou) contributes an essay to the booklet along with Robin Mackay and Elie Ayache.
Since 2009 French noise maker & improviser Alexandre Bellenger has seemingly dabbled in all manner of noisy improv and experimental music-he’s utlized guitars, turntables, and analog synths to create his varied noise bound sonics. This new album appearing under his surname, and on the excellent progressive/ ambient French HNW lable Slow Death records, finds him focusing on creating a varied & mostly consistent HNW record.
Miminokoto feature members of notable japanese psychedelic rock bands Che-SHIZU, Maher Sharal Hash Baz and Acid Mothers Temple, and with various line-up changes, they try to expand our consciousness with fuzz pedals since the year 2000.Such set-up/line-up makes it easy to guess what we're getting into.
A very smartly packaged double tape set here, from Phage Tapes; a good example of what can be done without necessarily going to extremes of effort: it’s all in the detail. Both inlays have striking images copied onto light card and the tape artwork is similarly sombre but effective, but the smallest of details makes all the difference: the text for the titles (etc) has been printed onto paper, then ripped up into separate pieces and stuck on to the pictures. When copied, this creates a very nice effect of depth to the artwork; its simple but very effective.
“She Is Like The Winter….” is the latest slice of brutal, unforgiving and death stench heavy Walled noise from the hugely prolific Serbian based project Dead Body Collection.This release offers up three single sided C60 tapes which feature three half an hour brutal lessons in gruelling, suffocating and rapidly battering HNW.
1981’s “Moving Pictures” saw theCanadian progressive rock band Rush come up with the perfect mixture of tightly reined prog rock/metal, atmospheric & memorable synth textures, and edgy new wave tinged moments. It was the bands mainstream break through album, and it’s still one of the bands largest selling releases. And it easy to see why as everything seems perfect blanced here from the memorable song craft, to the rocking guitar moments, onto the sleek and atmospheric synth dwells- it truly is the near perfect album. The release celebrates the albums 30 year anniversary, and presents a remixed album, a glossy 30 page booklet, and a DVD featuring a 5.1 surround mix of the album & three videos from the album.
First of all, I listened to this CD while looking at pornography and eating wonderful lasagna so my judgement could have been clouded and warped by the over-stimulation of senses.
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.