Loading
“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 It looks curiously outdated.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.
Fuck Patrol is an transatlantic harsh noise collaboration between two gay ‘n’ proud noise artists, and “contact” is the projects first sonic fruits. The two piece brings together Texas noise legend and multi project linked Richard Ramirez, and Irish based Mark Ward of quirky harsh noise/HNW project Where is This & owner of excellent Irish noise label Bored Bear.
“Yeren” is the 8th 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.
For some reason Machinefabriek often remind me of Gavin Bryars around the time of Jesus Blood and Sinking of the Titanic. There a sadness and mournfulness that comes over in Machinefabrieks work and that impression is reinforced for me on this reissue of an album of live pieces recorded between 2006 and 2008.
First impressions whether we care to acknowledge them or not, strike a chord with us either consciously or unconsciously. Seeing the cover of Envenomists 2011 release Bound Dominions did so for me. Loathe as I am to admit it, hammerhead sharks scare me to no end. So upon seeing this I was already apprehensive for what lay inside the cd cover.
This self-titled debut is a re-release of a severely limited cassette that Forma, a trio from Bushwick, New York, put out earlier in the year to serve up highlights from their synth jams. Apparently, working duties get divided cleanly between melodic and rhythmic dimensions where Mark Dwinell and Sophie Lam get to play with most of the exhibits in their museum of old synths covering several Rolands and Yamahas with a Moog and Farfisa added for good measure, while George Bennett sticks to a couple of old drum machines.
This album from Portuguese purveyors of the weird Brobdingnagian, has been brought to the public’s attention via a triad of labels, namely; Universal Tongue, Rusty Axe Records and Perpetuam. 'Pretty Magoo Cancer' is Brobdingnagian’s second official LP, the first of which was released by Rusty Axe back in 2008 and just as the album title suggests, they wield an unearthly sense of the bizarre and unconventional...sitting somewhere between all out noise, black metal and psychedelic experimentalism.
I've known and respected Lea Cummings' Kovorox Sound label since hearing a couple Noma releases a few years back, but my experience with the label founder's personal musical output was hitherto limited to his freeform harsh noise project, Opaque. In utter contrast, this new release entitled "The New Astrology", the third volume in his "Revelations From the New Silence" series, is six tracks of consonant, pure and reverent chordal drone, not too dissimilar to Noma's "Mara" album.
Pulse II” is the second release from the ultra minimal textural noise/ambient project of uk based James Killick(of Katy Perry influenced HNW project Love Katy and owner of the great uk based HNW label Sweet Solitude).
This self titled split c60 brings together a side long track a piece from two great euro based HNW projects. Side ones taken up by Croatia based Placenta Lyposuction, and side twos taken up by ghoulish & grim French project Bördel Noïr. Each project offers up a thick, crushing and unrelenting ‘wall’ of HNW.
Here’s a very professionally presented tape from Sweat Lodge Guru, with dapper inlay artwork, inlay printing and on-tape printing. The sounds inside are evidence of a lot of effort too. The cassette has nine tracks (spread across both sides) of dark, eerie sound-scapes. I wouldn’t personally consider them to be particularly akin to soundtracks, but that should give you a sense of their territory.
On 15th July 2010 a call for submissions went up on the Chondritic Sound forum asking for contributions from “non-heterosexual noisicians” to form a “queer noise” compilation cassette. Come February this year 100 copies of the resultant C100 were released, named Silence=Death after New York’s gay activist group of the late eighties, boasting eighteen artists mainly from USA and Europe.
Steinklang Industries have unearthed this recording of Satori’s performance in Salzburg on the 10.10.2008 and it successfully captures this duo’s work in its rawest and most intense form. For those who are unaware, Satori is made up of Neil Chaney (the man behind the old-school industrial/noise project ‘Pessary’) and Justin Mitchell (head honcho of the highly respected Cold Spring record label) and together they deliver to the listener a terrifyingly rich sonic tapestry, sometimes ambient in texture or sometimes deeply crushing in its heaviosity, but certainly always dark as the pits of hell itself.
Nurse Unit is a Texas noise based project that has being active on & off since 1996- the project mixes up a perversely seared mixture of often active HNW, ear scalding Harsh noise and overloaded industrial attacks. Nurse Unit conists of Richard Ramirez(Werewolf Jerusalem, Black Leather Jesus, An Innocent Young Throat-Cutter, etc) & Alison Rowe (Rinne, Wasp Honeymoon & Human Cobras). “Detox” brings together the first four highly ltd tape release by the two piece in a wonderfully thought out and designed four tape box set.
This self-titled long player from Mamuthones, released on the Italian Boring Machines label, brings founding member Alessio Gastaldello together with Jennifer Gentle’s frontman Marco Fasolo and veteran drummer Maurizio Boldrin.
“Tissue Damage” is a seared & extreme medical/surgery themed HNW collaboration between US Texas based three piece Ascites, and ghoulish/ brutal one man Serbian based project Dead Body Collection. Each project offers up two sets of original track source material, which the other project gives a final flaying & boiling mix to.
“Wall Reaper” finds this hard hitting yet creative Iowa based HNW project offering up a single track of thick ‘n’ crushing walled noise matter. The track literal grinds ‘n’ tears you through over it’s near on forty minute runtime, then spits you out at the other end.