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Fatalistic artwork, a compelling story and imaginative music; put all three together and you are presented with False Mirrors’ 2010 release Derelict World. Tobias Hornberger (the architect behind False Mirror, with help from Axel Baune, Tarek Mansur, Dieter Trustedt and Bjorn Springorum) carefully and intricately creates and manipulates sounds to match the story within.
“Consolament Bruitiste Part 1” finds the black bag wearing master of French unmoving and crusty walled noise offering up a c40 worth of fast paced, urgent and lo-fi battering walled noise.
Seth Horvitz is an interdisciplinary artist, musician, and designer whose work revolves around the perception of sound and the idiosyncratic behaviour of machines performing sound. Horvitz is most known for his innovative & creative techno project Sutekh which mixers elements of funk, dub, free jazz , noise, musique concrète, and classical minimalism into a techno & glitch sonic frame work. “Eight Studies For Automatic Piano” finds him creating modern classic works that are played in a live setting by machine operated piano's. The albums tracks mix together beyond human precision, detailed note patter-nation, and often harmonic/rewarding sonic detail.
Portland's Eternal Tapestry are adherants to the time-honored tradition of improvised, delay-laden space rock which has included such diverse groups as Phish, The Acid Mothers Temple and The Legendary Pink Dots. The journey of their latest release, "Beyond the 4th Door" begins deep within an open, slow moving trance-space (the first 3 doors already far behind), only to conclude even further into the distance.
This transatlantic collaboration is presented on a limited edition tape, and it’s presented without title or track titles. This serves as a noticeable contrast to the colourful imagery of the artwork: a tied up bear with a enormous penis on the front, and an insert decorated with chat-line adverts. Four tracks of ugly noise are spread across the cassette; one long piece and three shorter ones.
“Library Music 1” offers up eighteen tracks of fairly short but creative & varied mock library music from Swedish composer & multimedia artists Marcus Fjellström, whose most know for his mixing of classical & electronic elements on albums such as Exercises In Estrangement , Gebrauchsmusik & Schattenspieler.
“Haldor” is a charming, melodic and memorable collection of Germanic folk songs that mix in elements of lite indie guitar textures, pop and folk rock elements.
“Not Available” is the 5th album released by the musical art collective, derange pop and genreal off the wall sonic collective know as The Residents, who have been mixing and blurring the lines between musical genres for the last near on forty years. This album original appeared back in 1978, but it’s claimed it was recorded in 1974 just after the bands unhinged début “Meet The Residents”.
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.