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This untitled c70 split brings together two of the most adventurous and creative projects working in today’s world-wide HNW scene. Both parties released two of the most impressive releases of 2010; A View From Nihil put out the tar black bass lined nihilism of "Triumph Of The Broken Will", and TFT(with Insurgent) put out “The Shape of Static To Come” which showcased a stripped often futuristic sounding and minimalistic take on the genre.
“Winter Light” offers up a single lengthy shot of dense, swirling and darkly atmospheric walled noise matter from Andreas Brandal’s (Flesh Coffin, Drevne Bolesti, Avmakt, Museums of Sleep) HNW project Hour of the wolf.
“Bound” creates an bleak and gloomy, yet playful and edgy selection of tracks that sit somewhere between: creepy yet taut improv, unsettling sparse ‘n’ rhythmic clusters of field recordings, souring and wavering lo-fi classical swoons, doom metal, slightly quirky ritual precision, atmopsric junk metal elements and the very odd bleack simmer of noise texture
Here we have a Utech release by RST called The Sunset Limited. Rich drones that don't lack substance. Eight of them on one CD, in fact, so unfortunately, I really don't think RST gives each track enough time to reach it's full potential. The drone genre is so overloaded with boring crap, and RST's material sticks out amongst the crowd with it's tasteful layering and ability to be eerie as hell without being too melancholy. I just wish that, for meditative and "zoning-out" purposes, each composition lasted longer. This would give the listener more of a chance to really take in everything RST is doing.
Algernon is an up and coming group from Chicago, and this is their third record, their debut on Cuneiform Records. It does sound very much like the usual left-field prog rock you'd expect from a label that has issued much rare material from Soft Machine and related projects of such...
Brian McBride, inside and outside of his main project, Stars of the Lid, has long been a master of the deceptively passive soundscape. This particular album "The Effective Disconnect" differs from past works in that it is a compilation of music composed for a documentary entitled "Vanishing of the Bees", but sonically and creatively little has changed. The slow pacing, wet orchestral timbres and massive scope of his work in Stars of the Lid are undoubtedly intact. If you're one of those who has begun to tire of this unique yet often repetitious group's sound, well... you probably just haven't listened enough. Admittedly, Stars' work seemed like little more than relaxing background sound to me for years after I first heard it, but time has revealed their genius to me. Here as in the past, this Texas based musician truly stands apart from the pack through the sheer depth of his work, which is clearly through-composed in the classical sense, rather than created by improvisation, looping, or any other typical technique used by ambient musicians.
Missouri based one man project Jute Gyte (aka Adam Kalmbach who runs Jeshimoth Entertainment and is in numerous other projects on the label) has tattled quite a few different sonic genres and sounds since the projects inception in 2006.
“Robitussatan” is the second album from this mysterious state side project, and it’s very much a game of two half’s. The first eight tracks are often overloaded and manic collusions between muffled drum ‘n’ bass runs, gone wrong Casio core electronics, grinding metallic riffing and guttural 'choke-up-your-guts' vocals. The second half of the album is taken up by a fifty four minute track of noisy guitar texturing with doom and industrial undertones.
Deus Otiosus (Latin for Idle God) is the first full length release from Australia’s Nekros Manteia. The band consists of Poltergeist (ex-session drummer and vocalist from Drowning the Light) and various musicians. A some-what complex work to categorize, lots of influences are included from Bethlehem to Virus to Emperor with a few surprises thrown in to keep the listener guessing.
“A Call to Arms” is probably one of the most epic, controversial and thought-provoking releases to appear from the Harsh noise wall/ static texture genre thus far. The release conists of three ninety minute tapes that mix together often detailed static texturing and minimalistic HNW with all manner of samples connected to and about the Islamic fundamentalist world- both pro and negative in their message and point of view.
This c60 offers up two highly nasty, bass brooding and lengthy slices of extreme walled noise from this Louisiana based project that has links with other Violent Revolution International based projects such as Slaughter-Fetus & Peiste.
Lasse-Marc Riek’s “Habitats” released under the 3Leaves imprint is an electro acoustic collection of field recordings recorded in 2007 while in Finland. Accompanying this disc is a supplementary business card shaped cd-r containing images from the natural locations recorded in this album taken by Anne-Berit Riek. The disc containing audio begins with a narrated introduction and moves into the collected audio works described in the packaging’s linear notes.
Chrome peeler records along with Hospital productions have re-released here an early 90's demo from American Power Electronics group Final Solution entitled "All new power".
Through his work with Univers Zero since 1974, drummer and percussionist Daniel Denis has certainly disguised the fact that he is a self-taught musician. After a short-lived role with another drummer-led, European prog rock band, Magma, Denis formed Univers Zero out of those willing to follow him in concocting a rare blend of musical paradigms, particularly involving jazz fusion and modern chamber music, arguably among the most academic of styles. The result could sound a bit like Soft Machine or Focus even, but maybe more that of their darker cousin whose deliciously dystopian sound was not shy of adding discordant periods portending the industrial/dark ambience that wasn’t to be commonplace for another decade or so.
Horacio Pollard is a noise artist with his sophomore (I think) release on Twilight Luggage. The cover looks like it's hand drawn and xeroxed, not to mention it looks a bit sappy.
This is a slightly on the bland side album from Erdem Helvacioglu. A young Turkish musician who works in many fields of the arts from films to dance to music and his work goes from the more experimental, such as here, to the more mainstream, such as music for the World Soccer Championships.
The charmingly entitled “PUS” is a four CDR box set which brings together the highly prolific and sonically ferocious Serbian HNW project Dead Body Collection, and French brutal sonic anarchist HNW project Å. Each project firstly offers up a hour plus piece on the first two discs, then on the last two discs they deconstruct and rape each others work in another hour long piece per disc-so in total you have just over four and a half hours worth of brutal and total unrelenting walled noise on offer here.
“Rites of Passion & A Promise of Wild Ecstasy” is a C20 tapes worth of often shifting, brutal and rewarding walled noise from one of the mysterious HNW projects connected to the Californian based Absence Tapes label.
"Una Lucertola Dalla Pelle di Donna" is the first in the series of fourteen Seven inch vinyl releases celebrating the many projects of highly prolific and influential Texas noise artists Richard Ramirez.
"Je Me Retire De Moi" (meaning roughly in english I withdrawn from myself) is a fine title for this isolating and enclosing piece of Harsh wall matter from one of the most know and praised exponents of the form French one man project Vomir.
2010 saw the release of Mathias Delplanques’ Passeports, a study in the sounds of transportation. Using a combination of field recordings of various transit (harbors, planes and train stations) woven together with various organic, electronic and domestic sounds; Delplanque composes a hymn to movement.
“Als Puntje Bij Paaltje Komt” is a collection of three twenty minute tracks of often stuck noise or automated extreme industrial soundscaping from slightly deranged and offten sci-fi themed Netherlands based noise project Paddo One.
“Rural Route No.3” features bleak, strangely appealing and often jarringly edited field recordings taken from the Shetland Islands in winter 2006. Martin Clarke is a sound artists and experimental film maker from London, and this 3inch cdr is his firth release.
“Static Corps” offers up two 50 minute ‘walls’ of thick, airless, weighty and tar black HNW that’s a guaranteed to bury you deeply in punishing thick sound mass, and blackly sour the world around your listening space.