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“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.
"I slice Her Body, Over and Over” is a C70 that finds this ultra prolific & brutally macabre Serbian project offering up two side long battering of crude & violent slices of HNW. This tape is sure to brutalize even the most seasoned of walled noise fans.
Black Air is a project that blends together elements of textured noise, HNW and layers of atmospheric industrial noise texturing. The project has seemingly been an on/off concern since 2006 with Black Air releasing a single side locked groove 12 inch in 06, then a c20 in 07, and in 2010 they released this- the project first full length release.
“When There's No More Room In Hell, The Dead Will Walk The Earth” is the welcome return of the great & consistent US based HNW project Foul. And on offer here is single near on forty minute track of morrish & static bound HNW. Foul is the main project of J. Cadle(White Torture, ...Massacre & Oasis Of Fear), and the project been dormant for well over a year.
Corpo Nostro introduces us to Dario Buccino, a composer based in Milan whose work appears to centre on the use of suspended steel sheets, occasionally accompanied by voice, or the odd instrument, and reveals the bases behind Sistema HN, his unique approach to composition applicable to any instrument. The package offers both a CD of a piece completed in 2007 “for steel sheets, voices and plasterboard walls” and a DVD that, in addition to footage from his performances, features a 47 minute, self-directed documentary, providing much-needed context into his intentions and approach.
A low droning signal emits from the loudspeakers accompanied by ceremonial drum hits as the split release from (The) Bastard Noise and Christian Renou kicks into life. Employing a dizzying array of sound sources and textures, the duo of experimentalists present an incredibly effective collection of tracks that come together to form a really solid album. Both artists are highly respected in their own rights, Bastard Noise has collaborated in the past with such influential extreme artists such as Government Alpha, Merzbow and Man is the Bastard to name but a few, whilst Christian Renou will probably best recognised through his forays into musique concrete under his ‘Brume’ alias, having himself been active in experimental music circles since 1978.
Fräkmündt are a four piece Swedish project who brew up a heady, atmospheric & slight twisted mix of : alpine Folk, Germanic drinking songs, organic/ nature lined industrial texturing, off-kilter jaunting indie guitar band folk, slight ambient black metal elements, and the odd dwells in more avant tinged atmospheric ambient waters. “Urbärglieder” is the band début full lenght and it appears on the excellent Austrian based Percht/ Ahnstern family of labels (home of Sturmpercht, Allerseelen, Jahrtal, Svarrogh, Sangre Cavallum, ect).
“Robbie Doe” is the third release by this St. Louis HNW project which themes it’s unmoving and brutal Walled noise around ghost based or supernatural occurrences. Behind the project is Jeff Landgraf whose also in the great & more active HNW project Oblive, along with a few other none noise projects.
In 2008, unhinged Japanese noise rockers Nikudorei unleashed a righteous neanderthal roar in the form of "Chain of Evil Dead", a short disk containing a single 18 minute track. From the sound of it, it's a live recording, and it both captures this group at peak intensity and covers significant sonic ground.
There are times when you can put a cd into the player, listen to the first few notes, and you just smile. That’s the reaction that happened upon hearing Tsorer. The Israeli band (the duo of Tom D. and Avner) has been around since 2006. Return to Sodom is the first full length release (not that there’s any other releases on their website) from Black Hate Productions.
Here is a very stark, strenuous album on the Boring Machines label from Italy; recorded in 2009 by two people using guitar, tapes and electronics, and a third member responsible for “acoustic concept engineering”. (I’m not entirely sure what that involves.) Its a drone album: that’s all it does. But what a drone…
This c40 split brings together two French slices of HNW- On side one we have unforgiving crusty wall-making from the infamous Vomir. And on side two we have a fairly active slice of Harsh Noise/ HNW crossbreeding from relatively new project Ekunhaashaastaack.
“Blood Sacriifice” is a brutal, creepy and unhinging mix of lo-fi noise texturing, HNW, and manipulated forest & water field recordings. Peiiste(or Peiste as there sometimes confusingly known as too) is one of the many projects of Joseph Gates(Slaughter-Fetus, Vargrwulf Black Leather Jesus, & RSP) & Vanessa (Slaughter-Fetus, Black Leather Jesus Bast).
“The Tales Of The Dream Planet” finds Acid Mother Temples head guitarist & main honcho Kawabata Makoto offering up two lengthy and extremely mellow and drifting slices of ambient guitar scaping that’s prefect for meditative or extremely stoned states.
The lengthily entitled “Nur die Berge erinnern sich der Winde die hier ihren Anfang fanden vor so langer Zeit” is a compilation of synth only tracks by this distinctive and often darkly quirky one man ambient black metal/ dark synth project from Rivne Ukraine.
Seven Thrones is the first solo album from André Foisy, whose primary role as Locrian’s guitarist is presented this time unadorned by Terence Hannum’s keys, showcasing tones rich in natural textures, from sonorous shining metal to a dark, brooding wood more common of cellos. Although the title probably alludes to a sequence of seven 15th Century texts named after the seven brightest stars that form the Big Dipper, the sounds very much describe more earthly dimensions as they seem to reflect occurrences from the natural world.
One man Harsh Noise outfit Will van Gorder, previously from Other Peoples Children (I think that's his name - it seems to be different on various websites!) releases this short and 'sweet' limited edition cassette.