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For me, the letters DAF will always stand for Deutsch Amerikanische Freundschaft, but the Dead Air Fresheners, a free-spirited, generally experimental outfit out of Seattle/Olympia/Portland, do no disservice to the acronym. Armed with an array of cheap guitar pedals, suburban neo-dadaist cheekiness and an irrespressible drive to press on into new realms of thought and sound, they make up for what they lack in professionalism with their abundant enthusiasm and lack of inhibition. Evidently believers in power of spontaneous and even accidental creation, most of the band's music is free improvisation with varying electronic setups.
If I’d reviewed this after the first listen, I think I would have slated this album; purely down to personal prejudices and disappointed expectations. Fortunately, I’m contractually bound to listen more than once…
I’ve been listening to this album every day for a week now both in the house and also outdoors on an I-pod and I still don’t know if I like it or not. It’s a fascinating album and one I keep revisiting but it’s not because it’s catchy or because I like the way the sounds are put together or I like the production it’s more that I’m intrigued by the processes and intentions behind it.
GOG is the drone/doom/ambient project of Michael Bjella (with help from friends here and there). Heavy Fierce Brightness… is their second release for Utech records. What GOG presents to us here is a slow slithering colossal slab of doom tinged drone, all wrapped up in a lovely package with artwork by Locrians’ Terence Hannum.
“Pedestrian X-ing” is 5th of 12 monthly 3inch CDR releases that are going to 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 wonderfully named Suncarcass are a HNW project from Illinois, USA who have been putting out releases in dribs ‘n’ drabs since mid 2009. "Naked Unwanted" is the projects second full length release, after a few splits on various labels, and this CDR releases offers up two hypnotic and rewarding slices of twenty minute plus walled matter.
“Stockings Bloody Stockings part II” sees highly prolific and deeply brutal Serbian based Dead Body Collection offering up a single just shy of eighty minute wall of rapid, extreme and moorish walled matter.
“H^2” is the second full length release from Swedish sound artist and composer Hanna Hartman. And it finds her offering up a collection of tracks that mix together cleverly edited field recording elements with stripped musical and rhythmic textures.
‘Underground’ is around the thirtieth release of 2010 (out of at least forty) for Norway’s Andreas Brandal, who’s been recording in one shape or form since the late eighties and heads up the noisy experimental label, Twilight Luggage. This, though, is released on Florida’s Rotifer Cassettes, and features six mainly ambient tracks across its 40 minutes, all built with haunting properties.
This seems to be Dysania’s first release. The four tracks collected on here on a Cdr were recorded between 2008 and 2010 and sound like a mix of analogue and digital synth sounds.
“Penis Envy” was the third album by revolutionary Anarcho-punk/experimental collective Crass. The album originally appeared in 1981, and it saw the band offering up an album that focused more in on the feminist side of the bands output/ message. It also saw the band experimenting with more memorable & sonically creative moments, as well as edgy and noisy dips into the avant grade.
The Stanley Brothers are possible one of the most know and respected figures in the bluegrass genre. The pair where active between 1946 and 1966, and “Hymn” collects together two of the pair’s original albums from late 1950s and early 1960s, and feature here are twenty four tracks of god fearing and mainly up-beat bluegrass.
NightSatan are a three piece finish project who make up-beat and cinematic synth music that has a very retro 70’s and 80’s feel to it. “Midnight Laser Warrior” is the bands first full length album, and I guess it's best described as a collusion between up-beat 1970’s and 1980’s synth soundtrack music, 70’s/80’s electronica, synth bound prog, and metal gone synth bound; the band have christened their brand of high octane synth craft ‘Laser metal’.
Richard A Ingram, evidently approaching ambience from a post rock guitarist's perspective, continues to use the instrument and musical language he is most comfortable with as the primary voice in his minor key loop driven compositions on "Consolamentum", apparently his second full length as a solo artist. He has appropriated the Western twang and relaxed pacing of modern Earth, and the sort of brooding paranoia in the face of impending apocalypse that groups like Half Makeshift or Godspeed You Black Emperor have exhibited.
I must admit I do like compilations; they’re inherently interesting. They often gather together sometimes disparate artists and groups under some theme or idea, and its that theme, idea or curation that’s interesting. Sometimes its tracks responding to a given theme, sometimes its a snapshot of a local scene, sometimes its tracks created under certain conditions; and for me, that's the added ingredient that makes it so much more than, “here’s some tracks by some bands”. I must also admit that compilations have often been one of the best ways for my ears to appreciate noise, too; with shorter, digestible chunks of each project playing off each other. I’ve probably listened to the “A Tick For Every Dog” cassette (Bandaged Hand Produce, 1996), way more than any noise release by a single project. Since its a “genre” that puts precedence on sounds, placing different approaches to noise side by side, can sometimes illuminate the individual acts better than listening to a complete release by them.
The grimly entitled “By myself to myself sacrificed” is a c20 tape that offers up two sides of stark, eerier yet brutal noise matter that sits somewhere between static bound ambience, stripped and barren textural sound scraping, and ambient HNW.
So the story goes, Connecticut’s NoVisible Scars, a DIY label that peddles in severly limited extreme metal and noise cassettes, received an unsolicited CDr through the post in late 2009 from a previous customer hoping to be considered for release. It was accompanied by a single Polaroid picture of bed in an otherwise unfurnished room. The contents of the disk were very minimal: for almost 15 minutes a single bleak, lo-fi synth wave extends and pulsates broodingly while a male American voice slowly describes short episodes from his childhood that include sharing sexual experiences with his brother in the attic room of his grandparents’ house – presumably the one depicted on the Polaroid. The label pondered its release for a year and finally decided to make 25 copies available.
Music made from household appliances played through guitar pick-ups and embellished with synths, keyboards and organs; that where the basis of Noma starts. From that eclectic base he is able to create emotions through music.
Sometimes I wonder if the yahoo translation services has total lost the plot because apparently “Geenheidsworst” means “none driving sausage”…surely this cant be right!?. Anyway what ever the title means in English this is full length CDR from Netherlands based Doodshoofd & it offers up three great and intense slices of HNW matter.
“Carnal Violence” is a short, atmospheric and surprisingly approachable piece of HNW from one of Richard Ramirez most celebrated and popular projects. On offer here is a c10 that features a five minute track on each side of tape.
“Satan Worshipping Doom" is the sixth album from Chicago based instrumental doom band Bongripper. The album conists of four tracks, and just under an hour worth of dramatic and varied dark doom matter that weaves in elements of black metal, post rock and all manner atmospheric metal craft.
The third LP from this four-man, Belgian combo is an interesting mix of doom/black metal, punk, noise, improv, dark ambient, electronica and even a bit of free jazz. There are numerous influences here, from metallers and noisemeisters like Black Cobra, Nadja, Christian Death, The Melvins, Nirvana and Steve Albini. But there is also a more subtle impulse from the likes of Can and Faust, as in the Damo Suzuki type vocals from Oxbow's guesting Eugene Robinson, operatic radio samples and Faust-ian electronic atmospheres on the excellent track 'The Red Print'.
“Toute Une Histoire”( A whole History) finds this French HNW project offering up a seared, altering and mixed pitch wall of extreme noise. Featured here is a single hour long track that nicely slices ‘n burns through various noise textures and crusty 'n' high pitched tones, yet it always remains full and extremely intense in it’s attack.
Like much of the Jeshimoth label's output, this split between Ultra 64 and Tremor of the Black Manx, entitled "Blue / Doppler" is a specimen of heavy handed and ugly outsider art, a violently bizarre spectacle sure to get a strong reaction of some kind from just about any listener. In blind pursuit of new but potentially useless dimensions of thought, these artists have forsaken all finesse, dynamic range, and compositional structure.