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“No Way Out” is the 2009 release, on Vrihaspati Recordings, from Dutch project A Challenge of Honour. The project has been creating music since 2000; starting with Johan Konig. Later Konig left, leaving Peter Savelkoul with guest musicians to man the project. While their style and direction may have changed somewhat, the name has not. A vast amount of releases remain, with numerous albums and EPs littering their offerings.
Henry Jacobs returns with another selection from his archives that laid abandoned under his house for 40 years. Sadly the linear notes are somewhat scant and don’t provide enough background information. I don’t know if this is perhaps some deliberate act designed to foster an air of mystery around these recordings or just an honest oversight by the label but a booklet with some more history and a bit of context would be more than useful.
Endometrium Cuntplow is the project of one David Lucien Matheke, a quite prolific and apparently diverse experimental musician. The "Hollowbeast" 3" disk contains a single track, exactly 666 seconds long (11:06), and is pretty easily classifiable as dark / ritual ambient. What it occasionally lacks in originality it easily makes up with energy, tasteful pacing, and interesting sound textures, despite an obviously very low recording budget.
"Batutut" is a three c20 boxset that offers up six new ten minute tracks of thick ‘n’ extremely crushing static texture and engulf HNW matter from Richard Ramirez's bigfoot obsessed project. The set takes it’s title from the name used for the bigfoot/Yeti beast in the forests and jungles of Vietnam, Laos, and Borneo.
The last time I came across a collection of this caliber, it was the Susan Lawly compilation Extreme Music from Japan, which (along with the amazing Dry Lungs albums) introduced me to pretty much every major Japanese noise artist of note: Merzbow, Masonna, Hanatarash, Gerogerigegege, Incapacitants, Government Alpha, Hijokaidan none of whom, I should add, are on this disc.
Classix Nouveaux where a British 80’s pop band that grew from ashes of the shambling, yet charming punk rock project X-Ray Spex. Classic Nouveaux were a much more slick yet still fun bound project than X-ray & they mixed together more commercial post-punk edges with snyth pop & a new romantic spirit.
The music on Infra started life when German-born but British-raised composer Max Richter was commissioned by choreographer Wayne McGregor to compose the music for a new work for the Royal Ballet, which premiered in 2008 in London’s Royal Opera House. This swiftly followed Richter’s triumphant soundtrack for the multi-award winning film Waltz with Bashir and his fourth solo album (24 Postcards in Full Colour) whose short, dramatic orchestrations were designed as ringtones, further proving his deftness at seamlessly blending electronics with traditional classical forms.
K11 is otherwise known as sound artist Pietro Riparbelli, who prefers to make his music from short wave radio transmission at various locations. This particular release was recorded in a forest at night.
“Kapnos” (Greek for 'smoke') is an experimental/ ambient compilation. This disc is the fourth part in a series called "Between the elements" which sees Italian sound/ ambient artists tattle music that’s themed around different elements/ environments -other volumes in the series include “Cloud” and “Desert”.
Behind this Baltimore based Psychedelic, Blues & Rock band are Adam Bufano, Mac Hewitt, Will Kelly and Elias Mays Schutzman. This self titled effort brings together the bands two E.Ps, 'Bad Blood' and 'Winter' which were originally released back in late 2009.
Aurora Borealis unleash this stoically uncompromising slab of avant metal, raging against a tide of trite, gimic led black and doom metal, while steering a path away from ambient wash out to plunge headlong into the void.
I am A Slut may sound like a Power Electronics project, but instead there an polish based project who deal in very rewarding & often quite stripped jitter ‘n’ judder bound HNW.
“Barriers” offers up five tracks worth of thick and stern wall-making from this Müllheim, Germany based one-man HNW project. Taking in splits & comps the project has racked up a impressive twenty seven releases since it’s start back in summer of 2009.
“Remains” is a split CDR album that sees theses two Baltic state based Hash Noise Wall projects boiling up each a twenty minute plus slice of their own distinct form of Wall-making.
Static Mantra are a Czech Republic based Harsh Noise wall project whose focus/ obsession is Hinduism & Buddhism. “Om Shri Mahakala Hung Phet” offers-up a single hour long brutal mantra in locked wall-making.
“Odium” is collaboration and a split tape set between two active Harsh Noise wall acts in the form of: Chicago based Bachir Gemayel(aka Mac Chami who also in the excellent minimalistic HNW project Insurgent & the creative yet violent Power electronics middle eastern tinged project Koufar) and Italian based Terminal Erection(aka Nicola Vinciguerra whose also in the creative yet perverse Power electronics project Fecalove & often more surreal/ horror filled noise collective of Splinter vs. Stalin). The two C40 tape set features a side long track a piece from each artists, then two side long collaborative pieces.
Stasis:001 is a wonderful new compilation that brings together 13 tracks from some of the worlds most respected Harsh Noise Wall acts. It’s also the first release from new the HNW only label Stasis, which has been set up by Cole Peters whose of course is also in the great & creative Canadian walled noise project Gomeisa.
Dan E, also known as Krimson, has released a large number of mostly noise oriented releases as Churner. "Static Beauty" is the best selling album on Churner's own Violent Noise Atrocity label, and it's not hard to see why. The sound is meaty, rough, physical and often improvisational as many forms of noise are... yet absolutely possessed of a sense of beauty (as indicated by the album title), drama and even melody, in several indisputable cases.
Adjectives begin to come immediately to mind whenever I put on the first track of any album. In the case of Winterlands, the adjective is “intimate”. It feels like I’m right in the room with the musicians, thanks to the engineering and recording.
Though labelled at a collaboration, this CDR is also somewhat of a split, featuring noisy solo tracks from Reaching and Wolverine Carcass, as well as the two working together. At least for the purposes of this particular disk, Reaching is closer to avant garde sound sculpture and research, while Wolverine Carcass is pure power electronics.
This C90 tape offers up two side long tracks of unrelenting and hope battering Harsh Noise Wall matter from this sadly now defunct Texas based project.
“Crawling In Chaos” finds the highly talented & prolific Norwegian noise-head Andreas Brandal (Flesh coffin, Hour Of the Wolf, Drevne Bolesti, solo work, ect) creating a texturally varied and horror atmosphere rich mixture of detailed junk metal composition & seared yet brooding noise matter.
Thirdsex is quickly becoming one of the more interesting new labels in harsh noise and experimental electronics in general; their catalogue contains such excellent releases as the thrilling Vomir/Graham Young split and a wonderful re-issue of a 1989 disc by Richard Ramirez’ Flesh Puppets project, Medusa. Among the releases we also find Redglaer’s Petals & Scars, a project admittedly entirely new to me, but which, judging from the label’s output, should certainly be worth a couple of spins.
Sil Muir is a guitar-based ambient/drone collaborative project of Andrea Ferraris and Andrea Marutti. Ferraris is responsible for the guitars and Marutti responsible for the processing of the sounds.