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“Murder Castle” offers up two lengthy slices of blackly roaring 'n' ripping storm-bound slices of HNW from this West Virginia based project that's all the work of J. Cadle(White Torture, ...Massacre & Oasis Of Fear).
“Les Ecoutis le Caire” is a collaborative effort, with Gilles Aubry being responsible for the sound and Stephane Montavon being responsible for the accompanying text.
Smegma arrive to me through pretty innocent ears; I’m well aware of their revered status, but I really haven’t heard much of their output. I’m old enough and hip enough to have bought the “Ism” album about ten years ago, but it did little for me; and I saw Ju Suk Reet Meate & Oblivia perform a duo at the Colour Out Of Space festival in 2009, but again it did little to excite me. So I came to “Mirage” looking to be impressed.....And I was.
“Oak Folk” is a new compilation of edgy and experimental, to more traditional and Germanic tinged folk tracks that pay tribute to mighty Oak tree. The collection appears on the always rewarding Austrian experimental and quirky folk label Ahnstern which is home to the likes of Allerseelen, Jahrtal , Phase II, Sangre Cavallum and Svarrogh
“Smacked Red” offers up five tracks and near on an hours worth of Black leather Jesus distinct ‘n’ perverse brand of thick boiling drone matter, screaming noise tonalities and overloaded industrial noise texturing.
This is the first release from new French HNW project Ghost, and it’s also the first releases from new French HNW slow Death records. On offer here are four long eighteen minute plus tracks of walled noise meets often textural shifting ‘n’ atmospheric tinged sonics.
Le Voci Del Buio (The Voices of The Dark) is the work of Maurizio and Roberto Opalio (from My Cat Is An Alien) and Ramona Ponzini (from Painting Petals On Planet Ghost and Praxinoscope). Using an obscure group of folk musicians of the Western Alps and combining that with acoustic guitars and various homemade wooden string instruments, the trio creates something that is noisy, yet melodic and heartfelt.
This is the first release from the new, mysterious and quite primal/ elemental sounding HNW project of Iowa based Alex Nowacki whose main project is the excellent hard hitting, yet creative Boar.
This is seemingly the second release from this active ‘n’ multi-textured HNW project from that comes from near Paris. The projects first release “Il Ya Longtemps” came out on download/web based only HNW label Hum and Hiss.
RM74 is Swiss multi-instrumentalist Reto Mäder’s solo project of the past decade or so. Reflex, his fifth solo album, collects eleven short sketches of cold, bleak scenes described by a small array of treated sounds usually centred around a droning, processed electric guitar.
For "Old Punch Card", Sam Prekop delivers a gestural smorgasboard of pitched static and noise textures. It's a sort of hollow monophonic music that could only be the result of long hours of solitary tinkering with old equipment. He does not appear to fear the quiet of the room in which he works, as no well defined new sonic environment is created by this album. Reverb is used sparingly, and there is rarely more than a single instrument or idea in use at any given time. He has left the sounds alone in the quiet so that we might fully hear them. No added polish here, either; the obvious knob turns are there for all to hear.
Well this is yet another ambient release -- they seem to keep coming and coming and it's not exactly always fun to have to review. Parhelion are a bit of an exception, though. Their underlying shtick is being about arctic expanses, which obviously isn't a new idea if you remember Thomas Kõner. Needless to say this album isn't as complex as Kõner's stuff, but it isn't that bad.
“Maggotkind” represents one of the longest ever pieces of recorded and released Harsh Noise wall Sonics. The single track on offer on this audio DVDR comes in at six hours, forty five minutes and forty eight seconds of brutal and dense wall-making from this highly prolific Serbian based project.
This C20 offers up two side long tracks of atmospheric, thick, bleak and bone-chilling HNW from this Japanese based project. The tape seems to be themed around ghost or Poltergeist activity and how they can effect a sleeping female....victim.
“Death Charge” was the first release to appear from London base Hal Hutchinson's nihilistic HNW project that’s obsessed with capital punishment, human torture and Anti-humanist ideology.
“Curse Of The Baphomet” offers up two c20’s worth of satanic singed noise 'n' guitar textured matter from these two US based acts. Each project takes over a tape a-piece to summon up hellish harmonic and devilishly atmospheric drone and noise texturing.
Peripatetic is the most recent project by composer and sound artist Marinos Koutsomichalis. Here we find a field recording of the daily life in a city. The cities used were Berlin, York, Leeds, Liverpool, Amsterdam, Athens, Vienna, Brussels, London, Gent and Antwerp. All were recorded with simple means and sparse editing.
The built environment seems central to Locrian’s ‘Territories’. Track titles talk of geographical positions such as ‘Between Barrows, a ‘Ring Road’ and a ‘Columnless Arcade’, while ‘Procession of Ancestral Brutalism’ refers to the functional/industrial architectural movement of the mid-Twentieth Century. But the sound made by Chicago’s André Foisy and Terence Hannum seems to describe the decay of such structures as opposed to their construction. The monochromatic improvised interplay of Hannum’s analogue synths and organ with Foisy’s guitar feedback and fretwork has seen them aligned with the often dystopian-sided genres of noise and drone. But with ‘Territories’ they open up their sound with a selected guest list of collaborators that sees them slip in and out of their discomfort zone.
This collection brings together the complete violin/Viola and piano works of one of the great and most dramatic minimalist/modern classical composers of the 20th century, Morton Feldman. The set consists of two discs and 128 minutes worth of music that covers work from between 1945 to 1984.
Breakcore and Drill ‘n’ bass have always been hit ‘n’ miss genres in my book...the projects have either worked and blown you away with their manic, intense yet clever use of sound manipulations and beats ‘n’ bass. Or they've copied the greats in the genre like Aphex Twin, squarepusher, or Otto Von Schirach... and come off as bland impersonators with no ideas of their own. Thankfully "Nostril" is a wonderfully over the top, exhilarating and very clever mixture of: break-core, Drill ‘n’ bass, baroque, classic and church music; along with elements like chugging black ‘n’ extreme metal riffing, operatic and choral vocals, rapid and clever world music traits, and all manner of quirky yet rewarding & memorable sonic matter.
“Untitled Recordings 1942” is the second full length CDR from this Serbian bleak ‘n’ brutal HNW project who take their name from the German word for assault rifle. The projects focus/obsession is death through war; and in particular death in WWII.
“Nostalgia Ever After” is a familiar sound to those who have followed the psych folk underground within the last 5 years. This disc is a spell book of tracks that opens up with two folk rock inspired tracks invoking a late 60’s feel, but still with a very modern indie rock sound.
'Medicated' takes a shifting approach to wall making with long lasting textures executed in single dynamic shifts, and mostly exists in blasting static form spread out over the course of forty three minutes.
"Clonazepam" possesses certain qualities describable as progressive elements that constitute an alternative approach to wall making while complying with the genre's philosophy.