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It’s been a while since anyone was lucky enough to go on a Cyclobe cruise, affording the deep listener a journey along transcendental tramways that stretch from the dark corners of the psyche to the wide, open reaches of astral bodies. The last opportunity was in April 2007 when they opened the Donau Festival with their first ever live performance (despite recording since 1998) - their only sighting since the release of their truly terrifying third album, Paraparaparallelogrammatica, at the end of 2004. So there has been a perceivable gap, a dry period, in which those who developed a taste for their brand of delirious, electro-acoustic theatre have been left wanting, bereft of their potent intensities, in need of a very real lift from corporeality.
Muslimgauze was the musical project of Bryn Jones, who unfortunately passed away in 1999. Uzi Mahmood is the 2010 re-release from SolielMoon records. Originally it was released as a 4 song 12” EP back in 1998. An interesting fact behind this is while only 4 songs were contained on the EP; in reality Jones had recorded a whole cd worth of material. Now in 2010 we find the cd released in its entirety.
The gruesomely entitled “Choking on Your Own Blood and Spit” finds Four Flies, which is another project of the hugely prolific and muilt-project linked Richard Ramirez- the project started off as a four piece but is now thinned down to a two piece and features Ramirez & Robert Newsome (White Gimp Mask). The tape offers up two 15 minute slices of intense and bombarding walled matter with a bloody & sadistic Giallo theme running through them.
Regarding Us Sadly is a new, tense and detailed static texturing/ static based HNW project that brings together J Cadle (from Foul, ...Massacre & Oasis Of Fear) and the perverse mind behind Static texturing based project I Am Slut. This self titled c20 is the first release from this project.
Fecalove's "Forever Young" is an album of sputtering, violent harsh noise with no boundaries and a deranged, sex crazed feeling. This album is about as coherent and thoughtful as a depression fueled binge drinking session that ends in a blackout. It is the submissive who bids their dominant beat them to the brink of death. It an explosion of feeling, unhinged and cathartic, ultimately too intense for most listening situations. And yet for all that, there is formidable craft behind it all.
This is a very odd 3" CDr by Toronto sound artist and print company head Alex Durlak. This is supposedly his first recording after a long hiatus from "the tail end of a bleak winter" and it does sound quite dark and foreboding.
Horchata is Michael Palace, an electronics artist who usually does dance music (from what I can tell from his label's website.) This is supposed to be a "Dark Ambient" work but this release strikes me as merely Ambient to the point of being New Age.
Bektop is the 4th release by French electronic/glitch project Kabutogani. It’s released on CD by the influential German label Mille Plateau, and in digtal file format through Electroton. The album features click & cut-esque patterns of glitch work combined with both tantalizing & industrial style atmospheres over a span of 12 tracks.
Phase II are a late 70’s to early 80’s American based progressive-folk band who have recently reformed. This rather wonderful collection brings together a selection of old and new work from this distinctive and creative project, that sadly never got their the recognition they clearly deserved when they where around the first time around.
It’s all about the flow. 100 Jahre Einsamkeit (the German translation of “100 Years of Solitude”) has been culled from various tracks found throughout the Staubgold catalog, and assembled into a single, near-continuous mix. It’s only until we get to track 7 that there’s an actual silence between tracks, and by then we’re already so hip-deep into the groove we barely notice.
"Pipe smoking on a Balloon" by Fhievel is another fine release from the AFE label, which has many great releases in its growing arsenal. Fhievel is the Italian project of one Luca Bergero, who, as he describes, is “looking for the balance between opposite sound sources in his music, bringing together computer based sounds and music concrete”. Fhievel's album, like many of AFE's releases, comes in a very nice professionally printed paper envelope and is limited to one hundred copies.
This projects name and album title is somewhat misleading, they both suggest a retired bluegrass singer trying to jump back on the wagon. But instead stands a trio that is most likely to make anyone buying this album for some real country music, very dazed and confused. Though the albums cover, a Robert Wyatt sort of combination between naïve child's drawing and a demented alien scribble, does reveal in fact there will be no country music here.
“Ursula” is a compilation of Giallo themed HNW tracks, and it’s put out by Richard Ramirez's H Series label. The collection takes it’s name from 1978 giallo sleaze-fest The Sister of Ursula(La sorella di Ursula) which follows the killing spree of a black gloved killer who only preys on promiscuous women.
This split double disc release offers up an album a piece of thick and dense static worship from these two unrelenting and extreme Serbian based HNW acts.
“Om Namah Shivaya”(which is a very powerful Hindu mantra) offers up a single nineteen minute track of fixed and highly hypnotic wall-making from this Hindu/Buddhist obsessed wall-maker from the Czech Republic.
Impulsy Stetoskopu delivers us three projects of harsh noise on one cd. Bipolar Joe, The Sleep Sessions and Vilgoc are all featured (in addition to the last track which features The Sleep Sessions and Vilgoc together playing live in 2008). Each project brings their own abrasive touch to the festivities.
Timo Reuber, a writer of screen plays for television as well as a solo recording artist for Staubgold, has known the label’s founder, Markus Detmer, for over 18 years, all but four of which have seen them collaborate across occasional recordings and hundreds of live performances as Klangwart. Sommer seeks to celebrate the tenure of their musical relationship by compiling pieces new and old, all thematically underpinned by the light and heat of summer.
Cindytalk's new album, "Up Here in the Clouds" delivers several well-blended flavors of warm, whitewash ambience, consistently pleasantly noisy and stubbornly analog. The unique, lightly distorted timbral characteristics of guitar amplifiers are all over the album, but the clearly discernable sound of a guitar is nowhere to be found. Still, it's no surprise to learn that the band used to (and still occasionally does?) operate in less experimental arenas, and sport a rock band style line up with keyboards, drums, bass, guitar, and vocals. The liner notes of the album say only that these recordings were made by Gordon Sharp, the man listed as vocalist of the group, suggesting that this album was likely a solo endeavor.
"The Feeding Of The Five Thousand” is the first album from the revolutionary Anarcho-punk/experimental collective Crass; it was originally released in 1978, and this is it’s first reissue in many, many years. It’s difficult to underplay the importance of Crass- who where in existence between 1977 and 1984. Firstly they took the idea and format of Punk, and gave it a more thoughtful and proactive standing. Secondly they added fairly experimental and bleak edges to the punk format. And thirdly they managed to market and sell their distinctively nihilistic take punk to a growing fanbase which was disenchanted musically by the mock sentiments of the like of Sex Pistols & The Clash. And socially by a power hungry Tory government of time, which of course was headed-up by Margret Thatcher.
This is a fairly interesting release from a duo featuring a Canadian former TV presenter and journalist. Phantom lists almost all the instruments and noises they used on this CDr, but for all that this seems to be mostly a Goth/Coldwave outfit.
One thing I should mention about this limited edition of 50 copies, it's pressed on a silk-screened black CDr, which I've heard tend to degrade faster. I know of one Dark Ambient/Industrial artist from Ohio who put both the master and existing copies of one early release of his exclusively on black CDrs and all the discs rotted, meaning he lost most of the recordings. So I should say to the artists that if these tracks mean anything to them they should save them to a format more durable.
This is a split CDr of two noise acts from Virginia, Churner and Hostage Pageant. Yes indeed, south of the Mason-Dixon line has always been a hotbed for Harsh Noise (or HNW as I think they call it now) starting with (of course) Taint from Texas.
Rough Sex Quartet are a mysterious, sleazy and disturbing northern England based HNW project that specialize in thick yet detailed psycho-sexual obsessed wall-making. “Autobiography of a Seductress” is a C90 tape that offers up two side long tracks of dense, sleazed and depraved HNW that’s dedicated to the pioneer American sexploitation and later on hardcore porn director Joseph W. Sarno who died early on this year.
The artist Churner has been prolifically releasing projects since 2007 (with Churner mainly but he is also a member of Black Metal band Octagon). In between all his musical projects he also is the man behind Violent Noise Atrocities label. Throughout the years the consistent element to Churner is that it always seems to be evolving. His work may lean towards power electronics, ambient or harsh wall noise, but he always seems to bring something different to each release.