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Dan E AKA Churner shares a C30 cassette with Illinois’ Infirmary for his label’s 84th release. For Infirmary it just precedes their debut LP (on Scratch and Sniff Entertainment) following over ten cassettes released over the past two years while for Churner it is merely one in a sea of almost a hundred releases in the same time frame. This sheer abundance of recorded output, mostly self-released, confronts the hardy listener with as much of a challenge as the individual sounds themselves – how to interact with something that’s constantly changing, yet always the same? And this release is as good as any at provoking thoughts orbiting this conundrum.
This C30 tape from always rewarding and distinctive Italian HNW act Alo Girl takes its name from 1972 Sergio Martino directed Giallo moive (original titled “ Il tuo vizio è una stanza chiusa e solo io ne ho la chiave” ) which featured Edwige Fenech as the young, beautiful, and self-confident niece of burned out writer & possible killer Luigi Pistilli. The tape features on the cover a still from the movie of Ms Fenech holding a black cat to her naked body.
This split c90 tape offers up a length forty five track a piece from two HNW scene newcomers in the form of Vorg & Kaffehitler who both come from the city of Jonkoping in Smaland, Sweden- which is the ninth most populated city in Sweden.
When a band jams in free rhythm with lots of effects pedals, feedback and guitar noise and makes a big soupy, messy drone out of it, I usually call it 'psychedelic krautrock' in honor of those groups from the 70's that first put this sort of sound on record.
Dictionary time. Somnivore: eater of sleep, if my Latin is correct. And Oneiros—one of the sons of Night in Greek mythology. Sounds to me like we’re in for a tolling, rumbling, cavernous excursion into Lustmørd territory, and we are. But a clone this isn’t: like all good records, the stamp of an individual creator can be heard on each track and in every aspect of the recording. Imagine—or maybe better to say recall—the music that resonates in your inner ear right after you’ve floated up from sleep.
Oddly TIM the Band features no one called Tim(or Roland, for that matter!), but instead it features two San Franciscan gentleman who offer up some nice sometimes spaced-out & mellow, to rapidly honked and often electronic loop improvised sax playing.
“Pressure Vessel” finds Chicago based HNW/ Harsh noise project Is creating a single, highly tense and violent thirty five minute track that utilizers only the sounds of the carbonation of water.
Ïîòåðÿííàÿ Ãîðëà (Lost Necks) is a brutal & brain roasting HNW collaboration between Sarajevo Neven Misaljevich(of Smrznik and one of the minds behind the excellent Zvukovina label) and Russian based Alexander Kibanov (from Äåíü Ðàñïëàòû, and many other projects and labels such as Mind Noise Disintegration).
“The Killer Wore Gloves” is a 2008 release from this Giallo influenced HNW project, which featured the projects original line-up in the form of Richard Ramirez (of Black Leather Jesus ,Werewolf Jerusalem, Vice Wears Black Hose, ect) & Isabella K (formally of Anal Drill, ERK64, High Heel Maniac, Limacon, Manplug) who left the HNW scene altogether in 2009.
“Taiwaskivi” is the 8th release from ritual ambient project Halo Manash, and it’s also the most recent release on the excellent occult ambient & mysterious Finnish label /collective Aural Hypnox.
Francisco López uses sound in a holistic way to reward attentive listeners. Adopting Pierre Schaeffer's attitude to sound as having the ability to recontextualise the world as we know it, his objets sonore - or aural pictures - explore the sum of an environment and the sound-making elements that inhabit it when divorced from the other four senses. This forms a proposal for the listener to contemplate outside of language, a freedom so rarely offered by the 24/7 loquacity of the modern age.
“Florescent Bondage” finds creative US noise project Churner creating some of his most conventional harmonic and at times approachable work to date. With the album offering up seven very different and inventive takes on noise with elements of distortion buried synth pop and sound tracking elements appearing along the way.
…. Massacre is a HNW and brutal static texturing two piece that bring together the considerable extreme noise talents of Sam Stoxen(whose also in Baculum, Grain Belt, White Plague and runs the excellent Phage tapes lable) and J. Cadle(whose also in Foul and Oasis Of Fear, as well as running the excellent Bane records that put this great album out).
“Yang Jia” is the first release from French based brutal ‘n’ punishing HNW project Å. The 3inch cdr release takes it’s title from the name of a 28 year old Beijing resident,who in 2007 was beaten by the police while in custody for riding an unlicensed bicycle. Then in 2008 Yang retaliated for his treatment by igniting eight petrol bombs and stabbing six policeman at a police headquarters.
“Goat” find’s Ohio based ultra sludge doom/death merchants Fistula offering up an five song ep based around the case of 50 year old Anthony Sowell who was charged with eighty five counts of rape and murder after the police found 11 bodies at his Cleveland, Ohio department in October 2009.
Power electronics. That’s right. A couple of weeks ago I reviewed Argentum’s We Are the Fire, and ruminated briefly about the how and what and why of power electronics. I guess that whatever I wrote in that review still stands, and likewise also applies to the tape I just clicked into my walkman – Fear Konstruktor’s Philosophy of Conflict.
Geluidpost comes to me by mail – suitably, as the title can be translated as sound mail. A post, however – in Dutch, at least – is also a position, or a place; despite the inherent – and probably intended – ambiguity of the name, this is probably the most relevant meaning of the word. Geluidpost is a listening room in art gallery Lokaal 1 in Breda, The Netherlands, and for the duration of 2007 and 2008 it was curated by Martijn Hohmann, who has dabbled in sound art himself. As a curator, he invited several artists – nine in total – to record a piece specifically for the listening room.
Claudio Rocchetti's "The Carpenter" is a mix of many genres electronic and otherwise, but perhaps firstly it is one of those 'guitar and noise' records, in which conventionally melodic guitar playing exists in harmony alongside loops, noise, feedback experiments and a generally freeform avant garde feel in many places. I'm not sure if there's yet a name for this genre, though I can name others who are playing much the same kind of music - Alastair Galbraith, for one.
“Machofucker” finds these long running Texas noise ‘n’ sleazy merchants inflicting you with two extremely dense, battering, noisy yet higly enjoyable sides of 12 inch vinyl that mix together: Extreme noise, old school & grimy industrial steel abuse and haywire sometimes almost harmonic electronics.
Holy space ships. In the ongoing history of cinema and radio plays, extraterrestrial life, be it identied or unidentified, flying or not quite so, has been given a range of voices, from the stereotypical mad banter of little green men to the zooming and whooping of flying saucers. Yet all those sounds sound suddenly mundane and this-wordly when Chant, the opener to the Fred Bigot collection Mono/Stereo, kicks in.
It’s been four years since this atmopmospric and progressive Romania Black metal collective wowed the world their fourth album “Om” which was clearly their most prefect, realized and magnificent work that far. Now “Vîrstele Pãmîntului” appears with two or three member departinting in the interim between “Om” and now, and I’m afraid to say this is one of weakest & drab records of the bands career….I guess it’s true what they say once you reach perfection there’s only one way to go.
Split album, collaboration, or tag-team competition? I had a hard time picking just one of those labels to describe this joint effort, so I’ll cop out and use all of them. I don’t think they’d mind, since there’s elements of all three approaches on this disc, and the end result is diverse and engaging enough that no one of those labels really matters. The cover art (horror/trash movie stills) and leering track titles made me fear this would be yet another grinding slog, but like the Kenji Siratori et al. split disc I looked at the other week I was happy to be proven wrong.
Flesh Puppets was the first ever project of HNW innovator and highly prolific multi project linked Harsh noise legendary Richard Ramirez(Black Leather Jesus, Werewolf Jerusalem, Vice Wears Black Hose, An Innocent Young Throat-Cutter, ect). "Medusa" was the projects first release that was recorded back in 1989, & then released orignally on Ramirez’s own Deadline Recordings label in 1990. This reissue is the first time the album has been available since then.
Mass Graves is a HNW project that’s themed around Ghosts & paranormal activity. The man behind the project is Missouri USA based Jeff Landgraf whose also in the more straight forward horror influenced HNW project Oblive. “They Wait..” is the projects first release and it's theme from an abandoned orphanage near where Landgraf lives in St. Louis- that’s purported to be haunted by the ghosts of many dead children.