Loading
The Renderers have a very scary name for a folk-rock act such as them. Makes me think of abduction and torture, or maybe I'm thinking of "rendition"... Well going back to the band, they have remastered an old album (due to bad sound) called Monsters and Miamisas...
Gigant is German for giant; and this Belgrade/Serbian based HNW project certainly live up to it’s name as they create here one long and huge sounding track of throbbing and rumbling walled matter. This is the projects first (self) released album.
The “Nocturnal Veils” title may suggest lulling and grim ambient expanses, but there’s nothing darkly soothing or grimly subtle about this C30 tape- instead it ties you down & then gives you a detailed/thick noise battering. On offer here are two sides of raging and shifting Harsh noise with some very wallish like dwells taking over large sways of each side long track.
“BAVE” is an excellent four disc CDR set that brings together a disc a piece from cream of French Harsh Noise wall scene. We have disc from each of the following here: Bördel Noïr from the west of France ,Vomir from the south of France(how could any French based compilation be with out him!), Å from north/east of France and écoute La Merde from the east of France.
“Hunts & Wars” finds this British based dark ambient meets stripped and off-kilter doom project offering up their third and most consistent release to date. With layers of ritual and military percussion, along with noise elements been added to the projects sound to create a grim and sweeping sound canvas that has moments blood stained dissonance/ noise to more subtle and uneasy dwells.
“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.