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Avmakt is the latest’s project from one of the prolific and quality bound artists in working in the European noise scene today; Andreas Brandal whose also in Flesh coffin, Hour Of the Wolf, Drevne Bolesti, and Museums of Sleep. This new project is a quite atmospheric lined take on HNW with some subtle junk metal textures & dramatic/ dark noise moments.
“Santiago” is the second release from Santiago based noise project A.R.GH, and the 3inch mini cd offers up two twelve minute tracks of very dense and muilti-layered noise recordings that take in :the sounds of the city, junk metal textures, crowd noise, and even some harmonic/ musically elements too.
“Are We Experimental?” finds AMT offering up a collection of shorter, more unhinged and unbalancing freak-outs; compared with their normal, more lengthy jam based psychedelic space rock work-outs. And to answer the question posed by the albums title; yes they are, and very brain melting/tripped-out too this time around.
What is Black Metal? Other than the subject must pertain to Satanism in some respect, what exactly are the criteria for giving oneself the Black Metal moniker? Back when the world was new, it meant that you were diametrically opposed to anything Christian, that you were a loner and an elitist and that you expressed yourself to those only that you deemed worthy. Musically, it needed to be raw and unmixed, no clean production or name producer. It had to sound as unrestrained as the subject.
The pieces are all here; how come they didn’t come together? I couldn’t tell you. I listened to db9 twice, then three times, and each time I found myself simply unengaged by it. It’s the sort of experimental / ambient / noise-based music that one can find by the cartload now—technically well-presented, and with more than a little craft and awareness of composition … but somehow, just … bleah.
I'm not often impressed by shock tactics, in music or elsewhere, and the idea of maximum violence, hate and gore in musical form does not particularly appeal to me. When I first saw the cover of Fire in the Head's latest, "Confessions of a Narcissist", which shows a woman or child in bridal white and veil, mutilated... missing most of her face, the hole filled in collage style with images of chunks of anonymous bloody meat for the purposes of the picture... I expected I would dislike the album quite strongly. What a pleasant surprise to find that noise musician Michael Page is a perfectionist with a flair for tastefully mixing noise with strangely polished gothic atmospherics, and quite fluent in various methods of achieving intensity in noise music other than pushing the volume up.
"In grim imus nocte et consumimur igni" is an eight CDR box set that offers up some of best and most brutal European Hash Noise Wall around. With the set offer up seven full length (well at least 30 minutes, but many over this length) disc from the following acts: Namazu Dantai & Ptomain, Terminal Erection, Drevne Bolesti, Placenta Lyposuction, Die Reitenden Leichen and TFT. With the eighty discs offering a high quality DVD- R back -p of all the seven discs audio tracks
On his new album as Cría Cuervos, "L'Ombilic Des Limbes", Italian dark ambient musician Eugenio Maggi proves himself an incredibly meticulous conjurer of hallucinatory soundscapes. The seamlessly subtle yet dense interplay of elements, large dynamic range, and overall spacial depth of the mix all work to create a complete, evocative audio environment
Barn Owl are the San Francisco based duo of Evan Caminiti and Jon Porras, and "Ancestral Star" is the ninth release by this heavy guitar based drone project. The album is as powerful and unstoppable as an ever burning, ancient and immense ball of flame, with the project keeping this almost religious fire burning as they shift between heavy reverb soaked oriental guitar playing and super massive feedback drones. With each new track Caminiti and Porras seem to be ever expanding, pushing their own boundaries and always reaching beyond what they achieved in the previous track
This release is a bit of a mystery. I tried to Google who was behind this project but to no avail. The only thing I know is the artist once collaborated with someone called J. S. Zeiter (who appears on one track.) And in the liner notes a couple of musicians are credited for their help, including (of course) Danny Saul, whom I've written about on this site before.
For the almost 30 years that I've been listening to "Industrial" music, Gen Ken Montgomery was a name I was familiar with but somehow passed up. Being sent this release for review will do a lot to rectify that.
From the looks of this cover, I was expecting another Black Metal release. But actually this is blackened Dark Ambient -- no guitars or drums to speak of, just synths and various processed sounds.
"Ruined Hope" finds this long running Vancouver based one man project offering up a c30 worth of very brutal, loud and unforgiving juddering, drilling and grinding HNW matter.
This lengthy titled 3inch CDR finds brutal French HNW act Å kicking up a really nasty, layered and searing wall of extreme noise that both batters and roasts your mind in equal measures.
'For 2’ is a compilation of eleven pieces recorded by Germany’s Carsten Nicolai between 2003 and 2008 that are thematically linked by devotion. Like its 2006 predecessor ‘For’, also released by Line, each track carries a dedication suggesting focus points for the compositions, that while not always conceivable act as a portal through which Nicolai’s synaesthetics can be digested with more context than usual.
Einer Nielsen was a Danish medium of the first half of the last century that claimed to be able to invite physical phenomena from the spirit world, a claim that was often refuted and once led to a spell in prison. This ectoplasmic analogy is perfectly suited to this two-part sound sculpture, representing one of over ten solo releases so far this year for Norwegian Andreas Brandal, head of experimental noise label Twilight Luggage, who has been soundtracking the darkside since the late eighties.
This CD and DVD release is a celebration of 25 years of O Yuki Conjugate. What you have is a recording produced by all the members of the three line ups of O Yuki Conjugate in a studio in West London 25 years after their first ever gig at the Newshouse pub in Nottingham.
Well, just looking at the 'sensitive' artist on the cover (or I'm pretty sure it's the artist here anyways) I knew I was going to hate this record. Probably the kind of thing I was expecting to be sent to review one of these days... To be fair, however, Darren Keen of the Show is the Rainbow isn't the worst musician I've heard. At least he's competent enough stringing a melody together (after a fashion), and that's more than I can say for some self-styled 'artists' out there...
Mem1 is a very ambitious duo combining modular electronics with cello. As far as I can make out, this release features collaborations with other artists.
Museums of Sleep brings together two of the most creative and respected minds in HNW and noise in genreal- we have Norwegian Andreas Brandal who is highly prolific and features in the following projects: Flesh coffin, Hour Of the Wolf, Drevne Bolesti, Avmakt. And Canadian Cole Peters whose is in the great & always inventive HNW/ Harsh noise project Gomeisa and runs the stasis label.
This C40 put out by the mysterious Absence tapes brings together two sides of tight, precise and entrancing Harsh noise wall matter. With a side long piece from Fouke Richard Ramirez's bigfoot obsessed project, and a side long track from the XSXCXEXBX a secretive four pieces that features members of the Absence tapes collective.
Phelios is a dark ambient project created by Martin Sturtzer that began in 2002. “Astral Unity” is his first release with Malignant Records (although he has released material with Eternal Soul Records and self released material also).
Among the records in my collection is a live collaboration between Loren Mazzacaine Connors and Keiji Haino. I would have given more than a few body parts to have been watching the two of the playing the music I hear on that disc, but in my mind’s eye I saw both of them hunched tightly over their instruments, eyes down, hair over their faces, releasing one plangent string of notes after another.
The spectularly prolific Krimson had a busy year in 2009, releasing in more than two dozen releases as Churner on his own Violent Noise Atrocities label. Amongst them was this 3" CD, entitled "Against the Grains". Here, Krimson delivers an appropriately 'churning' 20 minute slice of emotionally neutral harsh noise wall. His tendencies towards freewheeling harsh noise freakouts and general frantic activities are mostly suppressed, though I intuit there are bursts of restless activity just beneath the threshold of audibility. There is a 'foreground' and a 'background'; a feeling of spacial depth and denseness, showcasing the sophistication and intuitive intelligence of Churner's compositions.