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I love being proven wrong sometimes. On unwrapping this disc, I thought I was in for yet another example that punk is dead, a victim of its own redundancy. But “Wrath of God”—this Peruvian band’s name in English—were more than happy to prove me wrong within the first few bars of the opening cut. “Punk” this is, but roots punk: the Music Machine, the Stooges, ? and the Mysterians and even The Stranglers—the punk before punk was punk, the stuff I throw into mixtapes and -discs rattle my friends’ virgin ears and eyeteeth. Take all those bands, double the tempo, keep their fire and color, and you’re about where this record starts.
‘Orgasm’ offers up a twenty minute live track from male & female caustic drone & harsh noise duo Peiste which features Joseph Gates(Slaughter-Fetus, Vargrwulf & RSP) & Vanessa.
‘Concrete Death’ offers up two sides of c45 tape worth of thick, roaring & ugly Harsh Noise wall matter from this Croatian project that appeared on the scene mid-last year & has since put out five releases taking-in splits & compilation tracks.
Blossoming Flesh’ sees Canadian based Gomeisa pushing thier sound more towards focused, thick & tar black Harsh Noise Wall making. Cutting out of the dark ambient & Harsh noise touches that appeared on the projects last few releases.
‘Golem’ is the first & only release so far by one man based Connecticut HNW project Deep Throat Choir & on offer here is a single 38 minute ‘wall’ which shows some interesting promise, but sadly the whole thing is rather let down by one rather glaring fault.
HB straddles the globe with two new works of sound art from Spain’s Francisco López and Australia’s Lawrence English, each providing both an original solo recording and a “mutation” of the other’s contribution. This illuminates hidden layers, giving us an insight into how they perceive the other’s work, both of which focus on environmental recordings with minimal editing and treatment.
In 2007, Washington Project for the Arts invited renowned sound artist Richard Chartier to curate a program of contemporary audio visual work celebrating the Color Field movement. Evolved out of abstract expressionism, this East Coast scene of the mid-Twentieth century deliberately avoided symbolism; instead it enveloped the senses with limited yet psychologically powerful tools of pure colour and texture. Colorfield Variations collects six works commissioned for the event on DVD, forging clear links between the birth of minimalism and today’s digital installations.
This two disc compilation was put together to fund & celebrate Heavy Focus III- the noise/ extreme experimental music festival that’s going on over this coming weekend(23rd & 24th of April) in Minneapolis. The two discs offer-up mainly excusive tracks from 22 of the artists performing at fest and there’s a lot of sonic & noise bound ground covered here we go from: Harsh Noise Wall, to Junk metal noise, through to churning psychedelic power electronics, onto aggressive & jarring electro beat scapes, through to sour & blacked dark drone matter, onto seared & ear burning harsh noise making & beyond.
‘Bone yard’ finds the always creative & rewarding Harsh Noise maker Churner turning his attention to more horror soaked & nastily macabre caustic drone matter & grizzly, grimy, at times violent & seared noise attacks.
Piero Umiliani was an Italian soundtrack composer who scored over 200 films in his career which spanned from 1958 to the early 1980’s. He scored mainly low budget Italian cinema such as westerns, comedies, spy movies, soft-core porn movies & a few horror/ Giallo moives too. This collection offers up a selection of thirty tracks from his career between the mid 60’s & the mid 70’s.
German born sound & concrete electronic artist Marc Behrens offers up here a collection of surreal, strange & at times jarring & noisy tracks built around manipulated field recordings, computer composition & subtle electronic elements that at times brings to mind Nurse With Wounds more field recording based & unhinged work.
One of the first noise albums I ever owned was The Hanatarash’s mind-boggling fourth CD. Unbelievable, the things one guy could accomplish with nothing more than a broken tape recorder, records and tapes from the thrift store around the corner, random stuff from the radio and an apartment full of junk. I thought of it a great deal after hearing Music for Gardening, because the latter record sounded a bit like someone had heard the former and decided to try for the same territory. The sad truth is, despite the participation of Lasse Marhaug, this is sonic collage in a minor key, a footnote to the careers of both people involved.
My first glance at the liner notes for Optofonica left me nonplussed: “…a new form of art is surfacing that invites audiences to transcend the limits of habitual perception… it seeks to shift the observer’s attention from the physical objects that stimulate perception to the act of perception itself.”
Vomir has fast become one of the most recognized, respected & know names with-in the rapidly growing Harsh Noise wall scene. And the reason for this is his pure unblinking & nasty focus on making unforgiving, unmoving & unchanging walls of punishing noise. ‘Honour To Bleak Existence’ is the longest, most unrelenting & completely hopeless creation thus far by Vomir with the single track on offer here coming in just under the eighty minute mark.
This is a two way split between two new & relatively unknown Polish based HNW projects in the shape of Jake Halter(also in Kill The Liver & A.D. III KAL. OCT ) & I’m A slut(also in more know Selymes Viragszirom & Self-Inflicted Violence).
‘Orthorhombic Crystalline Phase’ finds this two piece Serbian Harsh noise & HNW project offering one of the finest & most rewarding long form pieces of Harsh Noise wall matter I’ve come across.
Ah, Thierry Jolif and Gregorio Bandini's "Kantalon"... I've been putting off reviewing this disk, because honestly, it's hard to make myself listen to the whole thing. Upon noticing it was only about 45 minutes in length, I was shocked. It feels like one of those 75 minute albums.
Does humor belong in music? So Frank Zappa, back in the 80s, put into words a question which had plagued music fans since the dawn of, well, music, though it seems that Zappa himself had already figured it out, and the question was no more than rhetorical for him. Zappa’s music, roughly classifiable as 50% avant-garde, 50% rock and 50% comedy, adding to up to a nonsensical 150% awesome, never shied away from humor. Yet the self-proclaimed serious music fan still finds the combination of music and humor risky. Sure, it’s been done, done well, too; yet this kind of combination usually runs the risk of being too cheesy, too kitschy, and even if it is musically enjoyable, the tongue-in-cheek approach seems to devalue, for the listeners, whatever musical value there is indeed to be found.
Armpit? I think these guys just broke new ground for disgusting imagery in band names. Frankly, I’ve seen too many Corpses, Cunts and Cracks to be shocked by anything like that anymore, but armpits constitute a wholly new category, sort of in the same vein as potential band names (if they have not been taken yet) as Perineum and The Intertarsals. Perhaps this is just the mysophobe in me speaking, but armpits are just the dank, hairy and unsanitary type of places on the human body I think we could well do without.
This is a cdr reissue of a 2005 album by Richard Ramirez’s An Innocent Young Throat Cutter project(which also featured Isabella K at this time). The album shows the pair in a more atmospheric, textured & at times almost ambient take on HNW & static harsh noise making. The disc also features a new track in which The Rita remixes another AIYTC album from 2008.
‘I’ is the first release from Cursed Aether; this is a sub project of Griz+zlor's Paul Dever and each release is dedicated to moon worshiping HNW, with all recordings happening during full moons.
‘Feel The Pain’ is the second self released cdr from one man Texas based HNW project Stress(aka Casey Duncan). On offer here is one long near on forty minute track that gives the you a shot of boiling & lo-fi stormed wall making.
Altres are an Scottish based synthesizer band who utilize some guitar elements to build atmospheric & filmatic electronic music which has soniic references to the likes of later day Tangerine Dream, Klaus Schulze, less spacey elements of Ozric Tentacles and general more buoyant & dramatic 80’s sounding synthesizers music with guitar textures.
‘The Finishing Line’ is the second release from Matt Thompson of Guapo solo project Rashomon- which offers up an slowly becoming more unhinged mixture of :70’s library soundtrack music, lite prog rock, droning analogue moodscapes, sinister & slighty discordant jazz work-outs and all manner of 70’s focused soundtracking.