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‘Phase’ sees highly respected percussionist, improviser, electronic musician & sonic tension maker Jason Kahn joining percussionist Jon Mueller(Collections Of Colonies Of Bees, Hat Melter, Pele, Raccoons, Telecognac) to create a forty minute piece of thick & tense interlocking drone scape & precussive dwell.
In just under two and a half hours, Northern Italy’s Boring Machines presents twenty five artists from at least thirteen different countries across two disks. Surprisingly, only a couple of them are part of the label’s current roster, making Quit Having Fun less of a label showcase but more like a portal leading to a vast network of boutique labels and alliances.
‘Can You Read My Mind?’ offers up two 24 minute sides of ugly sonic uneasy & wonky, doomed & at times queasy soundscaping by long running one man English project Culver(aka Lee Stokoe) who has released 60 plus mainly tape releases since 1994.
‘Death’s Head’ is the first release from new Uk Midlands based HNW project Martial God Mask & it’s also the first release on new British label DWR(which is run by Rich who is Martial God Mask). On offer here is c30 tape with one 15 minute wall of noise on each side of tape.
”Emm dichda Ondrholz” (in the dense brush-wood) is the first album by this Alpine and Swabian woodland influenced dark folk collective. And it offers up a wonderful atmospheric sometimes tuneful mix of Germanic folk, lite folk rock touches, dark, dreamy & doomed forest ambience & all manner of woodland field recordings that are weaved through-out all of the albums 16 tracks to add atmosphere but also act as composition elements too.
Fire are a new Swedish uptight yet hypnotic and sternly psychedelic jazz and rock textured project that features the talents of Mats Gustafsson (The Thing) on saxophones and Fender Rhodes, Johan Berthling (Tape) on bass, electric guitar and Hammond organ and Andreas Werliin (Wildbirds & Peacedrums) on drums.
Not long ago I wrote a negative review of an album where I said something to the effect that Current 93 had been there, done that, and come back with more. Now we have an album that is the obverse of that: someone, namely Damian Mercuri (he of the compilation of Renaissance and Baroque guitar music I reviewed the other week), taking the whole folk-from-the-edge-of-the-world concept and doing it right.
Christoph F. and the Black Sheep have created a passionate but flawed record with "Heathen Frontiers in Sound" (what a great title!). The musical style exhibited here could be described as layered, politically charged folk rock with a strong focus on acoustic textures, resulting in a sort of 'campfire singalong in a revolutionary camp' atmosphere.
‘Stenwyken’ is the third release from Richard Ramirez’s (Werewolf Jerusalem, An Innocent young throat Cutter, Black Leather Jesus,ect) Fouke Project & it finds him offering up a single side of a C60 worth of tight, tense & jittering static based HNW matter.
‘Compossibility’ offers up two c40 tapes worth of agitated, shifting, detailed & rewarding judder, jitter & crunching noise matter & wall building by Chicago based Bryan W. Tholl's Harsh noise/ HNW project Is
This double disc set celebrates the tenth anniversary of American act Wilt who have over the last ten years brewed up a deep & dark decaying Americana lined mixture of: dark drone matter, downturned post rock weaved with country & folk touches, murky electrionca and windswept ‘n’ creaking cinematics that bring to mind all the sinister & dark connors of the great US of A.
'Received In Studio Dental, Gothenburg’ is a very tense, brooding & at times intense mixture of: scuttling, twitching & uneasy improv. And drifting to pressing drone throbs ‘n’ dips to more suffocating noise drone hovers later on in the piece. This collaboration brings together Swedish drone & ritual rock makers The Skull Defekts & two piece performance/noise project The Sons Of God.
‘Black Lily In A White Pond’ is the first release from German based noise maker Sascha Mandler's new HNW project Namazu Dantai. Mandler's also in the excellent, but brain screwing noise meets shaman music project Izanami’s Labour Pains.
139 Nevada, Central City, Colorado has been the address of the Belvidere Theatre since it opened in 1875. Claims that it’s haunted attracted local musicians Ross Hagen and Neville Harson to make some recordings inside the building, hoping to reveal electronic voice phenomena, perhaps left behind by previous artistes. Unfortunately, the ghosts refused to perform but the combination of an old grand piano resting on the stage and a charged atmosphere prompted further recordings of improvisations with assorted musicians, whose manipulated results occupy the two disks in this set.
The Sado-Mania project brings together Richard Ramirez (Werewolf Jerusalem, An Innocent young throat Cutter, Black Leather Jesus,ect) and Maria Velasquez(Tissa Mawartyassari, Death Carries A Cane, Devil Times Five, Sado-Mania, Torso Law). This project takes it's name & much of it’s sleeve imagery from Jess Franco’s sleazy women in Prison movie of the same name from 1981. This C30 tape offers up two fairly unchanging yet rewarding sides of HNW matter.
'Makhine' is a three way HNW split between Sarajevo based Smrznik, Russian/Sarajevo two piece Ïîòåðÿííàÿ Ãîðëà and Italian TFT. In all there’s just over an hours worth of rewarding & consistent 'wall' making on offer here.
‘Torture Machinist’ is a re-issue of a long out of print 1994 tape release by this highly respected & gay S&M obsessed Harsh Noise to Harsh Noise wall lo-fi & sleazed industrial tinged collective that features in it’s membership Richard Ramirez(of Werewolf Jerusalem, An Innocent Young Throat-Cutter, Vice Wears Black Hose & many other projects).
I sometimes wonder if independent music’s past is classical music’s future. With orchestras going bankrupt, opera houses teetering on the edge of insolvency, radio stations vanishing from the dial and the art of musical performance in general threatening to join the buggy-whip makers, I can’t help but imagine that only tiny independent hold-outs may keep the whole thing alive in the years to come.
‘The Mark Inside” is the first full length release from J.Cadle’s new HNW project Foul- in the past Cadle went under the name of White Torture & is still in ...Massacre(with Sam Stoxen of Baculum & runner of Phage Tapes) & Oasis Of Fear(with Richard Ramirez). This is also the opening release on Mr Cadle's new label Bane records.
‘Void’ offers up two half an hour slices of extremely loud, completely engulfing and nasty sounding Harsh Wall noise from Portland based project Thirteen Fingers. This is a seriously heavy duty sonic searing & brain cooking in two(not so)easy & violent steps.
“Symbols And Clouds - Euro Cross Commemorative Edition” brings together the best of two classic mid 1990s Death In June albums with tracks from ‘92s “But, What Ends When The Symbols Shatter?” and ‘95s “Rose Clouds Of Holocaust”. It also offers up a second disc of stripped-down acoustic versions of the same tracks recorded in 2005 after Death In June’s last tour.
Junk metal lined harsh noise has become quite popular of late with quite a few new acts forming purely to play this form of noise(most notable & rewarding of theses being Grain Belt). Headcase sees prolific Norwegian noise-head Andreas Brandal (Hour Of the Wolf, Drevne Bolesti, solo work, ect) under his Flesh Coffin banner taking on the Junk Metal baton to make a wonderfully focused, textural varied & macabre atmosphere lined, yet very violent noise album.
Coincidence has it that just as I come round to reviewing Bruce Gilbert’s( Wire's Guitarist) Oblivio Agitatum, I’ve just been revisiting (and hugely enjoying) Wire material in the two weeks before – or rather, I’ve been spinning their debut album Pink Flag on end. For some reason, I’ve never really bothered to seek out most of the rest of Wire’s immense discography or their member’s solo efforts. I picked up Chairs Missing a few years back after having discovered and grown to love the aforementioned Pink Flag, but, amazingly, it bored me out of my seat, and so, I stuck to Pink Flag, and, truth be told, it has served me well these last few years, and I haven’t tired of it a single bit.
Since 2007, Arvo Zylo, otherwise known as Mister Fuckhead, has assembled an assortment of chums from Chicago’s noise scene to perform excessive brass works or improvisations for scrap metal, tape and electronics. c93 compiles recordings from six of their shows across the ‘Windy City’ from the Empty Bottle to “inside of a meat locker above Grace Kulp's apartment”.