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“My frustration is that there are no frustrations,” remarks Efterklang’s Casper Clausen on the ‘behind the scenes’ documentary accompanying this live CD and DVD of the group performing their critically-acclaimed 2007 album, ‘Parades’, in collaboration with The Danish National Chamber Orchestra. This comment neatly summarises the main issue with the music on both the original album and this new version: by lacking in frustration, it also lacks degrees of contrast in tension and release, the type that can incite drama and stimulate through counterpointing conformity with deviance, cleanliness with dirt or the intellect with the visceral. The compositions on ‘Parades’ have plenty of the former but too little of the latter, and being originally written for orchestral accompaniment, its rearrangement is no different.
‘Wallwhores’ is a three 90 minute tape box set which brings together six sides of tape(though in reality there’s only three lots of forty five minute tracks here- as all the tapes are double A-Sides) from three artists who focus in on the more stripped, thinner and mainly unchanging HNW matter. Participating here are Chicago based Insurgent( aka Mack Chami who’s also in the creative yet violent Power electronics middle eastern tinged project Koufar & thicker more bombarding HNW project Bachir Gemayel ) , Dutch based UN( aka Kevin Jansen whose more know project is Svartvit) and Swedish based Missing Girls(aka Karl T who’s also of course in Audrey Hepburn obsessed HNW project Skönhet, along with other HNW project Självhat, he also runs HarshFuckedForLife label which put out this set).
German HNW project Namazu Dantai (aka Sascha Mandler) really seems to be focusing in on the seasons of late- first we had ‘Winter Assault’ on the excellent Phage tape label and now we have ‘Constant Inner Autumn’ on Bane records. And as with all of Namazu Dantai work, and for that matter all of Mr Mandlers work in general (Izanami's Labour Pains & Mazakon Tactics) this is an often complex brutal and very rewarding ride.
The word interesting can be a deadly insult in the wrong hands—most specifically, when used as a dismissive catch-all description for someone else’s creative endeavor. I came this close to typing the I-word when writing my first draft of this review, and I think I know why. I was stuck in that odd halfway-house of critical curiosity that stands between liking something for its ingredients and being unimpressed with the execution of the whole. It was “interesting”, without ever actually being good.
I guess it’s just pure coincidence, but the disc I randomly pick to review after having worked my way through September Collective’s Always Breathing Monster, a religious album in every sense but the traditional one – maybe we should settle for spiritual, then – is Brown’s Bathing a Leper, a record dedicated to Meher Baba. I’m not sure what the extent of his fame was, but for anyone whose knowledge of Hinduism and claims to manifestations of its deities is just a bit rusty, Meher Baba was an Indian guru whose claim to fame was his 1954 declaration of Avatarhood – that he was indeed a manifestation of a deity on earth. Among other things, he also remained completely silent for the largest part of his life, starting out in 1925 and not uttering a word until his death in 1969 – though the communicating via alphabet boards and hand gestures seems like cheating things a bit, but hey, what do I know?
Shining Sex is another HNW project from the highly prolific and multiple project connected Richard Ramirez(of Werewolf Jerusalem, Black Leather Jesus ,An Innocent Young Throat-Cutter, Vice Wears Black Hose and many other projects). 'Tender Flesh' is the third release from this project and it is influenced by Spanish sleazy and horror director Jess Franco 1998 film of the same name which tells of a couple who are invited to an island to play sex games, but end up been hunted down and killed.
This thick ‘n’ nasty sonic themed C42 tape brings together a side long track a piece from French HNW master Vomir and Spanish Harsh noise/HNW project Mixturizer.
Tinieblas is a USA based project that features one of the members of the four piece HNW collective XSXCXEXBX. 'A Skeletal Figure Clad...In A Long Robe' is the projects first release and the listener is offered up two sides of C30 tape that takes in active, but brutal HNW matter.
‘Blood Sac’ offers up a lengthy caustic drone track which takes in some Harsh Noise Wall like dwells latter on it it’s life. Peiste are a US male and female duo that features Joseph Gates(Slaughter-Fetus, Vargrwulf & RSP) & Vanessa (Slaughter-Fetus & Bast).
It’s a pleasure to be genuinely surprised. To that end, one of the best reactions I can have to an album is one of nonplussed delight. What words that do come are usually along these lines: “I don’t know what I was expecting, but … ” or “Now there’s something I haven’t heard before … ”
Greg Haines’ second album, ‘Until the Point of Hushed Support’, was developed over the past three years that saw the young composer relocate from England to Berlin. It is his first score-based composition, having previously worked as both a solo recording artist on his first album, Slumber Tides, and a live performer in many collaborative improvised projects.
‘William Blake’ is the second album from mellow and soothing Germanic tongued male & female folk duo Jahrtal. The album sees the band releasing yet another very rewarding, mainly soothing, relaxing and summer evening hazed collection of folk tracks that are primal based around acoustic guitar, harp, banjo and a mixture of male and female vocals. Though the album does see the band expand their sound pallet from the first album with jazzy flute edges, a few rougher electric guitar textures, subtle electronics and few more new sound textures and other genre hints- but none of this ruins or changers drastically the projects hazy, mellow and warming folk craft.
‘Might is Blight’ offers up quite a varied, original and often bleakly epic mixture of: electronic and junk based industrial textures, powerful and avant grade tinged neo-classical elements, animal and environmental field recordings, power electronics and cinematic tinged noise.
There’s a certain intrigue to the title of September Collective’s latest effort, Always Breathing Monster. Since the disc comes to me in a generic slipcase with, aside from some brief liner notes, no information whatsoever, what runs loose first is my imagination. I’m sure a monstrosity outside of time – if we interpret always breathing as breathing forever – could invoke any number of things with anyone, but I’d say any divinity (god, God, whichever you prefer) would be a pretty safe bet. It is, then, not too coincidental that Always Breathing Monster’s principal instrument used was an organ – an instrument traditionally known as the Voice of God. By extension, the organ is not only the voice of the titular monster, but becomes the monster itself – and so we have the album, an exercise in taming the monster that is the organ.
‘Choked In The Woods’ offers up two sides of a C30’s worth of rapid stabbing, twistingly active and ragged HNW matter from Danish project I Dreamt Of Her Beautiful Tentacles. The tape is influenced by and a tribute to the last five minutes of Claude Chabrol’s 1960 French new wave movie ‘Les Bonnes Femmes’ and it’s tale of four Paris shop girls and dark/nasty going-on’s in the country side.
I’m starting to realize that this whole “noise” thing is a little like the blues: it’s as much about a personality behind the work as the work itself. There’s your average bar-band bluesman with a slide guitar, and then there’s Howlin’ Wolf. Likewise, there’s your average basement-produced wall-o’-noise CD-R, and then there’s Merzbow. Or the Hanatarash. Or a good half of the Los Angeles Free Music Society, where the humor was right there in your face, not buried six levels down in a soil-bed of sullen irony.
This split c62 tape offers up two sides of thick, unforgiving, horror and torture fuelled Harsh Noise Wall matter from West Virginia, USA based Foul and Friedrichshafen, Germany based Cannibal Ritual.
Italy’s Act noir describe themselves as “electro-rock” at “the junction point between Depeche Mode, Perfect Circle, Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails”. This immediately rang alarm bells portending to an aspiration to conform within the boundaries of established mainstream acts. Fears that this arguably snobbish trepidation was borne out of an unreasonable anti-commercial belligerence were rapidly set aside as ‘Shape a New Start’ began the blandest of journeys, expertly sticking to the absolute centre of the middle of the road, generating no interest but plenty of revulsion on the way.
‘Retrospective’ brings together nine (mainly) early & extremely rare releases by the highly respected and influential harsh Noise and HNW innovator Canadian based project The Rita(aka Sam McKinlay). This release offers up nine original (mainly) tape based releases on a single region free data dvd in Wave and MP format. And along with the DVD comes twelve 5.5×8.5 cards printed in black and white which feature original tape art work and details of original releases information. Both DVD in paper shelve and cards are packaged in a heavy duty plastic bag.
'In Eternal Coldness of the Night’ is the first full length album by cold, barren and lo-fi Ukraine based black metal project Shadows Ground. The albums production and song craft summons up the feeling and vibe of Darkthrone's Transilvanian Hunger, yet this still has it’s own cold and often clamouring identity about it with some quite dark and melancholic harmonic riff traits here and there among the dark and cold gitar tone.
Venta Protesix is a Italian based project who specialize in playful and teeth gritting electro shredding noise with a hints of overloading and abused gameboy electronica. ‘Complexed’ is the projects first full length release and first proper CD after they put out a CDR back in 2008.
Yannis Kyriakides is a Cyprus born composer and sound artists who now resides in the uk. He composer/arrangers works that often mix electronic and acoustic elements in a creative and rewarding manner which join together: computer composition, unusual use of sometimes outdated or quirky modern technology and hints of traditional Greek Cypriot music. All to create a sound that is both sleek, modern, atmospheric and edgy yet ever so often takes a trip backwards to the past for hints at the music of Kyriakides homeland and youth.
'Black Porridge Kaleidoscope’ offers up a selection of thick, juddering, slightly noise bound and darkly crude beat-less synth scapes that at first start out vaguely atmospheric and marginally intriguing, but soon becomes more than a little repetitive, bland and samey when spread out over a full albums length.
The flag erected by America’s R&B garage bands of the sixties, made freakier through psychedelics by the end of the decade to become such a dominant force in shaping the punk sounds of the seventies, is still aloft and flying wildly as ever thanks to the likes of France’s Gunslingers. Their second album, Manifesto Zero, is a straight-to-tape set of ecstatic psyche punk that faithfully follows a wayward path laid down by the hardiest of hedonists before them (Texas’ Butthole Surfers and the UK’s Gaye Bykers On Acid often come to mind).