Loading
It’s incredibly interesting to see what diverse ranges of sounds very minimal set-ups can yield. That goes for both traditional instruments and electronics or other non-musical sound sources, I’d say. Consider, for instance, Aube works such as Pages from the Book or the Millennium series, for which single sound sources were used to create hugely diverse sound scapes. Or, at the more musical end of the spectrum, jazz saxophone player Evan Parker, whose solo sax works such as The Snake Decides sound like anything but works that were conceived either solo or with only a sax.
'A Walk In The Park’ offers up a nice unhinged,atmospheric & at times quite doomy & creepy improv mixture of electric & acoustic guitar elements, electronics, some noise textures & the odd splattering of doomed piano matter. This release brings together highly respected & versatile noise/experimental artist Norwegian born Andreas Brandal(Flesh Coffin,Hour Of the Wolf, Drevne Bolesti, solo work, ect) & fellow Norwegian guitarist Hans Kristian Senneseth( Lupus Golem, Nullpluss).
‘The Shape Of Static To Come’ is a highly rewarding, involving & brutal emersion in static rich HNW & minimalistic HNW making taking in a thirty five minute track a piece from Chicago based Insurgent & Italian based TFT.
‘La Rossa Dalla Pelle Che Scotta’ takes it’s name and inspiration from 1971 Italian/Turkish Giallo movie of the same name (it’s US title was The Red-Headed Corpse) which tells the story of a penniless artists who given an mannequin in a park which he takes home & it turns seemingly into a fiery femme fatale who takes over his life and starts a killing spree.
‘Another Merzbow Records’ (no, it’s not my bad grammar that is the title) is a three disc collection that brings together compilation tracks, split release tracks & various odds & ends from the long standing king of Japanese noise Merzbow.
‘The Black Mausoleum’ is the first release from this Dutch based project and their atmospheric to caustic guitar drone based sound. On offer here is a single twenty five minute track that goes from chilling & harmonically revolving to screaming & darkly seared.
‘A Banishing Ritual’ is album number three from Chet Scott’s (of Ruhr Hunter, Elemental Chrysalis and Glass throat records) metallic & folk/rock project Blood of the Black Owl. And it sees him offering up a single track in four 'movements', which offers up 40 minutes worth of ritual, primal & experimental sonic matter that mixers together elements of : doom, black metal, industrial, drone & brooding ambience, folk, rock & tribal music into a very distinctive & original sonic vision.
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.