Loading
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.
This untitled ep is the first real release (after a split with Torturing Nurse & a few comp tracks) by this Ukraine based perverse & sleazed noise project who violently simmer up a mixture of nasty and sinister: harsh walled noise, harsh noise & mangled/ amp-up creepy snyth attacks.
Dustin O’Halloran is a Los Angeles born composer & pianist who now resides in Berlin & ‘Vorleben’ is a new collection of emotionally rich, harmonic and at times quite complex solo piano pieces that were recorded live in Berlin’s Grunewald church.
‘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.