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'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”.
‘Triumph Of The Broken Will’ is the first nihilistic & nasty sonic fruits from the new Irish label Order Of The HNW. The album offers up three splendid, bleak & caustic tracks that mix together punk & doom hinted bass drones with seared & hope melting walls of noise.
Dead Body Collection is a Serbian based one man HNW project that specializes in thick, crusty & suffocating ‘walls’ of noise. The project has only been in existence for under a year & ‘Post-Mortem Examination’ is their third release…though Dr Alex(who is Dead Body Collection) is also in power electronics meets weird noise duo [C. T. D.] who’s work goes back to 2008.
Don’t be fooled by the cute oriental bunny girl on the front cover of ‘Pet Therapy’- there’s nothing cute, cuddle or nice about this slice of sonic nastiness. On offer here are two lengthy slices of thick & brain boiling, to fairly minimalistic & ear scrubbing HNW matter.
It must be pretty hard being Alec Empire. I don’t mean to suggest the guy’s life went down the drain somewhere over the last ten years, or that he’s, emotionally, privately, down in the dumps or something alike, but it seems tough shit to have been at the forefront of the scene specializing in that blend of hardcore, experimental electronics and punk rock dubbed digital hardcore for half of the 90s, and then to’ve sort of been chucked out of it, or rather, to have the whole scene chucked out with you. Fact of the matter is, digital hardcore, at least by today’s standards, is a dated, awful sort of thing, suitable mainly, if not only, for reminiscing (“Oh, friends, remember listening to this and thinking the world of it?”) and brushing aside.
With ‘It Is All That Is Made’ Jozef Van Wissem has created a solitary, contemplative moody piece of timeless folk music. Performing on the historic Renaissance lute (an instrument I was hitherto unfamiliar with) and absorbing influences from all throughout history, Wissem somehow synthesizes it all into this incredibly simple yet remarkably deep music that seems simultaneously of our modern age and hundreds of years old.
‘Audio For Lovers’ finds highly respected Italian mood setter Fabio Orsi offering up two disc & two hours worth of emotional & nostalgic rich ambient music. The album sees Orsi utilizing his usual mixture of stuck & poignant gitar scape, sad, melodic & creaking piano dwells, aged analogue synth matter & a sprinkling of emotive & hazy field recordings.
‘Zen Automata Volume One: V’ is all about very repetitive & looped machine like drones. It’s certainly not a easy listening by any means & I can see that a lot of people will not get on with this, but if like me you enjoy very repetitive sonic torture like HNW matter or stuck caustic drone music this could well be for you.
Slaughter-Fetus are a industrially caustic Harsh Noise wall project from Louisiana. This nasty & violent 3” CDR is the projects tribute to Takashi Miike’s film Addition & films notorious, nasty & sadistic Needle torture scene.
'Heavy Masonry' is all about creating a very thick & constant black jittering wall of evil sounding & murky static tone. Inside the black spray paint of black plastic case Griz+zlor offers up just over twenty minutes of grim, nihilistic yet rewarding ‘wall’ making.
Like many noise activists within the experimental doom/dark ambient/sludge scenes, Indiana’s Kyle Willey and Adam Cooley have been hyperactive, producing around fifty releases over the past five years under various guises on CDr, cassette or MP3. Most of these are available to download free-of-charge with torrents seeded by the artists themselves.
Here is one of those compilations that seems like it’s going to be all fusty theoretical mummery but instead boots open a door to uncharted sonic lands. Most people will probably think the target audience for this disc is music students, but I’d wager most anyone reading a site like Musique Machine would find this fascinating. I know I did. It’s a little like the aural equivalent of a literary anthology from a language never previously translated into English: Wow, where has this stuff been all this time?
‘Chainsaw Majini’ is my first taster of this Japanese HNW act & this 3” cdr is one hell of a brutal, unforgiving & brain grinding attack; like the sonic equivalent of being attacked by a chainsaw that's fully revered up & ready to split flesh ‘n’ bone.
‘Temporal Death’ is all about accelerating dread that turns very nasty indeed as the album swings from it’s dark ambient beginnings up to seared, shifting, sadistically juddered Harsh Noise & Harsh Noise Wall matter.
Simon Scott’s debut full-length Navigare comes to us courtesy of the fittingly-named Miasmah label, since “miasma” is an appropriate description for this record. Imagine the sonic version of greasy smoke rolling through the room you’re sitting in—but smoke with a whole congeries of subtle scents and maybe even flavours mixed in with it. It’s an atmosphere that suffocates and blinds as much as it soothes and uplifts. But if you assume this stuff always has to be uplifting and soothing, then you’re probably reading the wrong reviews.
Robin Crutchfield started his musical life back in the mid 1970’s when he formed & played keyboards in the seminal & respected no-wave band DNA with Arto Lindsay and Ikue Mori. His new album 'The Hidden Folk' is million miles away from no-waves jerking & often discordant sonic world; this offer up collection nineteen short tracks of earthy, haunted sometimes cute, sometimes eerier folk, music box unfolds & woodland bound moodsetting