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I rather enjoyed the 2006 debut album Ceiling Songs by warming drone maker Ethan Rose; So I was rather looking forward to hearing this his third album. And I have to say Oaks certainly doesn’t disappoint with Rose once more managing to sooth and comfort ones mind and spirit with melodic, often nostalgic and warming drone craft.
As a reviewer you sometimes get the feeling 'promotion' is more a necessary evil, nothing more than a potential leak unto that evil internet rather than a way to put your project in the limelight, which to me seems the whole idea behind 'promotion'.
Barcelona-based experimental musician and poet Ferran Fages' previous album Cançons per a un lent retard was a tour the force on acoustic guitar that demanded quite a bit from the listener, or at least myself.
A tiny cdr (3") in a tiny edition (75 copies) features one piece of a little more than twenty minutes. Nicholas Szczepanik made this to help his partner relax but eventually made him discover something about himself, as mysteriously stated in the linernotes.
Beat Circus boil up a rather potent mixture of junk band music, demented brass band work-outs, flamboyant and often doomy string work, old time jazz colours that have often quite a Jewish feel, sawing folk and the odd hint of off-kilter pop sensibilities. All to make Dreamland a rather pleasing and heady soundtrack for dreams of American freak shows and amusement park of the past, Victorian tragedies and general dark Americana.
Under milk wood sees LSD March return with the most approachable take on their distinctive sound thus far. It finds psyched & blissed-out electric guitar drifts meeting slowed post Velvet Underground riffing. Dabed with wonky and wavering folk and pop sentiments that are all tied together with an quirky and experimental ribbon.
Funcall is the next chapter in improvised jazz four piece The Antripodean Collective’s heady and angler craft. Offering up 5 often lengthy, complex yet at times strangely skeletal and grim pieces.
This collaboration between Angel (which features members of Mum and Pan Sonic) and Strings of Consciousness offers up two lengthy 20 minute tracks of drone craft & atmospheric builds/falls
A wilde Zeit is not the new album from Sturmpercht the masters and inventors of alpine- folk form; but it’s a fairly wonderful and consistent collection of odd’s and ends by the band which comes in near the 80 minute mark & offers up 18 varied tracks.
When glockenspiel is listed among the instruments it's not very likely that things will become rough. Italian indie group Il Cielo di Baghdad indeed aim for more dreamy sounds, full of melancholy.
Filth stands as one of the most effective, perverse and grimly atmospheric yet approachable to none noise-ears work by Italian noise sleazy master Fecalove; so far in his short but prolific career. It finds him mixing in moments of clear vocals, bent yet memorable industerlized electronic beats scapes and a seedy atmospheric edge to his mix of noise and power electronics.
End of Daze is a wonderfully brain frying electro attack which takes in electro-acoustic elements, manic multi-layered electroinca that’s both highly precise and jarring with the odd risers to more noisier overloaded territory here and there too.
This is the next chapter in Displeased records reissue series of old albums by Striborg -the prolific and often avant-garde touched one man Black Metal project from Tasmania. This one brings together In the heart of the rainforest which originates from 2000 & Misanthropic isolation from 1998; both which were original released in very ltd CDR form at the time.
Evil Madness sound very appealing on paper claiming to be an analogue synth collective who summon up the spirit of the likes of Kraftwerk, Tangerine Dream, Goblin and 70’s/80’s horror based synth soundtracks. Sadly the audio reality of what lies inside their second album Demoni Paradiso is rather shabby, amateurish and often very poor both in execution and concept.
From the UK comes an electronic artist by the name of Michael Santos to bring us his first 'real' album of glitch electronics, named The Happy Error, after a few cdr-releases.
Favorite Places is a compilation based on the idea of the artists choosing to represent in sound their favorite places. It's the type of concept which sounds intriguing, but in practice is somewhat confining. The locations chosen by the artists are often surprising in their banality, and lack of exoticism. But that may be the point; Claudia's Studio Apartment and Dot Tape Dot's My Bathroom present the realm of the artist's everyday existence, possibly in an attempt to bring the listener into their comfort zone.
Filaments & Voids is a wonderfully haunting & beautiful double disk collection of lengthy works by New York based Kenneth Kirschner- with the tracks falling somewhere between ambience, slowed/ electronica and modern minimalistic classical piano music.
After to been rather taken by Column One’s strange and jarring field recording album Feldaufnahmen I. I felt it was time to check out some more work by this bizarre collective; Electric Pleasure is quite a different kettle of fish from Feldaufnahmen I with the only connection really been the clever use of sampling.
Anicca finds Merzbow in a wonderfully urgent, manic and often chaotic mood; offering up three lengthy tracks that literal stream roller your mind in breathless submission & leave you feeling very pump-up and almost hyper.
Teeth of the Sea summon up a mighty,swirling and atmospheric wall of sound that mixers together kraut-rock dirges, Morricone like soundtrack pumps ‘n’ throbs, trumpet atmospherics, modern Earth like country rock/ doom folds, shadowy post-rock scaping and along with some slight grimy punked guitar chugs and 80’s indie bass wonderings.
This is a reissue of the first album by legendary soundtrack composer and arranger Henry Mancini who went on to write most famously the theme’s for the Pink Panther films, Moon river and many other soundtracks. This was originally released back in 1957 under the name of Driftwood and Dreams & is a wonderful collection of softly focused and mellow yet cool exotica/ easy listening.
Oneiromantical War is an dense blacked maze like journey into slow ‘n’ deep buzzsaw blacked metal guitar work-outs, which are flecked by odd edger’s and highly with creative blacked spirit. Seemingly the deeper you get into the album the more crushing and strange Oneiromantical War gets.
13th Floor is a highly satisfying & morbidly atmospheric 3inc cdr from one man USA project Oblong Box. With the four tracks here sitting somewhere between blacked yet fairly active ambience, horror cinematic and slowed industrial throb 'n' dwell.
Hollywood finds Circle once more shifting their sound into new genres & stringing into their instantly recognisable hypnotic riff presence a very 1980’s USA bound feel with: harmony led pop rock, geeky new wave airs, 80’s heavy metal- long with the traces of the blues & country too.