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All Pigs Must die is a welcome reissue of Death In June’s harmonic yet schizophrenic and progressively unhinged album from 2001. It saw for the most part a return to simpler and memorable acoustic guitar, accordion, trumpet and flute song based sound, but with the odd flirtations with post-industrial sound scraping, noise matter and unhinged edgers.
This rather wonderful, often unbalancing yet always inspired collaboration goes from been manic and noisy, to deranged and off kilter, down to be atmospheric and bizarre. With the pair utilizing an mixture of electric & acoustic guitars, flute, vocal sounds & noises, drums, keyboards & bass to create this superb collection atmospheric and mood jumping 16 tracks.
Anahita brings together Tara Burke (Fursaxa,Tau Emerald ect) and cellist Helena Espvall (Espers) for six lengthy often primal and sometimes haunting/beautiful tracks of droning, sawing avant folk dwell.
Dead Leaves title may suggest an organic, melancholy and doomy outlook but the three tracks inside are quite the opposite- with each been a great long, jittering and shifting electro noise attacks which are splattered here and there with melodic hints, rhythmic chugs and sonic chops.
This is a reissue of 98’s third album from the often abstract and odd sound obsessed electrionca duo of Matmos. With the whole album finding the pair in a surprisingly approachable, Organic and harmonic mood- with little of the ‘look how clever we are’ edge to the work that sadly permeates much of the pairs work.
Andrey Kiritchenko is a fairly prolific Ukrainian based musician who since 2001 has released over 20 albums- which have seen him dip his sonic toe in the genres such as: electrionca, folk, electro acoustic & drone works. Misterrious finds him offering up a collection of atmospheric often fragile yet harmonic piano pieces; that are lined with field recording elements and touches of guitar, glockenspiel, mouth harmonica, auto-harp, Tibetan bowls.
There’s no doubt about it good gospel music no matter what ones faith or belief can raise ones spirits and mood, and that’s exactly what this rather wonderful collection of gospel songs by 81 year old country legend Charlie Louvin does.
The Triple Tree is a new project headed by Tony Wakeford(Sol Invictus) and Andrew King that pays tribute to the great British supernatural fiction writer M. R. James. This wonderful debut is a heady at times chilling mix of dark electroinca, droning and string elements, grim English folk, English psychedelic air, dammed pop touches & field recording elements; really at it's best this mangers to summon up a very disturbing yet haunting air of English disquiet that I think James would have been very proud of.
For All Slaves.... A Song For False Hope is the new work from sonic depravity maker Gnaw Their Tongues(aka Maurice De Jong) & this as usually is another damned mix sinister soundtrack cut-up, doom and extreme metal mashing and industrial grim ‘n’ clunk.
Southern German folk collective Falkenstein return for a second full length album not long after their enjoyable first album Heiliger Wald. And once more this is another consistent and tuneful, yet stern collection of Germanic folk tracks.
Destination Space is the second collaboration between electronic, tape splice-innovator and Moog-popster Jean-Jacques Perrey & talented musician and retro-obsessed Dana Countryman. As the title suggest there’s quite a lot of space bound electronic easy listening fun to be found here, but there’s also a more emotional and cinematic touches on display too.
Screloma is a mainly one piece Japanese project who with this their second album offer up mixture of caustic industrial/ electroinca beats & textures, electro noise attacks and the odd swing into noise guitar scapeing
A Feral Spirit is the second chapter in Chet Scott’s (of Ruhr Hunter, Elemental Chrysalis and Glass throat records) metallic folk/rock project. It sees him building on and adding to the elements from the wonderful self titled Blood of the Black Owl from 07. Through out the nine tracks on offer here we find an more tribal tone and world music & atmospheric edge elements been mixed in.
The Tunnels is a one man project by Nicholas Samuel Bindeman, known for his participation in Jackie-O-Motherfucker. This cd-r is a re-release of a tape, and to the best of my knowledge, it's a couple of years old. The disc is self-released in a tiny edition, and is presumably self-labeled by Bindeman in black marker. This is the third artist associated with JOMF that I've have the pleasure of listening to, who were also at one time on the YarnLazer cd-r label. Honey Owens, aka Valet, and Adam Forkner's White Rainbow both produced very fine and very divergent psychedelic music for the label (and for Kranky Records as well.). Bindeman's music is slightly more "rock" than the aforementioned artists, yet his music is no less intriguing.
Pee-pee brew up a very quirky, often highly tuneful & addictive cocktail of folk/rock, indie pop & lo-fi electronics. Managing to stay gloriously lop-side and wonky yet surprisingly at the same time highly approachable and basically a hell of a lot of fun.
Nada Terma is a rich, exotic and mysterious eastern tinged ambient ride that brings together ethic percussionist Byron Metcalf, Bansuri flutist and Dilruba player Mark Seelig and ambient explorer Steve Roach.
Skellaten is a one piece female noise project from kelso Washington and Pretend 2 B nice is the projects first cdr full length after a few tapes and compilation tracks. And you’ll be glad to know there’s nothing nice or wholesome in here as the title might hint, this is ear melting and pain boring noise all the way.
Prototipos Irradiantes(Radiant prototypes) is a very energetic, body slamming and rewarding mix of noise matter, violent electronica and pumped up old school industrial tone. Often the album gives one the feeling of been stuck inside a vast gone crazy factory as the machinery goes in to spectacular overload.
Scott Kelly is most widely known as a vocalist and guitarist for Neurosis. Last year I reviewed an album by his band mate, Steve Von Till called A Grave is a Grim Horse, which was a mellow album very much along the lines of Mark Lanegan's solo material. Von Till applied enough of his own personality to succeed, by staking his own ground. It seems Scott Kelly has been drinking from the same trough, though he seems reluctant to emerge from his shell. This album owes a hardy thanks to the ex-Screaming Trees frontman as well, and a stiff handshake to Tom Waits. A couple of decent precursors for sure, but it's not evident that Kelly has the passion to compel.
The Paralysis Sect sees UK noise extraordinaire Kylie Minoise pouring out three long tracks of grim, pained, often airless and soured drone craft and suffocating noise pressing. Each track sonically humming of despair, decay and ruin that’s strangely compelling
Oddly enough, the Door sounds a lot like a slightly more esoteric (and motorik) version on the Doors over at least half of its running time. Is the title supposed to be indicative of the direction they're headed? One would assume so. Despite the prominent use of Manzarek-esque keyboard fills (albeit not as obtrusive as Ray's), there's remnants of everything from Neu! to Suicide, maybe even early Royal Trux worked into these bad trip jams.
This extremely limited cd-r of thirty copies is an art edition release with hand painted wrap around sleeves and a vellum bi-fold with lyrics and recording information. The album was originally released as a download only edition by the alternative folk Website Woven Wheat Whispers, which sadly shut down last summer. This cd-r was actually released in 2006, according to Cryptantus Records' Myspace page. Cunnan are Alan Trench, Christopher Patinios and Stephen Robinson of Temple Music with Tracy Jeffery of Orchis on vocals and Julie Brackenbury on violin. Alan Trench is a multi-instrumentalist also notable for his work with Martyn Bates, and also known as the man behind World Serpent Distribution, which also shut down a few years back. He's credited here with Lute, Guitars, Keyboards, Samplers, Synthesizers, percussion, whistles, dulcimer, tenor recorder and, among other things, shadows(?).
Emit's bend, melt and pummel Black metal music and spirit into a very strange, sinister psychedelic and bizarre place. This wonderful yet unnerving and varied disc is a highly consistent and strange collection of tracks from through out the projects 9 year descent into darkness and sonic madness.
This two way split brings together two tracks a piece of hypnotic tinged Krautrock from Expo 70 who come from the USA & Be Invisible Now! from Italy. And for a split release surprisingly this(for most the part) flows rather well as a glorious tripped out whole