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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.
'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.