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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.
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.