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Fursaxa's sound is a dense and psychedelic enchanted forest of layered folk & raged choral and harmony vocals lined with hypnotic stuck ambience and ritualistic sonic colour, Touching down in strange wonder, dread and spiritual wonder of the natural.
Elixirs is an exquisitely dark and heady mix of instrumental rock, jazz, shadowy classical tones, world music edger’s, prog and soundtrack tones. Though you can define their influencers this comes across as very darkly fresh and exciting mix of sounds that they make totally their own, having heard mentions of Guapo many times it’s nice to hear the band and for once find their better than expected.
Omen is the final album by Half Makeshift, a one man operation helmed by Nathan Michael. The reason for his retreat from musical activities is very interesting indeed. Michael believes, as a result of his biblical studies, that the world is going to end in 2011, and he needs to expend his time spreading the word. If you have any doubt as to whether or not this is some sort of prank or publicity stunt, see the Profound Lore website. There is, oddly enough, a press release of sorts, authored by Michael explaining the reasons for his lack of future involvement nor any interest in distributing this or any of his previous albums.
Caves hovers between discord and beauty, between drone and improvised to build a collection of pieces that swings between hypnotic, poignant, emotional pulling and strange.
Oxide’s tense, stark and white neon bleak soundworlds are built from corrupted, decaying and damp ruined taped elements & Over the piece's near on hour playing time a very real feeling of anticipation, dread and starkness is built up, that at times almost reachers fever pitch.
Oozing Bass Spasms finds Mr Schirach simplifying and adding more tuneful yet still stomping edger to his once complex and brain frying electronica. But without loosing his very distinct sound this is just more purified and focused- but still as demented, depraved and plainly odd as always.
Invocation of the sleeper offers up one track of rhythmic based dark ocultic ambience that mixers together gong tones, horror curdled synth drifts and general attempts to sound ominous and disturbed.
Lie Down in the Light came almost out of nowhere a couple of weeks ago. There was no huge ad campaign, even by Drag City's somewhat modest standards. Oddly enough, it's probably Will Oldham's most accessible and well rounded album, well, maybe ever. Of course, that's a loaded statement, considering the generally high quality of the man's work over an almost twenty year career. 1999's I see A Darkness is widely considered Will Oldham's best, and justifiably so, but in between then and now, he has displayed a restlessness (which some mistake as recklessness) of spirit, and as a result, his music hasn't always been consistent. His last album, the Letting Go, was a smooth, highly burnished album. The vocals were almost always just barely above a whisper, and the music was hushed and simple. The only flaw being the very same one which has plagued the last few Bonnie 'Prince' Billy albums; there are a few songs which come across more like sketches than finished songs. This lack of continuity has been a source of frustration, especially considering the fact that Oldham may be one the finest songwriters of his generation. It's possible that these sketches are the result of Oldham's eagerness to experiment, and for his reputation as an individual who works best at the spur of the moment. If his muse requires him to explore these seemingly inconsequential avenues in order to gain access to a unique path, then so be it.
River Mouth Echoes takes the listener on a varied, manic, strange and beautiful sonic journey mixing together noise, modern classical, improvising, jazz, orchestral music and Ratkje breathtaking and sometimes frightening voice.
Angry Eelectric Finger is one of the most release heavy projects of NWW career firstly there was the four original cd’s that featured remixes/ retakes of the original NWW piece by other artists, and a futher four disk vinyl set which represented the 3 remixes again and the original and un-tampered & unreleased zero mix. This wonderfully plush box set is really the cherry toping on the top of the whole project- featuring a full colour 220 page hardback book illustrating the 100 original paintings done for the project, the original zero mix of NWW material and a new unreleased album.
Italy has given birth to a wide array of artists whose personalities are frankly peculiar. Though Le Orme has been compared to bands like Emerson, Lake and Palmer, due mainly to the fact that Le Orme itself is a trio, their music is so passionately and carefully played that listeners can’t help but abide.
The Grey Daturas are a relatively prolific trio from Melbourne whose music can be a bit difficult to pin down. Certainly, there's metal of many stripes at the forefront, and to my ears, a post-rock element as well. The Neurot Recordings press release claims that the band is informed by the Stooges and European black metal. In reality, Return to Disruption reminds me more of the pummeling post-prog attack of nineties luminaries as Don Caballero, except the Daturas' music is completely improvised. The black metal connection could be a reference to the hazy production values, which blunt the edges a bit, thus softening the blows a bit. Of course, Neurosis pioneered the shoegaze metal movement with great panache, (Neurosis Recordings is their label) and the Daturas seem to have sifted a bit of their sound into the stew as well. Add to that the shadow of Albert Ayler hovering somewhere in the mist and you're just about there.
Though the projects name is Five Elements Music VarunaGhat deep often dark and quite tense/active ambient expanses mainly focus on one of the five elements: water. The 46 minute long release is split into 3 untitled and aquatic based tracks.
Cisfinitum is a project of Russian musician and composer Evgueny Voronovsky that’s been in existence since 1999- he creates a sound best described as a mix ambience, industrial and electro acoustic soundscapes. Tactio was recorded live in an ancient roman cathedral and offers up seven numbered pieces that utilize Baroque violin, bell sounds, electronics and the acoustic of the cathdreal it’s self to create a sometimes beautiful but often ominous & dense soundworld.
An aerial view is one long hour ambient piece for Theremin and synth with the remit of describe the ice age in sonic terms but instead of resulting to clichéd deep wind weathered drones you might expect Oophoi takes us on a journey of rich sparking harmonic tones, as if we’re sail high above vast expanse of ice that just stretcher on and on.
The idea of electronic pieces on multiple speakers is excellent in the case of liveperformances and installations, but to translate these things to the homesituation often is slightly troublesome.
Sprint Mill is a triple collaboration between three sound/ drone uk based artists Colin Potter, Phil Mouldycliff and Chris Atkins. With all the sounds here been derived from in and around an old mill in the lake district which is now used by artist Edward Acland as workshop.
Molech offers up two long tracks of dense, droning, ritualistic and sinister sound soups built around a fearful mix of organ textures muffled creepy occultic voices, ominous field recordings, slight percussive dread and blacked guitar pitchers.
The New Humans are an art/noise collective & this an hour long album offers up two noisy & sawing improvised tracks featuring at there centres the always busy C,Spencer Yeh (Burning Star Core and any number of growing projects) on Violin and modern artists/ string abuser Mika Tajima who handles Guitar, bass , chairs(!) and glass. The pair are joined on each track with different collaborators.
New Orthodox Line is a collaboration between two very prolific Russian noise and dark ambient practitioners, Bardoseneticcube and Noises of Russia. The concept of this 47 and a half minute piece seems to revolve around the role of religion, or perhaps the influence of religion on modernised society, particularly in the post-communist Russian Federation. This supposition is quite possibly either a gross over-simplification of their intent or well wide of the the mark altogether. Whether accurate of not, that's what I got from it.
Surfing the seas of Azeri piracy I came across this oddity. A mixture of traditional muğam with almost as traditional (neo) prog. The result, as one can figure, is far from traditional.
After the huge Success of The Melvin’s last album(a) Senile Animal which was praised in places high and low gaining loads of new fans, myself been one of them. I was eager and excited to hear what they had to offer this time around.
Solitude finds Striborg’s particular and distinctive brand of black metal at it’s most dreamy, ghostly and doomy. Fitting perfectly the albums title this is deep, dark and chillily ominous, really solitude it’s self distilled into bizarre and nightmarish audio cocoon that you can fold your self into far away from the world around you.
Riharc Smiles make an often very joyful and tuneful mix of Neo Folk, progressive medieval folk and pop with a really bounce to almost every song here- making this an album that will appeal way beyond normal folk crowd.