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The excellent Radio Rivendell compilation returns for a second volume of fantasy and role playing based music, giving the listener a mix of all manner of dramatic and filmtic music going from: bold bombastic to emotion swooned strings, to Celtic tinged harp and violin mixers, to war hungry brass ‘n’ horns and fighting percussion, to chugging guitar/ string power, to operatic lined grace. With of course all manner of sound effects and fantasy type sounds to enhanced the tracks.
Test Pattern shows the Raster Noton label at their more cool, calculated and concept based end of their catalogue. As Ryoji Ikeda builds sometimes dense, sometimes stripped down tracks of cold clinical and often noisy electronics derived from converting different kinds of data (text, sounds, photos and movies) into barcodes & then into a sonic form.
This is an enjoyable,varied and often tension filled and quite experimental soundtrack for this 1971 Giallo film which is thought of as one of directors Toino Ricci best films.
Basically, in a past life, the music of Tangtype is a form of acoustic folk. The music on their debut is heavily distorted in a laptop, so 'acoustic' and 'folk' are reduced to sourcematerial for electronic tapestries.
He is a lost soul as ever there was finds buzzing and gloomy guitar scapes of near static unfold and grimy ambient tone uncurling them selves in a slow, bitter and suffocating manner. This is music of slow internal decline and despair- been best described as noisy, barren and suicidal guitar dwell ‘n’ drone.
Alopecia finds why? building-on and filling out the quirky dark pop guitar music of their last album Elephant Eyelash with a few nods and journeys back to their hip-hop past too. All to give an album that while’s not as instant or as playful as Elephant Eyelash really does grow on you over time.
Inhalant is one man noise project from Texas who with Audio Terror conjues up one long & rewarding 30 minute track of shifting textural noise, violent ambience and vocal bays/ screams.
The Earth Grows In Each Of Us has a feeling of rural decline and death, of past life’s effects found in abounded buildings taken over by nature and time. Feeling like a more shifting and active version of William Basinski work- with loops of stuck and decaying strings and piano melancholy, & tired ambient unfolds that are weaved with ominous bell tones, muffled voices, aged textures and distant field recordings
The French record finds Sissy Spacek returning to more noisy terrority after the often improvised and more subdued California Ax box set, but like the box set this often walks new and adventurous ground twisting their sound into new divine sonic mayhem.
Recurring Dream And Apocalypse Of Darkness is a very apt title for what is The Acid mother Temples most dark, nasty and doom soddened release to date. Packed with crawling doomed metallic juggernaut like riffs and hypnotic metallic psychedelics- this is the blackest and heaviest trip they’ve every made. Seriously this is some heavy shit, man ;-)
Cover records are dedidedly hit ‘n’ miss & mostly wholly inconsistent affairs that often offer up one or two jewels, but Thing of the past bucks this trend to give a rewarding, warming and highly re-playable album which as the title suggests is hazed and nestled in a comfy and harmonic analogue age past.
When I first got this new release on Circle’s label Ektro I was sure it was a loving parody or elaborate joke on the part of the band with all their past and playful attempts at tacky but fun over the 80’s heavy metal imagery. Surely there cant have been a band this OTT metal- with a name like Thor & dressing in loin cloths and Spandex , singing deeply clichéd metal songs about sex, violence and metal with titles like Thunder On the Tundra and Rock The City?!
Prikosnovénie is a French based label who specializes in fairy and fantasy based music and La Nuit De Fées( The night of fairies) is a handy 16 track introduction to what the label offers. The labels sound is best described as a mix of folk, light classical/ operatic, pop and cute electroinca with often harp and strings playing a prominent role along with soothing and dramatic female vocals. There’s nothing particularly dark or nasty going on here it’s just all rather pleasant, spirit lifting and beautiful- through that’s not to say it’s not with out it’s contrast and darker hues- it just never strays too far from the sun and warmth
This is truly is one of the most deranged, unpleasant, festering slabs of audio displeasure you’ll possible ever have come across. It literally hacksaw off the top of your head and pours in it’s tarry, diseased and blacked mix of doom, lo-grade industrial rhythmic pounds, discordant classical elements, decaying and maggot covered ambience, grim cimatics, noise and deeply disturbing samples.
Kiko C. Esseiva is a composer with Swiss and Spanish roots who creates electro acoustic/Musique concrete sound pieces, which are best described as a more conventionally music based version of early Nurse with Wound’s work. With a more playful less sinister ‘n’ surreal vibe to them too, Sous Les Etoiles is his third album and first for relatively new experimental label Hinterzimmer.
The Begena is unique ten string harp instrument sounding like a more doomy and bassy Sitar, it exists only in Ethiopia with mentions of existences dating back 3,000 years, so it must be also one of the oldest existing instruments today. Akota presents an hour of the Begena music and Ethiopia singing by one of the masters of the instrument Zerfu Demissie.
What the acronym means is a mystery, I do know that R.Y.N. is from the UK and consists of Pete Burn (Marzuraan) and Lee Glaister(Romance). Astral Death is the first full album after a 7" on Drone Records.
When you put on Frenzy Of The Absolute, the new album by Dirk Serries (formerly operating under the name vidnaObmana), the difference with earlier Fear Falls Burning releases is instantly clear. A hit on a cymbal and a bassdrum: yes, there's drums this time.
Topography brings together five live improvisations of often grey and tension filled sound smog’s which at their most effective seem to fill your pours deep with almost unbearable anxiety and tension.
Secrets entries into Darkness is an highly atmospheric journey into ambience, edgy electronica led beat-scaping and cinematic unfolds.
Demians debut album is a pleasant, soaring and adventurous mix of prog, pop,metal, electroinca and string elements. Though you can hear hints of their influence here and there be it a Tool like vocal soar or Rush bass ‘n’ keyboard weave- there’s enough original edges & surprising twist and turns to make this something rather special.
Peddle is an atmospheric and hypnotic collection of pieces for two Steinway and sons grand pianos played by Chris Abrahams (The Necks, etc) and well respected Sydney based pianist and conductor Simon James Phillips.
This is a split between master of wall noise The Rita and brooding ambient/ noise project Is, With each offering up a 20 minute track on a 3 inch cdr a piece. All packaged in a rather nice & distinctive black card folder with a photograph set in like a funeral portrait of an ominous looking lake.
Obskuria are a psychedelic/space rock, meet lo-grade prog band with torches of lazy punk and other genre traces too, With a keyboard/organ prominence weaved through the often tongue–in–cheek songs. Bringing together members from across three continents; from the USA’s is guitarist Tom Brehm ( Dragonwyck and Moonlight Drive), from Germany Winnie Rimbach-sator( Karmic Society) and the rest of the members from Peruvian space rockers La Ira de Dios