Loading
Considering this is on Raster-noton label it sounds very un raster-noton like, the music here is often very touched by emotion and often full sounding. Strings brings together a collection of very organic and often very un- digital sounding and atmospheric electronic pieces by Russian Electronic artist COH- utilizing piano, electric and acoustic guitar.
Toronto's Sandro Perri has worked in the past under the name Polmo Polpo, producing music which skirted genres such as techno, ambient and jazzy post-rock. He's also added traditionally classical instruments such as the cello, within the context of somewhat danceable music.
The English Heretic are a mysterious musically, literary & dark historic collective who investigate ocultic matters blurring the lines between fact and fiction, their music is a layered and sinister mix of dark electronics, folk and source recordings & ambience. Their written word a mixture of ocultic history, true crime and horror fiction- all to make a intoxicating and often highly un-nerving whole.
The eighth chapter in the awe inspiring Norwegian collective Supersilent's career finds them creating a rather horror shrouded atmospheric album that weaves together elements of jazz, complex electronica, rock & metal, creepy synth expanses, cinematic tones and all manner of genre pick & mix into a magical, epic and often edgy, sometimes beautiful whole.
Two is, as the title would indicate, the second album by Chapter, a duo consisting of Swiss artists Alexander J.S. Craker and Thierry van Osselt. The album's subtitle (the biographer) refers to the unifying concept of the work; an elegantly presented lyric book presents a short biography, for which each track is named. For instance, the first track is named Baron B.M. Craker (1946-2003). Each biography refers to lyrics or poems found or provided by family members or significant others. Chapter sets each of these lyrics or poems to music. It is only upon careful examination of the album credits that you realise you've been had, most of the time. It says "All biographies are fictional; any resemblance to persons living or dead, are purely coincidental (except for Baron B.M. Craker, which is based on true facts)". It's an intriguing idea, and a pretty clever prank.
The Sacred Truth is first slice of sonic darkness from this new project from Christopher Walton one half of the now defunct ocultic dark ambient, neo-classical & ritual percussion project Endvra. Thankful this doesn’t try to recapture Endvra's past glories instead this has it’s own grim identity that summons up a quite an organic mix of dark ambience, drone blackness & doomy/ blackened mettlic guitar tone.
For me Time Frost is the first fully realized release from the Glacial Movements label that fulfils the labels remit of supplying ambience and sound work that conjures up vast frozen deserts, shifting ice continents and the loneliness and beauty of artic climes.
At all ends finds this noise/guitar duo weaving in more melodic, cinematic and ambient textures into their sound, though still managing to keeping elements of thier noise credentials with rich sometimes searing walls of sound.
Cyber Totem's sonic landscape is wonderfully exotic, mystical and often very odd mixing together all manner of instruments from around the world -we have; Fujara from Slovakia, Kaval from Bulgaria, Fadno & Paska from Sweden and this list goes on with fourteen or so weird and wonderful instruments from all over the world.
Back in the sixties and seventies Anglo-American popmusic was booming, the canon of the Shadows to the Beatles and the Stones up to Floyd even, we all know the drill. Lesser known is the how these sounds were combined with local traditions with often exciting results.
Testa Piena D’orche mix of eerier drone matter, bell tones, layered foreign voices/ chants and all manner of source recordings rather brought to mind the more recent Nurse with Wound material.
This is as the title suggests is a soundtrack to an Italian gangster/ cop movie from 1979, which by the sleeve description falls between being a Giallo & Poliziesco movie. This is the first complete release of the enjoyable eerier, hard-hitting and sometimes chessy soundtrack.
Descension is Aluk Todolo debut full length after a highly praised 7 inch and what a debut this is. For 37 minutes you tumbled through, get hypnotised and brutalised by this nightmarish, lo-fi , head-ripping and psychedelic black mind fuck.
High Tension Wires are a band made up of members of other bands, but they are not necessarily a "side project". The band consists of three members of punkers the Marked Men and one guy from the more rootsy Riverboat Gamblers. Their first album, Send A Message, released a couple of years ago, presented ten spiky punk and garage rock tunes in 19 minutes.
Sounds is frightening and exhilarating journey into jagged & awkward noisy guitar craft, thundering percussion, sinister & ill sounding ambient guitar uneasy, xylophone and percussion freackouts/playfulness with red hot splatters of electronic melt down and pulsing synth.
I first become aware of The Owl services’ very English take on folk rock from the excellent dark folk compilation John Barleycorn Reborn, instantly falling for their track North country Maid (which appears here too) with it’s intricate & memorable mix of banjo, guitar both acoustic and electric & all topped off with the beautiful sweet yet slightly melancholy vocals of Pamela Wyn- Shannon.
Canon Blue is a one man project by Daniel James, based out of Nashville, Tennessee, the Country Music Capital. James' music is not in keeping with his surroundings. Instead, he's chosen to create electronic pop, accompanied by real instrumentation.
Something’s just stick in your mind is an often charming sometimes twee & overblown collection of this English folk singers singles and demos work from between 1964 & 1967- going from bigger sounding stabs at more string led folk pop to more striped down acoustic guitar and voice tracks.
This new ep from dark electrionca duo Formication really shows them making thier sound denser, deepen and more unnerving. It also finds them removing a lot of the clichéd & straight forward beat patterns that littered their last full length & replace them with more complex and deviant ones.
The bizarrely named and mysterious Borful Tang offers up a double disk of strange audio treats falling between the cracks of ambient, noise, lo-fi electrionca & sound art to make a dusty psychedelic world all of it’s own.
Continuum is the dark joining of Steve Willson, guitarist with modern prog rock band Porcupine Tree & Belgium-born ambient artist Dirk Serries. The projects specializes in stretched out Sunn0))) like doom, drone, horror filled soudscaping and dark ambience.
Demons debut album is an ugly, sinister, nasty throbbing and droning collection analog synth basied tracks. Bringing to mind soundtrack music for either a very demented & sadistic sci-fi or horror movie or ones own bent drug addled nightmares.
De – tour is a jittering, dense, disorientating and often terrifying album with moments of drifting alien and looped beauty. Falling some where between improvising, jazz, electronica, modern classical, noise, drone textures, oily cinematics- this is a complex and head rushing experience.
Teniscoats debut is a charming quirky & sometimes hazily sad mix of tinkling pianos, warming & bobbing analogue electronics, light jazzy tones, folk, indie guitar chug and often cute Japanese female vocals. All making a buoyant & melodic album that also drifts into to more poignant, sad waters.