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Though this double disk set is highly enjoyable and memory jolting ride with some pleasant surprises along the way, sadly it’s far from a definitive history of Grindcore as promised in t’s sub-title.
Asa Irons, of Feathers and Witch, wrote these songs, inspired by the wooded and mountainous Northeastern United States, where he resides. The album was recorded in "an abandoned yellow bathroom in the basement of a large building". Not a very exotic setting considering the music's natural origins.
The Idle Suite are a New Zealand "supergroup" including members from Sferic Experiment, MarineVille, the Stumps, Dress, Sandoz Lab Technicians, King Loser, Cloudboy, Bad Statistics and Cloudboy. In reality, this recording sounds like a series of jam sessions between like-minded individuals. It's loose limbed improv music consisting of two drummers, guitars, bass and keyboards. There are some moments of intensity on these tracks, particularly on the last track, the epic twenty-three minute Forcefield, where the guitars feed back and the bass wanders. Mostly though, this music, though intermittently interesting, isn't sharp enough to keep interest.
Your Money;moon made brings together pulsing and throbbing electronic space noise, with chugging melancholy punked meets arty guitar craft & forays into more subtle & surreal soundworlds. All making a rather intriguing and often dangerous intergalactic musical trip.
This double disk set shows the different sides to these Australia purveyor's of doom; going from coarse, brutal and grinding doom with black metal edges, to spacey overloaded with noise/improvised tendencies, to grim harmonic rock/ country elements, to more expansive, mystical & atmospheric dark ambient side roads.
Under the Balcony is a memorable collection of quirky and inventive electronica that slides between dance floor friendly beatscapes, retro electro washers, and theatricals. Mixing in organic elements like acoustic guitars, Steel drums, slap bass, etc.
Katamine is mainly a one man band starring Israeli Assaf Tager, a session man who has lent his guitar playing talents to recordings by Elliott Smith, Beth Gibbons and Moloko. Lag, Katamine's debut, claims to include a band consisting of Uri Frost on guitar, Haggai Freshtman on drums and Zoe Polanski, credited with vocals, bass and casio. Oddly enough, only three of this disk's ten songs sound like anything more than Assaf Tager playing solo on vocals and guitar. Drums or bass are not evident at any time. The only evidence of additional noises or instrumentation are the backing vocals by Zoe Polanski on Winschester Gun, and subtle noises on Where the Ambulance Rolls and No Wonder We're Damaged.
Sart is the debut of the Norwegian duo of Jostein Dahl Gjelsvik and Rune Sagevik, otherwise known as Pjusk. Recently Taylor Deupree's 12k label has pushed away a bit from austere minimalism toward a more organic, natural sound. Since a non-specific form of music meets such criteria, many possiblities are opened up by such a philosophy. Unbound by genre, there's a lot of freedom for the artists' imagination to roam.
Valcanus 68 is the audio equivalent of a trip through someones unfolding mind and thier descent into insanity, it's made up of all manner of grainy,worn and battened music; sampled and played, along with beatscapes and a host of sound and dialogue samples.
Godheadscope is a project by Matt Rosin, who has also worked as Cindervoice and with Dead Raven Choir. A City Out of Sight is the full length debut for Godheadscope, and it's a hefty slab. It's taken me quite some time to be able to review this, partly because I wasn't exactly sure how to process the material. It is without a doubt an original work, which forges its own territory.
Sifantin Och Mörkret is a captivating mixture of playful often child like electronics, folk, rock & quirky sounds collages. Managing to sound cute, dramatic, sorrowful & distressing often in the same song-all making a heady audio adventure where you don’t know what you’ll hear next.
Signal finds all the mainstaysof the raster-noton label/collective; Olaf Bender, Frank Bretschneider & Casten Nicolai,working together to form an Abstract/ minimalist electronic supergroup. Robotro their second album finds them offering up some of their most rewarding, consistent and atmospheric work- to come from either of the three or the label as a whole.
Syk Asfalt takes the listener into a strange wet and grey world, where slowly decaying buildings appear out of rancid fog, black spores trails and growths creep over ever surface and the stagnant air is always heavy with dark threat. And it just carries on rain and raining with in this world, imagine if Bela Tarr decided to do a grim horror film this is the audio equivalent of it.
The Garden of Forking Paths is this Austrian jazz pianist first album offering up 8 slices of edgy and complex jazz improvising with help from fellow jazz improvisers like the excellent trumpeter Scott Tinker, ken Edie on drums and Philip Rex on double bass .
North Star Deserter is a lyrically sharpe and clever collection of memorable singer/songwriter songs, that go from folky to country strum to rocking bass led & string lined to the more experimental edges, but never moving too far away from there song base.
Wolf's Milk finds Mr Menche dipping into prime eerier, gothic and hypotonic drone waters. With three long & untitled tracks each sourced from a different sound source- with very little of a noise attack, this concentrates on smothering and grim atmospherics.
This is Murcof third album and it finds this electronica cinematic painter’s composing with recordings of classical instruments, Which in theory is an interesting idea that should deepen and make his work more epic, but sadly in reality it feels rather hit and miss affair.
"Astilbe Rubra plays as a collection of ideas/directions I plan to study and explore. Ultimately I wish to share with listeners my methodology and contributions to the field of sound design and composition", says Nicholas on the infosheet.
The central theme of "I am the Resurrection and the Light", the songcycle that makes up a large part of The Blind Spot is drugaddiction and loss, and it's a eulogy for friends of Redfearn who lost their lives battling an addiction. Accordingly, the music mostly is melancholic, if not depressed.
This untitled album brings together three often sinister and edgy, but always hypnotic improvised drone/tone shifting pieces by Ellen Fullman; playing his own constructed long string instrument and Sean Meehan playing snare drum with cymbals.
Plants and Hearts is 21 minute ep that easers the listener into calming almost weightless waters of ambient guitar drone audio soothing.
It's a small world after all, we find here a project with Swedish singer/songwriter Sara Lunden joining forces Ukranian electronic artist Andrey Kiritchenko for a 25 minute EP.
On For, their fourth (wink, wink) album, every song is a dedication. For musicians, graphic artists and/or personal friends. How exactly this influences the music of course not always clear, but it doesn't really matter.
Videniya (The Visions) takes you soaring over vast forests, down deep dark green valleys and falling through nature engulfed ruins , It feels like the soundtrack to when nature has taking it’s planet back and few humans roam the landscape, where animals graze undisturbed and natural spirits roam the woodland glades and the tallest evergreens.