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Musical or sonic tributes to artists have always been hit & miss, let alone trying to do a sound tribute to someone such as Japans Genre shifting director Takashi Miike- who’s tattled most type of film you can think of be it: gangster, horror, comedy, musically, social satire, fantasy. So how does this double disk stand up? Well on the whole it’s enjoyable enough, but it only really tattles one side of Miike visual pallet i.e. the more shocking, with nods towards some of his more surreal touches here and there.
I’ve really tried to like Solace in sore hands, as I so much enjoyed the bands first released ep, which seemed to be bringing something slightly different to the country come rock pop genre. Sadly their full length just feels rather washed out and all too familiar. You can hear traces of so many other artists here, with little of their own identity remaining.
Guitarist Richard Pinhas build a reputation with his band Heldon with whom he made a piece called In The Wake Of King Fripp. Pinhas playing with looped guitar indeed resembles the ‘Frippertronics’ that the King Crimson guitarist developed.
Shrine of the post-Hypnotic finds the Starving Weirdos in a more primal, metallic, fiery almost ritual mood. This Also feels like one long trip through their strange sound world, instead of several separate ones that usual make up their albums; this seems to be telling a story, with real thought gone into the track sequencing.
Religious Knives conjure up expansive and dense soundworlds, mixing b-movie like or low grade Tangerine dream synth throb and pierce, slow looped percussive matches, twanging and muddling guitar elements, chanted/mumbled male/female vocals and eastern edges. Coming up with a rather original and distinctive sound like a lost soundtrack to some late 70’s or early 80’s surreal horror movie or bizarre easter influence art-house movie.
The Garden of forked paths is san-Francisco sound and drone artists’ first full length solo album, though he has released stuff with post-rock/psychedelic project Tarentel and the mainman behind the excellent Root Strata label.
Stone Tablet is a strange tripped-out and psychedelic trip into groove locked, muilt layered kraut rock. Mixing in discordant and bent elements, battered guitar heroics, synth drug hazes and all manner of audio freak-out and sound psychedelics.
Spider Smile finds this German electronic experimental duo bending their sound into more pop like angles, also adding in more organic and acoustic elements like mouth organ, Obe and banjo. All to make an album that on the surface is more approachable and tuneful, but still having an avant ear for sound use and repeated plays unveil more quirky and odd edges to the songs.
This is a double sided 20th anniversary edition of this classic album. On the first side theres the untouched original album and the other side is a 50 min documentary about the albums making and its influence.
With Transmissions(voices of objects and Skies) Roden creates this beautiful soothing and subtle developing drone soundworld, which akin to floating in some strange star system. Where objects and sounds rotate towards you from the quiet blackness.
Majdanek Waltz are a Russian language mix of beautiful/chilling dark folk, bleak sawing and lush classical air, gloomy drone tendency, ragged industrial noise elements and the odd hints at more rocking moments. O proishozhdenii mira (About World's Birth)is their 4th full length album and is quite satisfying mix of sounds.
Deep rumblings open Aphotic Leech, Nathan Michael's debut cd. It's a preparation for a trip through dark spaces.
Desolate North is an impressive heady, dense and mysterious forest bound mix of funeral doom, clear almost post rock guitar work, folk elements, bird and woodland sounds, and moss covered ambience. This is Celestiial first full length with a self releashed cdr back in 2004, & for a debut it surprisingly focused and enjoyable though out.
This is a rather bizarre split 3” cdr, with one track from improvised noise cum- jazz drumming chaos from uk project Tetsuo. Follwed by three noisy and nearly falling apart Blondie Covers from Japanese Blondie tribute band Brondie.
I think Beip's guitar, drums, noise and vocal overload tribute to the male member. Will have most men crossing their legs in fear as to what she wants to do to our bits. As she squeal, shouts and bellows over the thundering and seething stop-start noise construction.
Heavy Rain Returns is a gruelling, electro buzzing, doom laded, limb-ripping vocal extreme trip into vein barring and sweat ‘n’ Blood spiting noise. That managers to sound extreme, dangerous and full of grimy atmospherics.
This is the first new releasers of the year from the excellent 12k family of labels, finding once more a mix of finely honed mix of electronic and organic instrumentation the label is know for. But Drape adds charming pop like edges, heady with innocent wonder of Moskitoo oriental at times child-like vocals.
Together with cats brings together some of this blossoming 19 year old singer songwriters best tracks recorded over the last year. Set primal in folk genre, but weaving in soulful blues traces, aged pop and sparing use of electronics on a few tracks.
Axolotl make a mix of crude drone music/sound haze scapes, utilizing guitar and all manner of other sound elements to create vast walls of harmonic sound that swirl and ebb around the listener like psychedelic fog. Memory Theatre brings together tracks from several out of print cdr, vinyl only releasers and compilations.
Selenoclast Wolves is split neatly in tow, the first half is all new material very much in a dark/ difficult avant folk state and claiming to be his last acoustic material. The second half of the disk is reissue and remastering of early Lesbian Corpse Wolves, which is probably as approachable to normal ears as Smolken has got with Dead Raven choir or his other projects, introducing more traditional/ tuneful melodies and sang female vocals.
What Bertilsson gives us with Paramount is a reality bending mix of beautiful recorded envormental sounds, drones, musical momments and odd textural noise and a real feeling of been in side some odd reality.This is Bertilsson’s first work under his own name before he released under the name of Sons of Clay.
I’ll have to admit I’d rather lost interest in Type O Negative after the disappointing World come Down, it seem their magic musically touched had slipped away. So it was with great interest I read the press release for Dead again claiming this was a return to ala Blood Kissers/ October Rust. I’m happy to report this does live up to the hype and is really rather good and solid album. I guess for the most part focusing more on the melodic, textured feel of their sound, but still with some nice heaviness in places.
What God doesn’t Bless,…. finds Sound sculpturer Connor Bell recontextualizing and morphing the work of jazz musician Eric Dolphy, to make a strange droning triped-out hallucinogenic audio soup. That falls somewhere between ambience, jazz, psychedelic rhythmic led freak outs and lost in strange nursery rythem woodiness.
There's No 666 in Outer Space is Hella's first album as a quintet. It's also their first album to feature vocals on most tracks (courtesy of Aaron Ross). Hella's music is a little difficult to explain, but suffice it to say there's a lot going on at once. They're very talented musicians who are not afraid to showcase their talents at every available moment. This makes listening to their music very interesting for sure, but it also makes for sensory overload at times. You have to be in the mood to be pummelled relentlessly at every turn by this music. That said, this album holds up pretty well. Just make sure you have a couple cups of coffee before listening.