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Weeler is Machinefabriek second non cdr/ ltd release, growing on the promise of last year debut album Marijn, also on Lampse lable. This double disk set shows more depth ,variation and understanding of his growing sound universe which touches down in: electronica, classical air, noise and droning soundtrack elements.
SKKULL is the first sour/ brutal disenchanted sound fruit of this Göteborg noise/ bitter drone collective. It's an album thats built for ultimate discomfort and torture, never really becoming too seething or overloading, this concentrates on being jarring and ill-at-easy.
This is a reissue of Sissy Spacek second album with an extra track with the same line-up as the original album tagged on. It finds the project mining the more rhythmic and hazed edges of their overloaded soundworld, coming across more almost of improvised, jazzy take on their work, but don’t get me wrong this is still flesh striping, brutal and intense.
The Hafler trio who is mainly one Andrew M. McKenzie, have made a career out of making some of the most puzzling, confusing and down right odd & hidden agenda art since the mid 1980's. Both with their strange and often jarring soundworlds which fall some were between; noise, ambient/drone,Musique concrete and their often very complexe and arty packaging.
Diagnose: Lebensgefahr invite sthe listener into the demented and padded cell world of the mental disturbed. Coming off sometimes vaguely disturbing and often unintentional funny with it’s mixed of ; stale sanatorium ambience, industrial surgical throb, overdulgent theatrical deep and often affected vocal rant and rave. Also later touching down in neo-classical rhythmic marching flare and the odd almost doom dips in sound.
The Trinity of the non being offers us a trip into dark/murky ocultic and left-hand-path pitch black ambience. Mixing in ritual percussion and black industrlized traces, as the title suggest we're led on our trip by three diffent and dark musical entity’s.
Hibernaculum stands as an enjoyable stop gap before Earth’s next proper full length album. Bringing together over half-an-hour of old tracks re-done in the more country/rock drone format of thier last album Hex. With a second disk documentary of their European tour that lasts near on an hour.
Retkikertomuksia presents us with a collection of eerier, barren and often awarkward avant folk, come improvised sawing and sour droning tracks. That wails and moans of dead winter husks and bitterly cold melancholy cloud-ness nights.
Hidden Ascension lowers you in to a cryptal like throbbing doom state and bleak metallic fuzz of tones. It concentrates more on the grim uncurling texture of the sound above any recognizable or pleasant riffing craft. Feeling like the soundtrack to some ill-fated and ultimately life losing quest into dark subterranean regions. There’s no hope ,light, or anything approachable easy about the grim 40 minutes of sound on offer here.
Fertile finds Japanese audio explorer KK Null tightening up and reign-in his often sprawling sci-fi sound worlds into more atmospheric, shorter and more earth based collection of tracks. That also highlight the more straight forward cinematic tendencies of his work.
Shortwavemusic offer us up 5 tracks of loop based/ drone wonder, Instead of his often longer pieces, we have a few tracks under the ten minute mark. Which are no less atmospheric and mood altering as his longer pieces. All making this an exceptional collection of soundart we’ve come to expect from Mr Basinski.
The name a band chooses sometimes intimates certain pre-conceptions as to the sounds that one expects to hear on their recordings. Knives Ov Resistance surely conjures thoughts of a Genesis P-Orridge fixation, but don’t expect to hear a bit of old school industrial music on Prisca Sapientia.
Super Roots 7 is one of the more approachable and ‘easy’ experiments of the Super roots reissue thus far, but don’t let that put you off, its still damn fine. All the three tracks are based around tuneful/playful melodies linked to rocking percussive matter.
Procer Veneficus rebirth Black metal into a folk format, but not in the discordant jagged form someone like Dark Raven choir has done. This has a timeless lovecaft quality of soothing blackness about it. The eerier fog enshrouded picked and strummed guitars are hovered underneath by distant growling carried on a dead autumns wind.The tracks are also often underplayed by subtle and grim dark ambient/drone touches.
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.