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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.
Off the map finds Hwyl Nofio Main man Steve Parry and one of his co sound conspirators in Hwyl Nofio Fredrik søegaard creating an album of disorientating, melting, noisy and alien sinster guitar based sound worlds. That go from been bizarrely meditife, discordantly beautiful to down right wrong sounding and reality bending.
Maaaa are a Russian noise project that here consantrate on two tracks of harsh screeching and metallic dragging, glass cracking, and junk yard crashing mayhem. This was original released on Triangle micro label in a edition of 20, here it’s brought back into garish violent live by kovorox sound- in a rather nice half size lime green dvd case, with orange/black outlay cover.
A total slitting of Throats finds Sam McKinlay Aka The Rita mixing and layering together his own work along with that of Mania, Treriksröset, Sewer Election, and The Cherry Point into wall of unforgiving dense noise. Making just over an hour of the finest most punishing and unforgiving ‘wall noise’.
Psyche nomine offers up a collection of slow moving electro beat landscapes weaved with horror soundtrack/dark melodies tinged synth work, minor piano cord atmosphere and mumbled and echoed vocals. Hardly a revelation of an album, but it does slip by darkly enjoyable enough.
I’ll have to admit I’ve been rather underwhelmed by previous Burn Star Core I’ve heard. sure there where some interesting ideas, but somehow it never seemed to gel quite right or the ideas where streached out far too long with little growth. Blood Lighting 2007 is much better than I expected far from perfect, but pretty damn good- it feels more focused, atmospheric and strange in an interesting, not in annoying way.
Ben Cooper has previously recorded with Alex Cane as a part of the duo Electric President. This is his second full length solo recording, released under the Radical Face moniker, and the first for Morr Music. Ghost is a well recorded album, and it has an intimate feel which draws you in with the first couple of tracks.
Strjon is Arve Henriksen third album that once more finds him mixing his talented and creative trumpet playing with electronics and other instrumentation. To create a textural and emotional varied collection of tracks, which are tuneful and inviting but also dark, textured and experimental.
With Honey Rose Rameses III make a very rural/country fed take on ambient and warming slightly haunted soundworlds. Utilizing guitars, envromental & found sounds and the odd traces of flute and subtle synth like tones.
This second collaboration between Merzbow & Nordvargr finds the pair once more mining the more rhythmic and ambient based facets of each others sounds. The material never really going fully noise bound, it always has traditional rhythmic or musically or ambient washes to keep it in check. Which is a pity if you’re looking for a more traditional Merzbow releashers, but like most of his collaborations it has it's rewarding moments.
Andromache offers up a collection of eastern touched world/modern classical, drone, percussive and mystical work-out tracks all with little surreal/bizarre edged . Making a highly enjoyable and varied near on 30 minutes playing time.