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Hounded by fury paints sour and sickly sinister atmospheres. The tracks creak and bend, yellowed like old newspapers reporting unexplained deaths. This is music to feel uncomforble to, which hovers heavy with the audio sent of death, and ill feeling.
Black magic pond is another searing audio axe in the head, from John Wiese. Hitting you like a tone of bricks from the out set, with it’s whirl wind mix of cut up sound, electronic stenches and singe and neck snapping overloading rhythmic blurs. But as always with a Wiese release you get a top quilty production and an ear for clever and breathing taking noise construction.
The Accidental is Aaron Moore’s first solo album, usually a member of UK dada odd jazz/ folk, what ever you fancy- band Volcano the bear. Here Moore mines more contemplative ambient textures, issue out haunting and droning tones from pianos, vibraphone, cymbal, ect. It all makes for an enchanting, if slightly melancholy journey into sound.
Murder nature is a twisted, often catchy mix of Prog metal, nu metal, edgy piano elements and touches of horror soundtrack elements, the mighty Goblin are brought to mind in a few places.
Mfi-Gbsp is like dropping back through time, to the late 60’s or early 70’s and walking through a desert and coming across a small fire , huddled around the fire are a group of hippies, bashing out this earth rthymic music, the air is high with all sorts of debuses substances and as you get nearer the fire you get sucked deeper into the music.
With this album English jazz outfit Polar Bear rightly earned themselves a Mercury music prize nomination. The award eventually went to Antony and the Johnson’s but it could have easily gone to this superbly English modern jazz record.
Cthonic Rites is a perfecttitle for Moss’s first album, as it takes in two tracks lasting 66.06 minutes, and it's a deeply grim death crawl mix of slow doom and black metal, that call up all that is bellow. From the outset your sucked deep into its black encrusted body, as distorted two ton heavy riffs, slop out of your speakers and demonic growls are admitted, conjuring up great heavy black rain clouds of sound in your listening area.
Otto Von Schirach music has always been about dada, sinister cartoon, digital overload of sound. It makes one feel as if they're stuck inside a audio pinball machine, been bounced back and forth at a blistering speed. In the past I’ve found his stuff too overloading, sure it was clever. But to listening to, it was'nt much fun. But with Maxipad Detention, he seems to have slowed the hectic pace enough, to discern tunes and interesting bits of sound, and as a result this is an enjoyable, if still a bit exhilarating experiences.
Stuart. A Staples, is the lead singer of the Tindersticks. With his second solo album, he offers up enjoyable collection of soulful and country licked adult pop songs , all tinged with his unmistakable sugary brown voice. He has one of those Classic voices, very distinctive and charming in its tone.
Regardless of all globalisation, to find an Australian artist set foot on European ground, figuratively speaking, is a relatively rare occasion. A 20 year old Australian guy has been working on his concept of how the woods would sing for three years and the result is in my CD-player right now.
Earache presents us with the definitive version of this death metal classic, by adding on a 44 minute live show from 1989 tour on DVD, making it a must buy for those who don’t already own it and to those who do own it, well worth buying again.
Touch 25 is an audio and visual celebration of the touch label's 25 years in existence. They are one of the most respected and quality consistent labels in the sound work, ambient, electronics fields.
Live at camp blood is a head melting kaleidoscopic noise trip, clocking in at near the twenty minutes mark. It rarely lets up and you'll leave your initially listening sessions slightly shaken. But like the best noise, over time it develops its own sense of chaotic satisfaction.
Monotheist stands as one of the most devastating, darkly poetic and mournful comebacks ever. It’s staggering how a band that most people wrote off as a lost, near on 17 years ago with the release of Cold Lake, have managed to create such a twisted heavy beast of an album, that still trickles with a eye for dark experimentations. It towers above the listeners like a sinister black monolith, which you must walk the corridors of again and again.
Susumu Yokota is a Japanese electronic musician who’s Sakura and Grinning Cat albums are considered classics of modern ambient composition. Here he collaborates with the UKs Rothko who as with their last release A Place Between enlist the vocal and flute playing talents of Caroline Ross.
Bryter Tystnaden was recorded in abandoned manor house in the Swedish countryside, as a result the sounds of the house have bleed into the recording. Spinform uses the house sounds as rthymic backing and atmospheric haze, for this dusty mix of electronica, haunted piano strains and muffled guitar strumming.
Sinkhole is a creepy half way house between field recording sound work and dark ambiences. The sound elements were recorded at II Pozzo Del Merro near Rome; it’s the world’s deepest Sink hole at a depth of a recorded -392 meters, but it’s believed to be deeper. The resulting album is a captivating highbred, alive with eerier echoes and sound calls from off in the darkness.
Death is no fun. Especially when there's torture involved: maiming, mutilation, rape, horror. And of course blood. And pus. And assorted fluids from genital areas. Preferably it has been rotting so that it got smelly. Or maybe it comes fresh, dripping from the gaping wounds.
My cat is an alien are purveyors of fine space music, utilizing guitar, percussion and space toys (what ever they may be). They managed to create without a synthesizer base, something akin to a more droney early Tangerine dream. Let's say if you enjoyed Tangerine Dream's three early albums, you’ll lap this up. This is wonderful heady, long form space music.
The Once and Future Herds is another Jewelled Antler Collective entity, featuring Donovan Quinn, Loren Chasse and the prolific Glenn Donaldson. For those who have been unaware of the Jewelled Antler ‘phenomenon’ up until now, it is a loose affiliation of artists with a flair for the experimental, centered around Chasse and Donaldson. These hard working cats also run the well-faring Jewelled Antler label, which has released music by the likes of Hala Strana, Uton and Dead Raven Choir.
This great double disk compilation, really highlights, the high quality of material released by uk label cold spring , in the areas of dark ambient, Neo-classical,Neo-folk, industrial, noise and experimental music. One can easily say, from what’s on offer here, that they are one of the top labels,in these musical areas.
Tor Lundvall is an artist living in America who’s output primarily consists of beautiful oil painting depicting lonely scenes of figures in open landscapes. His paintings are incredibly atmospheric and remind me very much of LS Lowry, albeit with a far more desolate and ambient feel to them.Lundvall has also released several albums of electronic music over the last ten years. He began with more pop orientated songs but his recent output has been in a looser more ambient style. Empty city continues in this vein.
With Moonchild ,John Zorn is again invocating the occult and devilry into musical form. But instead of using classical instruments as he has in recent pieces. He’s using Rock instruments to make a suite of songs, which bends and breaks the shackles of rockstructure. It summons up wonderfully intense and sinisterly brooding atmospheres, to revel in again and again.
About two years ago a friend of mine introduced me to the wonderful world of the Finnish experimental scene. Crowded with artists who playfully explore colorful psychedelia, kraut-influenced rock and weird folk in particular, Finland has often been referred to as 'Europe's Japan'.