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Teenage Hallucinations collects together the early work of US noise master John Wiese. The most amazing thing is that some of this work dates back to the age of fourteen. Even these tracks have a devastating and rewiring-of-the-brain tendency to them, while most fourteen-year-olds were thinking about first dates and how to get booze, Wiese was creating these amazing body jolting noise structures.
Something’s are worth the wait, the eleven years wait for The Drift, was worth the wait. From the outset it’s clear this can only be a Scott Walker album. It’s strange alien beauty ringing from every note, this is music to puzzle, to amaze, to get lost in. Like all great albums it will take many listeners to get proper handle on it. To understand all the reference points, even then it will still be unknown.
Son Memorise is Luc Ferrari’s first post-humous release. This the second in a trilogy of Ferrari Cds to be released by Sub Rosa contains three works spanning a period of twenty-five years.
Silva is the first proper release from Norwegian label Miasmah, and it’s a wonderfully treat for the ears. The compilation has a richly dark air throughout, all of the artists to some extent or another mix organic instruments with electronics. Surprisingly enough for compilation there’s not one duff track here and it seems to flow as a whole, making a wonderfully lush atmospheric journey, from begining to end.
‘Colourful’ would be the wrong term to describe the career of Japanese psychedelic bard Keiji Haino. Everything the man does, as diverse as it is, comes from very dark spaces. These two liverecordings on this double CD, its full title being Reveal’d to none as yet - an expedience to utterly vanish conscienceness while still alive, are no exception.
The Refusenicks, a trio around percussionist John Hollenbeck, had an inside joke going on about a fan named Claudia who they met at their first show. Her name kept lingering among the members of the band resulting in some sort of collective fantasy. The band fell apart and Hollenbeck went on to form a quintet. Searching for a name Hollenback wanted to tribute his old band (among other reasons) and named it the Claudia Quintet.
Ergosphere is a serpentlike beast of an album that twists and turns through complex beatscapes, noise eruptions, machine-chilled melodies and later on hazy ambient flourishes. But beware: like all serpents, it has fangs and will often ripping into you brain with caustic gusto.
The Creep slides out of your speakers and ripples under your skin. It’s eerier bass tones and sinister ambience, leaving bruise like hand prints on your mind, long after it’s finished. Also your listening space seems so much smaller, and your eyes home in on shadowy details of your surroundings.
Classic Erasmus Fusion is a kaleidoscopic, psychedelic and surreal masterpiece. It’s rich with dada humour, sinister implications, and general twisted oddness. Sounding quite unlike anyone else, but touching down musically and sound wise in lots of different places.
Honestly, I'm not one to romanticise the eighties. In many ways it sucked big time, but you can't discard an entire era and I have the proof right here. People may claim it was a horrible time for music but here I like to inform about a band that made their best material in the period.
Helios second album Eingya offers up eleven heart warming and mellow slices of electronica, met by lush organic instrumentation. Nice enough to take home to meet you mum. The melodies soothing and calming, the beats nicely head nodding.
Feu Thérèse debut album mixes experimental rock with elements of musique concrete, noise and sound art in an interesting and enjoyable manner.
Night of the Bloody tapes invites you through serrated flesh flaps, into a chocking and distorted world. Where the skies are black, cracked by crimson scars, and there’s just endless twisting and turning of sound molecules in the air, shadowy figures seem appear and disappear into skeletal forest that weeps, down into the strangely maggot flesh coloured earth.
The hurdygurdy is not much used in contemporary music, although it could be more logical than than one could suspect. It’s a common instrument in western European folkmusic where part of the current rocksound (the folkmusic of today) originates from as well. So for a French band to pick it up isn’t as strange as it may seem.
In the history of musique concrete Symphonie Pour Une Homme Seul is widely considered to be ground zero. Although Pierre Schaeffer had been experimenting with the techniques for a few years before it was this landmark work with his then student Pierre Henry that really set the standards for the next decade of research.
The previous album Souvenirs for me heralded the coming off age of The Gathering. The last bits of their ill-fitted rockattempts were shed in favour of a mature, dark and atmospheric popsound.
Brighton based Andrew Liles has been releasing his own brand of surreal sound collage for around ten years now. He has released a wide range of Cd-Rs vinyl singles and full length albums, and Mother Goose Melody or Sonnets for the Cradle is his latest.
Tango Saloon is an album of wonderful accomplished, mellow instrumental music, that users tango’s as a start off point. But mixes in lots of different genres along, the way. Like jazz, easy listening, slightly world music flavour, soundtrack elements and souring snthy work. And it’s all played with such conviction and flare, which makes it the more enjoyable.
This is harsh, even by Merzbow standards. All the safety nets like beats, melody and structure, staying in one places for anytime, have all but gone and we are left with a black encrusted grimy beast of an album.That from it’s first attack doesn’t , let go of your head and throat until near on 4 hours later.
Boris new album Pink is a supped up super charged psychedelic, heads down tribute to 70’s rock, twisting harmonies in to their pumped up rock muscle. In addition displaying some magnificent guitar scape atmospherics. But it’s all has their own identity, stamped on every note.
Whitehouse are all about intimidation, both musical and lyrical. This is not music to chill out to or unwind to, this is the audio equivalent of having your head held under water, then been let up for a few breaths and down you go again, bewildering and suffocating .
Something very strange this way comes, you see Sudden infants take on sound is macabrely devilish, leaving the listener wonder if they should laugh darkly or get creeped out. They use noise as a spring board, but touch down in lots of other genres, odd celectronica, and eerier soundtrack, punked and noised up rock, sinister ambience, and Musique concrète.
You may be wonder what a review of a pop album, Is doing here?. Well firstly Prince has always had an inventive and often experimental take on pop. And secondly he’s released some of the most inspired and influential music around, over his long career.
Machinefabriek’s Marijun dwells very much in streached and repetitive piano tones, that make up droning and slow moving canvas of sound, that drift into clouds of melancholy cords, often smudged by glitchness and other noise.