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Sadist Hunter is a wall noise split bringing together two US projects. Both tracks are around the nine-and-a-half minute mark, and each is as brutally/ ragging as the other. This is a digital release.
Backward Movement is a new release from the Russian wall-noise maker Sergey Pakhomov. It’s a single forty-minute track which highlights Pakhomov's skill for creating detailed, and subtle shifting textured noise matter.
Countdown To Esmeralda Bay is a late-1980s drama/ action film regarding arms deals/ government corruption in a Central American country. It’s one of the few films in this genre helmed by Jess Franco, who is more known for sleazy and horror-bound fare. Here from the folks at Fullmoon Productions is a Blu-Ray release of the film.
Wonderfully chaotic, Kaboom Karavan's latest, Fiasko!, has a quartet bringing together the musical madness through myriad instruments, electronics, and vocal work. Somewhere between free jazz and jam band, this fairly unclassifiable selection of songs piles on the sound while still remaining intriguing and entertaining. Unpredictable but not without purpose, Fiasko! is ten songs of instrumental ingenuity and experimental excess.
Renowned noise musician KK Null continues his ongoing collaboration with experimental/soundscape guitarist Joel Gilardini, the series "Psychic Drones", which began in 2020 with the 1st volume. The 3rd volume is being released now in 2024. With eleven tracks at sixty-five minutes in total, there's a lot of material here, and moving at a more rapid pace than is typical in the world of dark ambient.
Sympathy For The Underdog (1971), a popular yakuza crime movie from Battle Royale (2000) director Kinji Fukasaku here receives a handsome restored Blu-ray release from Radiance as part of their series of disks dedicated to Japan’s Toei studio’s crime films.
In 1968 the BBC screened their latest adaption of Britain’s favourite sleuth, played on this occasion by horror legend, Peter Cushing (Horror of Dracula, Curse of Frankenstein and Horror Express), whilst Nigel Stock (The Great Escape, The Lion in Winter and Cromwell) plays sidekick Dr. Watson. The series featured 16 episodes based on the written exploits of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, however, 10 episodes remain lost. This double disc set from Severin brings together the remaining 6 episodes on Blu-ray for the very first time.
More Human is a collaboration between envelope-pushing Norwegian jazz trio Splash Girl & singer/sound artist Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe. It’s an album that shifts from skewedly atmospheric/soundtracking, onto the warbling ‘n’ wonderingly odd. It’s a release that most certainly takes strange & often unexpected paths, which makes the whole thing wonderful and difficult to peg/ put in one genre/ or sonic place
Mythical River is the ninth studio album from Norwegian fusion/ prog trio Elephant9. It’s a rewardingly varied eight-track affair, which sees the band shifting between floating ambience, more propulsive & urgent, the groovy ‘n’ cascading, and more angular 'n' trippy.
Soldier Blue is an early 1970s US revisionist western with a very troubling/extremely violent twist in its tail- as it recreates the infamous 1864 Sand Creek massacre in Colorado by the U.S. Cavalry on a Cheyenne Indian village. The film largely follows the plight of a loyal/naive soldier and a young white woman who is due to marry a cavalry captain- as they try & to get back to safety after being attacked by Cheyenne. The main of the film charts the pair's love/ hate relationship, and the various obstacles they face- with splatters of violence peppered throughout….but boy wait until you get to the last twenty minutes, as we see the rape, pillaging, and execution of a village of 500 native Americans. Here from Studiocanal’s Cult Classics Collection is a fully uncut version of the film, with a new restoration/ scan of the picture. And a small selection of new and archive extras.
Chihei Hatakeyama appears to have mastered the art of subtle guitar drones, evidenced by earlier releases like Above the Desert. From the arid land to the infinite expanse of water comes Thousand Oceans, a work of ethereal ambience that continues and expands upon Hatakeyama's learned drone work.
It’s Good For The Soul is an eight-CD box set celebrating the considerable talents of Vincent Montana- an American composer, arranger, vibraphonist, and percussionist who is known as the godfather of disco. The set focuses on his mid-70s work with The Salsoul Orchestra- one of the key disco/ soul/ pop Orchestras of the decade.
Revenge Of The Blood Beast is a late 60’s horror film that seesaws between parody/ humour, and atmosphere/moodiness- with a few moments of uneasiness & gore. It’s a film that sits somewhere between being a witch & vampire film- set in a small Transylvania town, where a newly married British couple stop for a night. Here from Raro Video/ Radiance is a new Blu-Ray release of the picture- featuring an HD scan of the film, a few new interviews, and archive extras,
Penance is the third and final film in the serial killer found footage/ pseudo snuff film series August Underground. It appeared four years after the second film Mordum, and while it didn’t amp up the intensity of this film (what could/ does?!). It’s a decidedly grim/ nihilistic picture- which shows the unfolding/ decline of the film’s two killers…along with torture, taunting, bubbling guts gore, and brutal limb sawing. Here from Unearthed Films- is a double disk Blu-Ray & DVD release of the film- bringing together a new commentary track, a host of new extras, and some archive extras.
Here we have a wall noise split- with each party offering up an around twenty-five-minute track. Serbian’s Burial Garden presents us with an example of continual feasting walling with an ambient undercurrent. And Poland’s Olion severs up a slab of searing drone-based fare.
Rising from the depths with their third full length, Seattle's/Portland's Oxygen Destroyer wreak building destroying havoc once again on Guardian of the Universe. Always large and in charge, the quartet stomp and smash forth, thrashing and grinding on their path of destruction, continuing their impressive streak of hard and heavy releases. Three years since their last LP, Sinister Monstrosities Spawned by the Unfathomable Ignorance of Humankind, the big, beastly boys show that they haven't missed a beat and have another city-leveling banger on their hands.
Message From Space is a late 70’s Japanese sci-fi action film blending a grand/heroic score, a planet & princess in need of help, laser gun shoot-outs, acrobatic spacecraft battling, sword fighting, a cute/ quirky droid, and a selection of reluctant heroes. Aside from the sword fighting bit, this may sound a little familiar, and ‘yes’ this was inspired/ informed by the first released Star Wars film- but with a few neat/interesting enough twists added into the mix. Here from Eureka’s Masters of Cinema series is a new Blu-Ray release of the film- featuring a new HD scan of the film, a commentary track, and a few other extras.
The Miracle Fighters is a 1982 Hong Kong martial arts movie directed by acclaimed filmmaker/ martial arts choreographer Yuen Woo-Ping (Drunken Master, Iron Monkey and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon). Woo-Ping’s work on Crouching Tiger is credited with introducing him to mainstream Hollywood cinema where he has since gone on to choreograph the Matrix sequels for the Wachowski’s and the Kill Bill movies for Tarantino. The film stars Yat-Chor Chuen (Shaolin Drunkard, Legend of A Fighter and The Postman Strikes Back), Eddy Ko (The Bride with White Hair, Shaolin Drunkard and The Martian), Shun-Yee Yuen (Shaolin Drunkard, Once Upon A Time in China and Operation Scorpio, he also worked as a stunt man on the Matrix films), Ka-Yan Leung (Last hero in China, The Man with the Iron Fists and Five Shaolin Masters) and Cheung-Yan Yuen (Dragon Inn, Once Upon A Time in China and Shaolin Drunkard).
Here’s a tape from the dependable Ciel Bleu Et Petits Oiseaux Records, packaged in an old school homemade inlay; Morsure, it turns out, is a pseudonym (another pseudonym) for Julien Skrobek, a HNW legend that I’ll presume you have the good taste to know about. Here he gives us four tracks, each amounting to a quarter of a C90, and each a great example of why he is held in high regard. The tape is limited to 12 copies and is still available from the Ciel Bleu site.
Off Balance (aka The Phantom Of Death) is a decidedly wacky & often camp euro-horror/Giallo crossbreed from the late 80s helmed by Ruggero Deodato. It regards a ‘handsome’ & talented pianist played by Micheal York been diagnosed with a rapid ageing disease- who then goes on a killing spree. He’s been tracked by a bewildered-to-ranting police investigator played by the wonderful Doland Pleasence. With the whole thing topped off with Giallo legend Edwige Fenech, as the film's love interest. The film is a blend of hamming-it-up acting, ridiculous/ erratic plotting, arterial spray-bound murders, and a big dose of 80’s camp. Here from Cauldron Films is a Blu-Ray release of the picture- featuring a new/ fully uncut scan of the film, a commentary from genre experts, and an interview with the director.
Confessions Of A Serial Killer was made in the mid 80’s, but due to its similarity to Herny: Portrait Of A Serial Killer didn’t appear until the early 90’s. The film is a blend of police interaction, and flashbacks to the murders/ crimes- with a fairly creepy lead, who does look like the real Henry Lee Lucus, and a few moments of nastiness. Here from the Unearthed Classics series is a new region A release of the film- taking in a commentary track, and a few other extras.
The cycle of the Buck Moon passed a few days ago, and while most of us set our clocks (both internally and externally) to the standards provided by GMT, Harvestman (aka Steve Von Till) follows the lunar cycle, which, unlike the green laser beam in Greenwich, projects its own light over the planet. This subtle but important re-orientation is central to Harvestman's work, which takes its departure from such natural cues as the moon, in evidence on the second instalment of this Triptych series. Like film, music is bound to the forward march of time -sequential or purely abstract – which means that finding a measure for the temporal horizon and structural organization of a given composition is something that might otherwise go unnoticed when we listen. In lieu of a click track or other artificial beat, Harvestman, like Martin Heidegger before him, distinguished between the measurements offered by technical or mechanical time, and those offered by the larger network instantiated by nature and honored by earlier societies. If all of this sounds rather luddite; it is not. Harvestman is well at home in the field of modern production, even if he deploys its media to counter the standard.
'Miniatures in the form of ethereal experiences or sound trinkets; timbres in perpetual morphing from the rawest to the most delicate and the voices, coming from the bowels or from the heavens, interlaced into a single hyper instrument.' There is probably no one better placed to describe their inimitable and unique explorations of sound than avant-improvisational musicians Fanny Meteier and Andrea S Giordano themselves. While the definition of music can be exceptionally broad and all-encompassing, the duo’s first release sorry babe, I have weird legs, is irrefutably focused on sound, Meteier and Giordano using just their voices, electronics and wind instrumentation to create something rather astonishing in its innovation and vision.
Loop Track is an original, at points subtly awkward humour-lined New Zealand psychological thriller from 2022. It’s a decidedly paranoid-fed affair, which finds a very nervous/on-edge man going for a hike convinced that someone or something is following him. The film manages to make the most of both its simple concept & clearly small budget- to create an engaging, tense, at times lightly amusing thriller which blends in subtle action & horror tropes. Here from Arrrow Video is a new Blu Ray release of the film- taking a commentary track, and a good selection of other extras.