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Non Toxique Lost stand as one of the lesser-known, though still important bands to appear from Berlin’s early 80’s industrial scene. 026750,9 is the bands thirty fifth album, which appeared in the latter part of last year on Klanggalerie as a CD.
Here we have a collaboration between two long-active German electro-acoustic soundmakers, Asmus Tietchens and Achim Wollscheid. Apparently, the recording was found in a drawer in Tietchen's apartment last year, and it dates back some twenty years. What we have here is a single hour-long track, based around a droning yet often highly glitching soundcraft.
Parajekt is the Austrian duo of Bernhard Hammer & Matija Schellander, who create a sort of combination between the distant past and cutting-edge modernity, sequencing the kind of primitive rhythms once played communally on skin drums with analogue electronic devices and samples, for a kind of tribal IDM. This self-titled album is a substantial forty-one minutes, with eight tracks.
Ekin Fil, the nom de plume of Istantbul–based Ekin Üzeltüzenc, has been composing threadbare ambient works since at least the early tens, characterised by a heady mixture of field recordings, siren vocals, and reverb–laden piano. The cocktail is not unfamiliar to those who turn to Kranky label artists – Liz Harris, Tim Hecker, Adam Wiltzie, and so on – for their fix. While the elements and their gossamer dressing might be known quantities, there is something absent from Bor Boreas, Ekin Fil‘s latest offering. Not absent as in missing or lacking; absent like a void. The center has dropped out, and no amount of framing will bring it back.
The Incident is a dense, taut and tense example of the walled noise form with unsettling underbelly. The thirty-minute track from Cincinnati’s Whore’s Breath managers to create an effectively airless & uneasy vibe, which prevails throughout the track's length.
A Tapestry Made Of Angel Flesh blends thick ‘n’ crudely tumbling walled noise, with a sinisterly warbling ‘n’ wavering ambient undercarriage. This twenty-minute digital EP is the first release from this Alabama-based project.
Untitled Pig Collection brings together five slices of walled noise from this Old Town, Maine project, which themes all of its releases around pigs, boars, or hogs.
From 2024, The Devil's Wasteland is a zero-budget post-apocalyptic thriller/ horror. It features very cheap/ often gore-free effects, bad-hamming-it-up acting, and a fair bit of mouth frothing punch-up. Here from SRS Cinema is a very bare bones DVD release of the film.
Moljebka Pvlse are an experimental music group from Stockholm, Sweden, featuring Hara Alonso (piano), Isabel Fogelklou (Harp), Mathias Josefson (Electronics) and Kris Kuldkepp (Bass Guitars). They work with both acoustic and electronic instruments, as well as field recordings and found sounds, to create dark and haunting minimalist soundscapes. The band have released over a dozen albums on a variety of different labels; this is their third full-length album release for Zoharum Records.
Now here’s a film with an interesting/ unique concept-could a car run on human blood?. Ferat Vampire is an early 80’s Czech film which sits somewhere between conspiracy thriller, dark comedy, PR satire, and body horror. Here, from the fine folks at Severin, is a Blu-ray release of the film, featuring an HD print and around five hours of extras.
Dead Sleep is an early 1990’s Australian blend of medical melodrama and mystery thriller. It stars Linda Blair as a psych nurse who uncovers suspicious deaths. The film is based on the real-life case of Harry Bailey- a New South Wales psychiatrist/ medical administrator, who was linked to the deaths of eighty-six patients during the early 60’s and late 70’s. Here from Severin is a region A release of the film.
If 2024's Megaliths allowed Llyn Y Cwn to give these mysterious stone circles a voice, 2025's reworking, Megaliths In Dub, has given them motion. Reworking his field recordings to unlock the hidden beats within, this alternative view of the magic and mystery of prehistoric stone circles furthers our fascination and exposes even more of this unseen and unknown world. Obviously, these sounds are more manipulated than the original sources for Megaliths, but the re-interpretation adds another dimension to the enigma, another view, and a different retelling of the story. While Megaliths plays like grim epic poems recalling the past, Megaliths In Dub is like the graphic novel, quickly moving, charged up, and repackaged for those looking for an alternative experience.
V/H/S/Halloween is the 8th in the V/H/S/ found footage anthology series. As its title suggests, all six of the stories have an All Hallows' Eve setting and/or theme. Moving between a spectral-sourced frizzy drink, a deranged children's home, weird goings on/ murder in a medium’s house, a macabre alternative candy reality, a child killer stalking during Halloween, and a family-made haunt that suddenly becomes very real. Here from Acorn Media is a Blu-ray release of the film, taking in a commentary track and a few other extra
Atrophy is nearing an 80-minute ride into thick, dense, and truly hope-killing walled noise from this Hungarian project. This is an example of the world around you blocking noise, when you just want to get away for an hour or so, into constantly churning sonic nihilism.
Here’s a thirty-minute slice of bass-affected and lightly textural skittering walled noise, with a decidedly murky aquatic feel. Vacant Align is a Wisconsin-based project, and going from their Bandcamp, they been active since October last year, with three other releases to their name.
A project that has been releasing works for twenty-three years, Craig Varian’s 400 Lonely Things (co-member Jonathan McCall passed away in 2020) should be a haunted household name when it comes to the “pagantronic” and “ghost ambient” genres of electronic music. 400 Lonely Things is self described “Rustic Ambient Psychedelia” and “Analogue Folk Dronescape,” an amalgam of decayed samples, ethereal electronics, and detourned field recordings that conjure up a visionary, eldritch place that exists at the crossroads of hauntology and folk horror. Varian creates a sonic cosmos that fuses past, present, and future sonorities, a cinematic effect that plunges the listener into an uncanny atmosphere. While 400 Lonely Things’ recordings are indeed “hypnotic,” the music is actually quite complex and evocative, a diffuse layering of sounds, ambiances, moods, and effects.
She Thinks She The State Department is a wonderful, unbalancing, and disconcerting collaboration between Chicago’s PBK, and Massachusetts prime cassette tape-scaper Howard Stelzer. It’s a five-track CD album, which blends disorienting textural fumblings, stuck avant-jazz bayings, off-kilter droning’s, and a general feeling of disqueting-to-unhinged sound-scaping.
Wilt is an Illinois-based project that blurs the boundaries between dark ambience, uneasy field records, and low-key/ brooding noise texturing. The projects been active since the late 90’s, with over one hundred and twenty releases to date. Mold The Earth is a CD album release from 2024, taking ten tracks.
The Fourth State is a long-form, evolving drone work from Sweden’s Andreas Rönnquist. It runs at just over the fifty-two-minute mark and features some rewarding shifts/ sonic developments.
Vampire Zombies…from Space is a cult 2024 retro sci-fi/horror/comedy film from writer/ director Michael Stasko (Boys Vs. Girls, Things to Do and The Bird Men). The film stars Troma legend Lloyd Kaufman (The Toxic Avenger, Troma’s War and Class of Nuke ‘Em High), Judith O’Dea (Night of the Living Dead, The Pirate and October Moon), Jessica Antovski (The Unbelievable with Dan Ackroyd, The Dread and Dreamcrusher), Craig Gloster (Depraved Mind and The Eternal Present) and Oliver Georgiou (Helltown, Cam_Girlfriend and The Haunted Museum).
Here’s a recent release from this highly prolific Tampa, Florida based walled noise project. The single thirty-five-minute track has a decidedly unsettling looping quality about it, which really does burn deep into ones head/ psyche.
The Eyes Of Ages is a twenty-minute track, which merges thick droning & rattling wall noise, with an eerier/ unsettling undercarriage of ambience/ woozy pitch shift. This is a NYC based project that’s been active since the late 2010’s
Only Pain Remains True is a thirty-minute slice of crudely caustic 'n' jaggedly jarring walled noise nastiness from this new anonymous project.
With a title like Crash And Burn, you might be expecting a road-based action film- featuring some form of vehicle in chases ‘n’ chaos. But in reality, it’s an early 90’s sci-fi film, finding a group of characters stuck inside an industrial facility/ TV station, where a deadly synthetic human/android is hiding out. The film's most notable cast member is Bill Mosely( The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 2, The Devil's Rejects). Here from Full Moon Features, as either a Blu-Ray or DVD, the release is a reissue of the film. I’m reviewing the former, which takes in a new director/ actor commentary track and a few other extras.