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‘Brightwood’ is a new horror movie by director Dane Elcar which was released on 21st March across streaming platforms in the UK. This follows a successful US release.
Frighteningly futuristic and dark, dreary dreams make up the concept of Venomous Echoes' Writhing Tomb Amongst the Stars, now coming to vinyl courtesy of I, Voidhanger. While death and rebirth is a common theme, Writhing covers this with a terrifying twist: being ripped apart and reassembled by tentacles night after night. Like Lovecraft and Geiger working together on a grim Groundhog Day, Writhing puts the vile vision out for all to ponder and sets it to fast and spacy blackened death metal.
The Panther Women is a glorious late 60’s Mexican cinematic feast of masked superhero wrestling action, coffin creaking ‘n’ mist swirling gothic vibes, and detective ‘n’ gangster pulp. With side orders of female wrestling, lumbering-to-crawling creature feature, and a hell of a lot of campy ‘n’ creepy fun. Here from Powerhouse is a recent release of this wonderful crossbred- coming as either a UHD or Blu-Ray. Both feature a new 2k scan of the film, a commentary track, a few other extras, and an eighty-page inlay book.
INRI is a single forty-minute-long work that blends together constantly shedding/ chalky wall noise crunch with set/ brightly simmering ambience. It’s a work that nicely brings together searing & glowing ringing in an engagingly rewarding manner.
Gentrifier Genocide is an just under hour & a half journey in battering ‘n’ baying walled noise from this Cincinnati, Ohio-based project. The digital release takes in three around the twenty-eight-minute ‘walls’ with each being as crudely weathered & unforgiving as the next.
Composed and originally performed in 2019 in Vienna for the Wiener Modern festival, Ingrid Schmoliner's MNEEM is a feat of endurance and minimalist precision, interpreted by the work's author in front of an audience for over an hour! Written for prepared piano, MNEEM is a pre-digital loop: a circular phrase played by Schmoliner's right hand, while the right makes percussive work of the lower register. As with much in the post-Steve Reich orbit of new music/minimalism, the discrete separation of coordinated tasks and notes creates the possibility for an acute appreciation of the subtlest nuances within the looped arrangement of single notes. Without the benefit of a larger ensemble or any electronic device, Schmoliner's playing is breathtaking. Becoming author and interpreter in one, Schmoliner manages to isolate her limbs and hands in a manner as surgical as the steady march of MNEEM's constrained tonal vocabulary. There is no mistaking the recording and playing for anything less than analog and acoustic, with all of its restless movements and unavoidable flaws.
VIPCO (Video Instant Picture Company) were founded in the late 1970s by a man named Michael Lee. During this first incarnation of the company, they would release a host of controversial movies on VHS in the UK market, including such legendary titles as Driller Killer, Shogun Assassin, The Bogeyman and probably most contentiously of all, the strong uncut version of Lucio Fulci’s undead epic Zombie Flesh Eaters. After the introduction of the Video Recordings Act in 1984, all UK VHS releases needed to be certificated by the BBFC (British Board of Film Censorship as they were at the time, Censorship has since been dropped in favour of the less controversial sounding Classification). Lee and his company were one of those most affected by this change and many of his titles were no longer deemed legal in the UK, the BBFC would cut or ban outright certain titles that had been released by VIPCO causing a whole world of trouble for Lee and many of the other distributors operating in the UK at the time.
Sylvaine is the solo project of Norwegian/American Kathrine Shepard, who debuted the project in 2014. This new release Eg Er Framand is her first in a couple of years, containing six tracks three- six minutes in length for an EP-sized release.
Sitting somewhere between off-kilter/ uneasy ambient, and warbling ‘n’ baying electro improv Autumn In The House Of Usher is a three-track three-inch CDR from Vancouver-based Eli Wallis.
Here’s a three-inch self-titled CDR that offers up three tracks worth of noise craft- which sits on the gasp of receptively shearing ‘n’ shredding textured noise, and walled noise.
East Coast vs West Coast is an American staple. Whether it's This is Boston, Not L.A., Biggie vs Pac, or Celtics vs Lakers, it is undeniable. With this disparate approach to life, art, and thought looming, NY artist Stuart Argabright took his time in L.A. as a reference point to start a new work. While helping to produce a mix tape with Stefan Scott Nelson, the two took some vocal tapes that Stuart had brought, slowed them down, and then added whatever they felt to capture certain L.A. vibes. An iconic place even for those that have only seen it in cinema, LA Drones captures the sunshine, traffic, freedom, oppression, and all that L.A. has to offer in between
The use of misleading titles is an old trick within exploitation cinema, and this early 1970s film is a prime example of this trope. The brutally munching fish of the title don't appear until an hour into the film- and when they do it’s fleeting. Yes, we do get two Piranha-based deaths- but these happen towards the end of the film, and again are fleeting. What the film is a jungle adventure- later- thriller, which finds a female photographer, her womanizing brother, and a guide going into the Venezuela jungles- coming across a cruel & callous hunter. Here from Cheezy Movies is a region-free DVD release of this somewhat forgotten/ lost film.
From Sailor Suit, Machine Gun and Love Hotel director Shinji Somai comes Typhoon Club(1985), a Japanese coming-of-age tale which follows a small group of students who find themselves locked in their school while one hell of a storm rages around them. However, that storm could never match the tempest of adolescent romance, grief and emerging self-revelations which are taking place among the students.
From Second Run, here we have a three Blu-Ray boxset celebrating the early 1960s work of Polish director Jerzy Skolimowski- he stands as one of the key figures in the country's new wave cinema. His work is alive with visual depth and creativity- using conventional genres such as spotting dramas, romantic melodramas, and character studies as starting points to build his subtle satirizing & surreal film world around. The set brings together three feature lengths and a selection of early shorts.
Sealed in a thirty-five-minute shot of pelting, baying, and rapidly rolling HNW brutality from this French project- which focuses all of its work on fetish sexual practices, and dead/ decaying bodies
From late last year 59: No Input Wall finds this French walled noise project in an ANW setting- offering out a droning and windswept wall that slides in at the twenty-two-minute mark
Anabasis is the 4th full-length album from Italian’s Nihil Impvlse. It’s a six-track affair- where the sound sits in a decidedly brooding industrial-bound drone place, with the release working as the perfect soundtrack to surveying shadowy & bleak pictures of war's aftermath.
Split between pieces written for voice and field recordings, Swedish composer Marta Forsberg returns to her native Härnösand for Sjunger För Varandra, originally a commission from the northern Swedish town where the recordings took place. The elegant release is spread over four parts, sandwiched between an intro and outro, coming in at a mere 17 minutes. Without much prior knowledge of the tunnel where the performances were captured, the four central parts appear to have been divided equally between composition and recorded ephemera. It is not immediately clear what significance the tunnel has for Forsberg, but the inclusion of her brother as the sole vocal performer surely speaks to the familial significance of returning home for Sjunger För Varandra, which translates, I am told, to "Singing for Each Other." The gerundive is instructive here, for it places the emphasis on the act or performative dimension of the pieces, rather than hinting at anything like a fixed entity or score.
‘The New Boy’, a new Australian drama set in the 1940s regarding faith & clash of cultures. It was directed by Warwick Thornton, and stars Cate Blanchett- it's now showing theatrical in the UK and the Republic of Ireland.
The Stargazer’s Assistant is the one-man electronic project of visual artist/ percussionist David. J. Smith (founding member of Guapo and member of the Holy Family, Miasma and the Carousel of Headless Horses and the Amal Gamal Ensemble) a multi-instrumentalist with a penchant for Avant Garde prog sounds and German Kosmische drones. Alongside Smith on this release are regular collaborators David J Knight (Danielle Dax, Arkkon and UnicaZürn) on guitar and FX, Michael J York (Coil, The Utopia Strong, and The Witching Tale), and Antti Uusimaki (Panic DHH, Circle and Tindersticks) on pipes, FX and field recordings.
Here’s a pro package from Kairos, which you’d expect as an esteemed classical label, with a CD digipak featuring an extensive booklet neatly fixed inside. The Australian composer Lim presents, yes, three pieces here: ‘Sappho/Bioluminescence’, ‘Mary/Transcendence after Trauma’, and ‘Fatimah/Jubilation of Flowers’, all performed by the WDR Sinfonieorchester, featuring soprano Emily Hindrichs, and conducted by Cristian Măcelaru. The booklet explains that the Annunciation Triptych ‘draws a broad line from the Greek poet Sappho to Mary, the virgin Mother of God, to Fatima, the daughter of the Prophet Muhammad, founder of Islam. The composer considers the stories of these three women as comments on ecological, spiritual and transcultural issues of our times
Patrick is a low-key 1970s blend of medical drama, thriller, with the odd touches of horror and sci-fi. It focuses on the relationship between a nurse & in a coma young man- who seemingly has psychic powers. It’s a key film in the Ozploitation genre- been presented here by the fine folks at Powerhouse is a new release of the film. It comes as either a UHD or Blu-Ray disc- I’m reviewing the latter. Both versions feature a new 4k scan of the film, three different versions of the picture, a good selection of archive extras, and a few new things.
Here’s a two-CD set celebrating the 1970’s work of Kingstone, Jamaica-born producer Lloyd Charmers. The first disc takes in 1975’s Peace And Love – Wadadasow- which features four lengthy, jammed & hash smoked out slices of Roots Reggae. The second disc is a twenty-two-track collection entitled Fire Burning Charmers In Dub 1973-1976, which brings together Charmer-produced/ played on dub tracks- all of which have never been available on CD beforehand.
Hand-Held Hell: The Outbreak of Homemade Horror is a wonderfully informed and truly dedicated look at the world of micro-budget horror- be it SOV, digital, or general captured on less-than-a-shoe-string fare. The nearing four-hundred-page tome takes in not only the history/ growth of the micro-budget horror genre, but forty-four in-depth reviews, and twenty-two well-questioned interviews with some of the film's creators.