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Written and directed by Ali Abbasi (Border, Shelley and The Last of Us), Holy Spider is a 2022 crime thriller shot in Jordan. Abbasi’s previous movie, Border was Oscar-nominated and the director is starting to build a reputation as one to watch. Holy Spider itself was also nominated as the Danish entry at the 95th Oscar ceremony in the Best International Feature Film category. The film stars Alice Rahimi (The Salt of Tears, Balthazar and Narvalo), Soraya Helli (Axing, Sometimes Virtual and Khodahafez Refigh), Mehdi Bajestani (Tatami, Sweet Taste of Imagination and There Are Things You Don’t Know), Zar Amir Ebrahimi (Tatami, Shayda and White Paradise) and first-time actor Diana Al Hussen.
come, Memory: fieldwork is a true labour of love dedicated to the landscape and the interface between the omniscient ancient and what today we recognise as culture. Katrina Niebergal and Bergur Anderson, both interdisciplinary artists, spent two years visiting sacred and, in most cases, Neolithic European sites across Malta, Greece and the UK and as they travelled, not only did they chronicle their trip visually, but they collected accompanying audio recordings. Together these formed the basis of three experimental short films and the scenographic installation come, Memory that was presented in Rotterdam earlier this year.
Appearing a year after Vol 1 here’s A Sight For Sore Eyes Vol 2- which follows on the visual story of The Residents- those great American Avant pop/ satirical genre shifters who are into their 51st year of activity. The hefty coffee table picks up where the first ended in the year 1983 and finishes off in 2004- and once again we get a fascinating blend of imagery & quotes from those who worked with/ respect the project.
Formed in the late 60’s High Tide where a British band, which brewed up a rough ‘n’ ready at times heady mix of heavy psych rock. proto-metal, & prog-rock. Here we have a three-CD boxset bringing together their first two albums- 1969 Sea Shanties, their 1970’s self-titled, and a demo/ studio session disc.
From Wisdom to Hate appeared in 2001, three years after Gorguts daring- at times demented technical/avant-garde death metal masterpiece Obscura. And while the eight-track album wasn’t quite as brutally mind-melting- it melds the sound of Obscura, with the band's first two more formally focused DM albums- for a more easily consumable/ less sanity-twisting ride. Here from MDD Records is a new CD reissue of the album.
Destination Desert is a recent thirty-three-track compilation from the swell folks at Germans Bear Family Records. It focuses on 50’s to 60’s rock and roll/ rockabilly/ related genres with eastern exotic desert instrumental themes & lyrics. And as always with a Bear Family compilation- it’s another wonderful curated & realized collection.
Journey to the Centre of the Earth is a late 70’s Spanish retake on the classic Jules Verne story. It’s a largely charming, and pacy family sci-fi action – with a likeable cast, slightly different twists of the original story, battling sea monsters, a giant gorilla, and a few other encounters. Here is the first release in some time from Severin’s weird & wacky family-focused sub-label Severin Kids- with the region-free Blu-Ray taking in a new scan of the picture, and a few extras.
Traditionally one of the more difficult-to-find giallo classics, 1975s Footprints aka L’Orme, directed by Luigi Bazzoni (The Possessed, The Fifth Cord and Brothers Blue) remains one of the unsung gems of Italian cinema. So it is really good news that Severin have given us what may well be the definitive release of this underappreciated genre classic. The film stars the legendary Florinda Balkan (A Lizard in a Woman’s Skin, Flavia the Heretic and Investigation of A Citizen Above Suspicion), Peter McEnery (Beat Girl, Tales That Witness Madness and Negatives), Nicoletta Elmi (Deep Red, Demons and Bay of Blood), Lila Kedrova (The Tenant, Zorba the Greek and The Night Child) and Klaus Kinski (Nosferatu the Vampyre, Aguirre, the Wrath of God and Death Smiles on A Murderer).
Although no stranger to the scene, Takashi Watanabe released his first album as an artist this November with one. Cutting his teeth with dance music in the London acid house scene, Watanabe worked on hundreds of releases as a sound engineer. After returning to Japan, he began to produce more dance acts before expanding into writing songs and playing his own instruments. This all leads us to 2023 where Watanabe's paean to his new home in Nagano, it's comfort, hospitality, and environment, come to play on a lush, ambient, electronic slab of joy.
Rider is a new two-track release from the long-running US noise collective Black Leather Jesus- which has among its membership names like Richard Ramirez, Sean Matzus, Scott Kindberg. The release comes as either a c60 or digital download- with the sound focus very much on painfully warbling & searingly droned-out noise craft.
A History of Musical Pitch is a three-track journey into very lulling & softly drifting modern classic sonic waters from Amsterdam-based composer Seamus Cater. As the release title suggests all the pieces here revolve around slowly shifting & gently altering pitches.
String Trio is nearing a fifty-minute composition for Volin, Viola, and Cello from Swiss composer Jürg Frey. It’s a work that resounds with both glum forlornness, fraught grey beauty, and foggy ambient glow ‘n’ glide- it perfectly fits the album's cover photo of a mountain scape barely seen through a thick foggy haze.
Meitei, a Japanese sound artist, has delivered the final chapter in his Kofū trilogy, which explores the parallels between site-specific field recordings and the emotional states they engender in his homeland.
Ritual is the third volume in the seemingly open-ended Gathering of the Tribe series. The book series finds lecturer & filmmaker Mark Goodall looking into the mysterious power of sound and tone within music. As with all of the books in the series, Goodall chooses a selection of albums from a decidedly genre/ release date varied pool- with the focus for this Vol, as its title suggests, Ritual based- moving between the obvious & less obvious.
I remember Shackleton's skeletal tribal halftime beats from back in 2008-2010, associated with the dubstep scene at the time by the press even though the actual sound of the music was closer to something like Muslimgauze, containing no wobbles or hip hop influence, indeed virtually no synth at all, comprised almost solely of layers of drums.
From the early 2000’s Lycan Colony is an ultra-low budget, yet wonkily ambitious werewolf-come-action film. With tacky & badly edited 90’s PC graphics/ blood splats, dodgy green screen set-ups, some truly awful-though-of- kind- of charming acting, very cheap ‘n’ ropy looking werewolves, and generally bumbling/ bad filmmaking….we are very much in Birdemic territory. Here from Visual Vengeance is a recent Blu-Ray release of the picture- with a good selection of extras.
Joysticks is a lightly raunchy comedy set in a small-town video arcade. The early 1980s film is a bright, buoyant, and highly cheesy affair- with a mix of bumbling & innuendo-based humour, a few darts of female nudity, and a likeable enough selection of characters/ cast, with a soundtrack featuring a selection of tacky pop rock with video game leanings. Here from the MVD Rewind series is a bare-bones DVD release of the film.
The Island Monster is a mid-1950s Italian crime drama, which finds a prim, proper, and pencilled-moustached agent going uncover to break an island drug smuggling ring. Though it’s most notable for featuring none other than horror star Boris Karloff- though he is somewhat absent for the first quarter of the film. Here from the folks at Cheezy Moives- is a region-free & bare-bones DVD release of the picture.
Murder Me, Monster is a late 2010 arthouse police drama-come-horror film, with a deeply crawling & often grim pace. From time to time, we get sparks of quirky humanity & shots of landscape grandeur underfed by rising ambience- these dart through the films thick & tarry flow- like flares suddenly bursting in a pitch-black starless sky. Here from Anti-World Releasing- those seekers of cinematic curios - is a Blu-Ray release of the film- featuring on the disc is a commentary track, a few other extras, and a glossy inlay booklet.
Fascination was the 30th film from French director Jean Rollin- it appeared in the late 1970s after he had helmed a spate of hardcore films. It saw the director returning to his erotic & vampiric-tinged horror origins- for one of his more classy, ornate, and haunting films- which stands as one of the cornerstones of the erotic/European horror genre. Here from Powerhouse Films is the next in their series of reissues of the director’s work. It comes as either a UHD or Blu-Ray disc- taking in a wonderfully bold and bright 4k scan, a new commentary track, and a few other new/ archive extras.
Musically versatile Spanish experimental stalwarts bassist Àlex Reviriego and drummer Vasco Trilla have worked together for many years under a number of guises including noise avant-gardists Phicus and the fortune-telling inspired duo Bi Cong. By 2021 the pair were looking to mix things up a bit and explore new musical avenues. And that avenue came courtesy of Colin Marston. Marston’s heart lies in the world of black and death metal but with a big dose of the avant-garde, making him the perfect partner for Reviriego and Trilla. Experimentalist tendencies notwithstanding thanks to his multi-instrumentalist credentials, he also brings a suite of sounds including electronic drums, guitar synth and mellotron. The trio’s first outing was the intriguing Tholos Gateway and now two years later they return with the similarly Aegean-themed successor, Tholos Gateway II.
After a scene absence of a year or so, The Transparent Blue Tape is a new release from Stockholm-based Rien. The project's work focuses on creating sparse/ minimal, yet at points micro-detailed textured noise. This new release comes in the form of either a physical C30 tape, or a digital download- for this review, I’m covering the former.
Adapted from a pair of plays by playwright Frank Wedekind, renowned maestro of the silent era G.W.Pabst (Diary of a Lost Girl¸ The Threepenny Opera) directs the erotic drama Pandora’s Box. The 1929 film follows the young performer and seductress Lulu (Louise Brooks), whose once high-class life comes crashing down around her- as things turn from bad to worse.
The question of time is one that continues to animate the work of the enigmatic Daphne X. The current release, The Frost Of Time, follows other time-themed albums, like last year’s, Transactions in Time (czaszka). Time can be lots of things, of course – a formal element of all recorded music, a structural principle, an unavoidable horizon toward which everything moves – but what exactly it’s doing here, front and centre, is something of a mystery. Though maybe it should remain mysterious?