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Andrea Bianchi’s cheapo 1981 Zombie Flesheaters rip-off has no right to be called a classic. It's badly made, the acting is abysmal, and the dialogue is woeful, however, it has become one of the most beloved of all zombie movies. It’s a seriously creepy affair reminiscent of the Spanish Blind Dead movies, that utilizes a fantastic score from Berto Pisano (Death Smiled on a Murderer, Patrick Still Lives and Giallo A Venezia ) and Elsio Mancuso (Malabimba, La Collegiale, and Moglie Nuda e Siciliano) and a host of zombies that are pretty much decaying before your eyes. On top of that, it’s bonkers (in a good way), there are so many warped ideas floating around in this movie that you simply can’t ever find it dull. More on that later!.
Brooding, ominous, and grim, Uncodified's latest, Erased People, sees Corrado Altieri's project continuing its death industrial march forward bringing doom and gloom to the masses. WIth over ten years under his belt, he brings his craft to Dunkelheit to further spread his dark vision. Erased People is the latest volume in an already swelling catalogue of Italian industrial, and its textures and atmospheres will instantly grab any fan, new or old.
Here’s a double disc CD & DVD set taking in The Resident’s Secret Show, which took place at the Conservatory of Music in San Francisco on the 14th of January of 2023. It was part of the celebrations for the project's 50th anniversary- with the twenty-one-track set featuring songs from throughout their career- with a host of guests, and some very distinctive/one-off takes on tracks. All making for an original, at points surprising, and of course wonderfully odd look back on the project’s half-a-century career.
Dagr is a British found-footage film that slips from YouTube /pretentious film-maker satire to glitching ‘n’ phantom darting folk horror. With the often uncomfortable comedy and creepy chills largely kept separate.
As its title suggests ILOG3 is the third collaborative album between these two German improvisers. And it’s another overloading, yet often highly creative journey into where percussive electro improv, turntabling, darting electro-acoustics, and manic genre blending meet.
Math is a twenty-three-minute example of densely droning & rushing walled noise from this UK project. With the whole thing having a nice searing yet oppressive quality about it.
Abandoned Spaces is a collaborative effort between solo musicians Michel Mazza & Jeff Düngfelder (aka OdNu + Ümlaut), both artists having relocated from their previous NYC climes to the nether reaches of what that everywhere and nowhere moniker, "upstate." The results are spread over eight long tracks – nothing shorter than seven minutes – which do a lot of meandering with sparse instrumentation. And despite the length of each cut, there is surprisingly little development that occurs, each composition moving more circularly than linearly, creating the feeling that we are stuck in a limited sonic equation that is not headed for conclusion or resolution.
In his feature film debut, Sébastien Drouin brings us this new two-hander thriller Cold Meat. After saving a waitress (Nina Bergman) from her abusive partner, David Peterson (Allen Leech) finds himself desperate to survive in the frozen tundra of the Colorado Rockies. Violence, betrayal and brutality appear to be the only options, but how willing is David to take them?
Released in 1959, Horrors of the Black Museum was the final directorial feature by Yorkshireman Arthur Crabtree (Fiend Without a Face, Caravan and Lilli Marlene) and the first in a trilogy of films known as the Sadian trilogy. The other two titles that feature in this sadistic triumvirate are Sidney Hayer’s 1960 classic Circus of Horror and the same year’s Peeping Tom, directed by the legendary Michael Powell
The Blue Jean Monster is a wonderfully wacky, at points bad taste humour-lined Hong Kong-produced send-up of US buddy cop films of the 1990s. The Category III film blends action, horror, and fantasy elements- for a crazed romp of a film, that seemingly gets more demented & deranged as it unfolds. Here from 88 Films is a region-free release of the film- taking in a ltd slip, and a few extras.
Fear City is a mid-80s thriller set in Times Square strip joints, where a martial arts practising madman is taking out the talent. The film mixes cops ‘n’ club owner battlings, light slasher tropes, and mafia drama- with a fair bit of sleaze, tough guy/unintentionally amusing line…and a hell of a lot of flashing ‘n’ darting neon. Here from 101 Films is a recent Blu-Ray release of the film- taking in a new bright & buoyant scan, two versions of the film, and a commentary track.
V/H/S/85 is the sixth, and most recent instalment of this horror found footage anthology series. It takes in five more stories- each featuring an effective and largely rewarding mix of shocks, wacky derangement, gore, and very dark humour. As this series of films go- this is certainly one of the more consistent- with the whole thing rewardingly set in a darting & playful sea of (seemingly) random 80’s clips, eerier tape glitches, and unsettling static reels. Here from Acorn Media International is a recent release of the film- coming as either a DVD, Blu-Ray, or digital. I’m reviewing the first of these- which takes in a few extras.
Danish destroyers, Septage, descend with their debut full-length, Septic Worship, on three formats through three different labels. If the amount of people and logistics behind this release weren't enough to sell you on it, just look at the cover. Making the most of the vile collage imagery of goregrind legends of yore, Septage sends their message right from the gate: not for the faint of heart. More than just a pretty face, behind the band's grisly caricature is some pummeling, gore-soaked, grinding death.
A pianist and keyboardist primarily, California-based musician Thollem is also a composer, a teacher, a performer, a collaborator and an activist. As a child, he began toying with piano improvisation and it is this radical and innovative practice that lies at the heart of everything that he has pursued throughout his musical career - a career in which he has been hugely prolific with over a hundred albums to his name. Embracing multiple genres including free jazz, modern classical and punk, his latest work Worlds in a Life, One is the first instalment of an investigation into sound and its infinite essence.
‘The Song of Songs’ a 1933 romantic drama by the acclaimed director Rouben Mamoulian and starring screen icon Marlene Dietrich has been made available in a high-definition remastered print on a limited edition Blu-ray by Powerhouse/ Indicator.
From the BFI here we have a Blu-ray release of Werner Herzog: Radical Dreamer- an early 2020 documentary regarding the career of the highly respected, movingly arty, and more recently iconic German director. The disc takes in the film, and a few extras.
Bloodmoon is an early 1990’s Australian slasher set around a catholic girl’s boarding school. It features decent who-done-it plotting, gory often barbwire-related murders, creepy nighttime stalking, and a fair bit of female flesh. Here from Severin is a Blu-Ray release of this lesser-seen slasher- with a new scan, and a few extras.
From beyond the grave comes the second release from NPVR, the short-lived project of Nik Void and polymathic collaborator and label founder extraordinaire, Peter Rehberg, whose untimely passing hangs over this record like a dark shroud. Comprised of five tracks, mixed and finalized by Void in Rehberg's absence, the posthumous album is a genre-hopping affair, filled with elements that would be equally at home in dark ambience, avant-garde electroacoustic composition, drone, noise, and everything in between. The frame of 33 34 is not one defined by categories, though; rather, the precision and exacting mood of this work determine its parameters and constraints.
Testament is the 8th full-length album from Swedish experimental/free jazz/psych-rock/ three piece Fire!. It’s a five-track affair that shifts between the raw blues-tinged, the bounding 'n' seared, though to the moodily angular- with a great raw and honest production courtesy of Steve Albini.
Zvirat is a deeply layered, waveringly hazed, and organic-tinged take on the ambient form. With the album featuring seven largely lengthy soundscapes- which weave together threads of synth, flute, melodica, guitar tone, and field recordings/ found sound to create a drifting-yet-often harmonically glowing ‘n’ haunting sound.
Kill Butterfly Kill also released under the title of American Commando 6: Kill Butterfly Kill is a 1987 action film directed by Godfrey Ho (Mission Thunderbolt, Revenge of Drunken Master and The Ninja Squad). The two versions of the movie, both of which are included here feature different scenes. American Commando 6 was recut for American audiences and added sequences starring Mike Abbot (A Better Tomorrow 2, American Hunter and Final Score) and Mark Miller (The Siege of Firebase Gloria, Angel’s Mission and Ang Pumatay Ng Dahil Sa Iyo) and features on disc 2 drawn from a new 4k restoration, whereas Kill Butterfly Kill is presented in two slightly differing versions, the English language version and the Mandarin version, known as Underground Wife (both of which are included on disc 1 of this set) however, only the IFD English language cut is presented in HD, with the Mandarin cut in standard definition.
Here we have just under an hour's worth of sucked-into-void sonics. The single track sits somewhere between dense walled noise and oppressive drone craft, and boy does it drain all of the other sound & hope from your listening space.
$100 is the most welcome return of Swiss wall-noise project Anonymous Masturbaudioum- who in mid to late 2010 crafted some of the most creative material within the genre. The release is a three-inch CDR- featuring a single nineteen-minute slice of taut, shifting and nasty walled noise texturing
Eva Sajanova and Dominik Suchy's collaborative recording, Decision Paralysis , is an album of viscerally surreal electronic ambience and spoken/sung vocals, an ultra-modern post-industrial treat along the lines of CoH Plays Cosey or ANBB's Mimikry. The digital minimalist world of labels like Line and Raster Noton meets the psychedelic ritual ambient aesthetics of groups like Coil or Nocturnal Emissions.