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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?
Continuous Hole is an eleven-track adventure in taut 'n' tense textually sound making. It shifts between the jarring and complex, moodily shredding, slightly unease, and playful. The release is the first collaboration between Drew Daniel (Matmos) and John Wiese (Sissy Spacek/ solo). It was first released in 2018 as a Ltd vinyl pressing on Gilgongo Records- here from Cold Spring is a new CD release of the album.
Callum Waddell and Naomi Holwill’s 2021 documentary film about Ruggero Deodato’s controversial masterpiece has been given a standalone release from Germany’s 8 Films. Waddell, a Scotsman born in Fife has become a world-renowned movie critic and documentarian, his 42nd Street Memories: The Rise and Fall of America’s Most Notorious Street and Eaten Alive: The Rise and Fall of the Italian Cannibal Film have become much-loved horror/ exploitation documentaries.
To save some wear on your eyes: if you’re a fan of Ayler, go get this book; if you’re a fan of free jazz, go get this book; if you’re a fan of jazz, and not Wynton Marsalis, go get this book. For those of you still reading, Holy Ghost is a great book (go get it); a comprehensive biography of Albert Ayler, his pioneering musical ventures in free jazz, and the scenes around him.
Hawking Extended is a recent(ish) ten-track album from highly creative German Turntablist & saxophonist Ignaz Schick. For the album, he’s joined by two other names from the German jazz/ improv scene- guitarist Gunnar Geisse & drummer Ernst Bier. And boy it’s another dense, darting, and often deranged release that I guess is grounded in jazz/ improv- but it really goes way more places.
Catching Ghosts is a collusion between free jazz and Gnaoua Blues. It’s an album that moves between earthly rhythmic & grooving, spiritual & felt, and lightly to not-so-lightly seared. It's also one of the last releases from highly respected German saxophonist Peter Brötzmann- who passed in June of this year.
The Quarry is a slow-burn thriller set around a group of friends meeting at a waterlogged & long abandoned quarry on one summer day. The Uruguay film features a small, but well-realized cast- with the tension slowly but surely notching up over the film’s length in a decidedly compelling manner. Here from Jinga Films is a bare-bones region-free DVD release of the picture.
The Girl From Rio is a groovy ‘n’ campy action sci-fi romp from prolific Euro cult director Jess Franco. The film brings together a female supervillain who wants to take over the world, a sleek playboy with ten million $’s in a suitcase, and a suave/ ageing gangster. The late 1960s film finds the director at the more mainstream & less fleshy/ perverse end of his large filmography. Here from Blue Underground is a recent dual disc UHD & Blu-Ray release of the film- taking in a new 4k scan of the picture, a commentary track, and a few other extras.
With the advancement in recording technology, one man metal bands have become far more common. While they're usually in the black metal realm, a few death metallers take up the challenge and release their heavy, thrashing madness onto the world. Monterrey, Mexico's Adrián decided to take a different direction than his current bands (Impending Rot and Excretory) and sail into different solo waters, creating Stenched and its debut, Gorging on Mephitic Rot. Although Adrián is no stranger to solo recordings, his latest captures the wondrous majesty of rot, gore, and vile vibes
From the late 1980’s Door is a Japanese film that shifts from thriller to bloody slasher/house invasion in its last half an hour or so. It regards a middle-class housewife getting fed up with constant cold callers- be they on the phone or at the door of her apartment, and how after inadvertently damaging the hand of a salesman things start to escalate. It’s a film that carefully builds up its tension slowly- and when it finally explodes, we get some thrilling and bloody action. Here from Third Window Films as part of their Director's Company Collection, which focuses on the legendary 1980s Japanese production company is a recent Blu-Ray of the film. With the film's sequel as an extra, as well as commentary & a few other bonuses.
The English Surgeon is a 2007 documentary focusing on middle-aged English NHS neurosurgeon Henry Walsh- who spends his downtime helping at a struggling & unfunded hospital in Ukraine. It’s a compelling, thought-provoking, and at points moving documentary- which never sugar-coats the uncertainty of brain-related issues/ brain surgery/Ukraine's underfunded health system. The film features a most effective & moody soundtrack from Nick Cave & Warren Ellis. Here from Second Run Films- who is most known for releasing world film & arthouse fare is a region free Blu Ray release of the documentary- featuring new interviews with both Herny Marsh, and this film’s director.
.076 is a two-track digital release from this Calgary, Alberta-based wall noise project- which has a penchant for triangles and ritual-like scribblings. Each track slides in at the twenty minutes, with a nice variation between the two tracks- moving from busy and choppy, to droning and rattling.