Loading
Here’s a 2024 documentary looking at the life of Harley Flanagan, who helped define the New York Hardcore punk sound and founded key crossover band Cro-Mags. Now in his late 50s, he’s lived a hell of a life- moving from being left to fend for himself in childhood, to being a drummer in a popular punk band at the age of eleven, where at times he was used & abused. Before jumping into an adulthood full of anger and addiction, which later shifted into faith and focus. Here from Lightyear Entertainment is a dual Blu-ray/ DVD release of the film, taking in seventy minutes of extras.
Director Matt McClung, known for Gentleman's Fury (2017), brings us Inhabitants, a 2025 supernatural horror that attempts to blend psychological thriller and religious horror elements. Starring Anna Jacoby-Heron (Stranger Things) as Olivia and Josh Andres Rivera (The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes) as Francis, with Kevin Nealon (Happy Gilmore 2) as Denny and Ana Ortiz (Ugly Betty) as Lillian, the film promises much but falls flat.
Fantomas Returns! is a Blu Ray boxset bringing together the three 1960’s French adventure comedies featuring Fantomas, a blue masked supervillain who wants to take over the world. The films draw from a huge range of influences, from The Pink Panther and James Bond to Silver Age superheroes and Dr Mabuse. Each is a lot of fun, with some great moments of suspense, comedy, action, gadgets, and camp. This set is from Eureka Entertainment- each picture gets an HD scan, new commentary tracks, with featurettes and a sixty-page inlay booklet.
Despite the years old claims that physical media is dead, not only are older albums being re-released physically, but they're hitting fans on even older formats. Pita's Get Out is like Benjamin Button, originally released in 1999, getting a 12-track CD edition in 2008 (also from eMego), and now getting all of these 12 tracks released on vinyl for the first time (with an added live track to sweeten the deal). Widely regarded as an important work that moved experimental electronics in a new direction, Pita (Peter Rehberg) takes noisy, sparse electronics and melds them with melodies, adding new dimension to the pieces, and showing that noise can be more inclusive and musical than the aberrant onslaught that got many fans into the genre years prior.
The Knife is a quietly devastating procedural and psychological drama set entirely inside or around a house on one terrible night. Director and co-writer Nnamdi Asomugha doesn’t hold back with this taut tale that turns a family’s life upside-down in an instant, and has a lot to say about the state of the nation. Intense and thought-provoking, it’s a brilliantly filmed, unsettling watch.
Androctonyx's Respawning as a Pearl is a work of space ambient or drone, created with layers of synthesizer, not unlike Steve Roach's Immersion series, or Mathias Grassow's longform drone works. It is divided into four tracks, 12-20 minutes each, but is actually a continuous play, with no breaks between parts.
Veiled Erosion is the debut album from Anqi Liu- a composer, interdisciplinary/multimedia artist, photographer and filmmaker. The CD takes in five pieces from the late 2010’s and early 2020s, with each being highly unpredictable- sitting somewhere between the composed and improvised.
Here’s a CD bringing together two around thirty-minute pieces from Israeli-American modern classical composer Chaya Czernowin, both of which possess a rewardingly woozy/ unbalancing quality. They utilise the likes of an ensemble, double bass recordings, an orchestra, and amplified voices.
Hells Bells is a 2020 screwball horror comedy written, directed and starring Jim O’Rear (Torture Room, Nightblade and Scream Farm) and Scott Tepperman (Nightblade and the Cruel Summer movies). Starring alongside them we have Marc Price (Trick or Treat, Killer Tomatoes Eat France! and Little Devils: The Birth), Rebecca Erb (Kill Dolly Kill, Idle Girl and Death Care), Paul Von Scott (Cruel Summer, The Uncivil War: American Divided and Strange Love) and Jimmy Maguire (Unbillievable, The Mother God and Frenzy Moon).
Young Blondes, Stalked and Murdered is a 2024 film that blends elements of character study, slasher/serial killer thriller, and trying to make it in Hollywood satire. It focuses on Stacy- a young strawberry blond, who has recently set down in LA to make it as an actress, as a gloved/ masked killer is taking out aspiring blond actresses. The film has a decidedly darting/ fragment/ sleekly arty structure, which tonally darts all over the place- shifting from unease/ fearful, onto awkwardly vapid, to darkly funny. Here, from the recently resurrected Anchor Bay, is a Blu-ray release of the film.
During the late 1980s, cult director Lamberto Bava agreed to film a four-part anthology series for Italian TV under the banner of High Tension. But after the executives saw the completed features’ extreme themes, graphic violence, and nudity, their broadcast was blocked for nearly a decade, going on to exist as grey market bootlegs for many years. From Severin, here is a four Blu-ray/ CD boxset- presenting classy 2k scans of all four films, with a host of new extras.
Zu are an avant-garde metal trio formed in Rome, Italy, who have been releasing music since 1999. Ferrum Sidereum is their third full-length release for House of Mythology Records and their 14th in total. The band’s current lineup consists of Luca T. Mai on baritone sax, keyboards, synthesiser, and organ, Paolo Mongardi on drums and acoustic and synthetic percussion and Massimo Pupillo on bass, 12-string guitar, synthesisers, and keyboards.
Pushing the death metal envelope, Finnish trio Ligation unleash their brand of 'death mental' with their debut album, After Gods. Working within the confines of that cold, dark, Scandinavian sound, Ligation further their agenda by integrating uncommon, but highly welcome, elements like harsh noise and saxophones. Integrating the three tracks from their two prior split EPs, After Gods showcases the band in all their mighty glory, tearing new holes in the death metal fabric, allowing other dimensions to saunter in and wrap their tendrils on an unsuspecting audience.
In the field of music, you don't have to look very far to find meditations of all kinds; David Shea's Meditations is something else. Taking its cues from the actual IRL act of meditating, grounded in Buddhism and the Heart Sutra in particular, the eight pieces that make up this album are born out of meditating, sometimes even musically, and are designed to accompany or engender that process. I guess that means listening and being attentive to the other performers, like those who round out the album's lengthy roster and their instruments--vibraphones, guitars, ebows, and yes, singing bowls, among others.
For 10 Musicians is a modern ensemble suite, at its most stark and spare. The four-track work is built around spaced piano notation, with which the wind and string instruments are sometimes connected. It creates a work that is more about mood/ presence, and less about melody/ structure- though those do sometimes occur.
Les Signes Passagers brings together seven compositions written especially for the fortepiano- an early version of the modern piano, named for its ability to play both softly (piano) and loudly (forte). The works here are penned by Swiss composer Jürg Frey, and played by pianist Keiko Shichijo- who is a specialist in the instrument. The resulting album stands as one of the more pared-back/ sparse/ fragile keyboard-based recordings I’ve ever heard.
The Recordings is a four-disc set bringing together all of the 70s output from Gracious!, a Surrey prog rock band, who had an adventurous/ dramatic sound that blended blues, rock, classical, symphonic, and beyond. The set brings together three CDs and a DVD, which features the band's short set at the 1970s Isle of Wight Festival
The Maiden is a 2022 drama written and directed by Canadian Graham Foy (Paradise Falls, Mouseland and August 22, This Year) and shot on 16mm film. The Maiden is his debut feature-length film. The cast is made up of mainly first-timers, with no previous experience in cinema. Jackson Sluiter plays Kyle, Marcel T. Jimenez plays Colton, Hayley Ness is Whitney, Kaleb Blough is Tucker Siena Yee is June, and Charlotte Clarke plays Charlotte.
Going from Emma-Lynn’s bandcamp, this is a recently formed project from Untah, with this release & one other to its name. This is around a twenty-five-minute ep, takes in three tracks that sit in the more weathered ‘n’ hope rattling side of the walled noise genre.
Bleached Bones Flayed Skin is decidedly gnarly ‘n’ ragged example of the wall-noise form. The dead on twenty-minute track finds this Scranton, South Carolina project serving up yet another example of crude & corrupted walling.
Pure Visuals is a forty-minute slab of dense 'n' cranium-churning walled noise from this highly prolific/long-running California project. The track is simple/ set in its attack and form, though it works very effectively as a world-blocking-out sonic mass, which I found oddly soothing.
My Name Is 'A' by Anonymous is a 2010 teen crime drama, which shifts liberally between brain-numbing vapidity & deeply troubling behaviour. The film blends cinema vertia, found footage, and low-key artiness with a structure that drifts in & out of its loose plot. Here from Wild Eye Raw’s series is a release of the film, taking in three different versions of the film, and a few other things.
You’re All Doomed is the new slasher throwback film from long-running/low-budget horror/ sci-fi director Mark Polonia. He’s been active since the 80s, with around a hundred features to his name- including SOV classics like Splatter Farm & Hallucinations. The film to hand truly is a love letter to stalk ‘n’ slash films of the 80s, with some lines/ scenes directly mimicked. Here from Wild Eye Releasing is a DVD release of the film, taking in Mark’s always worthy, interesting, and down-to-earth director's commentary track.
Dawn Of Inhumanity was the 6th, and to date, final studio album from this Oakland, California, Death metal band. After the more creative/ moody genre mixing ‘n’ matching of some of their earlier work, this album largely focuses on a more straightforward blend of death & doom metal. Here from Peaceville is a CD reissue of the album, which adds an extra thirteen bonus tracks- featuring assorted 7”, demos, and split release tracks.