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Coda brings together twenty-plus minute examples of dense and at times detailed sound scaping that mixes space-bound synth scaping, spiralling harsh noise craft, and grandly simmer drone craft. The release appears on Bam Balam Records- with the CD out now, and the vinyl release coming in April 2023.
Death Loop Faction is another project from of Iowa-based Alex Nowacki- also of Boar, Centuries Behind A Gate, I Watched You Die, Phantom Rib, Pyramid Dust etc- so a quite prolific and well-established noise artist.
This self-titled release is a bleak winter storm-ragging example of Greek underground black metal. It was originally released back in the early 2000s as a 100-copy demo cassette. Here we have a recent vinyl reissue- either in swamp green or black vinyl- from Lithuania’s Inferna Profundus Records.
Here’s a CDR from RJ Myato, who’s been around for a good while now, enclosed in a simple photocopied inlay and plastic wallet. Doubtless Empty contains two long tracks, the first about 31 minutes, the second nearly 25 minutes, and both are satisfying pieces of harsh noise wall.
Musica Liquida is an album that sits somewhere between aquatic-focused drone scaping, taut-at-times dramatic improv, and atmospherically detailed percussive workouts. Here from the always excellent and worthy, Norwegian label Sofa Music is this three-track album- which is available as either a CD or vinyl release- I’m reviewing the former.
Threads is an album of deep ‘n’ broodingly sawing soundscaping created by skilful played and physically manipulated trombone and euphonium. I‘d guess you’d call what we have here is an acoustic ambient doom record.
Here’s a two-disc CD set bringing together two mellow, buoyant, though often love lost ‘n’ found themed female pop reggae albums from the 1980s. There’s 1981’s Reggae Impact by Marcia Aitken, and 1982’s Someone Loves You Honey by June lodge. Both albums mixing in pop, soul and other genres elements, as well of course all being finished off with the wonderful camp ‘n’ cheesy 1980s production.
Arkheth is an Australian band with a sparse discography dating back to 2003, initially known for making black metal. Their 4th and latest album, Clarity Came With A Cool Summer's Breeze, is released, on I, Voidhanger Records. Stylistically, it's largely progressive viking and folk metal, with a curious dash of vintage psychedelic rock/folk, and hints of the roughness of classic black metal, particularly in the guitar tone and occasional blast beats.
Returning to Cold Spring with their latest album, UK's Colossloth continue to plumb the depths of industrial with the rough and crushing Promethean Meat. Two years after their last full length, this project moves sound like mountains, heavy and huge, while still adding beats and rhythms to create a new approach to its sound, while still remaining true to its industrial roots. Clanging guitars teaming up with industrial noise bring about walls of sound that even Prometheus himself wouldn't mind an eternity chained to.
Originally released in the late 1980's Macht Durch Stimme was the first darkly bleak and crudely bombastic sonic statement from the Swedish Black Industrial project Maschinenzimmer 412, a.k.a. MZ. 412. Here from the folks at Cold Spring is a much-deserved reissue of the release, with the CD adding one bonus track to the original six-track release.
Directed by Anthony Asquith (who also directed Pygmalion, The Browning Version and Underground, and is remembered as the Great Uncle to Helena Bonham-Carter and the son of former UK Prime Minister H. H. Asquith), Orders to Kill is a 1958 espionage thriller set during the Second World War, starring Eddie Albert (Roman Holiday, The Heartbreak Kid and The Longest Yard), Paul Massie (The Two Faces of Dr Jekyll, Call Me Genius and Sapphire), silent film legend Lillian Gish (Night of the Hunter, The Wind and The Whales of August) and James Robertson Justice (Guns of Navarone, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and the Doctor series of films).
Jesper Nordin is a Swedish modern classical composer who mixes formal classical instrumentation, with electronics and computer music. His work often dips into other genres for influence, such as jazz, Swedish folk music, and rock. Vicinities is a five-track CD bringing together work from between 2011 and 2016.
Satan’s Little Helper stands as one of the more original Halloween films of the 2000s, and it’s a pretty neat take on the slasher form too, with some very darkly humorous touches. The film regards a geeky and naïve nine-year-old boy, who befriends a serial killer on all-hallows' eve. Here from Synapse Films is a region A locked blu ray release of the film- featuring a new director's commentary tracks, and a few other extras.
The Son Of The Devil is an extremely low-budget Indian film which brings together elements of serial killer thriller, bloody slicing ‘n’ dripping horror, and awkward drama. It’s fair to say that this film is very much at the lo-fi, strange, at points down-right-deranged end-of-budget filmmaking. Firstly it features overloud overly dramatic music, next it features a smattering of English dialogue which is really badly delivered/placed, and lastly- but most importantly the film runs at two hours and forty-eight minutes!....so this is most certainly for a very select audience. Here from SRS Cinema is a region-free DVD of the film, with the only extra being a very piecemeal and at times bizarre commentary track.
Black Candles is a heady, if at points highly camp mixture of 1980s softcore & satanic mystery- with the odd touches of horror here ‘n’ there. It appeared in the year 1982 and was helmed by Barcelona’s José Ramón Larraz- who of course had a good pedigree in erotic horror with his kinky-at-times-very-brutally-bloody 1974 film Vampyres. And while the film to hand is in no way as impactful, and the erotic outweighs the horror- it’ll be entertaining enough to euro sleaze fans, and there are more than a few WTH moments too. Here from Severin is a Blu-Ray release of the film, featuring a 2k scan, commentary track, and a few other worthwhile extras.
Nightmare Symphony is a modern thriller/ horror film that blends together elements of giallo, slasher, and uneasy chiller. It focuses on an ageing American horror director trying to get his new film completed, while someone in a creepy/ tight face-fitting peacock face mask is killing those connected to him. The film mixes effective air of disquiet & creepiness, with mostly night-time set brutal murders. Here from Germany’s 8-films is a media book release of the film- taking in both Blu-Ray, DVD, and glossy central booklet.
There Was A Fish In The Percolator is a new project from long-term British wall noise scenester/ creator James Shearman-A Raja's Mesh men, and many other projects- as well running two labels HNW Netlabel (which released this) and Small Worm. This new project is themed around the cult and surreal TV series Twin Peaks.
Here’s a C90 walled noise split bringing together the billowing ‘n’ battering walling of Planet Shithead, and the more textural controlled wall-making of Dosis Letalis. Planet Shithead offers up two tracks one longer and one shorter, and Dosis Letalis just a single track.
John Also Bennett is an American experimental and electroacoustic composer, multi-instrumentalist and sound designer. He has released several albums, either solo or mainly in collaboration with his wife Christina Vantzou (as CV & JAB). He is also in FORMA and Seabat groups. Furthermore, he has collaborated with the likes of Jon Gibson, Pauline Anna Strom, Michael Harrison, the American Contemporary Music Ensemble (ACME), Jefre-Cantu Ledesma, LEYA, Peter Burr, Zin Taylor etc. Bennett currently splits his time between Belgium and Greece.
Is the synthesizer the first readymade of electronic music? The device almost anyone can play, and yet, despite all of the rhetoric around amateurism, deskilling – whatever a respective's disciplinary language calls it – it's all there, ready and willing? It would be a mistake to call it "talent", or, worse even, "greatness", but listening to someone like Andrew Ostler, the training, the situatedness in a particular form or language, is obvious, whether you know his cv or not. His drone work is so precise and measured that you might believe it was all dictated, verbatim, to a machine. The mesmerizing intonation on his latest release, Four Drones for Saxophone and Modular Synthesizer, moves in swells, which routinely decay and almost never attack. Is this what is meant by a "drone" to those practitioners held captive in the 12-tone prison house?
For the last fifty years, those avant-popster/ genre tricksters The Residents have never followed the rules, or done what’s been expected of them. Take this their latest release- it purports to be a standard soundtrack recording for their soon-to-be-released film Triple Trouble. But instead of featuring formal cues/ songs, it consists of seven shifting, at points darting soundscapes which bring together elements of brooding to bombastic mood scaping, weird dialogue samples (from the film I’m guessing), general musical genre weird-ness, theatrical spoken word oddness, with darts back into their back catalogue.
Everything On Full is a recent release from Expose Your Eyes Aka West Yorkshire-based Paul Harrison. The pro-pressed CDR takes in two fourteen to fifteen minutes tracks, which shift through eventful harsh noise, dense and moody electro-scaping, and a general blend of the two.
Square Wheel is a release that sits somewhere between densely hazed harsh noise, and quirky to surreal sound scaping, which is often buried in the mass of the tracks. It’s a five-track album, that’s presented in the form of a pro-pressed CDR on Illinois-based Oxidation Records.
Part cuttingly amusing period drama, part ornate and charming puzzle, and part murder mystery. The Draughtsman’s Contract was the first feature film from the visually elegant, though at points devilishly dark British Auteur Peter Greenway. Here from the BFI is the deluxe 40-anniversary Blu-Ray edition of the film- taking in a new 4K scan of the picture, and a good selection of largely archive-based extras.