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Appearing at the tail end of 2022, The Residents 50th-anniversary, Faceless Forever is a nearing three hundred paged encyclopaedia focusing on the highly creative, but often cryptic/ puzzling career of this highly distinctive avant-pop come multimedia art collective. It’s a book that will appeal to those new to the project, and long-term fans- as it’s a great mix of key facts, figures, and release- as well as the more obscure/ lesser known.
Lieutenant Pigeon stand as one of the more unlike and quirky bands to chart in the UK pop charts of the 1970s. The four piece from Coventry focused its sound around honky tonk piano playing, which was wavering at times nearly out of tune. This was blended with upfront & simplistic percussion, mumbled at times rather creepy male vocals, and some rather wacky themes. Here from 7T’s Cherry Red’s 1970s pop/ rock label is a double CD set that brings together the band's first three albums, as well as a good selection of rarities.
Make some field recordings, load them into an input mechanism – DAW, synth, both? – and scramble their relationship to their sources (real or imagined) and poof, there you have it: a sound work. I realize that might ring a tad cynical on my part, but the formula has become something of a burden for composers looking to shape the barest means of production into something larger than the sum of their parts. It reminds me of the crisis of the easel picture in painting, or the homelessness of modern sculpture, divorced from its vocation as monument or totem. At the risk of leveling complexity – a risk, it seems, that anyone writing about minimalist electronic music is forced to take when confronted with the ubiquitous tools of the trade – I am tempted to argue that there have emerged, in the last ten years or so, at least two distinct families within approaches to working with roughly the same means: field recordings and electronic synthesis. One might be dubbed media-specific, and the other, narrative. Sure, there is some of each in the other, but I mean to underline the point of departure, the nexus, as it were, of making sense of what we're hearing when we sit down to listen to experimental electronic, free-form, composition.
Little Jimmy is a modern composition-focused release that features elements of clunking-to-felt piano, percussion, sine tones and woodland field recordings. It’s a release that very much shifts between jarring and edgy, and meditative and slightly uneasy.
Einar Torfi Einarsson is a modern classical composer from Iceland who creates decidedly darting and jarringly fraught work- which at points moves towards improv/noise-bound territory. Quanta is a six-piece/twenty-seven-track CD, featuring work for different-sized ensembles. And it most certainly is a release that is guaranteed to keep you on your toes/ very much awake..
Bitch Ass is an in-the-hood set horror thriller featuring slasher tropes, Saw-like board game traps, and gruff-voiced ‘n’ masked anti-hero killer. It features an impressive all-African American cast, neat visual touches, and some creative/ inventive kills. Here from Signature Entertainment & FrightFest Presents is VOD release of this 2022 film.
The New Syntax brings together two seasoned American free jazz players. We have pianist Matthew Shipp who has been active since the late 1980s as a both side man & collaborator. He’s joined by double bass player Mark Helias whose been treading the boards since the 70s, with projects such as Slickaphonics, Open Loose, and a host of collabs. The nine-track album is a nicely varied, at times unpredictable jazz record- which nicely highlights both players' considerable talents.
Black Boots, Leather Whip is an early 80’s Jess Franco film that sits somewhere between low-key Private eye thriller & softcore-tinged drama- with moments of off-kilter atmospherics & dabs of humour. It features two Franco regulars Lina Romay( as Candy Coster) and Antonio Mayans( as Robert Foster), with a wonderful wonky, at times cold synth soundtrack. Here from Severin, who of course are the key resurrectors of Franco's film is a region-free Blu-Ray release- featuring a new uncut scan of the film, commentary track, and a few other extras.
Bringing together two harsh noise warriors, Toxicofera sees Kadaver and Psychosadist unleashing four tracks of crushing, distorted bliss. Classic, no-nonsense harshness served up in tried and true, murder collage, B&W artwork, Toxicofera is every bit the straight-up, hard pill it promises to be. Built around brute force, crushing waves of distortion, this split CD goes directly to the stomach with little flair, and both artists embrace this gut-punch aesthetic.
I've been familiar with avant-garde saxophonist Colin Stetson for roughly a decade, and enjoyed every recording I heard. His unique style involves circular breathing and repetitive arpeggiated ostinati one might compare to Philip Glass. He employs looping and layering techniques to create lush melodic compositions. His music is refreshing in that it is both tuneful and highly experimental. When I saw that this album was tagged as drone, and contained two epic 20-minute pieces, I was intrigued.
The Cycle Savages is a 1969 biker movie directed by Bill Brame (Scream Free, Miss Melody Jones and Baby Needs A New Pair of Shoes) and starring Brue Dern (The Burbs, Psych-Out and The Trip), Melody Patterson (Blood and Lace, The Angry Breed and The Immortalizer), and Chris Robinson (Stanley, Sweet, Sweet Rachel and Catch the Black Sunshine). As an interesting aside, the movie was produced by Casey Kasem, the legendary voice of Shaggy from the classic era of Scooby Doo.
Mind Rotation is a sonic voyage into trance-inducing and inner space-expanding synth-scaping- that's themed around the human psyche. The five lengthy tracks each deal with a different part of the psyche- with the sound moving between bright and cascading, to tightly droning and pulsing.
The Book Of Radiance is a dizzily intense, but often highly creative journey into harsh noise craft, circuit bending, simmering organ tones, and seared-to chanted vocals. The release is themed around mystical Jewish texts from medieval times, and the seven-track release is certainly one hell of a varied, at times surprisingly moving noise ride.
La Petite Mort is an early 2000’s slice of torture porn- the German film finds a trio of friends getting caught in the clutches of the members of a deranged S & M club. It features effects by German splatter fiend Olaf Ittenbach, with a keen atmosphere of sleazed perversion and grimy unease. Here from Unearthed Films is a recent Blu-Ray release, featuring the director's commentary track & a few other extras.
Untergrundarbeiten is a C60 noise split- bringing together one side-long blend of drone, wall, and sweeping ‘n’ swirling noise matter from Greece’s Mai 12. And three shorter takes on more creative wall matter from Serbia’s Dosis Letalis.
Ceza Evi was the first sonic fruit from the early 1980’s industrial project We.Be.Echo. Originally released as a C60 in the year 1983, the album highlighted an often wonkily inventive sound that shifted between off-kilter to woozy beat scapes, more brooding to unease atmospherics, and even the occasional darts into gloomy ‘n’ slurred new wave. Here from Cold Spring is a double CD definitive edition of the album- bringing a bumper crop of thirty-two tracks over its two discs.
In the Lakes District of northern England, where Russ Young calls home, the storied history of Romantic poetry is almost as sedimented as the literal ground that tourists now flock to in the hopes of resuscitating the nature that inspired Wordsworth, Coleridge, and their ilk.
Edley ODowd is a visual artist, producer, drummer in Toilet Boys, PTV3 and collaborator with the late Genesis Breyer P-Orridge. He's a multi-discipline musician with a career spanning 30 years. F(Our)-Ward is his first solo album; a work that seems to be engraved deeply by ODowd’s history in experimental music.
Multi-instrumentalist David Carroll’s latest album Bold Reynold features a collection of folk classics reworked for a modern age.
ELEKTR0BATH is a new walled noise project from Warsaw Poland. And the rather unimaginatively titled HNW is a three-track/twenty-eight-minute digital release.
Big Time Gambling Boss is a low-key- largely blood and actionless Yakuza film from the late '60s. It’s a moodily captured affair that focuses more on strained loyalties, frayed trust, and (figurative) backstabbing. All making for a more thoughtful, wordy, and at points, art house-tinged take on the Yakuza crime film genre. Here from Radiance Films- a new British Boutique label focusing on the idiosyncratic & creatively adventurous side of cinema- is a Blu-Ray release of the film. With the disc features a HD print of the film, and a few extras.
From the early 1980’s The Scorpion With Two Tails was an attempt to blend together giallo and horror tropes. When it comes to the gorier ‘n’ chilling side of things, it’s decidedly tame- though on the campily entertaining & vaguely curious mystery, it largely succeeds. Here from Full Moon Features, is a region-free blu ray release of the film- featuring a new scan & around twenty minutes of cut scenes.
Driving force behind Acid Witch and horror/Halloween guru Slasher Dave sees his 2020 horror cinema themed synth-rock releases hitting vinyl via Hells Headbangers. Cannibal Death Gods (2 LP) features both parts 1 and 2 of his original, Euro horror theme inspired solo project on wax for the first time. Together comprising 72 minutes of classic, synth rock, horror soundtrack styled compositions, having both albums together in one release is a boon for fans of Acid Witch and classic Euro horror alike. Wearing the Fabio Frizzi, Nico Fidenco, and Riz Ortolani influences blatantly on his sleeve, Slasher Dave brings fans on a nostalgia tour of some of cinema's most shocking scenes.
The Dunwich Horror is an often heady, at times creepy mix of occult terror, hippy-tinged gothic, and inversed ‘n’ roaming psychedelic horror. The 1970s American film is based on the 1928 H.P Lovecraft novella of the same name, and aside from some slight 70’s ham-ness/ cheesiness. It’s one of the better attempts to try and capture the cosmic horror of Lovecraft. Here from Arrow Video- both in the UK and stateside- is a new Blu-ray release of the film, featuring a 2k scan of the picture, a commentary track, and a few other neat extras.