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Use Blunt Object To Open is a new project from Cincinnati-based David Hilshorst- of wall-noise project Whore's Breath, and label Stemms Audio. Seemingly Seek is the project's first release- and what we get are three slabs of gruelling ‘n’ grey industrialized walled noise, which flirts between HNW and ANW- with moments of just industrial noise making.
The Wait is a forty-minute release/ track, which brings together starkly industrialized drones with rattle-bound walled noise. It’s a release that is both broodingly focused, and steadily battering in its attack/ feel.
Can we really intervene in the mechanisms of machines, and technology.? There seems to be a belief that such actions are possible, or at least, for some, desirable. Such is the background to producer and label head, John Howes’ (aka Paperclip Minimiser) first-ever release under this moniker. The challenge of such propositions is of course that the results need to be audible, regardless of what goes into their making.
Sator is a deeply stark and very slow-burning folk horror film set in the evergreen forests surrounding the Santa Cruz mountains. It’s a film featuring minimal often mumbled/ barely heard dialogue blended with brooding and moody shots of woodland and flickering candle-lite cabins. It feels like the film Bela Tarr might have made if he’d moved to the states, went off-the-grid, and got obsessed with a local malevolent forest-bound entity. Here from the folks at Cauldron Films is a Blu-Ray release of the film, featuring a director’s commentary and a short making of.
Fall is a largely taut ‘n’ tight modern thriller set 2,000 feet up in the air. It features moments of heart-lurching suspense, some effective enough plot twists, and later on moments of gruelling gritty-ness. The film finds two female climbing buddies deciding to scale an isolated radio tower- which pushes both their lives and friendship right to the limit. Here from Signature Entertainment is a VOD release of the film.
The Other Lies is an angularly searing-to-gratingly droning ‘n’ warbling example of horn-based improv. It’s an album that rewardingly puts your teeth on edge and your sonic nerves through the grinder. It’s not in any way easy or safe, but if you’re after the sonic equivalent of root canal surgery, then this more that hit’s the spot!.
Twofold is a double CD set which finds Dutch jazz drummer/ percussionist Onno Govaert pairing up with two players, for two fairly varied improv sets. For the first CD, he is joined by Belgian Pianist Martina Verhoeven for three around fifteen-minute tracks. And for the second he’s joined by Dirk Serries, whose also from Belgian and plays amplified acoustic guitar- on a single forty-two-minute track.
Recorded before the 2020 pandemic brought the world to a standstill, composer William Fowler Collins' Hallucinating Loss is now available through Sicksicksick and William's own Western Noir. Lush, expansive, and cinematic, this album sets a tremendous scale and with the skilled use of cellos, violin, harmonium, and guitar, Hallucinating Loss moves, grows, and envelops the listener deeper and stronger with each listen. Thick and wonderfully textured, the composition presented can be explored and enjoyed in any setting.
Two Witches is a 2021 American production that tries to recapture the creepy-to-unnerving spirit of ’60s/ 70’s supernatural euro horror, from the likes of Dario Argento & Mario Bava. With touches of dark surrealism, fantasy/ non-sensical moments, and gore which all rather nods towards another ’70s/ 80’s euro director Lucio Fulci. It’s a film that certainly feels retro tooled, though is seemingly set (largely) in the present. With the whole thing coming off as a creepy & uneasy ride, dotted with moments of brutal violence- it's a largely compelling if at points rather natively messy film. Here from Arrow Video, both in the UK and stateside, is a recent Blu-Ray release of the film. And as we’ve come to expect from Arrow Video, we get great extras on the disc.
Timothy Gowdy is an experimental musician, producer, and audio/visual artist from Canada. He sang choral music professionally as part of the American Boychoir in Princeton, before going on to study classical guitar. He also achieved a Masters in Sound Recording from the Schulich School of Music in Montreal, Quebec. Since leaving University in 2007 he has produced and engineered over seventy albums for artists as diverse as Ada Lea and SUUNS. His first album as a recording artist, B-Stock, was released in 2018 and he has been incredibly busy ever since, recording another five full-length albums including this one and being responsible for various audio/visual installations around the world.
Eurotrash stands as one of the key/ classic back-from-the-pub watching series of 1990s UK TV. It ran between the years 1993 and 2004, clocking up an impressive sixteen series/ one hundred and fifty-three episodes. The best way to describe the series to the uninitiated is a bright/ buoyant/ camp take on the Mondo genre. With quipping French presenters Antoine de Caunes and Jean-Paul Gaultier showing the viewers a selection of quirky/ bizarre folk from around western and central Europe, and later on around the world. Here from Network is a twenty-disc set, bringing together all sixteen series of the show- taking up a whooping fifty-four hours of playtime.
I want some of what Richard Scott is smoking. His latest release, Delirious Cartographies, is one of the weirdest and wildest things I’ve heard in many months (and that’s saying something). Improvised electronics. Does that really mean anything? I’m not sure, because the electronic part of that genre moniker is something much more, and much less, than improvised.
The Pankow-Park Sessions Vol.1 presents us with a melancholily hazed take on the improv form, with a sound that sits somewhere between sparse modern classical drift, acoustic ambience, and a lulling-to-lightly angular soundtracking. All of the six tracks feature just piano and cello work- with the tone of the work moving between bleakly hovering and pressingly forlorn.
All I Feel Is Oblivion is a dead-on hour-long journey into loosely feasting ‘n’ buffeting walled noise. It’s a release that pulls you into a lazily flitting, yet densely suffocating sound world- then holds you there to be bleakly enchanted, and glumly battered.
Aleksandra Słyż is an up-and-coming artist in the modern classical and ambient soundscape genre, who released one previous album in 2020. A Vibrant Touch sees an expansion of her previous methods, which includes a quartet of instrumentalists playing classical instruments, namely violin, viola, cello and saxophone to compliment the sounds of her own modular synthesizer.
From Eureka here’s Universal Terror another collection of Boris Karloff films produced by Universal Studios. The three films featured here date from between the late 1930s and the early 1950s. And while there not all are terror/ horror films, as the set's title might suggest, each features a great Karloff performance, and are in their own right worthy films. With each picture getting 2k scans & great new commentary tracks.
Wall Maria takes in a single half-an-hour example of intense purr ’n’ drill-based walled noise. This Italian-based project started in the early summer of this year- with around fifteen releases to its name thus far, taking in splits and stand-alones- like much of the modern wall noise scene, most of these are digital-though there have been a few physical releases.
Earthflesh, aka Bruno Silvestre Favez, hailing from Switzerland and Eyerolls, aka Mx. Zoe!, hailing from Maryland, USA, came together for Elemental Atrocities. It’s a collaboration rather than a split, as both are joining forces to create the work here. We find harsh noise mixed with the drone and dark ambient elements, then infused with HNW and ANW details and occasional field recording/ samples. Altogether it makes for a quite volatile sonic cocktail, high with agony and despair.
Returning after eight long years since their debut LP, Paramnesia, Australian death metallers Altars have risen from the depths to grace the world with their crushing new album, Ascetic Reflection. From the haunting cover art down to the eight well-formed, and well-planned tracks, their return is a blistering and dynamic treat for the senses. Self-analysis, discovery, and perception are the themes here, both lyrically and via the mirrored song structure, and with this analysis, one also has the benefit of engaging and evolving metal to add to their inward journey. While re-evaluating oneself, what better time to challenge one's definition of death metal.
Burning an Illusion is an early 1980s London set drama focusing on the life and love of a young black British woman. It gives a great snapshot of Thatcher’s London in the decade, and how afro British people were treated during this period. But it also stands as a compelling study of moving out of one's parent's home, and how first relationships develop/change. Here from the BFI is a Blu-Ray release of the film, featuring a few new extras & a good selection of archive material.
In 1974, Hong Kong-based martial arts studio, the Shaw Brothers teamed up with British Hammer studios for the release of the movie, Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires. A first for both studios linking horror and martial arts and subsequently leading to the birth of a small but fruitful subgenre of martial arts cinema, the martial arts horror movie. Best known for Shaw Brothers Black Magic trilogy and Ricky Lau and Sammo Hung’s Mr Vampire series, the martial arts horror movie thrived throughout the 1970s and 1980s. They were often more than a little camp, always outrageous and always unique.
Scary Tales is one of the top-tier examples of the SOV horror form- as it features some neat & creative effects/kills, it’s full of quirky lo-fi charm, and the acting is largely fairly good for the genre. The early 90’s film is a three-story anthology, and each story has its own memorable moments/ characters. Here as part of 101 Films UK's reissue of the AGFA cult film library, here’s a region B blu ray release of the film- with the disc taking in a commentary track, a bonus film 1994 Darkest Soul, and a selection of early horror shorts from the director.
The instrumental trio Russian Circles cut their teeth in the twilight of post-rock, but that label hardly does justice to their particular brand of precise, dynamic rock. It is sometimes hard to see what development there is when the core principles – bass, guitar, drums – are already in place and have functioned so well up until this point. But with their latest release, Gnosis, it’s altogether plausible that we are experiencing a new Russian Circles.
Second Room is the tenth release from Norwegian microtonal tuba player/ composer Martin Taxt. The album is part of a series of releases that see Taxt looking at the relationship between music and architecture. It’s a four-track affair that not only utilises his own Tuba playing, but a second tuba, a double bass, a church organ, handbells and a modular synthesizers to create often deep droning, buzzing and simmering sound worlds.