Ordering information
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NB:The shipping costs are moderate and do not exceed €12. An average cost for 3-4 CDs/tapes is €6
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For any inquiries contact abgurd@gmail.com
New arrivals
February, 21 2012
CD
MAJUTSU NO NIWA Frontera Musik Atlach €12
2nd album from Majutsu no Niwa (ex. Overhang Party). This is their first studio album. Psychedelic Rock
SACHIKO & FUKUOKA RINJI áTOMO∑ Musik Atlach €12
The Duo of Sachiko and FUKUOKA Rinji(from Majutsu no Niwa) which were active together in OVERHANG PARTY performed sporadically in the past, in late years theyincreases the places. This is the album that gained live in Paris and Japan on 2011.
Cello, violin and electronics to play of Fukuokaare on Sachiko's voice drone, and his voice is even more intertwined.
The sound takes in neighboring atmosphere, and filled with passion, It reaches the radio wave that Fukuoka uses and appeared on us whom there is there now.
The first piece offered a glimpse of unbearable reality from beginning to end in threatening intension. on the other hand, The second piece that recorded a performance in church E?glise Saint-Merri of Paris, is sound of the prayer was dedicated in a solemn drone loops using representative song 'Prayer of a Fool' of late OVERHANG PARTY.
UTON From the Twilight, Next to Nowhere and Disappeared Musik Atlach €12
Uton is the one-man project of Jani Hirvonen originally hailing from Tampere, Finland. After 2001 Uton’s been releasing many albums on many different labels (like PseudoArcana, Jewelled Antler, Last Visible Dog, Ikuisuus).
Uton’s music is a mix of many genres, including elements from drone, avant-noise, free-improv, psychedelia, ambient, tape-music, musique concre?te etc. Sometimes wondering in the silent dark semi-acoustic mysteries, and in the next day creating noisy wall of sound with outer space echoes and alien atmospheres. Uton's sound is made from many sources; like electric guitar (which is usually detuned, prepared or/and bowed), small synths (usually far away from modern possibilities), electronics (mixer, bunch of cables with effect pedals), voice, different type of percussions (small drums, maracasses), bells, violin, flutes, keyboards... and nowadays also some digital manipulation too. All kind of instruments are welcome to join in, but the result is always coming from the same filter (which we call now with name "Uton") He has collaborated with Alan Courtis (Reynols), Antony Milton (Mrtyu, Black Boned Angel), Ben Reynolds, Peter Wright, Jari Koho (Vapaa), Maxime Primault (Enfer Boreal, High Wolf) and Jan Anderzen (Tomutonttu, Kemialliset Ysta?va?t) among others.
"From The Twilight, Next to Nowhere and Disappeared" album was recorded already around 2004-2005 in Tampere, Finland. Recorded with four-track tape recorder, and later edited and mastered digitally on computer. Musically this album shows the most mysterious and atmospheric side of Uton.
VENUS IN VIRGO Aurora There €12
Experimental performance with recitations in Japanese by Reiko A. (ex-MERZBOW)
CD-r
KAPOTTE MUZIEK Interaction 2xCD-r Lunhare €10
Previously issued in 1990 as two separate tapes to be played at the same time, here enhanced by one new double track composed and performed by Freiband.
KAPOTTE MUZIEK EGG Lunhare €6
EGG is Electrocute, Gematria, and Gilles de Rais, three works released on cassette in 1984 and 1985, representing the early KM way to sound manipulations.
KAPOTTE MUZIEK Enhanced Room Acoustics Lunhare €6
Previously released on cassette in 1996, the two original tracks are here enhanced by a new one especially composed and performed by Freiband in 2007. From the analogic sound modifications of last century's industrial age to the micro and nearly audible variations of the new digital era.
February, 13 2012
DVD
v/a City / Ruins Live Bait Recording Foundation €12
Cleveland Noise / Industrial 120 min. long documentary with Skin Graft, Aaron Dilloway, Arsonist's Prayer, Contamination Diet, Robert Turman, Murderous Vision, Cunting Daugthers, Nyodene D, Lisa Miralia, Michael James, XTerminal, Glacial 23, The Family Chapter, Order Of Melchizedek, Jerk, Collapsed Arc, Ghostpussy, Black Mayonnaise, Fascist Insect, Dead Peaseant Insurance, Ralf Hausman.
Vinyl, 7"
NYODENE D Caged Dog / Common Criminal Phage Tapes €7
Harsh Noise / Power Electronics.
CD
ANDRÈA NEBEL The Dark Side of Dreaming Infinite Fog €15
Witch of AGHAST / HAGALAZ' RUNEDANCE and her own project. Dark Ambient / Folk based on her story book. Beautiful A5 digibook.
CONTROL Deadly Sins Malignant Records €10
Power Electronics
KÖRPERWELTEN Avatars of Rape and Rage Malignant Records €10
Industrial | Noise | Power Electronics | Dark Ambient. Project of Nordvargr and Leech of NTT.
SEWER GODDESS Disciples of Shit: Live Waste Black Plagve €10
Collection of live recordings from 2010-2011. Death Industrial / Power Electronics.
TERRA SANCTA Sunken | Buried | Forgotten Malignant Records €10
Dark Industrial / Dark Ambient
YEN POX Blood Music 2xCD Malignant Records €15
Reiisue of some old tapes and vinyls. Gorgeous digibook. Dark Ambient.
CD-r
ASTRO / FEAR KONSTRUKTOR Dawn Mission Quagga Curious Sounds €7
Space Noise from Japanese and Russian acts.
JESS Silent Night 3"CD-r NADA €6
Lo-fi midnight collages. Drone Ambient with oriental touch.
MASARURASAM Move 3"CD-r NADA €6
Soft harmoniuos Drone Ambient.
MC
A NIGHT TO DISMEMBER Salmonella, Chains and Plastic Cadavers Worthless Recordings €5
HNW
ARV & MILJÖ Förändringens Frö Järtecknet €5
Emerging from the Gothenburg underground this noise act has developed into one of the most promising and interesting acts around. With high integrity Arv & Miljo creates primitive industrial noise without falling into the artistic cliches of the genre. The sound is getting more and more refined and the musical expression shows a steady and impressive progression. 100 copies
BURIAL GROUND Night of the Living Dead Worthless Recordings €5
Thick rumbling Harsh Noise
DEAD BODY COLLECTION / PERSISTENCE IN MOURNING Ritualistic Reanimation Worthless Recordings €5
HNW vs. Drone / Doom / Hardcore.
FEAR KONSTRUKTOR Spiritual Formation Already Dead Tapes €5
A mighty handful of Russian composers in the late 1800?s came together to compose a style of music that would reveal the world around rather than music of popular opinion at the time. The style incorporated village songs, church bells, and a few dances. The group came to be known as The Five. Reverberating along with the philosophy of The Five, Already Dead Tapes is pleased to welcome “from Russia with love”…Fear Konstruktor. Nikita Evsuk, sole member of Fear Konstruktor, brings a new mirror of sounds to view the modern world; the drones, the hums, the jingles, echoes and voices. The new album “SPIRITUAL FORMATION,” is the thirteenth album to come to public ears, and a great name for the consistently progressive ‘push’ of a musician. Still maintaining the dark-sided ambiance of dins and whirs of experimental noise, “SPIRITUAL FORMATION” has a nice setup of five well organized songs and will keep you as a listener, continually asking: “What the hell is going on?” Get “SPIRITUAL FORMATION” off of Already Dead Tapes catalogue and definitely check out Fear Konstruktor’s (great) website for further updates. [Ray Jackson, Already Dead Tapes, 2011]
GODHATESNATURE / ORMUS split Already Dead Tapes €5
“In the late 1970s an Arizona farmer named David Hudson noticed some very strange materials as he was doing some gold mining on his land. In late 2011, a young international tape label came across a strange, but similar (perhaps similar) sound of those materials over the internet. It is official (perhaps official): We (Already Dead Tapes) have rediscovered the element’s to the legendary philosopher’s stone – known only as Ormus. Coincidentally, the elements have come together and made a split. The new split from GodHatesNature and Ormus is a new tape we’d like for you to add to your noisy collection before the year ends. GodHatesNature, more rhythmic and guitar-based complies well with Ormus, a visual droning soundscape. The creator of both projects uses each to bounce back and forth for different means of expression. Ormus, being a sound project to tell a specific story with characters in mind, comes off as layering maze that is used to represent “the things people hide.” The intent was to create music that provoked thought rather than avoidance from than listener and to allow participation from the audience to reflect. GodHatesNature is a more active and rhythmic project, which I feel tells a whole other story of time and growth. Starting meditatively, the side begins with a few ambient harmonies and rhythms and then moves slowly into a more darker and mysterious sound. This cycle moves in and out from darker to lighter tones, and also captures a few samples of blurred dialogue underneath a beautifully and architecturally awesome sound.” [Ray Jackson, Already Dead Tapes, 2011]
IRON PILLAR Whipping Post Järtecknet €5
Whipping Post is the first release from this wicked and nasty Swedish act. With a naive and unpolished sound this one-man crusade delivers hateful power electronics. The recording is diveded into four seperated pieces, each owing its own character. Moving from minimal feedback and screamed vocals to a more layered, powerful sound. 100 copies
KYLE LANDSTRA Contemplation through Meditation Already Dead Tapes €5
The title says it all. Lay back, relax and let Kyle take you through his lush and expanding atmospheres. Dude is early on in his career and already killing it. Don’t miss this one.
MARAX / COMA CENTAURI Coerced to Pull the Trigger Worthless Recordings €5
Hash Noise
MATT MAVERICK Outsideness Already Dead Tapes €5
We are proud to welcome one of Kalamazoo’s best and brightest to the family. As an introduction, Matt Maverick gives us ‘Outsideness’, a collection of previously recorded material hand selected by himself and AD. 30 minutes of expertly crafted Rockabilly & Surf. Lo-fi basement jams and studio explorations. All remaining blissfully separate from any trends or expectations. Moods run all over in a whimsical fashion. This album is sonically perfect and was mixed/ mastered specifically for cassette. Get familiar. This won’t be the last you’ll hear from Maverick
PROBLEMS THAT FIX THEMSELVES / MICROMELANCOLIE Fractures Already Dead Tapes €5
“The first side of “Fractures” is by Problems That Fix Themselves and it’s very much in the vein of a Richard D. James mini-masterpiece. I don’t really know the correct language to use when describing this stuff, but I can say that Problems’ music is quite complex and utilizes a number of interesting rhythms and textures. Hey now, they even named one track after Jeffery Tambor. The B side is by Micromelancolie and it’s a lot more slow building, sounding like a room slowly filling with bees transitioning into the dead sound of a record spinning endlessly in its runout groove. Not as instantly ear grabbing as the Problems material, but It’s a good match to the energetic workout you get on the other side.” [Cassette Gods]
THE CATS' ORCHESTRA Coffee Killer Already Dead Tapes €5
Equal parts Scott Walker and eerie, melting lounge music, Moscow’s Nicholay Syrov (The Cats Orchestra) is definitely traversing an unusual path in the ever-expanding DIY tape scene. Or maybe it’s just part of this whole ‘New Weird Russia’ thing I keep hearing about. Either way, the slight skewing of instrumentation and recognizable musical elements gives pretty much all of Coffee Killer a drunken, zombie-music vibe. The original seed of a song seems to be present, albeit coated in peeling flesh and a rotting odor. To quote the label, you probably won’t come across something quite like this anytime soon. [Tiny Mix Tapes]
WEEPING SWORDS Death Wins Every War Worthless Recordings €5
Weird darkwave in the vein of LUST FOR YOUTH with aggressive blackened croaking.
WORN VESSEL The Refuse of Nature Worthless Recordings €5
Synth buzz and drone a'la HIVE MIND.
February, 3 2012
CD
ANVIL OV KELLIPOTH / VELEHENTOR Seismo... Tormented Whores of Da'ath Records €15
Industrial | Noise | Power Electronics | Dark Ambient. Split album dedicated to recent Seismic Activity on Haiti island and numerous Delightful consequencies, Atonal orthodox electroguitar aleatory and Abyssal Power Electronics / Dark Ambient.
ERIC LUNDE A World of Hurt in the Kingdom of God Heart and Crossbone €11
Clock says done. Time has come for the new admonishment from Eric Lunde: An inductive sound revolutionist, a founding member of the Milwaukee avant-industrial noise squad Boy Dirt Car, and an acrimonious underground writer & musician with over 40 solo releases dating back to the mid 80's. "A World Of Hurt In The Kingdom Of God" derives its name from a series of 2-ply plastic engravings Lunde did in 2004, The original title being "A World of Hurt in the Kingdom of Gosh". It is primarily a product of the concerns Lunde still have (and expressed in his book "Prison Sex", from which the majority of the text on this album is taken from) with the latent cruelty of humans in regards to their alleged relationship with a fabricated supernatural being and how is it that religious people have to prove nothing, but the atheist ones have to prove everything. So what's there to be found in Lundes' dragnet this time regarding these issues? A dish of sober mischief noise served cold, bubonic industrial and irate sound poetry created in the detrimental corners of the mind where the proof reproduces the intimate bonds of brutality that men create between themselves. Clock says done
VELEHENTOR Dyatlov's Pass 3xCD Infinite Fog €20
Drone Ambient / Ritual / Shamanic.
CD-r
BALATA We Are All Terrorists Heart and Crossbone €6
As the veneer of the democracy rapidly continues to fade in Israel, no clapping hands will welcome Balatas' debut album anytime soon. So we better get this out while we still can: This new joint venture of politically-charged hardcore-doom-noise by Lietterschpich members David Opp and Aviad Albert is named after a Palestinian refugee camp (the largest one in the West Bank), and cleverly translates the arbitrary resolutions of the Israeli government, the systematic cruelty of the Israeli army and the apathy of the Israeli citizens, into a merciless and resonant attack of curved ballistic beats, splattered cut-up noises and anguished rebukes that lead to one major conclusion: We Are All Terrorists. And yet, it's not even a new realization or a shrewd homage to The Pop Groups' classic "We Are All Prostitutes", as much as it's a precise observation of the latest outgrowth to cascade in the Israeli states' decomposing moral body.
FEAR KONSTRUKTOR Ushabti Dokuro €6
Fear Konstruktor is a brave new sound from Russia,inspired by brightness and vibrance of modern world. However it contains retro-futuristic touch as seen through the prism of ultramodern devices.All that chik-chik and wao-wao are just words of the significant phrase...Listening to FK is being inside yourself and outside our Universe at the same time. Because those billions of living sounds are caught for you by daring one. All tracks was produced in 2010-2011 by Fear Konstruktor. "Ushabti" comes in a ltd editon of 60 CDr, cover drawing by Artaksiniya and art layout by mic/nodolby.
KATCHMARE Frieda Harris Heart and Crossbone €6
An algid five tracks Occult homage to Lady Frieda Harris (mostly known as the artist behind Aleister Crowley's Thoth tarot deck) is the case with this new creation by Nick Hoffman aka Katchmare. "Frieda Harris" Represents both progression and realization Hoffman explored on previous Katchmare albums that he recorded during winter time, as it substantiates in the 25 minutes album opener "Winterreise"- A gesture to the renowned Schubert winter piece in the shape of saturnine and freezing drones that shifts to "Unseen Chariot", a picturesque track that offers noise washes alongside silent intervals and sensory drones gliding in idiosyncratic space heaven. "Wind Canticle" comes next as a methodical winter hymn with bitter ceremonial qualities, whilst "Shifting Snow" is a short and intimidating segment before "Ulrikke" rigorously end this album with an evident observation: Destruction implies creation. Death implies life. Winter is Death.
MUSCULUS Not in Dokuro €6
Musculus is a three dweebs choking out a morbid death dirge onto rotting tape, their last work "Not in" open with a track designed around tapes recovered from a box found underground with the help of a metal detector (!!?!) and close with a cryptic seashore filed-recordings . Their metamorphosing sound deambulate through anxious haze of voices and plunderpohic echoes of '80 horror soundtracks to noxious field recordings. "Not in " comes in a ltd edition of 60 CDr, artwork by mic/nodolby
PAINTS OF ANIMA Moon WorshipDokuro €6
Pearson Wallace-Hoyt records and releases moon-worshiping, esoteric noise under the moniker Paints of Anima. This release for dokuro was builted processing and manipulating female vocals, the result are two reboant and trance-inducing pieces. the dynamic of the tracks drift from bleak and obscure points to more saturated and loud peaks , repetitive progress close to a mystical catatonic experience. Wallace-Hoyt is also currently a member of the doom trance trio Is Root with Nur Greene, Elizabeth Chamberlin. He is the founder and director of the Seattle Occultural Music Festival. Moon worship comes in a Ltd edition of 60 CDr, artwork drawing by Claire Ragland and graphic layout by nodolby
MC
ASHTRAY NAVIGATIONS The Black Clock Matching Head €6
Z’ EV performed for an audience of about 50 Athenians at Knot Gallery in October 2010 in a concert curated by agxivatein label. The concert was recorded using a pair of spaced DPA 4060 omnidirectional microphones by Nikos Kyriazopoulos. Cover photos by Marinos Koutsomichalis.
COMPOUNDEAD Sink Dokuro €5
Rumbling low end frequencies coming from contact mic feedback, wildly modulated and sculpted with electronics fx into pulse-based jams, three tones of electricity debris who collapse in slow motion under and above suspended drones. Compoundead dyad from Italy explore poetically a gentle side of noise, their work is a continous interplay and each squelchy is a reply to other myriads of sounds detritus and repetitive hums into a complex and hallucinatory descent in bleaky landscapes.
CULVER Omon Matching Head €6
Z’ EV performed for an audience of about 50 Athenians at Knot Gallery in October 2010 in a concert curated by agxivatein label. The concert was recorded using a pair of spaced DPA 4060 omnidirectional microphones by Nikos Kyriazopoulos. Cover photos by Marinos Koutsomichalis.
CULVER & HAARE Rusted Zombie Mist Matching Head €6
Z’ EV performed for an audience of about 50 Athenians at Knot Gallery in October 2010 in a concert curated by agxivatein label. The concert was recorded using a pair of spaced DPA 4060 omnidirectional microphones by Nikos Kyriazopoulos. Cover photos by Marinos Koutsomichalis.
HUMANS FUCK OFF s/t Dokuro €5
Convulsive guitar approach, stomp boxes abuse and overgained tube amps. Asley Facchin (UnaLuna, Simmetria Distorta) and Michele Scariot (nodolby) recorded four improvisations inspired by high energy of artists like Haino Keiji, Thurston Moore, Dead C and Borbetomagus. Guitars flow change itself second-by-second moving from ululating tornado of dissonance to abstract pentatonic riffage ... the core of the works is to investigate catharsis of free improv at max volume.
SKULLFLOWER Thou shalt not Suffer a Witch to Die Matching Head €6
Z’ EV performed for an audience of about 50 Athenians at Knot Gallery in October 2010 in a concert curated by agxivatein label. The concert was recorded using a pair of spaced DPA 4060 omnidirectional microphones by Nikos Kyriazopoulos. Cover photos by Marinos Koutsomichalis.
VIDINE RAMYBE / VOMIR Split Terror €6
Z’ EV performed for an audience of about 50 Athenians at Knot Gallery in October 2010 in a concert curated by agxivatein label. The concert was recorded using a pair of spaced DPA 4060 omnidirectional microphones by Nikos Kyriazopoulos. Cover photos by Marinos Koutsomichalis.
January, 29 2012
CD-r
FRANCISCO LÓPEZ Fango de Euriptéridos 3"CD-r Agxivatein €6
Eurypterids were the largest Arthropods that have ever existed. Now extinct, these “Giant Sea Scorpions” were formidable predators in the oceans and lakes of the Earth some 300-400 million years ago. “Mud of Eurypterids” is one of the last sound pieces Lopez created with a reference to arthropods, some twenty years ago, at a time when his research work in entomology was fading away in favor of ecology. It was recorded and mastered at Messor Studios (Madrid) in the Spring of 1990, and originally released on a cassette edition of only 50 copies by the now disappeared underground label Hyades Arts (Spain).
KASPER T. TOEPLITZ / Z’EV Fleur de Peau Agxivatein €6
Z'EV (skins/symphonic bass drum) and Kasper (bass|computer) were recorded live in Sleaze Art studio, Paris, January 2010. Kasper mixed and assembled 'Fleur de peau' out of these recordings the follow-ing weeks. 'Fleur de peau' (literally: flower of skin) could be interpreted as 'ex-tremely sensitive'.
MARC BEHRENS Apparatus Agxivatein €6
Composed April-May 2010, using basic sound material recorded 2005-2010 in Austria, Brazil, Germany, Italy, Namibia and South Africa. The installation ‘Apparatus’ was presented in a four-channel setup (two channels via open headphones, two via ceiling speakers) May 28 - June 10, 2010 as 9/12 in the ‘Phonebox’ series at IMO, Copenhagen, Denmark.
"from therapeutic/organic to dis-junctive/phony, like some sort of animatronic backdrop" [Animal Psi]
Z’EV Live in Athens Agxivatein €6
Z’ EV performed for an audience of about 50 Athenians at Knot Gallery in October 2010 in a concert curated by agxivatein label. The concert was recorded using a pair of spaced DPA 4060 omnidirectional microphones by Nikos Kyriazopoulos. Cover photos by Marinos Koutsomichalis.
January, 20 2012
CD
BIZARRE UPROAR Viha & Kiima Freak Animal €11
FIVE ELEMENTS MUSIC & DENIS SHAPOVALOV Steel Glares and Night Shadows Observatoire €10
Record of this disc has been made during 2010,2011. The material of Moscow region project Five Elements Music is used as a basis. The record was made at night in different industrial areas of town. In this collaboration F.E.M. goes ahead with its field recordings line. Denis Shapovalov (adriva) finds his sound recovery from natural materials – metal, glass, wood… One cannot find synth’s in this disc, however, naturalistic sticky pseudo-analog sound provides “authentic old school”. This effect is sustained by wave reverberations which run into massive drones. But it’s not the very essence of buzzing often cut by new structure waves and cycles conjoined with field recordings.
FIVE ELEMENTS MUSIC / ANDREA MARUTTI / JIM HAYNES Tri-Ton Observatoire €10
Tri-Ton is a Russian publication of long-form, deep-drone exercises featuring the inner-space cosmonauts Five Elements Music, the Italian dark-ambient practitioner Andrea Marutti, and the California decay-artist Jim Haynes. Five Elements Music presents a 23 minute excursion of dissonant drones which twists into a glowing set of rarified tones by the end of the piece, as if something unsettled and slightly threatening had become contemplative and soothing. One could thing of an Oren Ambarchi piece morphing into one of Jonathan Coleclough's more placid moments. This track served as a guide for the following tracks. Marutti, who had recorded for the shadowy isolationist project Amon, laces gong tones and subterranean echoes around a steady drone that steams from oceanic vents with plenty of lugubrious drippings of reverb and liquid soot. The Haynes piece is one we, of course, are quite familiar with, given that he recorded that here at The Agency as the soundtrack for an expanded cinema presentation in collaboration with Allison Holt at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Haynes took the Five Elements Music track as an excuse to explore something akin to a Thomas Koner composition, with long sustained periods marked by glacial melodic episodes and revelatory gestures in addition to the consumate textural construction he's known for. The resultant 20 minute track rises through sinewy shortwave tones and up to a huge growling snarl of turbines and motors, eventually collapsing into a series of heartbeat rhythmic crawl and sweeping oscillations made from filtered electro-magnetic interference captured within one of the WWII era bunkers that dot the California coastline. A brilliant and haunting conclusion.
JUAN JOSE CALARCO & DAVID VELEZ Bahias Semperflorens €11
On December of 2009 Juan Jose Calarco and David Velez captured sound from bays near the cities of Buenos Aires and NYC respectively. They exchanged files for over two years until mid 2011 when the piece was finalized. The artists wanted to explore the opposite weather conditions as an element of difference and the site where they will record (bays) as an element of concurrence to support their site recording work. On the compositional process the artists make gestural and intuitive use of those recordings based on mere formal and aesthetic considerations: Concrete sounds used as material to build new experiences on the listener's conscience where the perception of space and time is altered and distorted under artistic acoustic means.
Active since the early 2000, Juan Jose Calarco is a musician and sound artist who works with materials from urban and natural environments. Ranging from the documentation of harbours to water canals to detailed sound topographies of several cities at night, his interest focuses in the narrative and emotional content of the sound matter. His works have been published in several labels as And/Oar, Unfathomless, Con-v, Siridisc, Mystery Sea, Mandorla, Test Tube, Frigida, Sijis or Koyuki and has collaborated with James McDougall, Manrico Montero, David Wells, H Stewart, Ubeboet, Pablo Reche and Nicholas Szczepanik.
LASSE-MARC RIEK Saison Concrete Semperflorens €11
Lasse-Marc Riek, musician and concept artist, combines and condenses sounds of the four seasons into a acoustic journey.
Sounds of the four seasons, condensed into one acoustic valuable – that describes the work of conceptual artist Lasse-Marc Riek. Birds migrating in late summer livestock returning from the alps in fall and April's showers are some of the more recognizable incidents. Above all, the artist forms a fascinating soundscape by working with a huge variety of sounds and noises, and with each acoustic part he creates a composition complete by itself. Saison Concrete – coltish and jaunty or unfathomable melancholic – cover the span of a whole year. Thus, Riek's journeys through nature's sounds subtly turn into reflections about the nature of sounds. (Stefan Militzer)
RIDE FOR REVENGE King of Snakes Freak Animal €11
Barbaric and ritualistic Black Metal. Pounding, twisting and haunting in all its eeriness, the album is one of the most essential Black Metal records after Beherit's Drawing Down the Moon. A lot promised, yes, but still The King of Snakes stands the comparisions without being a mere copycat. TKOS expands the meaning of Unholy Black Metal.
UMPIO Muelas Freak Animal €11
Finnish harsh noise at finest! Umpio has slowly but steadily reached the top level of harsh noise. Scrap metal, self build metal junk instruments, feedback, intense cut-ups. Think of Knurl, Sickness, K2 etc with addtional P.Dassum physical craftmanship and you may get close to Umpio. 40 minutes.
WILL OVER MATTER Lust for Knowledge Freak Animal €11
Freak Animal Records is proud to present new album of Will Over Matter. Band continues its path to new dimensions. Utterly unique approach bordering genius and utterly insane. Making choices that nobody else dares. Will Over Matter's take on esoteric-industrial noise abandons the cliche's of dark ambient/reverb drenched ritual muzak etc. It doesn't sound "retro". yet approach has more in common to M.B. and Musiikkivyöry for example. than contemporary noise.
CD-r
FIVE ELEMENTS MUSIC Summer Session Still*Sleep €7
Field Recordings.
JEPH JERMAN & FIVE ELEMENTS MUSIC Insecta Still*Sleep €7
Awesome Field Recordings of insects. Pure and clean sound.
KROMESHNA Simple Misteries Still*Sleep €7
Dark Ambient / Drone
January, 16 2012
CD
AELTER Dusk-Dawn / Follow You Beloved 2xCDCrucial Blast Records €14
One of several side-projects to emerge from the Wolvserpent camp, Aelter is the solo effort of Wolvserpent guitarist Blake Green. With Aelter, Blake explores a similar realm of dark majestic sound to Wolvserpent, with his massive downtuned guitar roar and bleak minor key melodies being the common thread between the two projects. But where Wolvserpent blends this chugging Melvins-esque heaviness and haunting slowcore arpeggios with violins, pounding drums, and a propensity for extended hypno-dirges, Aelter dispenses with the drums almost completely and goes for a more cinematic approach using layered keyboards and gorgeous harmonized voices that reminds me of something you would have heard on Beggers Banquet or 4AD being fused to a malevolent black heaviness. Both of the Aelter albums were only released on vinyl in limited editions of a few hundred copies and are close to going out of print completely, but we have now gathered both Dusk Dawn and Follow You Beloved together in a double disc set.
GNAW THEIR TONGUES Per Flagellum Sanguemque, Tenebras Veneramus Crucial Blast Records €12
Per Flagellum Sanguemque, Tenebras Veneramus. Roughly translated, with blood and whip, we worship the dark. This is the latest collection of atrocities from Gnaw Their Tongues, an eight song investigation into the rites and rituals that emerge from the copper-scented frenzy of the serial killer, the obsessive acts of death worship enacted by those that live on the edge of abyss, the limits of experience sought by black cults. The sound is, as always, immensely heavy, with fractured drums and tunderous tympani skins reverberating within a maelstrom of seething black doom, screeching classical strings, horns, piano, and some of the most vomitous vocals imagineable. However, Per Flagellum Sanguemque is marked by the most frenetic percussive attack that we have heard from Gnaw Their Tongues, with volleys of chaotic drumming, fractured blasts, and maniacally complex patterns that sometimes seem to border on free-jazz drumming.
SKULLFLOWER Tribulation Crucial Blast Records €11
Tribulation. The new emission from the UK trance-noise legends SKULLFLOWER. A black-void beaming of utterly destroyed drone rock and crushing amplifier obliteration that rains down black ash and punishing blasts of feedback skree on the listener. A dynamic, bleary-eyed meditation. An avalanche of powerdrone that threatens to take your cranium apart and transport your grey matter into filthy new dimensions infested with melodic razor cuts and submerged mantras. A triumphant eruption of apocalyptic meta-metal and radioactive raga swarms, guaranteed to loosen eardrums. This album is one of the heaviest, harshest slabs of guitar armageddon from Matt Bower since the glory days of Total, and bridges the void between the krautrock/celestial free drone influence of the last few Skullflower albums, and the blackened molten death of his Mirag material.
WEEDEATER Sixteen Tons Crucial Blast Records €10
A masterwork of southern fried sludgecore. The soundtrack to your next zombie beach party. Sixteen Tons churns out a black hole of thunderous, snarling Swamp Doom from acclaimed rebel rockers WEEDEATER (featuring Dixie Dave of confederate metal legends BUZZOVEN). With monstrous production courtesy of Billy Anderson (MELVINS, SWANS, CATHEDRAL), these ten whiskey soaked anthems are heavier than a mastodon trapped in a tarpit. Crusty, wasted, and buried.
WOLD Badb Crucial Blast Records €12
Originally released on cassette in 2004 in a limited edition of 100 copies, Badb is one of the earliest releases from the Saskatchewan-based black metal/noise duo Wold. The nine tracks featured here revolve around the mythology of the war goddess, the spectre of doom that lurks at the edge of the battlefield, and begins at the heart of a roiling black blizzard and proceeds through a charred nightmare soundscape of icy corroded black metal riffs, fractured blasting, melancholic melodies blurred and smeared into malevolent new shapes, and scathing distorted witch-screams ripping through the blackness, all doused and drowned in Merzbowian levels of feedback and distortion abuse. Now presented on Cd for the first time, this early swarm of Wold's psychotropic black metal/noise terror comes with all-new artwork from Pippi Zornoza.
WOLVSERPENT Gathering Strengths / Blood Seed 2xCDCrucial Blast Records €14
Previously known as Pussygutt, the duo of blackened psychedelic dronemetallers from Boise, Idaho changed their name to the much more ominous sounding Wolvserpent in 2010. The name is the really the only thing that changed, as the occult hypno-doom and grim, folk-stained nightmares that populated their previous albums are all intact here. This double disc from Crucial Blast collects both the Gathering Strengths Lp (Olde English Spelling Bee) and Blood Seed Lp (20 Buck Spin), both of which were previously available only on limited edition vinyl. The material has been remastered for this format, and comes in an eight-panel digipack that features both the original album artwork as well as new imagery that further compliments Wolvserpent's avant-garde witch-sludge. Originally released under the name Pussygutt, Gathering Strengths offers more of their signature blackened dronescapes and ominous metallic ambience that we heard on the amazing albums She Hid Behind Her Veil and Sea Of Sand, with two massive tracks, each one a mysterious and abstract slab of twilight drift and formless low-end blackness. The beginning of "Gathering Strengths (Silence Within)" is a spacious blend of abstract doomdrift and eerie nocturnal field recordings, the chirping of crickets and other nighttime forest sounds surrounding the slow deep wheeze of a clarinet drifting through the woodland shadows, the tones of the clarinet stretching and winding into tendrils of dark drone, a subtle undercurrent of rumbling heaviness deep beneath all of this. As the track continues to unfold, clinking metal and the whir of prayer bowls and distant tolling bells drift in, along with what sounds like a detuned banjo, muted strings, blurred streaks of violin, the sound smoldering for quite awhile, a sort of cinematic chamber-doomdrift, looped and scraped strings becoming more intense, joined by a gorgeous violin melody that begins weeping over the dark diaphanous ambience. And then the calm is split apart as a billowing black fog of metallic heaviness rumbles across the landscape, crawling over the horizon, seething and roiling just behind the mournful violins and creaking, whirring drones. The second begins with black wavering buzz floats across the simple pound of hand drums and a slowly beaten tambourine that begins "Gathering Strengths (Spirit Walker)", slowly joined by violins playing a simple keening melody, the mood bleak and sorrowful, with buzzing cello-drones slowly swarming beneath. The sound gradually builds into waves of rumbling doom riffage hovering over the horizon, never becoming overly heavy, instead spreading out and forming into a hazy doomfolk ritual with hypnotic violin melody and deep strings and soundtracky synths, becoming a dreamy funeral processional, dark and beautiful, austere and apocalyptic.
CD-r
LIGHT Light 3xCD-R Crucial Blaze Records €14
When the black doom duo Light originally released it's three full-length albums, they were put out in tiny print runs that were only available from a couple of select sources and went out of print almost instantly. I remember seeing them listed over at Aquarius Records on their website and wanted to pick them up based on the amazing things that the guys at AQ were saying about 'em, but by that point they were already sold out. It would be a while before I would finally hear these three albums, but once I did, I was immediately hooked by the strange, blurred-out sound that Light created, completely sucked in to a twilight world via the bands phantasmal bedroom blackdoom. I listed to all three albums over and over, cranking them up and filling the office with the heavy waves of droning amp hiss and plaintive chords and anguished vocalizations, and realizing that this wasn't quite like anything else I'd heard before. Light's music obviously had it's roots entrenched in black metal of the most abject sort, as well as the more extreme variations of doom metal, but there's a delicate quality to this that strips away the metallic aspects and turns it into something else. The one reference point that seems most apt to me and that I keep jotting down when trying to describe this is that listening to Light is a bit like hearing a kind of stentorian blackdoom misery being filtered through the autumnal chill of Codeine's The White Birch. If that notion sounds at all appealing to you, then you need to hear this stuff. There's nothing shoegazey about Light, either, although fans of the current wave of "blackgaze" bands might just love Light's music as well. It's much bleaker and agonized and desolate than that kind of stuff though, and based on how I've been listening to this triptych of albums, I recommend all lights off when listening to the music collected on this set.
NEKRASOV The Ever-Present 2xCD-R Crucial Blaze Records €11
That Australian black metal/industrial artist Nekrasov incorporates the aesthetics of harsh noise into his miniature holocausts of hellish speakershred isn't news to anyone who has been following his body of work over the past few years. From the beginning, Nekrasov's mechanized black blasts and sprawling abyssal soundscapes have been infested with the most caustic forms of electronic abuse and frequency terror. But starting with the extremely limited disc In Solitude And Darkness, The Last Step Is Made that came out on Void Seance last year, Nekrasov has now also started to work with the rigid aesthetic of the "wall", sculpting brutal, immersive infernos of extreme static noise that are reminiscent of Vomir. The mindset is certainly similar; going for extremely long unbroken tracks of churning high density distortion that remains unrelenting and unchanging, Nekrasov's efforts in HNW drag me down into the same sort of depressed, lightless Zen state that the French master is so adept at invoking. This is no small feat. In Solitude was a successful first effort in the field of HNW from the artist, and now follows that with a new two-disc set called The Ever-Present that we have issued on our Crucial Blaze sub-label. This set offers more massive black walls of rushing static noise, with two half hour long pieces on the first disc, and a single monolithic track on the second disc that stretches out for over an hour. Each of these tracks is formed from varied frequency levels and different approaches to texture, shifting in tone and extremity as the listener moves from one track to the next, but it all flows together rather seamlessly as an exercise in intense, super heavy trance-blast. In addition, deep listening reveals myriad sonic events and nuked drones that swarm deep within the maelstrom of The Ever-Present, and the monolithic "III" in particular ventures into more detailed regions of noise where fragments of grinding rhythmic clank, smoldering static riffs, and howling blackened melodies can be heard buried underneath the roaring inferno. It's the the heaviest slab of "pure" noise work that we've heard from Nekrasov so far, that's for sure. Fans of the band's more "black metal" centric work are warned that when we describe this as a noise album, we're not kidding. But for fans of HNW and Nekrasov's more abstract industrial side, The Ever-Present is a crushing experience. The two discs are packaged inside of the clear dvd-style case like all Crucial Blaze titles, and include a sticker, 1" pin, and a twenty-eight page zine filled with black and white collage art, with murky, inky visions of all-devouring blackness, carcinogenic landscapes, cathedral-like tumor masses, amoebic growths, and Watchers from behind the shadows. Hand-numbered and limited to two hundred copies.
RECLUSA The Anticonscience Crucial Blaze Records €8
A while back, I was turned on to the band Diseased Oblivion by way of their split with Sewer Goddess, and was impressed with the filthy, fucked-up deathdoom that made up their side of that split. While looking into their other releases, I found out that one of the members of the band also had another project, this one called Reclusa, which had released a bunch of tapes on a variety of tiny underground imprints. I checked out Reclusa, and was floored by how ridiculously heavy and disgusting the music was; it didn't even sound like metal to me, but inhabited another realm of twisted, abstract heaviness closer to industrial noise, while utilizing massive down tuned riffs and elements of death metal that were left to putrefy into noxious formless slime. Reclusa mixed together filthy sub-Godflesh / (early) Pitch Shifter machine pummel, putrescent guttural vocal-fumes, ultra bleak dark ambience, weird bits of diseased dub, deformed deathdoom, blasts of orchestral terror, & murky industrial noisescapes, and the result is hopeless, terminally nihilistic ugliness that skulks in a dark corner somewhere in between the likes of Black Mayonnaise, The Human Quena Orchestra, Aderlating, and the nastiest strains of underground gorenoise.
Of course, this led to my wanting to get Reclusa on our Crucial Blaze series. And here it is, a new full length disc called The Anticonscience that offers a seventy-seven minute descent into vile, absurdly heavy low-fi mechanized horror from this cult Ohio outfit. Released in a limited hand-numbered edition of two hundred copies, The Anticonscience comes with a twenty-page chapbook of nightmarish artwork and writing, a vinyl sticker, and 1" badge.
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ABGVRD / ROKOT / SILPHIDAE releases
ADRIVA Voix de Mythe 3"CD-r Abgurd €5
A new mini-album from this Russian project which album Cold Sea Week released by Abgurd in 2007 got good acknowledgement. The new material is completely acoustic without usage of any musical instruments. Only field recordings and feedback. Everything melts down into electroacoustic drone ambient of live tension. [label info]
CORPOPARASSITA L'affannoso Respiro del Gatto Abgurd €6
Itialian Dark Ambient project. Surrealistic macabre. Soft harmonic drones and ambiences, bass-guitar, gloomy scratches. Contemporary tales of parallel worlds.
DARUIN / TORTURING NURSE / STPOCOLD split Abgurd €5
This is the second part of Harsh Noise 3-way split series. DARUIN, guided by Kazuya Ishigami, is rather well-known among adorers of experimental Digital Post-Industrial. 19-minutes-long track filled with action: it starts off with a Glitch prelude, streams towards schizophrenic TV-collages, trembles with piercing Digital Noise, whirls with a storm of heated noise. A 20-minutes-long track of TORTURING NURSE is recorded by duo of Youki and Junky. Wall of noisy feedbacks interrupted by guitar passages, pick scrapes and screams. STPOCOLD — project of INSTANT MOVIE COMBINATIONS, researching wastelands of Digital Noise. 21-and-a-half minutes of asthmatic asphyxia. Fine-dyspersated gravel of noise is forced through ears by howling and droning frequencies.
DS MATTER Harmonia Abgurd €6
After releasing two albums (Untitled and Pinky Lips) this project of Denis Shapovalov (SUNCHARIOT, ADRIVA, ENMERKAR) added two symbols to its name and one album two the discography. "Harmonia" is an oversimplification of frequencies or "supercompression" as an interpretation of author's point of view on the nowadays digital mastering in the mass-music that makes the final mix sound unified. The album presents only saturated frequencies on rise and fall. This sort of averaging allows disclosing new aspects of pure acoustic sounds of glass, plastic, wood, metal recorded with microphones and digitally processed. The album contains three long meditative tracks in a sophisticated electroacoustic manner with interesting variations of frequencies and warm droning backgrounds.
EXIT IN GREY Storms Abgurd €6
Two new pieces recorded in August 2011 by these well-known Drone Ambient / Experimental project. Guitars' warm harmonies, space hiss, distant voices, echoes of larions from above.
FUNKSTILLESENDER untitled Abgurd €5
UNKSTILLESENDER along with ZFK, PUBLIC IMMORALITY and KOMATOSERZUSTAND was a part of mysterious alliance that existed in Lipetsk, Russia, in 2004 and 2005. During that period the projects created a solid amount of very talented albums that cloaks the listener with scorching Harsh Noise (ZFK and PUBLIC IMMORALITY) and hollow Radiodrone (FUNKSTILLESENDER and KOMATOSERZUSTAND) in a masterly fashion. The mini album we have here contains two last tracks that appeared in 3 years after the author's death in May of 2005. If you had listened previous albums of FUNKSTILLESENDER you know what to expect: lo-fi drones and trance radionoise united in a monumental all-devouring clutter. There is nothing to add — just listen to the message from Beyond.
JEREMY BIBLE AND JASON HENRY Ound Abgurd €6
American artists JEREMY BIBLE & JASON HENRY work in the field of electroacoustics, digital sounds and field recordings constructing deep and smooth Drone Ambient with light touch of experimental and slightly noisy sounds. During the year 2008 they released some albums throught their own label Experimedia and through other labels: Gruenrekorder, Resting Bell and Gears of Sand. The last one is known for its releases of NETHERWORLD, OOPHOI and AIDAN BAKER, in which ranks the JB&JH duet stands proud and self-confident without any allowance for the yet short musical career. [press-release]
KOMATOSERZUSTAND Koma Abgurd €6
Russian project that was active in 2004 along with FUNKSTILLESENDER project and ceased in Spring of 2005 after a presumptive death of the artist. The only goal of komatoserzustand was a research of coma. The album is the first result of the quest: profound low-pitched drone, long and monotonous linear humdream. The project was induced by the author's dichlorvos intoxication and following coma.
ONDO Sol Abgurd €6
ONDO started in 2007 under the rule of C-J Larsgarden who had been performing under name PACTA before that. Since then the project has released several albums ranging from good to excellent. Style of the project is varying from work to work from raw Drone Doom with Industrial touch to abstract Drone Ambient with melodies and melancholy. Sol album is filled with bells, reversed sounds, spectre piano melodies and other hissing and whistling beauty of unknown source as well as sounds of bonefires and voices from afar. The most similar projects as we see it are OMENYA, raison d'etre and, of course, some tracks of TROUM. [press-release]
REMOTEBAND Pinche Madre Abgurd €6
Moscow project with a short but rich history. The only person standing behind REMOTEBAND began his experiments with sound as REMOTE and created mindblowing Harsh Noise and some bizarre electroacoustics. In that short period there were some performances with Nikita Golyshev of CD-r. It's a pity but we think there is not a single chance to listen to any recordings from that period though those were really fascinating. In some time the musician became interested in softer kinds of electronic music, changed his name to REMOTEBAND and gave a few concerts in Moscow and Saint-Petersburg charming audiences with Space Drone Ambient/Noise. We offer six tracks from the latest period of REMOTEBAND art. Guitar, voice, analogue synthesizers, lots of effects, various pre-recorded samples. All these means of soundexpression very smoothly, skilfully and gently interlace into thick and rich intellectual Drone Ambient with some noisy touch and futuristic moods.
TETRAGOR Made in Madness Abgurd €6
TETRAGOR is a siberian project from the city of Kemerovo. In 2005 it recorded Made in Madness which can be described stylistically as mystic Dark Industrial. Archaic symphonies sound from millions miles away, obliterating tread of Time, rigidity of Chaos, primeval essence of heteroaseity. The album brings reminiscences of the early albums released by mighty Cold Meat Industry - ILDFROST, MEMORANDUM, MENTAL DESTRUCTION - with its aesthetics of introvertive religion of Kali-Yuga.
TZESNE Defrost Abgurd €6
Spanish duo is well-known for its high-class albums released by some excellent European labels. Five untitled tracks of "Defrost" walk through different genre fields: electroacoustic experiments with clicks, scratches and macrosounds, static resonating mezmerizing drones and brutal final chord of 12-minute-long abrasive droning wall. Accurate and monolithic work.
UR The Day of the Lord Abgurd €6
Italian project started in 2005. UR has released a number of albums through Topheth Prophet, Afe Records, Mask Of The Slave. Music is mostly free-improvised in the style of Industrial of 1970’s. Four long pieces recorded in 2006 create a hellish maelstrom of black shadows, heartrending groans, bloodletting rave in a throng of ashletting horny and caudate entitites. Sometimes more scary than TG, early CURRENT 93 and STALLAGH.
YELLOW6 Heavy with Snow 3"CD-r Abgurd €6
Minialbum by a rather well-known project from UK was recorded in the beginning of 2010 as an impression by heavy snow clouds floating away. Warm, humid, wrapping piece by this great musician. Post Rock / Ambient in the vein of BOSCH’S WITH YOU, LABRADFORD, PAN-AMERICAN, GODSPEED YOU BLACK EMPEROR!: otherworldly, melodic, melancholic, as a natural accompaniment for rain, snow and mist.
.nyctalops. Electric Retard Rokot €6
Young Russian project from the Moscow region. Raw and throbbing pedal abuse Noise. Two tracks recorded in the autumn of 2011 sound like quasi-static roar in the vein of WEREWOLF JERUSALEM.
COMFORTER Voice of the Voiceless Rokot €6
Old Russian Harsh Noise project that was very active in the beginning of 2000s but is on hiatus nowadays. Swift, superdispersed analogue noise powder of feedbacks and metal junk. Recorded in 1999.
KORPERSCHWACHE A Host of Bad Vibes Rokot €6
Texas duo with an album recorded in 2009. Six tracks of contemplative, melancholic mid-tempo Blackened Droning Shoegaze. Trance-like drum-machine, mocking melodies, repetitive guitar riffage, some guitar-based Drones. Despite all the darkness of the project, the music leads in the world of vivid weird dreams that are hard and heavy as a tombstone while leave you a sort of bright enlightenment.
MAAAA Human Waste Rokot €6
This Karelian project has been very active giving gigs and producing studio works during 2006-2007 but as the founder moved to Poland there has started a sort of hiatus for MAAAA. "Human Waste" was issued by Rokot in 2008 as a tape with additional bizcard CDR and got a lot of good response from listeners worldwide. Due to some wishes of people who were late in getting a copy of the first edition, we decided to make a CDR version to provide everybody with a great piece of Power Electronics. Don't be confused if you heard some of MAA(AA) earlier works that contain raw and chaotic Noise. On "Human Waste" nicely constructed tracks are pulsing directly through your liver right to the spine. The sound is thick and mangling. Maybe the whole picture is not that agressive and insane but if you want a nice "CONTROL making ATRAX MORGUE-like throbs" album -- you'll be satisfied. [press-release]
ORGANOMEHANIZM Quiet Insanity Rokot €6
New album of recently reactivated noisician Kirill Stoukalin from Leningrad — you must forget about Saint-Petersburg here for it's pure concrete hash, rusty metal, killing cold humidity and mouldiness of Soviet era city on the banks of Neva. Kirill was a founder of Reductio Ad Absurdum — one of the very first Russian Industrial projects which started in the same time infamous Alexander Lebedev-Frontov did (early 1990s). If you still haven't heard a track from it -- you are loosing some great experience of feeling pure old-school madness and simplicity in the vein of M.B. and M.O. "Quiet insanity" includes 8 tracks of decomposed vinyl records, analogue sound sources and various schizophrenic samples.
REDHOUSE Aggressory Rokot €6
REDHOUSE is a Noise / Power Electronics project of [S] of EXIT IN GREY / SISTER LOOLOMIE. It was recorded in 2002 and never planned for a release but inconsistently released as a 10 copies private edition in 2003. All the sounds are improvised voicenoise performance. The concept of the album is alchemic Magnum Opus. Work in Black, White and Red with the sound as the Materia Prima:
Intro - abrasive wheeze, drowning howling, high-pitched squeal;
Nigredo - heavy wrecking tread of noise structures with "orchestral" crescendo;
Albedo - non-aggressive necrotic noises intergrowing in ritual oppressive rhythm;
Rubedo - raw and impetuous semi-harsh and semi-sick noise;
Aggressory - 20 minnutes of thick mangling noise in the vein of THE RITA, PARANOID TIME and THE CHERRY POINT.
ZAVOD' Ritual Rokot €6
Young quartet (ZAVOD means "backwater") from Kharkov, Ukraine, performs some sort of Blackened Post Hardcore / Crust. Shredding thick guitars, croaking vocals in Russian and intense bass-drums section with excellent, clear - but not sterile - production. These youngsters' minialbum that was recorded in the beginning of 2011 is definetely one of the best in the genre of extreme metal from C.I.S. throughout last 5 years.
ZFK Mashina Yest / Medizinisch Rokot €6
ZFK was among Russian circle of experimental underground Noise / Industrial projects that included PUBLIC IMMORALITY, FUNKSTILLESENDER, KOMATOSERZUSTAND and existed in 2003-2005. The first album of ZFK called Rabochiy Kontrol was released as the CD-R by Abgvrd and then re-released as CD by Japanese Teito Sound label.
Two tracks recorded in 2004 present raw rumbling Industrial / Harsh Noise with very old-school ear-mangling sound.
ABGVRD mailorder catalogue
CD-r
... Creative Person YAOP €5
Sarcastic Power Electronics / Rough Noise. An original work dedicated to all sorts of "unappreciated geniuses", "always misunderstood" home-made "gifted", graphomaniacs and twaddlers, "self-expressing personalities" who feel enough to fart in a microphone to consider themselves "not like other". Last 12 copies in simplified package - one five inch CDR in a sleeve. Yet completely hand made, all information is hand-written, each copy is unique. [press-release]
... No Valgriind €5
Primitive feedback / radionoise Industrial. Oversized package.
900PIESEK Breezing Stars Zvukovina €6
First full physical release after heaps of free net releases by this Slovakian harsh layered ambient/drone project. Digital clean but also with harsh dense disturbances and trash space drone combination. All very nice structured in similar direction like on his latest split with REI REA on Crater. “endless war between two antipoles… like a frozen river of blood which slowly fills your eyes..”
ABSENCE.INSOLUTION The Slaughter of Pigs 3"CD-r KAFKEX €3
Absence.Insolution aka the guy who does pigdurt, seems to have disappeared. Here are 16 reminders in Earth minutes why he is missed and should return. Lo-fi noise that apparently features a vacuum cleaner and some really waped vocal samples - it could have easily fit in alongside a slew of great Hanson releases by Raven Strain, Darksmith, Skin Graft etc
25 copies.
ADRIVA Equites Mini Observatory €5
This project always remains true to itself: minimalism, lo-fi sound, slowly rotating loops and feeling of some devilry happening around.
ADRIVA Oriens Observatory €6
The album was recorded in winter 2008. Lost - somewhere in reality and dream interactions. Clarity - only in search of one of the four cardinal directions... Total time - 60 minutes. [label info]
AIYTC / VOMIR / GOVERNMENT ALPHA / TORTURING NURSE Harsh Purification Corrosive Art Records 4xCD-r €12
Absolutely infernal release consisting of four harsh noise albums. An Innocent Young Throat-Cutter is a project by Richard Ramirez, others need no introduction. DVD-box with inserts.
ALAN COURTIS ACR 3"CD-r Lona Records €5
"A Capella Rainbow" is an experimental piece made with voice as only sound source recorded at the artist's own Studios in Buenos Aires. In this case the recordings were so heavily processed that it's hard to recognize traces of human voice. Vocal Drone? Sci-fi Spoken Word? Detuned Human Bioacoustics? Electrified Singing? It's difficult to say, however it's an intense piece to be filed probably in between "Sound of Hydrangea" and "Tape Works". [label info]
ALEPH NAUGHT The Dreams in the Witch-House 3"CD-r Small Doses €5
ALEPH NAUGHT creates some of the best dark ambient work around these days, and he's at his best here. five tracks of synth-laden drone. edition of 66 copies featuring artwork by anthony mangicapra (hoor-paar-kraat).
ALISA-YHTYE [untitled] Triangle Records €5
Grigory Avrorin makes noise since 1997. He started in a band TALONOV NET, and after it's breakup continued to improve his skills in heir band TEA MAN WITH TEA GUM. Later there were such projects as SOVIET SEX MACHINES, MONOPOLKA and some more. In the last years Avrorin paid more attention to his solo work. His noise researches are presented to the audience under various titles, the most known of them are GRA, FREDRIKSON, CHELOVEK V SHTANAH, FON-BARON, DOKTOR KINCHEV, NOISE WENDY, ALISA-YHTYE, HUREN AQUARIUM, VIOLINIST IN ASSHOLE, G. Avrorin. Most of his works have their own recognisable sound, namely dirty, disharmonic and aurally disgusting. ALISA-YHTYE is not an exception and represents junk industrial mixed with scrap noise. Nevertheless it sounds very noble and traditional, the listener immediately feels the atmosphere of late 80-s - early 90-s. Sluggish hardly heard noise is interlaced with metal gritting and percussion. Feedback whistles quietly, and G. Avrorin leisurely emits another cloud of cigarrete smoke. Noble old school industrial noise. [press-release]
ANAPTHERGAL An Intracranial Disclosure Soulworm Editions €6
Finnish ritualistic death industrial.
ANDREA MARUTTI / TOMMASO COSCO Turra 3"CD-r Afe Records €5
Ambient / Dark Ambient / Drone Music. "In the house where I live, a fire-place continually warms my own intimacy during wintertime, while my wife spreads sweet gastronomical scents of real mediterranean nature as I capture the flights and rests of the birds in the garden with my eyes. In silence I listen to the beating of time that scans each and every of my emotions for all the smallest particles and instants of my perceptions. When I have the chance I go to Archiaro, a countryplace where memory and becoming merge in a present full of inspired consciousness. Gratitude lives in my existence and it keeps me in touch with the pulses of silences that pour inside my body where I keep the "Knots" of R.D. Laing, the "Moses and Aaron" of Jean-Marie Straub, the sounds of Morton Feldman, the movements of turtles and a trove where I hope to give shelter to all God's creations." [Tommaso Cosco] "Turra" is meant to be a natural extension to "The Subliminal Relation Between Planets (Live in Archiaro)" CD released by well-known Czech label Nextera in January 2008... [label info]
ANDREAS BRANDAL Little Three 3"CD-r Lona Records €5
Andreas Brandal is from Bergen, Norway. He has been making music with various bands and projects since the late 80's. In 1994 he released his first recording as a solo artist. This was a 2'5 minute cassette-single titled "Tape 1", followed in 1995 by 2 more cassettes. In 1996 he released his first vinyl single "Better Than Casters" on his own label. In this period he also participated on various compilations and music for art and web projects. In 1997 the Smalltown Supersound label released a split vinyl single with Andreas Brandal and Bruce Russell (The Dead C / A Handful Of Dust). In 1998 Andreas and fellow musician Jarle Nordvik formed the guitar-noise improv duo Larmoyant. This project released one LP and played several concerts. [label info]
ANDREW PERRY / DEAD WOOD The Sweetest Meat Striate Cortex €7
Fine collaborative effort of three pieces of drone-play that slip between sine language, lunar waves and guitar-based music. It’s the disc’s least harsh, and most organic sounding piece, the opening ‘The Presentation’ that’s the most intriguing – sounding something akin to the hollowing out of the drone of shaking Hendrix notes. The Sweetest Meat succeeds, where many, many others fail in finding a sliver of the Arcanum between the solid and the insubstantial.
ANTI-VERSTAND Kak Govoritsa, Chelovek 3"CD-r+MC YAOP €8
A misanthropic grin inspired by many years of observing the "two-legged fellow citizens". A digital-analogue release in two parts: 3"CDR contains a 7 minute Old-School Power Electronics track with a mocking vinyl sampling; cassette carries a 45-minute canvas of the performance of Leonid Brezhnev with a real time accompaniment of retrograde industrial electronics. For those who loved "By the song as the wind". Sleeve with pharmaceutical insert. [label info]
ANTONY MILTON Pucullpa To Iquitos Riverboat Pop Manglings Dokuro €6
Dokuro is proud to present "Pucullpa to Iquitos riverboat pop manglings " the new effort of New Zealand artist Antony Milton, recorded upon the 'Gilmer IV', a cargo ship that carries stores and passengers along the Pucullpa and Amazon Rivers between the jungle cities of Pucullpa and Iquitos in Peru. The basic methodology was to play over the top of a random selection of Peruvian pop songs (recorded off the radio in advance ) building up layers- including vocals- before finally deleting the original radio track.
APALUSA Live from the Dry Valley's 3"CD-r Waterscape Records €8
Live From The Dry Valley's is an almost 19 minute long guitar drone. Starting really slow just to catch your attention while it is building more and more until it reaches the climax which is a wonderful mesmerising layer of guitar tones with tremolo effect on it. In some way this could be compared to Fear Falls Burning, just with the exception, that Apalusa is hiking on the bright and warm side of the mighy guitar drone. Highly recommended to all lovers of the guitar drone.
ARABIAN HORSES Guardians of the Flame 3"CD-r Full of Nothing €6
To put it shortly: Moscow's Arabian Horses dance on the edge or 'plain weird' and 'fucking good'. Oh, how many times have I seen people's reactions to their live shows! It's always like: "What the hell are they trying to do? No, wait... this shit is getting huge!" The duo have it all: excessive drinking, goofiness, bored/lazy moans, pointless strumming - but add heavy floor tom drumming and black wall of guitar distortion to the mix. Straight to tape, very lo-fi and intense. Here and now. All in 17 minutes. Top notch raw tribal psychedelia. Red paper covers and spray-painted CDrs. Edition of 50.
ARGENTUM We are the Fire L.White Records €9
This Argentum album is the first exclusive pure power electronics work coming from Argentina. It sound is based in raw and harsh sounds with aggressive revolutionary lyrics. GREY WOLVES, GREEN ARMY FRACTION and SEKTION B are their mainly influences. "We are the Fire" will give you 66 minutes to choose your side: "Wolf or Lamb", as one of the song titles say. The newest sonic terrorism to awake the consumist global citizens.
ASONAR Sunnvortex 3"CD-r Khaos Productions €6
Re-released version of Finnish act Asonar's mini album "Sunnvortex". This cold and dark ambient / experimental release includes three mind scratching tracks. A great surreal feeling of darkness is guaranteed. File next to Raison D'Etre, Atrium Carceri etc. Pro-duplicated CDR.
ASPEC(T) Skinless Dokuro €6
Fire music from Napoli. Four tracks that prepare a new Vesuvian eruption .. synth like molten lava, sax like screaming people and tellurical guitar. Skinless is not only the title of this amazing Aspec(t) release but also a promise for he listeners. Mario Gabola (sax), SEC_ (electronics) and Maurizio Argenziano (guitar) shares the timbrical research and the execution control typical of some radical impro music, but meets the visceral intensity and the obscure poetic of the new aktionsm and of noise music as well as the research on analog devices and concrete sound materials of the sonic poetry.The result is a fascinating and inextricable forest of sounds: frenetic structures, noise explosions, ancestral cries, an unceasing perversion of the soundscape and the time stream.
ASTROGENIC HALLUCINAUTING Radon Scan Cycle Solipsism €7
This has got to be some of the best non harsh noise I have heard in a long time. I mean, if noise had to be music, it would have to sound like this, beautiful revolting, sinister, but kind, simplistic, and deep with an atmosphere that heightens the senses and contracts the muscles, this is an audio massage that you will not easily forget nor will you be so eager for it to end. Subtly changing in tone and octave, the sound just billows from the speakers like the chemicals at a plant's smoke stacks, causing the same unseen contamination of all it comes in contact with and ten times as alluring. Arresting your attention like a wet dream that smothers you in pleasure and drastically improves your ability to perform and perform well! The entire one long track seems to better itself minute by gloomy minute, entering a gradual increase of volume and intensity that is sure to please you and perturb the neighbors. Do you enjoy Halloween? Then you actually need this recording piped into your ears played at ten walking through the Sleepy Hollow woods with a sign strapped to your front and back touting that you aren't leaving until you witness a beheading. Enjoy this to the fullest by playing at unnecessary volumes.
AUTODIDACT Chinesegirlshavethebestasses Crucial Blast Records €6
Doom / Sludge / Noise. Pre-KORPERSCHWACHE.
AVMAKT Kadaver Zvukovina €6
Harsh Noise by Andreas Brandal.
AXIDANCE / ZAVOD' split Black Cardinal Records €6
Blackened Crust with perfect sound. The best projects in C.I.S.
AXONE & kNOw Night of Deliverance Somnambulant Corpse €6
A descent into the darkness of faith, a soundtrack for ritual mass suicide filled with harsh noise washes, pounding metallic rhythms, dissonant drone collisions, experimental guitar, mutilated melodies and clinical vocal samples. Experience a night in the box deep in the smothering Guyanese jungle.
AXONE Casus Belli 3"CD-r Somnambulant Corpse €6
Soft industrial soundscape with some warlike samples and sounds, noise-influences and deep drones.
AYMREV ERKROZ PREVRE / MH LMTH split Symbolic Productions €6
Black Ambient.
BACTERIA CULT Soulless Solace Crucial Bliss Records €6
Crucial Bliss is issuing Soulless Solace, a new full-length disc from this up-and-coming southern California quartet that features Chris Dodge (Spazz / Hellnation / Despise You / Ancient Chinese Secret / East West Blast Test / Jesus Philbin), Jay Howard (Circuit Wound / Wire Werewolves), Kevin Fetus (Fetus Eaters / Watch Me Burn), and someone named E. Nervo all collaborating on mammoth jet-expulsions of seriously deranged ambient muck. The nine tracks on Soulless Solace tend towards the epic, with more than half of them running past the ten minute mark as the group summons dense, murky clouds of psychedelic effects, swirling opiate ambience, inebriated fx-box fuckery, random flashes of found music and radio transmissions, skullcrushing free-noise mayhem, and flailing demonic heaviness. Some out there have been lazily slapping the "noise" label on this bunch of maniacs, but don't be fooled...this is something much more gorked than just another exercise in mindless power-skree. Nah, Bacteria Cult create something much more druggy and creepy they travel through an upside-down dadaist darkland filled with looped voices, smears of ominous orchestral samples, bubbling mad scientist lab fx, and waves of crushing formless sludge and monstrous distorted vocals. Like some mescaline-doused tumble through a black pit where different turntables are spinning beat-up, shit-encrusted copies of The Conet Project, Nurse With Wound's Homotopy to Marie, Coil's Scatalogy, Contagious Orgasm's The Flow of Sound Without Parameter, and a chorus of unknown, super-obscure Scandinavian black ambient 7"s all spinning on their wobbly axis at the same time. A fantastic and cohesive series of schizophrenic yet mesmerizing bad-dream soundscapes. Released in a limited print run of 300 copies, and packaged in a full-color foldout sleeve
BACULUM [untitled] Business card CD-r Central Dynamo Room €2
Harsh Noise.
BACULUM Heavy Machinery 3"CD-r Corrosive Art Records €5
The famous American band Baculum plays here three tracks recorded on a 3" CDr and packaged in a slim jewel case. The Heavy Machinery release show the Harsh Noise at the best! Hand-numbered copies x 25
BAD WOLF Live Swamp of Pus €2
Noise / Industrial.
BAMBIKILL Arachne 3"CD-r Striate Cortex €6
This 3" offers five tracks of dark, meandering, reverb-soaked guitar and voice. Normally, I love things that are dark, meandering and soaked in reverb, but something’s missing here. Sonically, you could draw comparisons to Grouper, but what Bambikill has missed this time around is direction. The tracks, often featuring numerous loops and tinny E-bow work, are like half-developed ideas. Not that this needs hooks or choruses or anything, but Bambikill would benefit from a greater attention to details and some focus. There are some moments of promise, however. The middle-eastern tinged “Forest Mantra” eventually starts to take off in dramatic, hypnotic ways, before the track ends abrubtly just shy of three minutes. Similarly, the ghostly murk beneath”Old Ghosts” is intriguing, but left relatively unexplored by the artist, and unexplorable by the listener, thanks to the track’s brevity. In short, while Bambikill has some interesting ideas, greater track length and some sublte direction would see those ideas grow into some seriously haunting sounds.
BASTARD NOISE + GOVERNMENT ALPHA Radiation Snowfall Xerxes €8
Harsh Noise.
BERND SPRING Bernd Spring Verato Project €7
2nd album by the notorious sound-experimentalist Mr. Bernd Spring, also known from his own Records Label Dhayna Records and his experimental bass-rock project DEEP. Dreamy and spacious sound collages, absolutely excellent recordings in an astounding hand made package!
BIG CITY ORCHESTRA Love Film Greats Roil Noise Offensive €7
BIG CITY ORCHESTRA Love is... Roil Noise Offensive €7
BJERGA / IVERSEN Sharks Control These Waters Still*Sleep €7
This Norwegian duo is quite prolofic in solo and collaboration work, and usually keeps away from self repetitions and graphomania, which is great. The new album "Sharks Control These Waters" is probably the best material recorded by this day: one 48-min long track slowly and accurately evolves with demersal bleeps, nice interferences, background drones and knockings into submarines' platings. Just less than an hour long immersion under water...
BJERGA / IVERSEN / MADAME P Broken English Ambolthue Records €4
Late last year Bjerga and Iversen did a tour in the UK (marketing tool number one if you want to be famous: play loads of concerts) and on the road, part of the same tour they ran across Madame P, who herself is an active force in the world CDRs, touring and tourism. I saw her already a couple of times, but I don't think much of her work was reviewed in our pages. She sings and feeds it through various sound effects and electronica. Like it is common in these areas, on evenings like this, everybody plays together and on 'Broken English' (wasn't that a LP by Marianne Faithfull?) there are the best fragments from four different evenings around the UK. Over the course of some years now, Bjerga/Iversen are a duo that can play a subtle tune or two of an entirely improvised nature, sometimes spot on and sometimes a total miss. Madame P's own music is more like sound poetry, but sometimes with a good touch of popmusic. However the menage a trois here, doesn't always work well. First of all the recording is not really great, all done with a microphone (noisy audience, yuk!), but the sounds do not always seem to match very well. Sometimes they are banging on and on, such as in 'Newcastle' and sometimes they seem to be searching too much for perhaps anything to happen. The pieces are in chronological order here and it turns out that the final piece, recorded in Brighton is the best one. Hunted and haunted, this speeds on through a wall of noise of rhythm and feedback. Not entirely convincing, this collaboration. (FdW)
BJERGA / IVERSEN / PAULSEN River of Ashes Striate Cortex €7
Bjerga, Iversen and Paulsen teams up for a one-off gig at the super-suave Hjem Coctailbar in Kristiansand in an attempt to flex the collective muscle of the experimental no-audience underground of south and southwest Norway. South by southwest indeed, our bold heroes wade knee deep in murky rivers of sound debris, trying to uncover the pearls among the rocks. No stone left unturned the trio battles their way through the ragged sonic elements, shaping them slowly into streams and pools of sound. A once-alive lynx var also with us on stage this evening, overseeing the operation and keeping the audience in captivity
BJERGA / IVERSEN Intersecting Parallel Lines 2xCD-r Striate Cortex €10
In Euclidean geometry two points can either intersect or be parallel,in general and in hyperbolic space in particular there are three possibilities. In the hyperbolic plane, there are two lines through a given point that intersect a given line in the limit to infinity. The sound would reverberate infinitely. This double-disc set can likewise be experienced in an infinite number of ways. Play both at once, start one a second later than the other, then 2 seconds, and before you know it, an infinity will have passed. It will never sound the same again
BJERGA / IVERSEN Throwing Giant Pebbles in a Tiny Pond Impulsy Stetoskopu €7
This mini album is short, a little romantisized and melancholic deflection from usual reviewed stuff. I've never heard of Bjerga/Iversen till this record and I don't really know when I'll hear them next time, but after a peak into their discography I was not able not to notice one thing - productivity. More than 50 albums since 2004. Wow. "Throwing Giant Pebbles In A Tiny Pond" is drone/ambient/experimental/abstract meditation with a touch of light sadness, lasting for more than 20 minutes. During the whole album nothing is being said, nothing is being asked and nothing is being answered. The main thing is sound and specific interpretation of it's aesthetics. That's how I imagine it from the creators' side. I couldn't even describe what instruments and sound sources were used during this record. Huge amount of reverb, sounds of metal, strings, intensive and deadened noises, soft feedback... Since the very beginning of the album the sound becomes intensive extremely slowly and so delusively that it isn't almost felt. I catch myself just comparing separate parts of this record though while listening to it, it is rather difficult to think and analyse the sound. Preferably I look to the colorful covers. Water lillies on one side, on the other one - stones under water. Inside there is an insert of lime paper. Several stones and the note on one of them - "hope". I look at it and at the amount of stones on the back cover. Is that the message? Hope is somewhere here, you can find it accidentely, but this plan is condemn to failure. Of course it might be (and perhaps it is so) that this is simply my answers to my own questions and I am cheering because I found both of them in the pond made by experimentators from Norway. The record does not obligate against anyone, even against your own self. Sounds that are suitable for calm and silent nights, for imperceptible drowning deeper, to narsack through own reminiscences and thoughts. Finally, awoke in the middle of the night, you realise that you've found yourself somewhere, in unknown place, by the pond, throwing pebbles into it. "Hope" is written on one of them. To throw it into water so that you could not find it anytime or to keep it. There are no answers. [Terror]
BLACK DEAL WITH SNOW AND MESOPIC VISION [untitled] Still*Sleep €7
Russian Dark Ambient in the vein of YEN POX. Excellent release. Side projects of EXIT IN GREY / FIVE ELEMENTS MUSIC and SUDAN STRAIN / POLARIS.
BLACK ROLLER CROP ROTATION Prayers from the Rotten Soil Crucial Bliss Records €6
I've been haunted by the beautifully dark loopscapes of French artist Sorc'henn dating back to first hearing the band on their Harmonium pieces & dead reveries disc released by Faunasabbatha, so we were immensely stoked when Sorc'henn was interested in releasing some more of their music through Crucial Bliss. This new full length features four tracks of Sorc'henn's murky, dreamy drones that stretch out over a misty, grey-washed landscape much like the one pictured on the exterior of Faro's foldout sleeve, a lightless wetland that fades way into the distance, obfuscated by a thick veil of shadow, and the fourth track is additionally notable for being a collaboration between Sorc'henn and members of Portland black metallers L'Acephale and Virginia deathdrone outfit One Lifeless Eye. The first track is essential Sorc'henn, a twenty-one minute dronescape that is mainly made up of a single warbling harmonium loop that repeats over and over and over, as a young woman whispers lines of poetry over top. As minimalist and simple as this is, it's amazingly beautiful, and almost has a My Bloody Valentine-like quality to it, like one of the guitar-feedback ambient parts of Loveless that has been melted and crushed into a misshapen version of the original melody. The second track is a mere four minutes in comparison - a deep, murky field of subterranean rumblings and a distant crackling sound, like a phonograph needle stuck in a run-off groove over crashing waves of distorted tidal thunder and ominous harmonium drones. The next track is basically a continuation of the previous, with those sinister harmonium drones humming over surges of distorted low-end thunder and weird noises that pan from speaker to speaker. The last track, the collaboration between Sorc'henn and members of L'Acephale and One Lifeless Eye, is the longest on the disc at ovr twenty-six minutes. This one is a sprawling expanse of murky black ambience, a slow-swirling fog of muted harmonium notes, oceanic sounds, chirping noises that might be frogs, and hushed, whispered cackles and demonic processed vocals drifting across a vast void of Lustmordian darkness.
BLACK SAND DESERT Blight 3"CD-r Snip-Snip €5
Greh Holger of HIVE MIND.
BOAR Family Meeting Zvukovina €6
HNW project based out of Dubuque IA. Three tracks (60 minutes) with mixture of crunchy and torn harsh textures. Static elements are basically long and pure-dominant but sometimes rough in changes like collages sealed between warm analog feedbacks and tense variations of main wall theme in each track.
BOGDANOV / POTSUKAILO / STUKALIN Slaughter in the Pigeon-Hole [not on label] €7
An archive recording from 1997, previously released as limited CDR editions by Black Dead Rabbit label twice - in 1998 and 1999. This is a collaboration between the group Reductio Ad Absurdum with yet unknown Igor Potsukailo (Bardoseneticcube). This compilation is a second part of the collaboration recordings of RAA and Igor made in spring 1997. All material was recorded during 3 or 4 noise sessions in two months. First part of this material was previously released as Genetic Load "Tollenkisten". These recordings were not included in "Tollenkisten" because of somewhat different sound concept which, compared to "Tollenkisten", is more primitive and rough.
BONES OF SEABIRDS Subterranean Lightsource Small Doses €7
It seems that ryan mcgill is complete unable to cover the same ground twice. this is the fourth (i believe) bones seabirds release, and it sounds nothing like any of the others. this one foregoes the guitars (for the most part) and relies on ryan's handmade voice of saturn synth.the first nearly 35 minute track is intense and brutal - like being strapped into some sort of machine that's boring deeper and deeper into the earth only to slowly burn you alive. the second gives a bit of respite, but leaves you lost in a dark cave drone. it's not to be missed. packaged in a folded artwork by matt yacoub, with an obi and an insert. edition of 129 copies.
BROKEN DIODE Screaming on the Inside Existence Establishment €5
Twisted, abused, and squealing electronics meld to form an abrasive wall of unrelenting blistering noise. Textures range from crunchy-cut up brutality to wallowing passages of self-destructive loathing. The debut album from this Dresden based project rises from the ashes of broken towers and forms a scathing intrinsic diatribe.
BT.HN & SISTRENATUS Exposing the Ribcage Existence Establishment €8
Existence Establishment helps usher in the Canadian invasion with this brutal masterpiece of wall-noise drone. BT.HN (The Rita & Sick Buildings) and Sistrenatus (formerly Funerary Call) present one long harrowing track of pure depravity. Droning overblown synths, unrelenting spasms of crunchy distortion, and subtle atmosphere form a hopeless barrage of industrial waste.
BUCKETTOVSISSORS Brain Erase Produck €6
Droney rough noise, almost atmospheric dark ambient! Recording of a gig performed in a small railway carriage with the use of reverb made of a tin can.
BUCKETTOVSISSORS History of Obedience 3"CD-r L.White Records €8
After some tapes and full length CDr on foreign labels here the first 3” CDr on L.White Records. Near 24 minutes of a nice mixture between harsh noise and a small piece of power electronics.
CLOSING THE ETERNITY Kosmodrones Operator Produkzion €7
This album of the established Russian project was recorded in 1999-2002 but released only now. Three tracks interwoven with semantic interference with three poems of Georgy Ivanov about what is left after "the attack of atomic hysteria / will scatter everything in flare of azure". Black drone of cosmic vacuum and icy glow of monumental electronic melodies. [press-release]
CONCRETE VIOLIN End Times Solipsism €7
Raw noise music of American PE-school with monotonous noisescapes and lots of distorted vocals. Concrete Violin here isn't that agressive as his colleagues usually are, this album is even atmospheric to a certain extent.
CRACK FIERCE Full Metal Confused Solipsism €7
One of the many Japan noise monsters. best quality powerful elektronik-noise with additions of metal scrap, water, motors …
CROW FEATHERS Temple Lions, Pale Interiors Small Doses €7
you never quite know what to expect from crow feathers. brandon miller seems to take a very organic approach to the music he makes as evidenced here. temple lions consists of processed field recordings that take on a pulsating rhythm of sorts. that leads into pale interiors, one of the most beautiful drones i have ever heard. this is a pretty tough release to describe, so i highly recommend the samples. edition of 71 copies
CULVER / KARST Quarter Mile Volcano Striate Cortex €7
Drone Noise.
CULVER + G.PROCTOR collaboration Turgid Animal €4
Drone Noise.
D.N.S. Mechanistic... [not on label] €5
Experimental Industrial. Project of Lithuanian DONIS.
DAO DE NOIZE NM III Dokuro €7
Artem Pismenetskii aka Dao De Noize from Ukraine bundling three hypnotical tracks of extreme blasting electronics. Static drone nebuale, cyclical propulsions of violent feedbacks, murmuring voices dives under LFO collisions, are perfectly dosed for a meditative journey with loud sounds.
DASEIN Vae Victis Valgriind €5
Deep noise ambient, associated with history of world wars. Author's artworks are used in design.
DAVID WELLS Efegin 3"CD-r SiRiDisc €5
Based on the master tapes of The Infant Cycle's track "Ephedrin Bird Samba", David Wells coaxes out the drones buried deep in that track into a 20 minute glide through harmonic and textural shifts, drones simultaneously warm and dark. Signed and numbered edition of 100 copies.
DEAD BODY COLLECTION / SMRZNIK Existence is Fukte 2xCD-r Zvukovina €8
HNW.
DEAD BODY LOVE Candles Impulsy Stetoskopu €7
HNW.
DEAD WOOD Slow Threat Striate Cortex €7
Drone Noise.
DEATH IN DEATH VALLEY Death in Death Valley 3"CD-r Dokuro €6
Olivier Dumont and Nicolas Thirion from Dijon (FR) create songs structure and dynamics with sound deconstruction. Organization of sonic detritus is punctual, rigorous and well-prepared, every sounds have his place in space and time. Control increase energy, and split listeners brains. For the Death in Death Valley project, Olivier Dumont abandons his bass to produce some more concrete sounds with music instruments he built himself, allowing him to play with physical and sonic material : metal, wood, glass, stone... Nicolas Thirion captures the sounds, transform them directly with his computer and projects the music on several guitar and bass amps. Death in Death Valley wanders at the borders between free impro, electronic and noise musics, but never forgets its rock n' roll roots.
demergo Westwater Meadows Ahasverus €6
Demergo's first album, preceded by just one demo, contains a bit over half an hour of effective noise-ambient. While it's clearly soundscape stuff, its style is quite harsh. And a most charming thing is that despite the machinery, it is in no way clinical-sounding. Instead, it lives in an organic fashion and mutates a lot. Patrik Muhr shows definite talent in using several sound layers at once, in ways that make Demergo very much the equal of Finnish masters of the style such as Haare and Nyrjä. The tracks also differ significantly from one another, making the album stay interesting laudably well. The fact that the tracks also have a feel of being definitely pre-planned compositions adds to the interest it evokes as well. Especially the last two pieces, Deteriorated infrastructure and Normal counterparts are excellent examples of this.
DEMONOLOGISTS Miscarriage of the Soul Crucial Blaze Records €8
The latest assault from the Crucial Blaze series. Miscarriage Of The Soul is a new full-length from the Indiana blacknoise duo Demonologists, whose lineup includes a former member of cult black metal weirdoes Ensepulchred; this band has been possessing the sound system at Crucial Blast over the past year, with releases like their split with Blue Sabbath Black Cheer and the Sermons Of Death And Eternal Damnation tape that recently came out on Waves Of Decay getting mucho play. Their grim, malevolent noisescapes are as extreme as it gets, going beyond mere industrial black noise into Merzbow-style levels of ultra violent electronic destruction. This is ritualistic deathworship rendered through howling, smoking amplifiers, extreme pedal abuse, and hateful vocalizations, equal parts infernal power electronics, obliterated black metal buzz, and crushing harsh industrial noise. Total nihilism. Absolute misanthropy.
DEVILLOCK Lay Into Me Troniks €6
Field recordings from somewhere freezing and desolate.
DIAGRAM:A Communications Noise Solipsism €6
Harsh Experimental Noise.
DL / EK XIB Soulworm Editions €6
Formerly known as Dachaulustknaben and Einsatzkommandos, these two legends of German power electronic scene in early Nineties came out with a collaborational release, entitled 'XIB'. The title stands for their deathcamp concept - XIB was the number of the women's block in one of the nazi lagers. But neither DL nor EK did approach the subject alike so many other power electronics outfits. Their attention has turned out to the victims not mutilators. Later on, they have decided to leave this imaginery as nothing original anymore. Anyway, their recordings speak for themselves alone, as only 'alte-schule' power electronics can do. Extremely raw, grinding and obscure electronic assault that crushes your bones and boils your blood, still being soundscape rather than just noise for the sake of noise. This CDR is a re-release of long sold-out one on Bastet Recordings (re-mastered version of the '92 tape). [press-release]
DN23rd & HYDROGENIUM Scorcher 3"CD-r CSRC €5
Multilayered radionoise sounding a bit like (electrical) transformer drone filled with communication interceptions and slowly, systematically and inexorably corroding the last remnants of your cerebrum with somewhat detached, restrained mechanical fury. Like a disabled, uncontrollable tank set on fire with its crew trapped inside still driving amain through the bodies of already dead and still alive. [press-release]
DN23rd + LIGHT COLLAPSE + GALAXY THE INCUBATOR Chants of Ether [B]rush Records €5
Radionoise.
DOR Life in Russhausen UFA Muzak €8
Power Electronics. Boundless distance of dark areas, corridors, side streets, bottomless niches. Catacombs of endless labyrinth, suppressing with monumentality of its cruelty. Everyone who is here feels horrifying despair, because this territory is not somewhere outside, it is inside of people. Those who are entrapped, beaten and humiliated. Who lives in a country where treachery and violence has become the basis, where all human rights are defied, and there's only one freedom left: survival and slave submission. The project of harsh analogue anti-music in Power Electronics style, presents its requiem suite of the basics of people's structure resulted in a formula: "Hate your neighbour as yourself". Eight tracks of manic depressive convilsions. Sick therapy session either going to cure you, or plunge deeper in the abyss of the vicious circle. To all born in the period of new distemper. Russia is an ordeal... 8 tracks, 45 minutes, 8-page cardboard booklet. [press-release]
DREVNE BOLESTI s/t Zvukovina €6
Drevne Bolesti (Ancient Diseases) is project by Brandal (Flesh Coffin, Hour Of The Wolf) and Smrznik. 48 min without change of deep, focused and “salty” crunchy layers by different “color” and gear.
DRONAEMENT Ezoterick Muzick Afe Records €7
"Ezoterick Muzick" was inspired by repeated listenings of indian traditional music and is a successful attempt at creating meditative / relaxing ambient music. [label info]
EATEN BY CHILDREN The Sword Swallower's Grave State Sanctioned Recordings €5
Industrial, Musique Concrete + Drone Ambient.
EDUARD SRAPIONOV Biologic Observatory €5
The newest recording of a noise artist from Rostov, Russia. Eduard (Papa Srapa) has done a lot of live performances with immutable manipulations on his self-made chemical synthesizers. His artistic approach to composing and wide separate range of frequencies are very impressive during his gigs. The most significant individual character of the project is the combination of his engineering inventions with the creative aims. This CD is a first edition after his own demo-releases, it contains 6 tracks totally in 50 minutes. [label info]
EDUCATOR Sow the Wind 3"CD-r L.White Records €8
This is the second release of EDUCATOR. The two tracks “400 years/hollow earth” and “white people/wigger” are "the whole truth and nothing but the truth" of ugly power electronics!
EMME! Emme! Sincope €5
impro noise with very lo-fi attitude
ENFER BOREAL L'espace Des Eternites Possibles Ikuisuus €5
Improvised and recorded at home in Rennes, mid august 2007, using various instruments such as guitar, electronics, turntables, bass, radio, keyboards, voice...Then the multilayered impros have been put together to make two long tracks. Both tracks is around 20 min long, mostly due to chance, no particular meaning or will about it. It has been sent to Jani Hirvonen, known as drone master Uton, who quickly helped to make an Ikuisuus release with the recordings and who made the cover art too. The result is a mix of quiet moments, electronic meditations, drones and dreamlike wave of sounds; ambiance alternating between melancholic darkness and grace of beautiful peace of the mind, with some fire coming up at some points.
ENMERKAR [untitled II] Observatory €5
Drone Ambient. DS of SUNCHARIOT / ADRIVA / MATTER.
ENVENOMIST / FENCES split Phage Tapes 2x3"CD-r €8
two discs, once by each artist, in individual jewel cases with hand screened covers housed in a handmade, hand screened box. incredible package.
ESCUADRON DE LA MUERTE Omnia Vincit Mors UFA Muzak €8
Apocalyptic noise / Power electronics. Going wind in black pits, in ropes with no way out. This is the situation of reality. All of you are sitting tied to chairs, and information goes right in your brain. Abnormal, infinitely violent and compressed. Blood, lies, hunger, money. Smell of a burned human being and nature of depravity felt in killing fields. Bile of the world, in all corners of constant inconceivable depression. The project from South America presents an hour of music full of total strain and moral hardiness. This is not just noise in it's common form, this is a completely new level where this project exists, leaving behind all rivals. Prepare for adrenaline shock and remember - there's no way out. Escuadron De La Muerte is the music of crisis, all and everything, without an end. [press-release]
EYELASH Dust Mite Umbilical Cord €5
Lo-fi Noise Rock
EYELESS FACE Reclaiming My Soul from the Lost and Found Phage Tapes €6
Eyeless Face are a two piece male and female project from Pittsburgh who summon up a atmospheric soaked & brooding mixture of:flapping and doomed bass guitar textures, sinister to spacey electronics & guitar noise texturing. Along with elements of junk metal manipulation, slurred electronics and jack-knife yet sleazed percussive industrial beat work-outs that appear here and there along the way.
FALT Livets Grottekvarn Plutonium Distribution €5
Power Noise / Dark Industrial
FANUM & VAZHES Ir Still*Sleep €7
Thirty minutes of steady dense and tight (like molten bitumen or solidifying lava) "trademark" drone from Fanum, filled with hardly imperceptible movements of keys, mournful singing of duduk, bird voices and rustle of wind in the leaves, boiling of huge amount of water in which the listeners dives closer to the middle of the track, and voices recorded probably by Sergey Gabbasov (Vazhes) during his ethnographic trips to abandoned villages. I can call for help the words "natural ambient", and it will be quite relevant and characterizing the hidden events happening in the depth of the sonic mass and illustrating such processes as slow growth of grain, deliberate movements of shadows, dissolving items and substances in the water and something like this, invisible from the first glance and subject to the eternal cycles of the outside world.
FECALOVE Beautiful Lona Records €6
Italian ugly, filthy one man harsh noise / power electronics unit. Started in 2002. Head of Turgid Animal Records Italian Division, also plays in Splinter vs Stalin. [label info]
FECALOVE La Nature Devoilee Impulsy Stetoskopu €6
I think no presentation is needed for Fecalove, but anyway. Nicola Vinciguerra is an artist from Italy, responsible for Turgid Animal Italian division who also takes part in Splinter vs Stalin and several other projects, titles of which mostly associates with shit, love and mutants. This person, apart from his sound perversions is also known for his drawings of filthy pornofantasies that appears on releases of his own or his colleague noisers, or in press of minimal editions. This CDr is dedicated to one of the surviving victims that was kidnapped by serial rapist and killer Marc Dutroux - Sabine Dardenne. Not without a reason the main artwork is nude woman curved for bridge exercise. Nice. It seems that this album was recorded around the time when Marc Dutroux was finally caught, but it's been released just in 2008 via Polish label Impulsy Stetoskopu. Playing time of album is more than 40 minutes. It consists of one long track. Material in the album - decent harsh noise, though I've never been die-hard fan of chaos that Fecalove creates, so for me this album slightly lacks the same - concreteness, concentration and intensity. No, this album is neither light, nor too simple or bad. The whole result is slightly chaotic and it's similar as if you'd construct the full picture out of smaller separate pieces. Sometimes these separate parts fits together with each other well, sometimes not. Torture of feedback, weird rhythms, appearing from nowhere, pseudomelodies, formed from sounds of feedback or noise generator, finally bricks of low frequencies start to fall and you just enjoy a little when sound evolves further and you reach the next stage of the album. Eternal motion. Truth is, there are places in album where chaos disappears and the album start to sound like perfectly realised gem of harsh noise. I especially like what Fecalove does with the sound when album almost reaches the middle pause - ear piercing feedback and interesting textures of sound. And one longer part when the album is going towards the end. All in all, it's decent harsh noise album that you can pleasantly listen to. Nothing too exciting about it though in slightly schizophrenic atmosphere - here it's joyful and lively, there it's serious and fierce. Like the bigger part of creations of Fecalove. [Terror]
FILTHY TURD Erect Roar of Eerie Moon Cock 3"CD-r KAFKEX €3
Four tracks of weirdness from everybodies favorite fecal affliated noise fiend. All sounds present are quite nasty and lo-fi and range from strange field recordings, pure noise, vocals and even guitar!! My words cannot do this justice - it needs to be heard to be enjoyed! 25 copies.
FISTULA Inverted Black Star Crucial Bliss Records €5
Every time I get something new from Fistula, by the time that I reach the end of the CD, or 7", or whatever, I make up my mind that there's no way that this band can get any goddamn heavier. This ongoing habit of laying down sonic ultimatums in my relationship to Fistula's music has been going on for what I guess has been seven years now, ever since I first picked up their Hymns Of Slumber CD on Shifty Records. Man, I felt like someone was stacking cinderblocks on my head the first time that I spun Hymns. And each subsequent release from the Ohio group (which over the years has oscillated between various permutations of the same lineup, always returning to the core of guitarist Corey Bing, bassist Bahb Branca, and guitarist Scott Stearns) just keeps cranking the frustrated, ultra-pissed-off negativism, mutant crossover thrash riffs, gooey doom tempos, feedback, narcotics, trailer park satanism and absolutely skull-splintering slow-motion mosh riffs even further. If you've never heard 'em, imagine an unholy union between Japanese doomlords Corrupted and the scathing thrash of The Accused colliding together into a mutant form of sludgy, thuggish doomthrash and left to stew in an oily vat of Gummo-esque atmosphere. God damn, I love Fistula. But this, this is something different. Different at least from any of the other Fistula records. At some point last year, the members of Fistula met up with another Ohioan, Steve Makita from the midwest power-violence legends Apartment 213, midwest power-tool noise legends Lockweld, and current second throat for Agoraphobic Nosebleed. At some point, both of these parties decided that joining forces would be a good move and had Makita lug over his toolbox to the Fistula practice space and drag out some of his most lethal circuit-shredders, keyboards and power tools. The end result are two new discs, Lessons In Lamentation and Inverted Black Star, each one possessed by a single hour-plus track of Fistula with Steve Makita conjuring fucking HUGUNGOUS slabs of apocalyptic free-metal. And it's Fistula's most abstract, demonic music ever, a charred mess of harsh electronic skree and gut-rumbling noise and unholy doom metal. The title itself points to the pure blackness of Inverted Black Star: a massive hour-plus wave of bleak, blackened improvised doom riffing, only one or two riffs tops, but each one repeated over and over into infinity as the band and Makita pile on layers and layers of corrosive feedback, pneumatic drill noises, slicing sinewave tones, long black tentacles of undulating drone. About halfway through the disc, a voice begins speaking underneath the crushing sludge and noise, and it creates an effect similiar to hearing a television news bradcast about something really bad from four rooms away, only to sink back into the lumbering, monotonous deathtrance. Utterly crushing. There has been a groundswell of bands and artists lately that have been fusing the heaviness of the slowest, most extreme doom metal and black metal with pure harsh noise, artists like Wilt, Josh Lay, Matt Bower's Mirag stuff, for instance. Well, you can add these two discs from Fistula to the top of the heap of blackened doom noise. These are as crushing, noise-encrusted, and corrosive as anything else lurking in this new realm of abstracted heaviness.
FISTULA Lessons in Lamentation Crucial Bliss Records €5
At some point last year, the members of Fistula met up with another Ohioan, Steve Makita from the midwest power-violence legends Apartment 213, midwest power-tool noise legends Lockweld, and current second throat for Agoraphobic Nosebleed. At some point, both of these parties decided that joining forces would be a good move and had Makita lug over his toolbox to the Fistula practice space and drag out some of his most lethal circuit-shredders, keyboards and power tools. The end result are two new discs, Lessons In Lamentation and Inverted Black Star, each one possessed by a single hour-plus track of Fistula with Steve Makita conjuring fucking HUGUNGOUS slabs of apocalyptic free-metal. And it's Fistula's most abstract, demonic music ever, a charred mess of harsh electronic skree and gut-rumbling noise and unholy doom metal. In contrast to it's companion disc Inverted Black Star, Lessons In Lamentation sounds like it's virtually "rocking". Where Inverted spews monoto-riffs and malevolent power tool noise across the jet-black waste of it's hour long length, this jam is more upbeat, opening with a massive chugging sludgy metal riff that cycles over and over, slowly joined by a swarm of sizzling feedback and high pitched sine-whine. Crazed shredding solos appear, the central riff changes shape throughout, the whole track seems to be split into three distinct sections. It's super hypnotic as Fistula grinds away endlessly surrounded by Makita's dense and textured noise. Deep monstrous vocals emerge from out of the filth, gutteral invocations that are impossible to decipher. A massive plodding industrial dirge, a meditation on repetitive metal riffing and the blackest feedback, recorded all the way in the red, a majestic crumbling obelisk of monstrous noise-doom.
FLUTWACHT When the Dogs Come Out Deserted Factory €5
Experimental Power Noise
FORDELL RESEARCH UNIT 56.07°N 03.40°W Kovorox Sound €5
FORMATT Did We Ever Consider Postmodernism? 3"CD-r Silken Tofu €5
minimal glitch meets digital noise
FUKTE & ATARAXY Distant Shores Puzzle Records €6
HNW.
FUKTE Giallo A Venezia Toxic Industries €5
HNW.
FULCI Dead Lights / Red Sky Crucial Bliss Records €5
The first recorded offering from twilight-psyche dronerock duo FULCI. Deep, rumbling, and eternal speaker-buzz worship, wrapped around lumbering riffs drunk on cough syrup and shimmering distortion overload. Howling feedback mantras repeated ad infinitum. Major key rustic lullabies are reduced to primal string scraping drones that climb over mountains of echoing hum. Intensely melodic and repetitious, like SKULLFLOWER covering EARTH's 2 in an old, empty farmhouse. FULCI is Eric Crowe (formerly of Social Infestation, currently of Marax) and Adam Wright. Former members of Leviathan A.D. and The Bodybag Romance assisted on bass and drums, respectively. Mastered by Scott Hull at Visceral Sound.
FUNEBRUM / PURIST split Bone Structure €5
BLACK AMBIENT / EXPERIMENTAL / DARK AMBIENT ... Five tracks of pure suicide art: 2 tracks by one of Bone Structure´s most recent dark ambient creators, coupled with 3 tracks of icy cold and depressive material from German duo Purist. Limited to 66 copies!
FUNKSTILLESENDER+KOMATOSERZUSTAND DNO [not on label] €2
Packaging isn’t everything. I’ve lost count of the exquisitely beautiful creations used to hold the most hideous of recordings. I call it the ‘mutton dressed as lamb’ syndrome. Then I occasionally come across the reverse of this syndrome where its ‘lamb dressed as mutton’ and I wonder why more time and effort wasn’t put into the presentation to enhance the overall production values. "DNO" by Funkstillesender / Komato Serzustand falls into this latter category. First impressions of this release were not good. Looking at a blank non descript CDR housed in a slim line CD single case with a cut out paper front did nothing for my enthusiasm. Amateurish and dull. Or dull and amateurish. Take your pick. The sort of packaging that if for sale on a market stall you would immediately pass over because it looked like something a twat with a new computer had taken great pride in churning out within five minutes. That bad. Appearances though can be deceptive and so it proved with this release.
Groundhog day part 1: No press release was forthcoming for this recording so I’m at a loss regarding the history of either artist. Possibly / probably Russian groups. Groundhog day part 2: Attempting to access the Funkstillesender website led me to a page with the word ‘Index’ on it. Nothing more. Groundhog day part 3: It could well be a limited release but to how many copies I don’t fucking know. It would appear I live in a continual time warp where this occurs and happens to me all the time. Stop the world. I want to get off. If you’re looking for more facts you’ve come to the wrong place and person…again.
But hey…these are minor trivialities. Look past the non information and piss poor packaging and what you’ll find is a prime example, nay the best, of Industrial machine drone music spread over five tracks and 60 minutes that I’ve ever heard. What an absolute joy of a recording. Really it’s a simple concept. Take the main sound, be it an fluctuating elongated note or what sounds like pounding pistons in a machine, repeat it continually on a loop then add extra electronics effects on top and occasional voices reminiscent of deus ex machina. The ghosts in the machine. You can’t go wrong with this formula. There are of course further variants to be found within. Hints and bursts of fluxing static. Subliminal low / high frequencies. Other exotic sounds and samples coupled with the intricate mixing of subdued power electronics and black ambience. The concept though stays the same throughout which is the main thing. Put quite simply…and in words that I’ll stake my hard earned rep utation on... ‘DNO’ is pretty fucking shit hot and amazing. Loved it to bits and loved it to death. A quintessential industrial machine drone recording that just begs for your attention. How you’ll get a copy though slightly worries me. Nag your local distributor** until you’re blue in the face and keep your fingers crossed. [Aural Pressure]
GAS CHAMBER The Filth at the Bottom of the Barrel... Mask of the Slave €5
Great new Power Electronics, Noise band from UK
GENETIC TRANSMISSION Rondel Pelen Lajna Soulworm Editions €7
Tomasz Twardawa is a living legend of the underground industrial scene in Poland. Since the mid eighties, he has taken part in pioneer projects as TKT, Godzilla and a few more, introducing noise and power industrial aesthetics into the numb, self-proclaimed 'avantgarde' crowd, stimulating its development with his uncompromised, radical approach. His main brain-child, Genetic Transmission, with numerous great releases under belt, proves that his flame still burns. The album presented hereby is a bruitist construct of thoughtful, detailed electroacoustics with a remarkable musique-concrete edge and composition methods that are completely unpredictable, yet consistent. Sound is the matter. [press-release]
GIANFRANCO GRILLI Come to the Light of Day! Tantric Harmonies €7
Sound-journey from pure darkness to the light based on "Egyptian Book of the Dead". Impressing opus about enigma of death and origin of a new life. Comes in foldout sleeve and limited / numbered to 230 copies.
GLASBERG Utrennik ElectroIndustriya €5
In a certain sense Glasberg (St. Petersburg, Russia) reminds of clanking question mark, which can appear in the head after a sleepless night on a balcony of a tower-block in St. Petersburg outskirts. Important are not the specific formulae, but the gesture and message themselves. Technologically the meditation is performed by a method of intuitive warping, by distorting the sound in real time intil it turns into a rarefied vibrational flow flavoured with a desperate voice. [press-release] The debut album of Uncle Fika, a permanent member of Deutsch Nepal concerts in St. Petersburg. Old-school death-industrial, analogue weirdness and insane vocals.
GLUTTONESS Smothering Hopes & Crushing Dreams Toxic Industries €5
HNW.
GOMEISA Fallen to Dust Zvukovina €6
Cole Peters takes Canada to the next level of HNW. Aided by the ruthless monster that is Gomeisa he stakes out new territory for the darkest demons of the static netherworld. ‘Fallen To Dust’ serves up 40 minutes of earth shattering rumbles, sure to leave you numb with fascination and sheer awe. HNW mountain audio fact.
GORDUW Crossfire Center Torga Amun €6
Industrialized Minimal Electro with lots of urban samples. Recorded by dr. Feithnathoroth in prison in 2005-2006. Double handmade sleeve.
GORDUW Ress Veriints Torga Amun €6
Famous Russian underground project from Siberia mostly active in early 2000ies. The album was recorded by its mastermind Dr. Feitnathoroth during 2005-2006 in prison (where he was serving a sentence). 65 min. Folvork dark electronic with elements ambient, noise, beat… CD-R, DVD-slim box, 50 copies.
GORDUW XII CIF. Rouna Control! Millions Vs. Millions Folvork'prodactions €6
Famous Russian underground project from Siberia mostly active in early 2000ies. The album was recorded by its mastermind Dr. Feitnathoroth during 2005-2006 in prison (where he was serving a sentence). 65 min. Folvork dark electronic with elements ambient, noise, beat…
GOVERNMENT ALPHA Impregnable Storm New Nihilism €6
Harsh Noise.
GRIEFER Evilbit Deserted Factory €5
Canadian Griefer might employ some cheesy names, but musically it settles stylishly into the North American death industrial tradition. The record kicks off with some dynamic rumbling and high pitches, with an accessible, even somewhat melodic and cinematic style - with dark threatening atmospheres, of course. Sound sources are used with refreshing variety, the rumbling and crackling soundscapes, sliding from noise to ambient and back, are complemented with eerie synth melodies and metal percussion. The record is first and foremost very American in style, and immediately reminds me of pioneers from the west continent, like Control, Wilt or Gruntsplatter. Although Griefer shares traits with all of these - Wilt's concrete grip and atmosphere meets Control's electronic cruelty and Gruntsplatter's churning horror atmospheres - the whole becomes quite personal and unique. Sometimes the record does slip too much into aimless chaos to keep hold of the listener's interest. However, for a debut (?) this is an unusually impressive piece. A must for friends of "the North American school", and definitely deserving of a larger edition.
[John Bjorkman / Kuolleen Musiikin Yhdistys]
HALTHAN Collapse In Progress 3"CD-r L.White Records €8
a new power electronics artist from Finland with his brand new work on L.White Records / 4 catchy power electronics tracks with tortured voices and a sound alike CONTROL
HARSHASHISH Flood Underpass Condone Kastration Artfuck Productions €5
Environmental industrial power electronics
HARSHASHISH Overriddance to Epistholocaustic Oblivion Artfuck Productions €5
Another extreme journey, power electronics and "ritual power acoustics"
HASSU PELLE s/t Ikuisuus €5
Hassu Pelle (Funny Clown) from Tampere, Finland was active only a couple of years at the first part of 2000s. This hilarious quintet was formed by Pelle Eloton, Pelle Svanslos, Ulkomaan Pelle, Pelle Jatka, and Apupelle who was involved with the recording session. Hassu Pelle’s self-titled first and only record was originally released by the band members themselves with the edition of approximately only 30 copies. Hassu Pelle played some mind-boggling live shows for the handful of people mostly just in their home town. These small audiences were witness to the surprisingly fresh and thrilling musical happiness. First impression might be that Hassu Pelle’s music is just “foolery”, but hidden underneath the seeming simplicity these compositions carry true brilliance. Eight catchy tracks were recorded at those mighty days when Hassu Pelle was dancing at the peak of their strength. At the recording session they used the simple one-take-style without overdubs. The result is extremely playful, yet confident, jagged with the taste of life. Hassu Pelle played beautifully bittersweet, yet at the same time hysterically merry music, which could be described in this context as "circus music". Even the most hardened humourless person will get a smile on the face while listening to Hassu Pelle. There's no other ensemble which has reached such enchanting carnivalistic atmospheres like Hassu Pelle. This cultural achievement from Ikuisuus label saves these sounds of delight from the oblivion. Step into the circus, you won't regret!
HATED BRUIT KOLLEKTIV Aktion One New Nihilism €6
HBK is an ephemeric project held among musicians behind Genetic Transmission, Moan and Nojsens. Three minds, three individualities, tree artists sharing one inspired vision. These are people we know for years so it became somehow natural to invite their bastard child to our NN therapy group finally, starting the "Harsh Kontakt" series of relases from now on. The sound sculpture presented hereby has been captured at Bez Kontroli Fest 2007 as probably HBK's best gig to date. Expect the unexpected, as they have gone the whole hog, without no mercy to the audience or themselves. OK, it's all there: refreshing traditional industrial, warming harsh noise, stoned bruitist plunderphonics, and last but not least—good taste and the fucking clue, VSOP. The packaging consist of a huge, A2-sized heavy stock poster folded to form A5 sleeve housed in a solid plastic wrapper. [press-release]
HATRED IN EYES Nothing to Condone 3"CD-r L.White Records €8
This is the third release of HATRED IN EYES a power electronic project from Hong Kong which starts 2006 run by Crow.C. and provides pure hatred sounds, topics all about racial discrimination, alien, things happen in the city .... !
HEDORAH Collection Crucial Bliss Records €6
I've been a fan of Wilt ever since Matt Gibney (RIP) sent me a copy of the The Black Box Aesthetic: Zeitgeist 1 CD that he had released on his label The Rectrix. The combination of dark ambience, organic sounds, and industrial creep that Wilt delivered on that (and other early albums) had me captivated, but I lost track of the project for a few years as the labels that were releasing Wilt's albums were largely off of my radar. It wasn't until late last year that I rediscovered Wilt after member James Keeler sent me a bunch of his recent releases to check out for Crucial Blast. Not only did I flip out over the newer Wilt stuff that came in the package, which now had a tactile metallic heaviness in addition to the always present waves of black sound, but I was also introduced to a band called Hedorah that was on a split cassette that James included a copy of. The Hedorah tape (a split with The Fortieth Day) felt like a boot to the skull when I popped it into the office stereo, an oozing syrup-blast of blackened doom metal delivered over sickening downtuned guitar riffs that seemed to drift in and out of phase, smears of filthy electronic noise, and crushing monotonous drum machine beats. Not one ray of light, nor ounce of melody is anywhere to be found. Just plodding, utterly hypnotic, nauseatingly crushing industrial doom. That tape immediately became one of my favorite items that James sent, and after writing him back to ask what the deal was with this band Hedorah, it turned out that the band is actually the "doom metal" alter-ego of Wilt, with both James Keeler and Dan Hall of Wilt making up the band. It also turned out that they had some surplus recordings that they were looking for a home for, and in an instant this collection of Hedorah recordings was birthed, screaming and covered in black oil into this world. Taking it's name from the aerial pollution god that faced off against Godzilla in the Japanese psychedelic kaiju classic Godzilla vs. Hedorah (1971), Hedorah is fully documented on this handmade disc that combines the track "From Beyond" from the split cassette with The Fortieth Day, "Planet Of Doom" from the Dr. Who Vs The Noise compilation, and five unreleased tracks. Hedorah proves to be a multi-tentacled beast: "Crystal Smoke" evokes a smog-ridden wasteland laced with acid-rock guitar soloing, pummeling industrial bass, and trance inducing beats, and ends up as some kind of grim krautrock jam. "Self Medicated" emits looping dialogue and whirring drones over monstrous throat chanting. "Hyperbolean" combines terrifying screams converted to echo-chamber hiss and overdriven, pummeling metal riffage thrust so far into the red that it sounds like there are flaps of speaker material smacking up against yer eardrums. The twenty-minute "Black Walls" is the apex of distortion though. That final track starts off as a sheet of obsidian ambience, a shimmering drone streaked by whirring noises, but then the riff appears, a massive three-chord doom dirge looming over the horizon, massively distorted and plodding, a hateful obelisk of fuzz lumbering through the increasingly violent blasts of feedback and distorted vocal noise that's shot across the soundfield. Ominous synth melodies and dank cave ambience appear later on, but become devoured by vicious feedback lashings a la Prurient and the return of that bottomless crushing doom dirge. Heavy is an understatement.
HOUR OF THE WOLF I Doubt the World to Be Zvukovina €6
Two tracks of static quality in this debut release. Harsh Noise Wall project by Flesh Coffin from Norway.
HOUR OF THE WOLF Winter Light Toxic Industries €5
HNW
HUM Le Pilote De L'Onde Vive [not on label] €6
The bonus piece that came with a small edition of "The Spectral Ship" 10" is now also available as single release, pure light shimmering meditation drones, comes in a handmade minimal design, numb. ed. 40 copies. This is something for the "endless repeat" button.
IAMSEAMONSTER Brilliant Blaze 3"CD-r Central Dynamo Room €3
Harsh Noise.
IN NEGATIVES Climates Small Doses €5
alex pearson (d/a a/d, snapped in half tapes) takes a different approach with this project. using nothing more than magnetic tapes, he creates incredible, dark rumbling drones that sound fitting for being lost and alone somwhere in space. he also provided the image on the cover. edition of 62 copies.
INDCH LIBERTINE Bodil Jorgensen Lover Toxic Industries €5
HNW
INDRA Seven Mortal Sins Operator Produkzion €5
Conceptual Death Industrial / Power Electronics album inspired by the concept of seven deadly sins. Sound was created from processed recordings of real manufacturing equipment, to be compared with best projects of Italian PE school, like Atrax Morgue and N. The disc is packed in a 5" flexi disc package and comes with 4 double-sided inserts with pictures for each track.
INDRA Taste the Poison Operator Produkzion €5
Toxic Power Electronics. Totalitarism, overload of venomous frequencies, clanks of carriages, barking of guard dogs, orators' calls, hiss of sprayers in gas chambers, yperite fog over trenches and momentary collapse in the end. We should note the sound separately - ideal combinations of power and lo-fi, worth of best works in genre. Handmade package of mirror-like plastic with roughly burnt logo. Limited to 99 copies.
INDU MEZU Chdetoria Misfake €5
Long awaited release. We finally assembled all compositions to reach integrity of album and create masterpiece. Some tracks was published before and some not. Music varies from rythmic noise to glitchy ambient with higly saturated sound full of details. Higly recommended. [press release]
INDU MEZU Opus Cold Graey €5
Tape was recorded in the end of 1997, beginning of 1998. Remastered in 2007. No computers used in recording. Hardware: two tape decks, broken guitar, lo-fi mics, CASIO M-100, various handmade stuff and tapes, tapes, tapes. [label info]
INSEMINOID Beauties of Beltane 3"CD-r Small Doses €5
inseminoid is the collaborative project of lee stokoe (culver, skullflower, marzuraan) and george proctor (mutant ape, karst) they've been quite prolific in their relatively short time releasing music. this recording has them focused on the drone. It lingers in harsher territory somehwere between a soft drone and wall noise, while allowing some melodic synth lines to bleed through the noise. edition of 65 copies.
IOIOI Sleeping: Awaken Visions Ikuisuus €5
IOIOI approaches here the possibility of witnessing the flux of sound-emotions.... through the breathing of a passive mind. What is left when the body-mind is almost sleeping yet awake?.... Each track acts as a perceptive pleat; time affecting. It asks for time. All the process is improvisation, however it may sound as composition, here and there..... “If you fall asleep while you listen to…that’s very good. When you wake up sounds are ended. What’s left?”.... Love, ...
IRIKARAH / E.H.E. / C.VOLLMER Noise Rhine Westphalia Sick Art Products €3
Noise / Power Electronics.
IS / CIRCUIT WOUND split Phage Tapes 2x3&quopt;CD-r €8
Each artist takes a disc of around 20 minutes, Is letting loose a burly pack of clamouring harshities while Circuit Wound divides the second disc with some initial blunt force distortion and which lulls into drain-circling minimalism.
IZANAMI'S LABOUR PAINS Womb of Izanami Sick Art Products €3
Digital noise.
JAZZFINGER The Golden State Turgid Animal €4
Drone / Noise
JEPH JERMAN NAAU / Trunk Space Lunhare €5
If his name tells nothing to you, Jeph was/is in Hands To, City of Worms, Blowhole, Animist Orchestra and in many collaborative projects during the last twentyfive years
JEPH JERMAN Roadwork Lunhare €5
A work documenting 25 years of field recordings on the roads of the USA brilliantly edited and mixed in a single long track. [label info]
JESUS OF NAZARETH / EXPLODING METH LAB The Seedmouth Collection Crucial Bliss Records €5
Total fucking blast noise armageddon !!! This disc has been in the works over here for an eon, but we've finally gotten it together and have this jackhammer assembled and ready to trepan any of you mutants out there that might be looking for some extreme cut-up grindnoise violence to ruin yer day. This is part split album, part collaboration between two DC-area projects that have been orbitting the underground grind/punk scene in the region since the turn of the decade. I've been raving about Jesus Of Nazareth ever since JON's first album Braid Of Muscle fucked up my brain matter back in 2004, and while new recordings from the band have been sporadic since then, everything that I've heard from JON has been crushing. The band is basically a solo project from Jake Creggar, who in the past has played drums in a number of DC/Baltimore area bands like Hissing Choir, Triac, and Flowers In The Attic, and also plays in Exploding Meth Lab. With Jesus Of Nazareth, Jake creates short, violent spasms of harsh noise, brutal gabber, damaged grindcore blasted through a sheet of skull-scraping distortion, and slabs of evil ambience, served up in brief doses that are usually well under a minute long. The six tracks that open up this disc are incredibly harsh and abstract, and each track flows into the next, forming a psychedelic collage of blasting Whitehouse-esque electronic noise, blastbeats, distorted screams, sick Bloody Fist style beats, ominous orchestral samples mutated under an avalanche of effects, and it's all distorted and chopped up and glued back together into a sickening vomit-rush of violence and dread. Then there is Exploding Meth Lab, the current project from former Enemy Soil members Mason and Vaughn. Old school Enemy Soil fans no doubt remember Mason and Vaughn has being in the classic Casualties Of Progress lineup of the band, so there's some heavy grind pedigree here. EML is a totally different sort of beast from Enemy Soil though, equal parts extreme noise and grind and fucked-up low-fi sludge, a bizarre mashup of the Japanese noise of Pain Jerk, Incapacitants and Merzbow and the industrial noisecore of Seven Minutes Of Nausea, early Earache grindcore and trippy sample cut-ups. The eight minute EML track that is featured here is "Exploding Meth Lab Soup Kitchen", which originally appeared in cassette form back in 2005. The focal point of Seed Mouth Collection are the final five tracks, a collaboration between Exploding Meth Lab and Jesus Of Nazareth recorded in 2003. The first track, "Chimney Scream", is dark, deep ambient drone, a slowly fluctuating two-note synth riff hovering over screeching feedback drones and growling noise. It flows immediately into "Empty Teeth", a massive, nearly ten minute long low-fi dirge metal holocaust of glacial doom riffs and screeching spiteful vocals, operatic female singing and wavering, warbling electronics melting together into a triumphant deathmarch of toxic doomnoise, like hearing some lost Grief demos being remixed by Merzbow. The remaining three tracks move back and forth between the grimy ambient sections that are laced with murky samples of some old opera recording, and the bludgeoning, ultra-noisy deathdoom. These collaborative tracks are ridiculously harsh and crushing, and I can only hope that the two projects are going to continue to team up to create more of this heavily damaged outsider noise/doom/ambient sickness.
JEVADE X WHITAKER The Guillotine / SMRZNIK La Technique Zvukovina €6
HNW.
JOHANN WLIGHT Yvnshrynd Queasy Listening Records €5
I like a challenge, and conceptually, this is one of the more thorny releases I’ve heard for quite some time. On the one hand “yvnshrynd” is Wlight’s meditation on the sign of Virgo. The sonic manifestation of a Jungian journey into an environment laden with hermetic and heuristic symbolism. On the other hand , it is quite simply an elegantly and sensitively crafted soundscape, replete with originality, and mysticism. I honestly have not heard anything like it - no mean feat considering my age and long and undistiguished career in the world of experimental electronica.
Like any work of art, "yvnshrynd" can be appreciated at many levels, and I have no cause to doubt Mr Wlight’s integrity in matters of astrology or magick, neither of which I have any significant knowledge of. As a piece of sound art conceptually aligned with telluric currents, ley lines and other snippets of Forteana, these recordings are extraordinary, and unique. Each sequence of work exhibits a degree of restraint and lightness of touch that has an implied depth of field suggesting something altogether other worldly is at hand here. Sleeve notes and press release combined indicate Wlight’s work is gleaned from location recordings from his immediate environment that have evolved organically from serendipitous discoveries at “temporally significant points”, presumably in the astrological calendar.
Now whether or not the listener decides to embrace Wlight’s philosophy, or simply listen and appreciate the beautifully structured soundscapes he has created is of course, entirely up to them. I would have liked to have heard more, as the piece clocks in, (unsurprisingly in magickal terms) at a mere 23 minutes. Go and buy this. [Aural Pressure]
JOSH LAY Dead Blessings 3&quopt;CD-r Chondritic Sound €5
A heavy, hateful outlook from this Cadaver In Drag hammerer via dark electronics and spiteful vocals. 17 minutes of digging through wet soil only to be disgusting by what you find buried within. His first release for Chondritic but a personal favourite of his canon. Reminds slightly of Neuntoter Der Plage. Colour artwork and painted CD-R
KADAVER God has Left the Building Mask of the Slave €5
Kadaver is a 1man project by Michael Zolotov from Israel. Active since 2003(yet the first release came out on 2005). The sounds of Kadaver shifts from dark and twisted ambient through industrial till harsh noise and power electronics. This is NOT art nor music. Kadaver is NOT an artist trying to "creatively express himself" via this format. This is a cancer. It’s sickness. It’s a warm streaming vomit of hatred towards life, humans and existence. It’s the knife in your hand when nightmares twist your dreams. It’s the emptiness that devours your meaningless being and bleed as tears of decay over it. This is not for anyone... This is Kadaver.
KANIBAL HYMN Brompton Cemetary 3&quopt;CD-r Cthulhic Dawn Productions €4
Two tracks of haunting, coffin-encased ritualistic Dark Ambient Noise; commences with the proceeding of being interred into the tomb whilst consciousness still lingers and continues to the existence beyond the grave, where the voices of those beyond the shut coffin lid whisper of a new existence.
KANIBAL HYMN Dominions of Cthulhu, Legions of Shub-Niggurath Cthulhic Dawn Productions €4
A compilation of previously unreleased tracks from the earliest days of the project when it still went under the monicker of Terrorgoat; ranging from a track left over from the fourth demo Nuclear Goatnoise Attack up to ...A Plague Upon All Men, this is a cut-through to the development of the entity. Brutal, crude and primitive Black Noise.
KANIBAL HYMN In the Black Void of Space No Stars' Light will Save you from the Gnashing Teeth... Cthulhic Dawn Productions €4
One long track of haunting Dark Ambience ripe with the mind-bending horrors of ancient, thoroughly inhuman stellar abominations of the void and the spaces between realities.
KANIBAL HYMN Songs for Cannibal Generations Cthulhic Dawn Productions €4
The first publicly available release of Kanibal Hymn, the re-formation of Kaniba; five previously unreleased tracks harvested from a variety of sources from between 2006 and 2008. Dark Ambient that at times forays into the realms of Noise and Death Industrial.
KAPOTTE MUZIEK Assemblage Lunhare 2xCD-r €8
Previously issued in 1990 as two separate tapes to be played at the same time, here enhanced by one new double track composed and performed by Freiband. [label info]
KARJALAN TAZAVALLA Uhtua UFA Muzak €7
Death Industrial / Power Ambient. Karelian republic as Uhtian republic. Wonderful sonic document of the second "opus magnum" of this project from Petrozavodsk. This disc is a dedication to the Uhtian republic, which was founded in 1920-s in the northern Karelia and wanted to separate from Russia and become part of Finland. Two revolutionary revolts happened but were suppressed. This is history. During the running time of this disc you'll hear: iron walls of death industrial, cold currents of death ambient, and whisper of dark noise - this would most efficiently describe all the dreams that haunted the musicians during the recording of this material... Vainamoinen arises from Tuonela and warns people: don't make evil deeds and you won't be in that horrible situation where mean people are... 5 tracks, 54 minutes, CD-r, black carbdoard handmade digi-folder + stickers and cards. [press-release]
KARST No Prose Phage Tapes €5
Drone Noise.
KEIZHUN Walking on Saturn Chaos Campaign €5
Some bedroomesque Black Metal but very good, intense and GNAW THEIR TONGUES sounding.
KIRILL STUKALIN Organs and Mechanisms [not on label] €6
Kirill Stoukalin is an old school noisician from St. Petersburg, formerly known as a member of Reductio Ad Absurdum, and now making solo recordings (Organomehanizm) and collaborations with Alexander Lebedev-Frontov. This disc contains four different mixes of the same composition "Organs and Mechanisms". Collage made out of noises, bucket ramblings, radio and TV samples. Rough concrete sound.
KIRILL STUKALIN Program #3 [not on label] €5
Russian harsh-noise from Kirill Stoukalin (Organomehanizm).
KNURL Mesosoma Impulsy Stetoskopu €8
Harsh Noise.
KORPERSCHWACHE Broken Blades of Steel Scattered across the Narrow Way €5 Crucial Bliss Records
A thunderous new disc from Korperschwache! Broken Blades Of Steel Scattered Across The Narrow Way detours from the blackened machine-pulse hypno dirges that have appeared on recent releases on Faunasabbatha, Inam, and Public Guilt, and delivers a slab of heavy, instrumental drone/noise rock that builds even further upon the heavy influence of classic late 80's/early 90's NYC noise rock (and especially Band Of Susans) that has been juicing Korperschwache over the past seven years with six tracks of dense billowing reverb, atmospheric hypno-riffs and supreme guitar squall. The Burzum/Abruptum-esque blackness of the Ourobouros series on Crucial Bliss is absent here, and instead the music emerges as a lumbering deformed cousin of classic alt-guitar noise, huge open chords unfolding over shimmering distorted strings and multiple layers of vibrating amplifiers, with some sweet sun-scorched melodies swimming around in these lengthy riff explorations. Of course, it wouldn't be Korperschwache without the jagged, pounding beats of Doktor Omega, and each of these mechanical jams uncoil over a battery of thumping machine beats, cymbal-soaked motorik rhythms and even the odd unexpected breakbeat that kind of sounds like some spastic jungle has suddenly ripped it's way through the swirling clouds of drone guitar. I've been a big fan of Korperschwache's music for years now, and this is by far the prettiest, dreamiest music that Korperschwache has oozed out, but heavy too, a shambling, beautiful mass of hypnotic plod made up of pieces of Godflesh, Band Of Susans, My Bloody Valentine, and early Earth. This new disc is packaged in a full-color foldout sleeve and is limited to 300 copies.
KORPERSCHWACHE Ritual of the Ouroboros Crucial Bliss Records €5
Korperschwache returns! The Texan black-industrial drone-sludge project of RKF, who is also the mastermind behind the longrunning out-music webzine Dead Angel and the sadly defunct avant-rock label Monotremata, is back with not one, but two new discs of damaged black-metal infected drone rock, hot on the heels of that 3" CD-R that Public Guilt released at the beginning of the summer . Since the mid-90's, Korperschwache has been issuing fairly obscure but solidly heavy doses of blackened noise rock, or noisy abstract black metal, depending on your point of view, mostly through small-run cassettes and cd-rs on a myriad of labels. More recently, RKF and his trusty pile of smoking amplifiers and damaged drum machines have been constructing a trilogy of cd-rs entitled Ouroboros for our Crucial Bliss imprint, which began with the Voice Of The Ouroboros disc which came out on Crucial Bliss over a year and a half ago. It's taken me awhile for a multitide of reasons - well, mainly just because we're perpetually swamped here at Crucial Blast - but we've finally issued these last two chapters in this trilogy, the Sacrifice... and Ritual... discs, and each one emits a bleak, suffocating fog of stuttering drum machines, Skullflowery feedback dirge, weird cackling goblin vocals, layers of fuzz and grit, distortion and buzzing speakers, all offered up in tribute to the great serpent.
KORPERSCHWACHE Sacrifice of the Ouroboros Crucial Bliss Records €5
A brand new seventy-three minute disc from Korperschwache, the Texan black-industrial drone-sludge project of RKF who is the mastermind behind the longrunning out-music webzine Dead Angel and the sadly defunct avant-rock label Monotremata. Since the mid-90's, Korperschwache has been issuing fairly obscure but solidly heavy doses of blackened noise rock, or noisy abstract black metal, depending on your point of view, mostly through small-run cassettes and cd-rs on a myriad of labels. More recently, RKF and his trusty pile of smoking amplifiers and damaged drum machines have been constructing a trilogy of cd-rs entitled Ouroboros for our Crucial Bliss imprint, which began with the Voice Of The Ouroboros disc which came out on Crucial Bliss over a year and a half ago. It's taken me awhile for a multitide of reasons - well, mainly just because we're perpetually swamped here at Crucial Blast - but we've finally issued these last two chapters in this trilogy, the Sacrifice... and Ritual... discs, and each one emits a bleak, suffocating fog of stuttering drum machines, Skullflowery feedback dirge, weird cackling goblin vocals, layers of fuzz and grit, distortion and buzzing speakers, all offered up in tribute to the great serpent. Sacrifice Of The Ourobros contains 13 tracks of this grim and grisly blackened hypno drone rock that resides somewhere at the stygian intersection between Skullflower, Burzum, Abruptum, and Godflesh. It's pretty frightening stuff, heavy and trancey and very noisy, and strangely catchy at times...on this particular disc, Korperschwache's decision to name each one of these tracks after a different girl's name ("Jessica", "Lori", "Julie", "Sabrina") adds an additional creepout quality to his skulking, psychotic buzz rituals. Packaged in an oversized sleeve with the disc attached on a plastic hub, in a limited edition of 150 copies.
KORPERSCHWACHE Sordid Revelations from the Cult of the Nazarene Crucial Blast Records €5
Extended buzzsaw feedback necrodrone blasts that resemble the slow shrieking and crushing destruction inflicted by heavy machinery. Existing somewhere between pure noise|drone ambient and the grisliest depths of avant-garde/mutant Black Metal (minus any semblance of percussion,mind you), this is the sound of a small orchestra of fried out amplifiers performing extreme exercises in dissonant annihilation, with occasional vocal proclamations by Elektra Sturmschnell. But believe it or not, there are some DAMN CATCHY moments here. Using tape loops, gadgets, distorted samples,effects pedals,and blown-amp guitars and bass, Korperschwache creates an extremely loud form of isolationism.
KROMESHNA + BARDOSENETICCUBE Lilac Honey Ostroga €6
One collaborative 21 min. track from St. Petersburg based Bardoseneticcube and Kromeshna from Ural. "Like psychedelic balm pouring in florid patterns in eternal search for otherworldly clouds". A5 paper sleeve with a herbarium.
KYLIE MINOISE / WETHER split Pepto Records €5
HARSH NOISE * OMINOUS DRONE
LACKTHROW Pervectionist Vol.1 Central Dynamo Room €3
Electronic Noise
LAP DANCER Rituals of the Gaping Secretion Troniks €5
7 tracks of thick, heavy droneing noise created with pedals, guitar, sampler, voice, laptop.
LARSGARDEN / ROWENTA [untitled] 3"CD-r Tuguska Label €5
Tuguska Label skipper C-J Larsgarden (Ondo, A Perfect Friend, Pacta etc.) teams up with German sound connoisseur Frank Rowenta. Rowenta has been active in the experimental music scene since the early eighties and has released various records, both solo and with different constellations such as Rowenta/Khan and Grillhaus to name a few.The record contains 5 new tracks recorded 2008.
LEFTERNA Leaves 3"CD-r Striate Cortex €4
Massive & throbbing! Enormous pure tones lobbed themselves out my puny speakers. They kinda don’t do much…just sit in the air being massive and throbbing…but that’s cool. Imagine Pan Sonic really playing it down and letting the machines run themselves. Imagine fat bellies blubbering together. Imagine water filled balloons bouncing down the stairs in slow mo. Some seriously low frequencies here that are (as I sit here and write) merging with the racket of our washing machine, almost like the whole house is slowly gaining cognition and is stretching out for life. The last track, lying overlaps these massive blobs to start some tintibulating action from the windows. Play loud at your peril!
LEFTERNA Urna 3"CD-r Striate Cortex €4
Two tracks on this one. First is mainly unchanging, unadulterated hiss. As ever the devil is in the detail and here old Nick is blowing a hurricane through a plastic straw; emotionally it ranges from intense to very intense. Track two is more lead weight pendulum swinging, covered in moss, down a well circa Witch finder General. Pretty minty!
LEXES Worshipping Trees to Numbness Spatter Records €5
Madness, insanity, headache, tension and hysteria through wall of noise, vocal samples, feedbacks, pedal effects, contacts microphones.
LIGHT COLLAPSE & VOMIR Torganum Torga Amun €6
HNW
LIGHT COLLAPSE Crushing Philosophy Torga Amun €5
HNW
LIGHT OF SHIPWRECK From the Idle Cylinders Crucial Bliss Records €6
Light Of Shipwreck is a one-man project of Ben Fleury-Steiner, owner of Gears of Sand Recordings. Dense ominous feedback drones and heavy pounding riffs freely flowing under the massive of the mechanical tribal rhythm. Three tracks of intense crushing power-ambient, with huge resonating metal slabs glimmering in an ocean of heavenly feedbacks and reverbed guitar on the back of trance-krautrock percussion.
LILLY Lilly's Kiss Folvork'prodactions €5
65 min. Drone Dark Ambient & Power Electronics / Power Noise (GORDUW / TCHORT & OBOZDUR Members). Special cardboard packages made of the boxes from DXM containing cough syrup Tussin Plus + HIV-infected used syringe! [label info]
LOATHINGS Now Watch Me Self Destruct 3"CD-r KAFKEX €3
Loathings is a project based in Yorkshire, England. "Now Watch Me Self Destruct" is 15-ish minutes of primitive lo-fi horridness. Shit/lo-fi noise at its simplest and crudest. Barely changing and ugly, think of a devolved Hollow Bush or Macronympha with scabby hands due to knuckle dragging and you're almost there... 15 copies.
LOVE KATY Rainbow Haired Starlet Toxic Industries €5
HNW
LOW END ENSEMBLE Low End Ensemble .Angle.Rec. €6
Coming out from the ashes of multiple rock, progressive, blues and metal bands, Christian Lecompte joins forces with Simon Thibaudeau's oscillated and noiseful world. Witness the birth of Low End Ensemble. We promise no knobs to be left unturned, no feedback left unheard and rumble that would make an earthquake feel ashamed. Simon plays synths, effects, noise & bass Christian plays bass, feedback & moog. Simon also goes under the KVIK moniker, with releases on labels such as BRISE-CUL RECORDS or NAME RECORDS.
LOWLIFE Piece of Shit Whore II 3"CD-r 100% Unsocial Records €5
Harsh sex Noise for young and a bit older but still sexy is required! lim. to 69
LUASA RAELON Into the Void Crucial Bliss Records €6
Finally, after a pronounced delay, we're presenting the latest in grim, Cthulhian ambient death from David Reed, the man behind the Snip-Snip CD-R label and the ice-drones of Envenomist. With Luasa Raelon, Reed uses deep-frozen synthesizers and electronics to construct pitch-black sonic sculptures that evoke lost cities carved from obsidian whose masterless machines have been left to grind on into eternity, or descents into stygian pits whose bottoms cannot be gauged. Into The Void is the newest masterwork from Reed, recorded in 2006 and presented here as a five-chapter narrative that chronicles a doomed space exploration, where all that is left are the faint transmissions of apocalyptic dread drifting back at us through time. Beyond ominous, and gorgeously eerie, Reed continues to craft some of the blackest, heaviest drift this side of Gruntsplatter, Troum, Lull, Yen Pox, Melek-Tha, Lustmord, and Megaptera. Into The Void has been released in an edition of 200 copies, packaged in the signature Crucial Bliss foldover sleeve with the disc attached to the interior on a plastic hub, and featuring some of our best Bliss artwork yet, which David described as looking like 70's science-fiction art.
LUNAR MIASMA / ONDO split Tuguska Label €7
Lunar Miasma (Panos Alexiadis) from Greece teams up with Ondo. One track from each artist. 40 minutes running time. File under: Experimental, Drone, Ambient etc.
MANTRA-I Prehistory of HATI: Vol.1 Eter €6
arly 1997 recordings from this Polish project, this time with a ritual touch added to their percussive / junk metal modus operandi. 6 long pieces of hypnotizing lo-fi loops and drones.
MARAX Black Veil of the Sanguinarian Crucial Bliss Records €6
The first new release from Marax since 2005...this is electronic/harsh noise by Eric Crowe, who in the past served as throat for the cult Southern grindcore band Social Infestation, who also featured future members of Mastodon and Withered. This full length has been in the works for several years and is only now crawling out into the light, but the wait has sure been worth it. This'll incite some serious zoneouts from anyone who dipped their skulls in the molten deathdrone of Marax's ultra-limited Love Of Death series...Black Veil has four lengthy tracks of heavy liquid nightmare distilled from the catacombs. The disc opens with the fuzzy muted swirl and distant percussive clang of "Returning To Rust", which moves through soft gauzy layers of crackling distortion until exploding in a churning wall of concrete-mixer crunch with heavily modulated, howling demonic vocals. "Inside The Inner Voice" is a seven minute exercise in pitch black ambience and malignant incantations, and "Bleeding Black" stretches out across a vast abyss of distant reverberations and ambient fuzz, filled with far-off sonic flutterings, metallic scraping and screaming voices that just barely heard, an intensely creepy ambient dronescape. And the final track "Nod" is a twenty-two minute headphone epic...this is one of my favorite Marax tracks, a threatening ambient film score piece that stretches way out and moves from huge slabs of growling black ambient drift and buzzing black metal guitar through epic celestial synthesizer riffs. Simple synth melodies are repeated over swathes of droning amp rumble, the low-end sometimes swelling up in huge waves that threaten to overwhelm the entire piece, and a beautiful little melody begins to take shape later in the track that sounds like it's being played on a heavily processed piano, repeating over and over. Later, the buzzing, fuzz-drenched sheets of blackened guitar and droning distortion come back in and the sound becomes a massive muted fuzzdrone that reaches out forever, finally fading off into the ether as the track comes to a close. I'd normally never describe any of Marax's material as beautiful since most of his works either suggest feelings of isolation and dread or simply shear your fuckin' dome off with extreme electronic skree violence, but with "Nod" Marax gives us one of the most mesmeric pieces of music I've ever heard from him, a sprawling, subtly beautiful narco-scape that's like hearing the mystical krautrock orchestrations of Florian Fricke and Popol Vuh faded and filtered through the deformed, dank dungeon atmosphere of Abruptum.
MARK BRADLEY Sustain / Release Dokuro €6
Dokuro proudly host a new effort of fruitful artist Mark Bradley, who also have released music through label like Rural Faune, Reverb Worship, Hooker Visions and Hobo Cult to name a few. Sustain/Release grab the listener into a dream state of mind, minimal synths provide subtle harmonic structures where layers of electric shores, evaporating pulses and mellifluos drones drapes subconcscious voices transmitted from other dimensions. Once again the successful achievement of Bradley music consist in his ability to create new worlds throught vibrating sonic landscapes.
MARK BRADLEY When Art Imitates Life A Beard Of Snails Records €6
Technocentric head music from the always reliable Mark Bradley. A 33 minute opus spanning loud 'n' proud glitch gabber, over deconstructed drum 'n' bass and punchy synth zaggin', into deeper cybernetic dream rave dimensions. Artwork affixed to white digipaks, 35 copies made.
MASKED DIODE Masked Diode 3"CD-r L.White Records €8
MASKED DIODE is an industrial noise unit in Japan. There are several splendid noise units that are not yet known in Japan. MASKED DIODE Diode is one of some such units." The first really power-electronic orientated Japanese noise stuff with vocals! Sometimes harsh and with a lot of power, sometimes more ritual!
MATHIEU RUHLMANN As a Leaf or a Stone Afe Records €7
Mathieu Ruhlmann is a visual and sound artist. He first began composing soundworks to accompany his visual art based on found material.
He has created works for various labels worldwide - including S'agita Recordings, Mystery Sea, Spekk, Unfathomless, Taalem and Gears of Sand - as well as contributed to several compilations.
He has also produced sound installations and held performances throughout North America. He currently resides in Vancouver, British Columbia.
After "The Earth Grows in Each of Us", released in April 2007, "As a Leaf or a Stone" Mathieu's second release on Afe
MATTER Pinkly Lips Observatory €5
Matter is a project of Russian musician Denis Shapovalov (Adriva, Sunchariot), in which he explores the possibilities of computer technologies. However he does it in the same way as in his main projects. The result is rather strange meeting of digital sound and raw primordial approach: monotonous noises, crackles, loops and complete obscurantism. An engaging release.
MAURIZIO BIANCHI Akoustikoriginem Lona Records €6
Improvisation is the practice of making and creating in the moment and in response to the stimulus of one's immediate environment. Musical improvisation is the spontaneous creative process of making music while it is being performed. It's like speaking or having a conversation as opposed to reciting a written text. "Akoustikoriginem" is a marginal and exhausted resource for experimental diffusion of uncompromised acoustic sounds from the convergent beginnings... Maurizio Bianchi prevalently uses an expiatory acoustic guitar, maltreated with cortical fingers. Dedicated to Jubal, the tamer of the improvised acoustic sounds. [label info]
MAURIZIO BIANCHI March-Ex Lona Records €6
March-Ex (based on the book of Genesis, chapter 31, verse 35). "To obtain the menarchal attention of creative limits in a special synthetic subject, electro-hematic photocompositions scratched to the declivity as always different to obtain a dysmenorrheic catalyst. It was planned for soft shapes, extreme perfection, hematopoietic spirituality, however that was a simple labial menometrorrhagia. The tendinous tissue adapted the metabolism of coagulative effects, on the pestilential determination to guarantee the menorrhagic splendor among impressive recordings. Spurring the processional metrorrhagia of reformable background and concrete oligomenorrhea; between the infinite paths, our hypomenorrhagic point of view is inevitably furnished in a genuine horrors of our amenorrhagic time, mysterious of lightning along with the sanguinolent and peripheral activities. The polymenorrheic reputation or some excursions to a consequent capillarisation of hematogenous resistance. To modify the sedentary escape. This is the hemostatic defrosting of "March-ex". This work is not dedicated to the Dr. Hermann Stieve (22-5-1886 / 6-9-1952). [label info]
MAURIZIO BIANCHI Verfall Lona Records €6
Dedicated to the "entartete" musicians who were persecuted for their creativity between the 1937 and the 1945. "An intimistic work, in which the disintegration and declension of multicellular particles meet damaged piano affections. Ruinous and protonic waves culminate in a declining sonorous decay, which is the neurotic aim of the falling off author, at his regimental climax." (M.B. - March 2010). Degenerative work, played at a degrading piano on the 17th August 2009, in a decadent afternoon. [label info]
MEDITATIONS Eternal Absence Small Doses €6
This is the third release from this trio - Franklin Teagle, Matt Yacoub, and Ryan McGill (Bones of Seabirds). Schizophrenic noise -PE-like one moment dark ambience in others - of the highest order - drenched in feedback with a heart of stone. [label info]
MEMBRANA The Aids Meter A Capella Solipsism €6
Noise Ambient.
MESSIAH COMPLEX 31 Symbolic Productions €5
MESSIAH COMPLEX Meniscus At War With False Noise €5
A torturous bleak industrial noise soundscape that could only be borne from Bathgate, Scotland! Totally bereft of joy, this is much more dark ambient than this two-piece's usually more harsh noise output, but there are definite METAL undertones to the whole thing.
MEZIRE Electronic Warfare 3"CD-r L.White Records €8
new German power electronic tracks from MEZIRE in the way of Thomas Garrison aka CONTROL
MICROSPORA BOM Operator Produkzion €5
Psychedelic ambient, somethimes rthythmical, sometimes turning into a retrograde droning of an electro organ, sometimes spiced up with concrete noises. Reminds the experiments of the electronic music pioneers in 60-70ies. Handmade cover, all info handwritten. [label info]
MICROSPORA Microspora Operator Produkzion €5
Operator Produkzion opens a series of releases by Microspora - most likely the least known project of the "Leningrad noise school". It's creator - Valery Rakcheev - belongs to a group of such artists as A. Lebedev-Frontov and K. Stoukaline, he's been active (in the fields of music, fine arts, philophonia, audiophilia, etc.) in the underground since late 70-s, but somehow hasn't released anything from his music until today, just making some copies of his albums for friends. This album is filled with old school power droning electronics, pulsating minimal noises and technogenic claustromanic rumble. Last track is a sort of experimental downtempo industrial with samples from German history of the second third of XX century. Handmade montage cover with the graphics of V. Rakcheev. [press-release]
MICROSPORA Necrofuturism Operator Produkzion €5
Second release from the classic of the Leningrad noise school for Operator Produkzion. Sampledelics, swinging Moog organs, buzz of valve electrobees mixed with blurry factory noise, abrasive rustle and shocking redneck beats. Sleeve. [label info]
MICROSPORA Wool Operator Produkzion €5
First track is soft psychedelic sci-fi space ambient based on warm retro electronic sound, resemblind some sci-fi movies from 60-s. Second track contains strange music as if old Suicide from 1975 with their garage electronic sound tried to perform Autechre compositions. Sleeve. [press-release]
MIKE LOVE 666 / NOVA-SAK split Swamp of Pus €3
MIKOSTERION Slipout 3"CD-r [not on label] €6
One more side-project of Hum. Bright and transparent droney track dedicated to the Autumn Mystery, mushrooms and ideal trip.
MINUS Minus Live Bait Recording Foundation €5
The cover art featuring a collage of photos of roadkill and assorted dead critters is the first clue that this release isn’t likely to feature any tender ballads. Track titles like ‘Your Only Purpose In Life Is To Arouse Men’ and ‘Analgasm’ are further indications of what Minus are going to sound like. When you actually play the disc, these suspicions are confirmed – this is nasty, dirty, uncompromising power electronics, with no vocals (other than some very heavily processed and unintelligible speech and screams on tracks 4, 7and 8) and much in the vein of Merzbow or Consumer Electronics. Sirens, hums, howls, roars, crunches, clangs and clicks collide in an evil, incessant noise-storm. Actually, track 7, ‘Independent Thought Alarm’, and track 9, ‘Decaying Flesh’, are a bit quieter than the rest of the album, though still pretty menacing.
MITCHELL BROWN Bewigged Timetunnel Shimmeress Troniks €5
cut up stuttering and shimmering sound manipulations
MITCHELL BROWN Plug-in Parsnip Troniks €5
microscopic bursts of sound
MOISTURE Essence of a Spooky Horror Show Bone Structure €5
MONO T-10 Solipsism €5
Harsh Noise.
MORBID ORGAN Scum 26VoltsOfDanger €5
HAARE project.
MORTART Abuse Imbecil Records €5
Classical death industrial from the south of Russia. Dark soundscapes and factory atmosphere, vague blows, low frequencies. The album is recorded in old school manner, without any computers, only tapes, field recordings, metal percussion, etc.
MORTART Annihilation Imbecil Records €5
As it was noticed by critics "in all Mortart's albums slow death approaches to the listener, but in each album it looks a little different". Here it's incarnated as three long and very slow tracks, filled with senseless scraps of human speech and deep low frequencies. Compositions breathe with despair and blackness in listerer's face.
MORTART White Slave Imbecil Records €5
Death Industrial / Power Noise.
MUSHY Superfetazione Final Muzik €6
Long awaited full length CDr album by Mushy, the girl from Rome. Mushy is well-known in Italy for her live concerts and for an older CDr on Cold Current label. “Superfetazione” shows / expands her genuine interest and work on early 80's industrial music scene, shadowy electronics and vocal experimentation, mixing together anxiously all these influences though a deep soundtrack, where everyday life and paranoia walk hand in hand, nervously.
MUTANT APE / EARTH INCUBATOR collaboration Zvukovina €5
Six tracks, 37 min of hermetic-maniac-noise recorded in England and Russia.
MYRRMAN PorNOsmagoria Cold Graey €5
This is a solo-project of ArnoldPR of Reutoff. The rhythm is essentially closer to Das Reut, with its apocalyptic harmony and striking-down samples. The music is easy, but you feel its extreme heaviness after digging it. The album goes straight to the deepest sides of consciousness to settle in there and turn everything upside down. The release presented as an oversized handmade digipack, limited edition.
MYSTIFIED Science Fiction R.O.N.F. Records €5
Science Fiction is a foray into cold and minimal Drone. Sometimes beats are featured, while often the pieces are Drone and simply that. You could use it as a soundtrack to your day, and as a herald for the approaching Winter. Edition of 75
MYSTIFIED Skywatchers Small Doses €5
this is a concept album of sorts from mystified's thomas park. dark, shimmering ambience - sometimes transcendent, sometimes unnerving, but never anything less than engrossing. packaged in hand torn vellum with a torn insert. numbered edition of 121 copies.
N. Macabre Lust / Destination Morgue 2xCD-r Cerebro Morto €8
Cerebro Morto presents N., one of the most important acts out of the Italian death industrial movement, in a unreleased studio recording from the early days, together with a very rare live recording from 2007.
NEW BONDAGE FAERIES New Bondage Experiments II Soulworm Editions €6
NBF is the sonic equivalent of a dildo rammed up your virgin little asshole. Bow down to the awesome force that is New Bondage Faeries. [label info]
NEZNAMO Korjenje 3"CD-r Operator Produkzion €5
Known for his wonderful works in the field of traditional drone ambient, this time Neznamo takes a shot at completely different but spiritually close approach. Ritual music full of humming life, bird voices, fabulous atmosphere of bright summer nights, ringing of a ceremonial bell. The work is dedicated to a small people living in South-West Germany - Luzyczanie (or Serbjo), and the artwork contains thematic photos and text in Luzycz language. Mysterious voices from Spreewald. 2-sided printed sleeve. [press-release]
NIEZWYCIEZONY The Last Command Zvukovina €6
Collaboration project by Fukte and Smrznik from Italy and Bosnia. This is debut Niezwyciezony release recorded last year and second is coming soon on other channel. Two 30 minute tracks, mixture of typically static harsher elements from both artists. No change in developing of each track. Pure static control over mass of analog and digital micro details.
NIHIL EST EXCELLENCE Environ Soulworm Editions €6
Nihil Est Excellence is an alter-ego of an Ukraininan artist Andrey Kiritchenko, whose works rapidly become well recognized within the international electronic scene. Indeed, it's hard to pass indifferently by his field recording experiments. Two compositions 'Environ' consists of, are based on sounds recorded using nothing more but a microphone. After the skillfull processing a fascinating atmospehrics unveils, sort of theme for environmental contemplation – tempered but hard to forget. [press-release]
NINTH DESERT & MATERIEL BROUILLEUR Ainos Deserted Factory €5
"Ainos" sees the debut of both Ninth Desert and Materiel Brouilleur on Japanese label Desert Factory and is released as a hand-numbered limited edition of just 150 CDR copies. Ninth Desert is the solo project of French artist Cyril Herry formed in 2005 and has four previous albums under its belt, the fifth being "Neyss" released around the same time as this album. Although he started using the name as far back as 2006, Jean-Francois Fanton's project ,Materiel Brouilleur makes its debut with "Ainos". Based around low atmospheric dronescapes, "Ainos" concentrates on the subtleties of dark ambient music. Deliberately minimal, each track heaves and rumbles its way along, almost metallic in tone, as if created by huge mechanical devices. The drones are big and earth-shaking but low and discrete, just audible enough to have the desired effect but not dominant. The constant low rumble is accompanied by equally large scale industrial buzz saw sounds that swing, circle and engulf. While the drone is deep and dull, the circling, abrasive, metallic industrial scrapes and whirs are aggressive and threatening. As the drone discretely shifts in the background and becomes more prominent it raises the tension level with it, bringing heightened anxiety and ever darker imagery. "Sennassiom" for example could represent the descent of a massive flock of angry mechanical birds, darkening the sky with their sheer numbers. "Seriel" initially calms things down but slowly reveals itself as its dark tones rise and fall, becoming increasingly agitated before calming once more and slowly disintegrating into silence by its close. Clocking in at less than four minutes and changing the emphasis somewhat is "Maz Experience" with short heavy grinding tones, reversed synths and general demonic undertones, it is a short interlude of subtle nightmarish sounds and spectral groans building to a crescendo before suddenly dissipating. Closing the album is the longest track of the five; the 19 minute "Depressive Western" is a lengthy track returning to the dark ambient soundscapes experienced earlier in the album. As tones slowly undulate, they rise and fall with a gentle melancholy, still dark and uneasy but with a new sense of calm introspection. Similar in style to Ninth Desert's "Neyss" released by Deserted Factory around the same time, "Ainos" has a darker, more minimal atmosphere and a metallic theme running throughout. The sound is generally big and expansive giving the impression of long empty enclosed spaces, sometimes hinting at sinister forces but generally focusing on mood and generating feelings of tension, anxiety or melancholy. Overall, "Ainos" is a collection of drone-based dark ambient tracks that take their time to unravel, evolve and find their way. [Paul Lloyd / Judas Kiss]
NINTH DESERT Neyss Deserted Factory €5
Desolated landscapes of various feedback sounds like a blowing wind over monolithic plateaus grinding the rocks into dusty clouds of sand. Ninth Desert creates atmospheric sonic landscapes made of subtle feedbacks and other cavernous metallic sounds. Unfortunately most tracks are short and end abruptly awaking me rude from my listening experience. Ninth Desert is an ambient project by Frenchman Cyril Herry who may also be known from other projects like Ashes to Ashes. Neyss is already his fifth album for his Ninth Desert project, and second for Japanese Deserted Factory label. The atmosphere on this CD is dark and industrial but the tracks are very much the same in construction and structure. I do like to hear the separate tracks but the whole CD in one run causes some lost of attention and makes Neyss into nice background sound. [Remco / Gothtronic]
NOISE JESUS s/t Cthulhic Dawn Productions €4
In his wisdom, God is infallible and makes no mistakes. Words that pope Ratzinger surely agrees with, with a fine upstanding representative of the Catholic church such as Ruggero Conti as his witness. It is this Holy and perverse spirit, this sacrosanct degradation that Noise Jesus is of. A six-chapter Gospel to the glory of the Angels of Incest, the sincerity of the confessions of those at the sharp edge of the blade, and the death of a loving God, Noise Jesus is both Holy and Perverse, Faithful and Blasphemous, Godly and Satanic. Six tracks and 40+ minutes of unrelenting, abrasive Noise interlaced with ominous organs creating a perversely sacrilegious yet Holy experience. Comes on a CD-r (with label print) in a ziplock bag and with a pin, limited strictly to 25 copies.
NOMA Lacrimosa / Nidus 2xCD-r At War With False Noise €8
Finally the new Noma album is unleashed! I'm massively chuffed with this one; everything about this release is why I decided to start At War in the first place! Double album set that shows two distinct sides to the wonderful and often frightening world of Noma; the first disc "Lacrimosa" features one long piece built up with layered harmonium and drones which slowly envelop the listener. As Dylan Carlson said, "...a physical presence in the room...I can almost touch the sounds". The second disc, "Nidus" collects a bunch of more "noise"-style shorter tracks built around heavily-manipulated found sounds, vocals, and field recordings. In contrast to the first disc, lots going on and really benefits from repeated listens.
NOTHINGISTTRUE The Stand Against Humanity Rape Art Productions €5
NOVA-SAK Ignominy Triangle Records €3
O + YN - La Cancion Del Ciempies / Quise Ser Buho Ikuisuus €5
This is O +yn : a group formed by Gustavo Valerga, Maria Victoria Arener, Pablo Picco and Cesar Young. Four people from different parts of the country mixed together in Cordoba (one of Argentina’s bigger towns, 600 km west from Buenos Aires). Recorded in 2007 and mixed this year, ?La cancion del ciempies? (?the song of the centipede?) comes from the same recording sessions of ?Copa de un arbol sin raiz? [LP that is about to be finished later this year]. Vocals are mostly throat singing by Maria Victoria, Gustavo makes all the guitar walls, Cesar does the drumming and Pablo the keyboards & flutes. Spectral melodies in second track ?Quise ser buho? (?i wanted to be an owl?), sung by the special quest, our friend Gubia from Ecuador. Long minutes of electric static after some thick guitar and keyboard barriers, mixed with tons of voices, just to uncannily land in some woods near home, calmly hypnotized by some hand made stick flutes. We like folk, we like drone, we like to hit electric guitars, we like overtone singing and we like the trees that cover us at night. Just sit back there and enjoy the music from the heart of the centipede.
OBLONG BOX Premature Burial Housepig Records €6
A killer collection of out-of-print and unreleased material from horror-drone master Oblong Box, whose fearsome combination of dark ambience, noise and formless metallic synth heaviness has been crawling out of the dungeon in the form of various super-limited cdrs and tapes for the last few years. The tracks are collected from the untitled 3xCD noise compilation on Public Guilt, the split tape with Fossils and SB, the Pictures From The Fire cdr and their track from the 804Noise Fest 2006, with an unreleased track at the end.
OBOZDUR 91404 D [untitled] Operator Produkzion €5
Collaboration of two remarkable projects from Urals and Ingria. Dense psychedelic Droning Noise pierced by seismic shimmering drone, flexuous like deep breath, sometimes peeling with industrial clanks, near power electronic passages, parts played by traditional instruments and sample-symbols. Through faint retro images from 60ies, through yellowed black and white photograps and scenes from daily life one can see the shapes of forthcoming Last Days. [press-release]
OLD MONKS’ SAGA 09.11.01: Illuvatar’s Children Present Time 3"CD-r Soulworm Editions €5
'During the whole history of human civilization, mankind has fought itself because of religion, ideologies or national differencies. This process has been expressed once more in September 11, 2001 as an apogeum of the conflict between America and the Muslim world. We're at a starting point for the end of civilization...' Unlike the former OMS recordings, the contents of the following disc is much harder. Bombastic orchestrations are collapsing into the decomposed mayhem of industrial sounds, multiplying the feeling of chaos, panic and uncertainty. [press-release]
ONDO Low Premature Burial Recordings €5
ONDO Slow 3"CD-r Tuguska Label €5
1 Track. 21 minutes. Dark ambient doom/drone...
ONTAYSO Score of an Imaginary Iceland U-Cover CDr Re-issue €6
Ontayso consists of former members of Llips. & Starfish Pool. 'Score Of An Imaginary Iceland' brings a combination of acoustic instrumentation and fine electronics. Lofi guitars, melodic sax and subtle percussions are mixed with layers of electronic manipulation of acoustic sounds, field recordings, samples, and several synthesizers. The result is very cinematic, you can picture the imaginary movie of this 'soundtrack' in your head, floating in dark and breathtaking ambient surroundings. A fresh delivery for the land of contemporary electronics.
ORGANOMEHANIZM Dichlophosrelaxator Operator Produkzion €8
Apotheosis of base harsh noise and old school industrial. Reissue of a cult album from 2000, previously release only on cassette. Almost infrasonic noise perforates ear-drums, heavy steps of metal percussion and dripping water sounds lead into the labytinths of night catacombs, industrial rumble fuels your brain with adrenaline, electric drone forces out the remainings of a false ego, and incomparable vocals of L.I. Brezhnev adds some idiocy. An absolute masterpiece!!! Special anti-crisis edition comes with a portion of a real Chinese noodles and is packed in a big handmade cardboard box. [press-release]
ORGANOMEHANIZM Twilight State [not on label] €6
The new release from Leningrad based project of Kirill Stoukaline (ex-Reductio Ad Absurdum). Three tracks recorded in 2006-2007. Monochrome aggressive schizo-noise.
PACTA Fragments 3"CD-r Tuguska Label €5
Flowing guitars meets laptop buzz. 7 songs. Limited to 50 copies
PAPA SRAPA Perdutto. Minimalizm [not on label] €5
noise \ ambient performed with self-made instruments that functioning with author's spit and sperm.
PARANOID TIME Nod Off Troniks €5
30 minutes of gritty drone and feedback that Will make you stare a hole through your hand.
PARCHIM Winter (I will Never Die) Valgriind €5
New album from the author of Necrasota, ex-member of Ierophania. Transparent DVD-slim box with b/w cover decorated with a dried oak leave. Ritual ambient / noise.
PER ASPERA AD NILUM Silentwinter Soulworm Editions €6
The light against its reflection, the snowy landscape monotony against the frost pattern complexity... Keeping the subtle balance between the sound and silence, Per aspera ad nilum's aural ambiences are quite successful attempt of rendering the wintry tranqulity. Clean, tamed but still sophisticated atmosphere creation and good selection of source sounds makes this release a promising debut.
PER ASPERA Rain Passes. Only the Pools Reflect the Moment between the Last Drop & Another Deal of the Cards. Time Flows Nowhere Ibsen Produkt €6
PLACENTA LYPOSUCTION Erosion Zvukovina €6
HNW.
PNG Son To Noko To Ej Heart-Shaped Box €5
lo-fi ambient/drone
PORNOGRAPHIC NOISE ERECTION / VOMIR Harsh Music for Hot Nurses Vol. 2 Symbolic Productions €5
HNW.
PORTABLE NOISE KREMATOR No Dedication Produck €5
cd-lathe/abrasive distortion and damaged electronic overload,industrial clatter,and stellar guitar noise
POTERYANNAYA GORLA s/t Zvukovina €5
Completely static harsh material of Russian winter and Bosnian village maniacal resistance to any progress! 33min, one track.
PRAYING FOR OBLIVION A Permanent Shadow 3"CD-r L.White Records €8
"A Permanent Shadow" showcases 3 tracks of dark, raw P.E. with vocals. It is the first time that these tracks are available together on a German release.
PRAYING FOR OBLIVION Cathartic Disgorgement Roil Noise Offensive €5
Harsh industrial noise from this long running American power electronics/death industrial project. Limited CDR with full-color packaging.
PRAYING FOR OBLIVION Vilification Ov 3"CD-r Roil Noise Offensive €3
Harsh industrial noise from this long running American power electronics/death industrial project. PREGNANT SPORE / DEMENTIA AND HOPE TRAILS / INAPPROPRIATE KING LIVE The Three Braces of Naivete A Beard Of Snails Records 3xCD-r €10
Blend of Lo-fi collages, drone ambient and raw noise.
PRISONER OF FLESH I Soulworm Editions €6
PTOMAIN Ptoma Toxic Industries €5
HNW
PVMNTSW Forintelsen Elfenbensportar 3"CD-r Small Doses €5
this has been in the works for quite a while, and it came together better than i ever expected. sweden's pvmntsw (read pavementsaw) gives two tracks of incredible synth (and some guitar) work. it plays like a lost lament from a john carpenter film that never got made. packaged in a folded vellum cover with two-sided insert. edition of 96 copies.
REDUCTIO AD ABSURDUM #1 [not on label] €7
Reissue of a tape recorded in 1995 and released in 1996 as a limited edition of 100 copies.
REDUCTIO AD ABSURDUM Dublery Ostayutsa na Zemle / Anisotropiya Relictovogo Izlucheniya [not on label] €7
Reissue of a tape from 1996, previously released as a limited edition of 50 copies. Third album of this project.
REDUCTIO AD ABSURDUM Plodovitaya Suka Undead! [not on label] €7
A collection of almost all compilation- and bonus-tracks given to various labels. Sleeve contains detailed info about each track.
REDUCTIO AD ABSURDUM Triumph of the Will [not on label] €7
Fantastic old school industrial from Kirill Stoukaline, Russia. Two tracks, 52 minutes. Samples from movies, cut with unhealthy sense of humour, noise pickups from various devices, metallic noises, peeps of modulators.
RICHARD RAMIREZ / GOVERNMENT ALPHA Sol Suave Xerxes €8
ROBE. Fragile Sonctruct 3"CD-r Tuguska Label €5
Drone Doom.
ROBE. Hadramaut Phage Tapes €5
Drone Doom.
ROBE. Tragedies Phage Tapes €5
Drone Doom.
ROBERT HORTON / SINDRE BJERGA Broken Wisdom on Its Wild Lone Striate Cortex €7
.. the light is quietly seeping though into the endless night, glimmering over the vast, endless plains of unknowing...the sun is crackling lightly into the vertigo of nothingness... no sleep, no consciousness, no wisdom...the magnetic light of infinity, the endless plains of pure being...
Robert Horton & Sindre Bjerga have constructed one continuous piece of infinite sonic light to keep you up at night, again and again... 38 minutes, edition of 100 in black digipak cover with glued-on picture on front and a mini-booklet inside.
ROEL MEELKOP Real Mass 3"CD-r Lona Records €5
Roel Meelkop (1963) studied visual arts and art theory at the Willem de Kooning Academy in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. During a post-graduate course at the same academy he decided to dedicate his work to sound and music. His musical activities date back to the early eighties when he started THU20, together with Jac van Bussel, Peter Duimelinks, Jos Smolders and Guido Doesborg. THU20 have released several tapes and CD's and performed regularly in Europe. The working method of THU20 included many discussions about how to compose and why. This period was crucial in forming his ideas and concepts about sound and how to organise it, but it was not until the mid nineties that he was able to fully realise these ideas. The purchase of a sampler and later a computer radically changed his possibilities of working with sound, offering infinitely more control and freedom. Since then he has worked steadily on a body of work, most of which was recieved enthusiastically in the small but dedicated world of sound art. His other activities include working with Kapotte Muziek and GOEM and organising sound events, mostly in Rotterdam. Aside from releases, Meelkop also creates site-specific sound installations and performance pieces in collaboration with other artists. [label info]
ROSE SOBCHAK Rose Sobchak Heart-Shaped Box €5
Smart serious Harsh Noise a la Lefthanddecision and Werewolf Jerusalem from the Moscow based project. Handmade package, double sleeve.
ROSE SOBCHAK Sunproof Pillar Heart-Shaped Box €5
Rose Sobchak is a noise unit from Moscow.
ROSE SOBCHAK vs. AMATEUR ANT split Torga Amun €5
34 min. fat harsh noise & radio frequency noise. CD-R, carton pack, 46 copies
RYR / TRANSISTORWALD split UFA Muzak €7
The mysterious pre-execution rite has been done, no barriers left, only shadow left in this cell forever... Ryr and Transistorwald - preparation for something not coincidental. Borders passed by wanderers in black uniform, they took cover where no living will ever be. The pits are dug out and immersion of symbolical artifacts is finished with vein bloodletting. Sturm music, goes out of line without accompaniment, with the sound of needle cutting a plate. His eyes are covered with soil, but he breathes deeper and stronger than those who go, he believes. Inside the house burnt down just yesterday will pour stranger's guttural speech, a steel knot will be tied in the heart. Befor the taste of lead bullets and ground line riddled with tank dead grids there's a symbol of Ahnenerbe on yellow leaves. Weisthor whispers with fire and moves in a stream, in the place where he is. The earth is covered with ice on fire.
S.O.F.A. Shitloads of Fuck All 3"CD-r L.White Records €8
"Adopt this theory and things might get better; they may not!" The debut release from S.O.F.A. is really their paradoxical manifesto. This cell of musicians arose from the fallout of a string of British punk bands. Disillusioned with the direction that punk was taking, they decided to strip back music to raw noise and expression of anger. Putting aside conventional instruments, and using vacuum cleaners, shouts, theremin, synths and industrial samples; S.O.F.A. delivers. This release kicks ass, if you like the funny Whitehouse style!"
SCHMERZ Old School Misanthropy New Nihilism €6
Industrial elements and of course, typical power-electronic styled vocals. The release features four tracks in a little over 30 minutes which is unusual for a power electronics release, but these tracks do not disappoint. There is little change or development in each track and when they tend to be this long that can be detrimental, but the basis for each one is brutal in it's simplicity so they end up working well. The release is packaged tastefully in all black and white artwork with glossy inserts that include lyrics and other propaganda.
SCHREI AUS STEIN Tsisnaasjini Crucial Blaze Records €8
The third entry in the Crucial Blaze line is the new full length disc from Schrei Aus Stein, the experimental black metal/ambient alter ego of Ross Hagen from the drone/ambient outfit Encomiast. I've been a fan and follower of Ross's work with Encomiast going back to the beginning of the last decade, and we've released two of his releases as Encomiast through the Crucial Bliss series over the past five years, so when he emerged last year with this new project that combined his trademark droneological sounds with a noisy, moody brand of mid-paced black metal, I couldn't wait to hear it. The first release from Schrei Aus Stein was a limited edition disc on Starlight Temple Society called Talus that came out in 2009, an eerie blend of frostbitten mid-paced black metal, gothic post-punk throb, and sweeping arctic ambience, an excellent debut that showed that Hagen was going for more than just another downbeat depressive black metal project. Now, Schrei Aus Stein returns with it's second release Tsisnaasjini, a three song full length with songs that average at around thirteen minutes, long majestic soundscapes that still reveal a bit of that Encomiast ambience, but which delve into harsher, more unfriendly terrain than before, mixing together strange industrial dirge, blown-out depressive black metal, and ambient drone into icy realms of hypnotic atmosphere.
SCISSOR SHOCK We're in the Trashbag Crucial Bliss Records €5
An impossibly fast and noisy blur of technical tape carnage from the midwestern plunderer SCISSOR SHOCK. Just over ten minutes of insane dayglo digi-grind-splatter, like a battalion of attacking cassette players operated by cartoon mice advancing on your burg. Spastic drumming and hi-speed cassette catastrophe and razor-thin techno bleats are encoded in puzzle melodies and transmitted direct to your nervous system. Pretty shoegazer drones and electrocuted cut n' paste sweeten the cataclysm like Evil Dead on sugar overdose. Packaged in a hand-assembled, full-color cardsleeve in a resealable plastic sleeve. Presented in an edition of 250 copies. .
SCREWTAPE Shikata Ga Nai [B]rush Records €5
SECONDS IN FORMALDEHYDE Suchness Gears of Sand €6
The latest installment in our live, improvisational series is a work of three flowing drones by Seconds in Formaldehyde. A decadent work of aural escapism recorded live at last year's Auerworld Festival 28 July 2007. This release is limited to 100 hand numbered copies and presented in chipboard boxes with genuine letter pressed text and images by Matt Borghi of The Hand Work Press.
SEXTERMINATOR 69 Violazione Di Sepolcro Toxic Industries €5
HNW
SHIFTS Vertonen 15 The Locus Of Assemblage €5
SHIFTS Vertonen 16 EE Tapes €5
SHIVER Born to Lose 3"CD-r Diazepam €5
bleak, raw noise/power-electronics
frustration,awakening,shattered dreams,resurgence,suicidal tendencies,love/hate,revenge,life in general
SINDRE BJERGA Have you Heard the Truth? Striate Cortex €7
Drone Noise.
SINDRE BJERGA Hermetically Sealed Static Operation Operator Produkzion €5
Live recording made by famous Norwegian musician in St. Petersburg's Experimental Sound Gallery (ESG-21) on June 29th, 2010. Alchemical tapestry at the edge of non-aggressive atmospheric old school industrial and chtonic technigenic drone with expressive psychedelic taste, parts of live glockenspiel and ocarina. For the fans of Vetrophonia and ZGA, NON and Herbst9... Artwork made of paper and plastic, special unique insert comes with 8 copies. [press-release]
SISTER LOOLOMIE Diagnostica 3"CD-r Still*Sleep €7
SISTER LOOLOMIE Signals Zhelezobeton €6
Sister Loolomie is one of the offspring of [S]ergey (or just [S]), a musician from Moscow region, known for his projects Exit In Grey, Five Elements Music and some others, as well as for his labels Still*Sleep and Semperflorens. The musical style of [S] is notable for its delicate and gentle approach to sound, the keywords for its definition are: ambient / drone / experimental / electroacoustic. In Sister Loolomie [S] utilizes deliberate sonic "digitalizing" and at the same time manages to keep the warmth and cosiness of sound in his own way, resembling tape drone music... [S]ergey uses guitar, electronics, radio and computer processing in creating his soundscapes, both abstract and sensuous at the same time. The compositions move calmly and slowly, sound loops draw in attention like spirals and dissolve it in their textures. Shivery signal waves and soft generated rasp form an aerial atmosphere, in which crackle the discharges of digital interference, and bright yet slightly melancholic melodies bring serenity and tender contemplative sadness.
SKY BURIAL Skinwalker 3"CD-r Existence Establishment €5
Inspired by the supernatural entity of Navajo legend by the same name, Skinwalker is a dark, cold, dense, swirling miasmic ambient/drone/industrial hybrid developing on the “ritual” theme of previous Sky Burial recordings. Alternatingly distant and suffocating, this recording features a heavier focus on the use of electronics and vintage synths while also incorporating field recordings, aboriginal instrumentation and percussive elements.
SMRZNIK Two Evil Arguments for the Elimination of Evolvent Zvukovina €5
HNW
SORC'HENN Faro: Death of the Island Sheeps Crucial Bliss Records €6
I've been haunted by the beautifully dark loopscapes of French artist Sorc'henn dating back to first hearing the band on their Harmonium pieces & dead reveries disc released by Faunasabbatha, so we were immensely stoked when Sorc'henn was interested in releasing some more of their music through Crucial Bliss. This new full length features four tracks of Sorc'henn's murky, dreamy drones that stretch out over a misty, grey-washed landscape much like the one pictured on the exterior of Faro's foldout sleeve, a lightless wetland that fades way into the distance, obfuscated by a thick veil of shadow, and the fourth track is additionally notable for being a collaboration between Sorc'henn and members of Portland black metallers L'Acephale and Virginia deathdrone outfit One Lifeless Eye. The first track is essential Sorc'henn, a twenty-one minute dronescape that is mainly made up of a single warbling harmonium loop that repeats over and over and over, as a young woman whispers lines of poetry over top. As minimalist and simple as this is, it's amazingly beautiful, and almost has a My Bloody Valentine-like quality to it, like one of the guitar-feedback ambient parts of Loveless that has been melted and crushed into a misshapen version of the original melody. The second track is a mere four minutes in comparison - a deep, murky field of subterranean rumblings and a distant crackling sound, like a phonograph needle stuck in a run-off groove over crashing waves of distorted tidal thunder and ominous harmonium drones. The next track is basically a continuation of the previous, with those sinister harmonium drones humming over surges of distorted low-end thunder and weird noises that pan from speaker to speaker. The last track, the collaboration between Sorc'henn and members of L'Acephale and One Lifeless Eye, is the longest on the disc at ovr twenty-six minutes. This one is a sprawling expanse of murky black ambience, a slow-swirling fog of muted harmonium notes, oceanic sounds, chirping noises that might be frogs, and hushed, whispered cackles and demonic processed vocals drifting across a vast void of Lustmordian darkness.
SPARKLING WIDE PRESSURE / RAMBUTAN Abandoned Spaces Small Doses €5
both artists on this release took their inspiration from photographs of deserted, discarded, and decrepit buildings. sparkling wide pressure's (frank baugh)track seems to evoke the ghosts that still inhabit these forgotten places with ethereal loops, samples and drones. rambutan (eric hardiman of century plants) follows with an epic, drone track that takes on the emptiness seen in the images. Edition of 77 copies packaged in an 8-page, pro-printed booklet that shows some of the images.
SPLINTER VS. STALIN Colossi Mastro Titta Produzioni €5
One track only, a monumental 50 minutes non-stop mayhem of crunchy harsh noise wall, agonizing tibetan flute and decayed piano. Special packaging in oversized plastic bag with pieces of wall, screws, cables and other trash.
Limited to 33 hand numbered copies.
STEGM Abstinence Soulworm Editions €5
Finally, we are glad to intruduce an album dealing with our long-live fetish interest. Adorable, BDSM oriented, voiceless power electronics radically executed by Ryan Bloomer (Flatline Construct). Harsh, malignant yet very atmospheric sound makes 'Abstinence' a perfect soundtrack for a satysfying intercourse. [press-release]
STOP ASKING STUPID QUESTIONS / NOVA-SAK split Swamp of Pus €5
STPOCOLD What Happened Outside Misfake €5
Deep within tumultuous static storms, half-heard whispers and indistinct crackles of incongruous melodies teasingly hint at sinful pleasures. The hair rises on the back of your neck as reverberating pulses throb uncomfortably deep within your bowels. Monotonous, repetitive rhythms build hypnotic constructs from which you’ll never escape, confined for eternity to cyclical confrontations with your darkest nightmares. And then track two, “BAM tale”, takes over and the story starts again…
Stpocold is among the most frightening music I’ve ever heard. It lays waste to any comfort zone or sanctuary you may have imagined you had, exposing every lie you ever told yourself for the self-serving fiction it is. Meticulous application of mutating feedback structures, granular percussive noises and looped tape textures combine in what could easily be considered the answer to modern industrial – a bleak, aggressive and oppressive atmospheric masterpiece that perfectly captures the nihilism and anger that typified the first experiments of the early 1980s that sought to marry an anarchic post-punk attitude with drum machine dance rhythms in the electronic fury that eventually became industrial music as we know it. “What Happened Outside” covers all the elements of this varied and highly subjective genre, fusing classifications ranging from “darkcore” to “bruitism” to “martial dance music”, all on one album. The totalitarian military flavour of the record, too, resonates with the original post-cold war political statements made by pioneers like Front 242 and Skinny Puppy.
Whether you’re expecting pure sublime noise (such as “Holy 97?), harsh ambient (“I don’t need your right”) or even a tribute to electronic legends, Klinik (on “Sick in your mind”), there’s something here for everyone with a taste for a roughly distorted mirror to society. It’s loud, misanthropic and likely to offend somebody.
[ Connexion Bizarre]
STRUP / .nyctalops. split Spasi i Sohrani Records €6
Two noise projects from Belarus and Russia. Strup presents long atmospheric radionoise track dedicated to Jan Palach. .nyctalops. performs good varied Harsh Noise. DVD-box.
SUBINTERIOR The Chrysalis Secret Afe Records €6
"The Chrysalis Secret" is a long evocative track divided in three parts. The journey begins with a sort of repeated bell-like sound which is soon backed by an unsettling and obsessive echoed pad.
Along the road we encounter deep drones - both of a windy and metallic nature - and abstract textures keep on overlapping themselves creating slow but ever changing atmospheres, like an infinite serie of reflections created by subtly different distorting mirrors.
Low frequencies make room for more recognizible sounds of what seem to be flowing water and animals. We can even imagine (...or are they really there?) a few piano notes at some point...
Sometimes the music seems to stop and drones turn into a minimalistic affaire, but suddendly melodies emerge from the background filling the air with colours for a while, just before turning back to black again.
SYNDIKHAT Folkmord 3"CD-r Soulworm Editions €5
Great Swedish death industrial / power electronics. [label info]
TAPHEPHOBIA Black City Skyline Reverse Alignment €6
The music Taphephobia makes is mostly based on manipulated guitars (except house of memories that is mostly based on sounds). Taphephobia try to get out the feelings he has at the moment when Ketil compose the music. The idea is to create a atmosphere that is sometimes scary, and sometimes beautiful, like for example a good thriller drama movie. Taphephobia is very skilled to create a cinematic atmosphere combined with personal feelings like fear, hope, hate, regrets etc… The main goal is to make the listener able to dream away with the music. [press-release]
TEMPLE OF TIERMES Psychotropic Substances Soulworm Editions €6
Being an incarnation of the Tiermes duo, Temple of Tiermes explores the sonic areas that are pretty close, from another angle though. Mind mangling, powerfull dark industrial ambience based upon acoustic and electronic preparations with almost shamanistic approach. While the bands members often dissapear in the woods to 'revitalize' among the fruits of mushroom, the eerie recordings they bring back are remarkable. Ritual – this should be a keyword when discussing Temple of Tiermes activities. The acompanying booklet presents photographic work by one of the bands members, and further visuals can be found in video presentation playable on the computer. Previously released on vinyl by Kaos Kontrol, the album became highly acclaimed and sold out soon after. Don't miss the secong chance as there could be no another chance given – it's a limited edition release again. [press-release]
TENDAGRUTA Cloaca Latrina do Chifrudo €5
Drone Noise a'la CULVER
TERG A Cold Grave Symbolic Productions €5
Abrasive & harsh noise.
TERG Instinctive Death V.E.N.E. €3
Three long Harsh Noise tracks
TERG This is Why 100% Unsocial Records €3
Lengthy instrumental tracks of intense and extreme harsh noise, very fragmentary, built with many widespread layers of harsh noise and feedback, no rhythms, beats or air to breath.
TETSUO David Keenan is My Dick At War With False Noise €5
Manic chaotic noise
TETSUO VS KYLIE MINOISE split At War With False Noise €5
A track each from each band and two collaborations recorded on Monopolka's UK tour. Harsh high-end assault from Kylie, confrontational drum/vocal fight instigation from Tetsuo.
THE 120 DAYS Beauty & Beast 3"CD-r L.White Records €8
20 minutes of nihilist Power Electronics inspired by the lovely touch of contempt and hopelessness that our ordinary lifes bring. "This world is no Nirvana where peace forever flows, it is a gruesome butchershop, where dead lambs hang in rows"
THE BIG DRUM IN THE SKY RELIGION Rangda Electric A Beard Of Snails Records €7
THE INFANT CYCLE A Mysterious Disc The Ceiling €5
A disc mysterious. The release has not a single letter on the sleeve or the media.
THROUROOF / BJERGA / IVERSEN Unsettling Starbursts Striate Cortex €7
Both units deliver 1 track each clocking in at exactly 20 minutes. Both pieces constructed around field recordings... Throuroof from Italy deliver s beautiful piece centred around birdsong and expertly layered electronics. Our piece is bulit from the buzz in an airport lounge... Two very different approaches to field recordings... Very nice handmade ultra heavy fold-out cardboard covers, linoblock-printed and with artwork glued on, housed in a thick vinyl sleeve. Edition of 100 copies.
TORTURING NURSE / MIXTURIZER split Roil Noise Offensive €5
TORTURING NURSE Adult Believe [B]rush Records €5
TORTURING NURSE Does Utmost EP Roil Noise Offensive €5
TRANSISTORWALD Atomic Spirit Birth Valgriind €7
Martial Industrial Ambient with elements of Neoclassic, themes on Nordic mythology, Ragnarok and the Third Reich. Features a cover version of Burzum track.
TRETTONDAGEN Kors Zvukovina €6
Overdriven static synth wall duo from Warsaw, Poland, members of MAAAA. Two 30 minute tracks of hissing static driving through deep, sinister surround. It is like heavy toxic humidity, full of analog melting and dark liquid drone-layers.
TRUE COLOUR OF BLOOD Awakened. To Never Sleep Again Soulworm Editions €6
Drone ambient with guitar parts.
TUONELA Land of the 1000 lakes YAOP €3
Karelian psycho-folk. The album is based on recordings made in ancient Karelian village Mashezero (local people say Mashozero). Crooked accordion improvisations, domestic noises, field recordings of birds, grasshoppers, rain, unobtrusive radionoise. Very relaxing album, like taking a rest near a lake after Saturday's bath... DVD-box, violet cover with a photo and a copy of painting of beautiful Karelian artist Tamara Yufa. Each copy is unique. [press-release]
TZESNE / VANUM split Verato Project €5
Drone.
UL III Zhelezobeton €6
UL was formed in 2006 by Argentinians Alan Courtis (Reynols), Fernando Perales and Charly Zaragoza. They have performed live many times in Argentina and released two albums: "Astropecuario" on the Scottish label Pjorn Records and "II" on the Argentinian Facon Records. This is their third disk containing material recorded in 2007. The goal of UL is the exploration of timbric possibilities of electric guitars in their own way, combining elements of noise, drone music and free atonal improvisation. Their compositions immerse the listener into an abstract world of electromagnetic interaction between acoustic and electronic medium. A world glutted with raw sounds of string vibrations, droney feedback resonances, acute work of limiting amplifiers and layering echoes of effects.
ULTRAPOLAR INVASION + MORBUS MUNDI / TRANSISTORWALD Act of Total Nonrandomness Valgriind €6
Totalitarian Power Noise / Industrial
ULTRAPOLAR INVASION Vector of the Green Beam Valgriind €6
Totalitarian Power Noise / Industrial
UNEARTHED s/t Zvukovina €6
Six tracks, 70 minutes of Static and Droning Harsh madness nice completed with different touch of dynamic disturbances in each track. Debut release under this name and sound by man from Corpse Candle.
UR / D.B.P.I.T. Defenestration Triadic Records €5
UR / HARSHCORE A Pleasure Trip part 1 Sincope €5
Great full length collaboration for this two italian bands obscure industrial noise by UR meets experimental poor electronic noise approach by HARSHCORE
UR Four Calls for Locusts Mask of the Slave €5
Ur were born in early 2005 as a collaboration between Federico Esposito and Mauro Sciaccaluga, both active in the italian hardcore circuit. Their music is mostly based on free improvisation and its sonorities can't easily be described without referring to the well-known and wildest experiments of Industrial music of the late '70s / early '80s. There is a strong dramatic feeling in their powerful sound, where everything seems to reproduce a sort of wedding between the modernity of the media and the primordial instincts of the performers. CD-R in normal slim-jewel case limited to 60 copies. [label info]
UR Triadic Memories Afe Records €7
Industrial. Ur were born in early 2005 as a collaboration between Federico Esposito and Mauro Sciaccaluga, both active in the italian hardcore circuit. They were later joined by Andrea Ferraris, past and present member of Burning Defeat, Permanent Scar, Onefineday, Deep End and One By One. Their music is mostly based on free improvisation and its sonorities can't easily be described without referring to the seminal work of the well-known and wildest Industrialists of the late '70s / early '80s. "Triadic Memories" is their first "official" disc and comes after the self-released "Baptism & Birthday". There is a strong dramatic feeling in their powerful sound, where everything seems to reproduce a sort of wedding between the modernity of the media and the primordial instincts of the performers... [label info]
URNA VII Skulls of Heaven €6
UTON Suoniin, Luihin, Ytimiin Ikuisuus €5
Live recording from Mental Alaska, Telakka, Tampere, Finland, September 2005 from this subterranean actionist who works elemental drones from earth tones, percussion, lung, subtly applied acoustic instruments and manacles of rust.
V Fam Still*Sleep €7
Drone Ambient
VAZHES Urja Operator Produkzion €6
Conceptual mini-album of Vazhes featuring leading Russian post-industrial artists Vresnit & Akpan. A voyage to a lost among the boggy forests Komi-Permyak village of Urja located near the huge site of Kuregkar ("hen town") of a mythic people of Chud' (Vazhes) on shore of Nylva ("girl's water") river. First composition makes it's path through the twilight of sundown foreboding night. A mystery of shadows, calm flow of water through the grass of fields. Evil rituals of black wizards can be heard in the night darkness of the second track, sparkles of fire flying high in starry sky, shades moving in a rhythm, gloomy incantations, voices appealing to mysterious beings. Daybreak in Urja. Sunlit fields, haystacks covered with morning dew, stubborn and viscous fog hiding in forest borders and river valley, singing birds and bawls of cattle following a shepherd playing horn. Beautiful material in nice packaging: handmade cardboard cover with three photos. [press-release]
VELVET NARCOSIS Surgery by s.d. 3"CD-r Silken Tofu €5
belgian harsh noise & power electronics
VICTIMS FROM TABULA The Victims Tabula Rasa €5
power electronics
VILGOC Ubytki Beast of Prey €6
Before you will listen to this album acknowledge yourself with this medical hint...> "The loss of hearing is a permament or temporary disfunction of hearing organs. There are many couses of hearing loss, most common are those connected with exposing yourself to noise and loud impulse souds."
New VILGOC album is a 100% power electronics / noise music. This album is an essence of what you may see during the projects live performance, expression and devastation. Reality closed and transformed into impulse, sound and distortion. Over 40 minutes that will cruch your hearing organs.
Unconventional release. Printed and folded in two parts cardboard cover. This in printed fringe for the whole cover. CDR with professional printing, mounted on cardboard by rubber dot. All closed and foiled. Hand-made limited to 180 copies.
VILLA VALLEY Massive Amounts Of Deadness Crucial Bliss Records €5
New private-press CD-R on our Crucial Bliss imprint. We've joined up with the Michigan feedback-violence duo VILLA VALLEY to vomit up Massive Amounts Of Deadness, a near hour-long, 8 track infestation of extremely gnarly/fucking awesome free-feedback/noise rock covered in gobs of meat, amp squeal, and deadness. This is heavy corpse-rumble and hideous death improv for fans of primo Michigan damage (UNIVERSAL INDIANS, WOLF EYES), dissasembled noise rock, and Prurient's tube blowing horror. We assembled a single hand-numbered edition of 100 copies, with jewel cases blasted in black enamel, and original art from the band.
VILLE MOSKIITTO Kaikki mita unohdin sanoa Foxglove €3
This album differs a lot from the other works of Ville Moskiitto. The author focuses more on acoustic and organic sounds. From odd soil-blurry folkish roots to awkward forest plaints, the alter ego of Moskiitto - pure magic. Whisper and accordion make sound deeper and push "Kaikki Mitaunohdin Sanoa" forward to the midnight sun.
VILLE MOSKIITTO Retkikertomuksia Barl Fire Recordings €3
More soil-based atmospheric material from the young Finnish talent.
Prevail here folk bow instruments. Very strong forest, shamanic spirit.
VILLE MOSKIITTO Ylistyksia 267 lattajjaa €3
crackling mumbling free-association drone recorded in the deep and dark caves of turku: drawing inspiration from the dim and snowless winter, sleep deprivation, sickness and alcohol. try and catch the wind – crayon colored covers.
VOMIR / GOGHAL split Zvukovina €6
HNW
VOMIR / VILGOC / I AM A SLUT Walls of Annihilation Beast of Prey €6
France / Polish split with Harsh Noise Wall.
VOMIR Renonce Crucial Blaze Records €8
Now that the Crucial Blaze series of limited-edition disc/print titles is fully underway, I wanted to get moving with the most punishing harsh noise that we could bring you, which naturally led to French harsh noise master Vomir coming on board for this fourth entry in the Blaze series. I can't think of anyone else who better embodies the nihilistic aesthetic behind the Crucial Blaze line than Vomir, and this new set is as massive and brain-flattening as anything that he's come out with lately. Renonce presents a single monolithic track of crushing noise wall, almost fifty-two minutes of absolute nothingness, just a seemingly infinite maelstrom of extreme low-end rumbling, severe unchanging distortion, crunchy oceanic filth, and abyssal static that Vomir forges into a primordial wall of black frequency chaos. Fans of Vomir's formidible catalog of releases should have a clear idea of what to expect from this. Total ego-destruction, an obliteration of awareness, of the self, of the present moment via pure suffocating noise, total immersion within the vortex, drawn in and crushed within the inescapable gravity of a collapsing star. The philosophy of absolute isolation and withdrawal that is found in most of Vomir's works is also explored in greater depth on Renonce, not only though the relentless tectonic crush of the recording, but also through the writings from Vomir mastermind Romain Perrot that are included here as well. A set of four original free-verse poems from Perrot are included here in an eight page booklet, printed in their original French language text with English translations overseen by Perrot and Crucial Blast; each of these pieces compliment the sonic nihilism of Vomir through ruminations on seclusion, silence, and a deep, considered distaste for one's fellow humans. A formal renouncement of social connection, and of human contact. An essential set for enthusiasts of Vomir's ferociously negatory, skull-imploding HNW constructs, Renonce is presented in a plastic library case with full color sleeve art, in a hand-numbered edition of 250 copies. The package includes the eight page booklet of writings from Vomir, a vinyl Vomir sticker, and a 1" Vomir button.
WALDCHENGARTEN Bottom Feeder 3"CD-r Dokuro €6
Ethereal and obscure long track by Lars and Dennis Hansen from Aarhus (DK). Waldchengarten's composition for electricity abstract drones and minimal guitar bring the listener in a flight upon landscapes of comfortable desolation. This is music to play (loud) in the dark.
WANDER Wander 3"CD-r R.O.N.F. Records €5
Drone, Dark Ambient and white noise ensemble from The Netherlands. 1 track / 19 minutes Length / 50 copies pressed. Packaged in mini-dvd plastic case. [label info]
WE WAIT FOR THE SNOW The Dawn of the Vultures A Beard Of Snails Records €7
SELAXON LUTBERG project. mixing styles of OF THE WAND AND THE MOON, ILDFROST, MORTIIS, ARCANA.
WEREJU Lost and Far from Home Small Doses €5
three tracks of lush, guitar-based dronescapes over fifty one minutes. dark, haunting, and heartbreaking music from Ireland-based Cathal Rodgers. numbered edition of 139.
WETHER Uncertain Ritual Crucial Bliss Records €6
Wether is the blackened noise project from Mike Haley, the beardo that runs the classy Electric Human Project label and who is also half of Big China & Little Trouble...this entity has released an assload of cassettes and splits and even a wee bot if vinyl over the past couple of years, and all of it which I've heard has been excellent, a kind of formless, ganrled industrial blackness, usually very dirgey and crushing, possessed by the occasional blast of snarling black metal screams buried in distortion and awesomely malevolent synthesizer drones that, when they really get going, sound like the tarblack afterbirth of Wolf Eyes jamming on cues from John Carpenter's The Fog OST from '94. We finally hooked up with Mike to bring you this new full length of infernal hypnosis Uncertain Ritual, a collection of hellish mechanical atmospheres, meditative trance-loops constructed from machine clatter and blocks of white noise, torrents of bellowing distortion goo and black ambience that's creepy as fuck. This is super-high quality fx pedal/circuit-bent generated deathscape action, brutally heavy in spots with massive creeping industrial rhythms and whirlpools of ultra-distorted metal-like crunch, and tranquil and beautiful in others when Wether moves into placid drones and subdued underground vibrations. This is terminally evil shit though, and it falls somewhere in between the black ambient/industrial chaos of artists like Nordvargr and Abruptum, and the grinding electronic skum of Wolf Eyes and Anenzephalia.
WINQUIST VIRTANEN All Hope is Gone Soulworm Editions €5
Known of the brilliant harsh noise experimentations, this mysterious Swedish duo surprises us by their actual interest to minimal dark ambience works. Utilizing electronic preparations and low frequency manipulation, 'All Hope is Gone' is a brilliant example of what was once called 'isolationism', or even a step further... [press-release]
WINQUIST VIRTANEN Dead Last Soulworm Editions €5
Bleak. The word might have been overused, but this new album from Swedens Winquist Virtanen entitled Dead Last is the very definition of that word. Some call it dark ambient, some call it isolationism and some call it the soundtrack of hopelessness, but regardless of which description you deem most fitting, this album is bound to send you looking for the razor blades and erase what little remains of your will to live. "Dead Last" follows in the steps of its predecessor "All Hope Is Gone" with it's combination of dark, slowly evolving drones and the cold reverberations of metal against metal, but takes it one step futher to an even colder, more desolate domain of absolute darkness. Through the course of its 50 minute duration it offers no escape, no relenting and no hope, only desperation, fear and hopelessness. [press-release]
WOLFNUKE Nightwar Crucial Blaze Records €8
The second document on the new Crucial Blaze imprint, Wolfnuke's Nightwar is a glorified demo, the first raw recorded work from this new Hagerstown, Maryland quartet that includes the C-Blast boss on bass and bellows, as well as a current member of long-running hardcore/grinders Strong Intention (Six Weeks / Coalition Records) on guitar. Wolfnuke seeks a different form of mayhem however, forging a furious, blackened thrash assault out of an unlikely combination of influences that include the obvious (classic second wave black metal and Teutonic thrash), the vitriolic crossover thrash of Cro-Mags's 1989 album Best Wishes, a lust for the driving, apocalyptic power of late 80's UK goth rock (Fields of The Nephilim, Sisters Of Mercy), and the violent aggression of Scandinavian hardcore. The four songs on Nightwar are universally fast-paced and dark as hell, starting with the nihilistic blackened thrash of "Beneath The Last Of The Neuro-Goat" and continuing through the blazing black metal-meets-crossover extermination vision of "Deathfire", the crushing mid-tempo blackened metalpunk of the title track and the anthemic matricide hallucination of closer "Filthwraith".
WYRM + NOCTURNAL EMISSIONS Symmetrical Ecstasy Roil Noise Offensive €8
XIPHOID DEMENTIA Wounds Never Heal 3"CD-r Soulworm Editions €5
These three intense bursts of heavy, cold ambience with sinister noisy inteludes are the first Xiphoid Dementia release for a pretty long time. Was it worth waiting? Definitely yes, no matter if it's not a full-lenght material. Reborn, Xiphoid Dementia amuses the listener with sound that resembles the uncoscious fears that he may have experienced when being closed in the mother's womb. [press-release]
XOMBIE Xombie Snip-Snip €5
YAO 91404 D Aallot 3"CD-r YAOP €5
Monumental atmospheric droning noise, meditation over waves. Played with the use of vod (vod - vaddalain - a small Finno-Ugric people of just about 70 persons, indigenous population of western Ingermanland) traditional instrument - a wooden double-bass "puspele", also with radionoise, sounds of sea wash, and sounds of grinding machine working in a factory floor. The power of nature. Packed in cardboard frame mat covered with glass + insert. [label info]
YAO 91404 D Anthracite 3"CD-r YAOP €5
Chtonic industrial droning noise played with electronics and tape loops with samples from the Soviet film "Mine Workers" (1937). Sound silicosis. Inner printed sleeve, outer sleeve handmade of cardboard and leatherette. [label info]
YAO 91404 D Pervomai Valgriind €5
One of the best albums from St. Petersburg. Walls of three-dimensional noise constructions and documental recordings from the beginning of the XX century. Scratching of the gramophone needle on the breath of the agonizing country. [label info] Cover made from roofing material + postcard.
YAO 91404 D Yuksporryok Valgriind €6
ZOOLOGIST The First Swamp of Pus €3
v/a Aural Bowels Latrina do Chifrudo €5
A gathering of the musicians that annually perform the “Matancas Festival” in Oporto. This is ritual, occult music from the depths of this city. This compilation shows a large variety of experimental/metal music and it is an excellent showcase for the musical scene from Oporto. Contains tracks from Satan’s Zombies Paranoid, Besta Bode, New Traditional Fang Music, Pvppa, Caverna, Brutos da Natureza, Filigranas Negras, Tendagruta and Sparagmos.
v/a Blood Ties Document 2006 Existence Establishment €5
A collection of noise and experimental music created in 2006. Tracks from sold-out limited releases, live sets, outtakes, etc. Ranging from minimal ambient and experimental, to power electronics, to harsh noise. Featuring: Fire in the Head, Harm Stryker, Envenomist, Chefkirk, Jake Vida, Lackthrow, Noisewerrrrk, Caustic Castle, LSFB, and Salvation for Sale.
v/a Cinnamon Frequencies Kakashka Records €3
Damno Te / Galaxy The Incubator / Hinyouki / Splinter vs. Stalin - Artiglio Pedofilo / Flutwacht / Maaaa / Novasak , etc.
v/a Negative Message from Collective Mind 2 Spirals of Involution €5
MISERY, OUT OF FOCUS, FROZEN OCEAN, FEAR KONSTRUKTOR, CIRCLE OF IRON TAPE, MAAAA+MINUALA, SUDAN STRAIN, AVRORIN/ZUBOFF, BUNKER, BIOMASS, NECRASOTA, ORGANOID, MAAAA, COMFORTER, MUSICPRODUCT.
v/a Noise Propaganda vol.1 Corrosive Art Records €6
This collection of noisy music opens with a thin buzzing track by Bizarre Uproar, a track that isn't one of the band's best works. There are two others on this disc as well, and those are of proper, reliable, BU-level quality. And Green Army Fraction ups the ante already on track two, with a piece that balances on the line between noise and power electronics, using both noises and clearly yelled vocals, so the album eventually gets off to a good start indeed. With its noise background and heavy altered vocals, Hatred in Eyes sounds somewhat unfinished, even though it's clear that the track isn't actually something that's just been thrown together. Terg gives us straight basic noise, neither good nor bad. Halthan is responsible for one of the best pieces on this album - slowly grinding, massive heavy electronics, done with a stylish retro feel. Death Pact International is also in a retro mood, and strong, with tablesaw-like power electronics. SudanStrain's track is quite clinical sounding noise - treble-oriented directness with a couple of breaks, pretty well made. From Lowlife we get another piece of quite nice straight noise. And Noisewerrrrk's part is very original noise - not of the very best kind, but structurally highly clever. After these continuing masses of noise, Wertham's noise ambient with speech samples seems really strange, and it doesn't even offer as much as it could, remaining somewhat bland. Gelsomina uses clearer vocals than before, and a more pounding background as well, with good effect. In addition to Halthan, Fear Konstruktor, which has impressed me already with its other work, provides the album's best treat: siren, heavy electronics, vocals, all in perfect balance.
So what we essentially have here is a noise & power electronics compilation of quite strong quality, one that works as a good whole all the way. And the fact that there are a few tracks which clearly differ from the others makes this a less numbing experience than a typical noise comp. It's not exactly a truly amazing noise/p.e. compilation, but it's strong nevertheless.
v/a Tra(x)cce su Eicool Sat Transf.Order €5
N., Atrax Morgue , 3eem, etc.
CD
:WULGATA: Ressurection of Those Days… a Third Book has been Written Beast of Prey €9
New album of great project WULGATA opens a new page in it's history. Over 10 years of music experiance doesn't leave any doubts. Project doesn't hide it's fascinations of easter and ethnic cultures, to the point you can hear original recordings of didgeridoo and other ethnic instruments. All this combined with modern dark ambient music. The album was recorded trough several months what brought varied style in sound. The album combines old cultures and modern ways of creating music, combines acousting sounds with pure electronic made ones. Skillfuly balanced sounds make very interesting and pleasent to listen to album. The album can take the listener from one world to another. It's an album standing strong on a fundaments of dark ambient music. Released in nicely design digipack, prepared for release, perfectly remastered and professionally printed. 10 tracks and over 60 minutes of music. [press-release]
[multer] Berge im Bunker ConSouling Sounds €9
The two tracks on this release are based on the music that was originally composed for the Berge im Bunker exhibition by Barbara Meisner that ran from August 2008 to May 2009 in Dortmund. The collage is a repeating, light melodic environmental soundscape that creates an unheimlich feel, while incorporating all [multer] elements: loops, electronica , drones... Still it is not a typical release for the German duo as it is their most minimal effort up to date. The music will get the best out of your imagination.
A.M. Orla Ikuisuus €8
One day in early 2004 I arrived home to find the biggest parcel I had ever received sitting on my doorstep, it was crudely wrapped and covered in stamps. I was amazed that anyone would POST something like this through the regular mail system. I brought it inside and cut away the packaging. To my astonishment I found that it contained a large old 'Orla' chord organ and a letter from Marcel Bear (Empirical) saying that he had noted my recent enthusiasm for organ tones (see also With Throats As Fine As Needles and Sunken...). He had found this one at a garage sale and thought that I might like it. My interest in organs had been at least in part inspired by my reading about Charlemagne Palestine and his concept of the "Golden Music". His idea of a stream of sound that may facilitate an ecstatic bliss of religious intensity has been hugely influential to me (in much the same way as Haino's 'sound of the universe'...). I decided pretty much straight away that I would record an album using this organ as the predominant sound source (the only other sound sources are the field recordings of rain on the 1st track and scaffolding pipes on the 2nd). As the recordings progressed from the straight ahead drone of the 1st track I stripped away more and more unnecessary components of the machine until on the last track I was bowing and plucking the spring pegs of the keys. One of my favourite sounds was that of the fan motor itself.
ACROSS TUNDRAS Dark Songs of the Prairie Crucial Blast Records €8
Dark Songs Of The Prairie, the first full-length album from Denver's ACROSS TUNDRAS, holds eight portraits of heavy majesty carved out of massive syrup riffage and spacious melodies. It's almost like hearing some mysterious 70's country rock outfit thawed out and refitted with mighty amplification, sludgecore tempos, and shoegazey shimmer that conjures up visions of the wide open prairies and looming mountains of the band's home territory. As weighty as the melodic heaviness coming from the from the whole "post-metal" camp, but coming from a different place altogether, ACROSS TUNDRAS draw a tangential line from Neil Young to HUM to NEUROSIS, and unleash a powerful new statement of rustic, crushing Americana. Features former members of Sioux Falls, SD post-hardcore outfits SPIRIT OF VERSAILLES and EXAMINATION OF THE...
AGNUS DEI Paternoster Musik Atlach €10
Agnus Dei - which began performing in 2006 - is a funeral dark drone project by Naomi Hoca who's sound is dedicated to the dead based on old sacred songs and religion music. She is dedicated to mass at church and devoted herself to religion and ancient music of the Renaissance deeply in the Middle Ages of West Europe. She is affected by artists works of mysticism and she tries expression of the new religion music that went over the east and west from Christian faith and the point of view of the pagan. Her sound consists of drone, quotation, sacred song and her vocalization, condolence to a victim forgotten by war is dedicated to the sound.
AKAUZAZTE Azalberritan [not on label] €10
... if we understand evolution as a way to make between respect for the heritage and memory, Akauzazte show us that have chosen the best way, perhaps the hardest, but the right one. Unashamed of debts on their teachers, and instinctively following the footsteps of nomadic paths crossed by them, Akauzazte been known to seek, find and shape their own personality. Dancing in the shadow of popular music, fornicating with rock, and looking fearlessly face to face, the avant-garde, Akauzazte invites us to know your personal world of sound. Between two edges: one real and raw, and a soft, imaginary, as the two skins of the snake. With new skin, but with the same head, Akauzazte.
AMIR BAGHIRI Planet X Bluebox €8
Inspired by the exotic astrophysical phenomena of the 10th planet. An in-depth ambient turmoil of 76 minutes, blending deep soundscapes with sequenced pieces (in Amir’s words: "multidimensional ambient & groove creation") and environmental sounds. A certain touch of Steve Roach’s music still can’t be missed, but again Amir shows he’s has found his way in the genre by exploring his own musical pathways over the years. In a way it’s a pleasant dream flight with some more active passages, but in no way background music. This highly atmospheric and well produced recording certainly deserves both thumbs up. [label info]
APART Across the Empty Night Final Muzik €10
Apart is the music project by Francis M. Gri, "Across The Empty Night" is his official debut, though he already released a few private demo CDs. Francis has been member and co-founder of well-known ethereal Italian act All My Faith Lost, until "In A Sea, In A Lake, In A River..." band's official first release. "Across The Empty Night" is a fabulous dark album, developing new influences and sound structures. The songs alternate male (by Daniele Stefanuto and Alberto Milani) and female vocals (by Viola Roccagli of All My Faith Lost...), building a bridge between the ethereal music past and current moody / somptous identity. Fans of obscure dark / etehreal sounds, Projekt Records, cloudy postrock, Antimatter and – of course – All My Faith Lost will 100% love this album! Digipack, limited to 500 copies.
ASTRO & CORNUCOPIA Deep Wind Quasi Pop Records €11
The second collaboration between Japanese noise legend Hiroshi Hasegawa (Astro) and duo Cornucopia from Puerto Rico, though the first one released on CD. Each from two tracks is from the particular artist, and based on opponent’s sound sources. Totally psychedelic record, often in extreme frequences & dynamics, it features some Cornucopia’s trademark pulsating sounds, while Astro’s track is unstopable stream of deep, heavy and slow as hell noise magma. Physical, brutal and meditative. Pure beauty of modern extreme electronic music. [press-release]
ATUM Legendy Miejskie Beast of Prey €10
"Legendy miejskie / Urban Legends", the latest album by ATUM, has just arrived! "Urban Legends", arguably one of the strongest titles of the Beast of Prey label, is an extraordinary album, composed mostly of field recordings registered in Jaworzno, the home town of ATUM. It is an attempt at reconstructing the surroundings in order to distill something that eludes the every-day experience. Despite its private character, the message of the Legends is universal as well. Everyone of us passes dozens of places we think are "tamed", places seemingly devoid of meaning. Just a little effort is what it takes to dispel this illusion.
Musically, the album is rather varied. It's a combination of field recordings, drones, whispers, and sounds of different acoustic instruments. The purpose is to reveal the oneiric dark side of the surrounding world. Guests such as Infamis (acoustic guitar), Tomasz K, Rafal Pach, and Piotr U (the author's friends from Jaworzno) contributed to the making of the album.
AUBE Comet Cipher Productions 2xCD €12
AUBE Variable Ambit Housepig Records €10
This long-awaited disc finally sees the light day! Recovered from a now-defunct label, delayed for various reasons including a fake cd plant scam, Housepig is proud to present "Variable Ambit"! The master of single-source recording takes a simple starting point - feedback - and manipulates it into a rich tapestry of overlapping tones and textures. Eight tracks, 66 minutes. Pro CD in jewel case with full-color four-page booklet, limited to 300 copies. [label info]
AUTHOR & PUNISHER Drone Machines Heart & Crossbone €10
By squelching, triggering, amputating, stretching and tormenting sounds achieved from the execution of heavy machinery into vivid instruments, Tristan Shone, the man behind Author & Punisher, offers "Drone Machines", One of thee most eviscerated and innovating albums to come out in years. Nonetheless, "Drone Machines" is beyond avantgarde, in that exciting sense that it brings together slow-paced DOOM whips, modern technology, an eerie flood of vile drones and heavy machinery in a whole new perspective. It's also an album that is reviving the INDUSTRIAL METAL genre from its ashes and rephrasing the primeval passion for that classic bestial drum pound with rancid low end and sonic-metallic scraping - and this unblemished contrast - between concrete innovation and the reinvigoration of lost sounds, is exactly what makes "Drone Machines" such an important, groundbreaking and iconic album. For years to come.
Recommended if you like Godflesh, HALO, Swans, Human Queena Orchestra, Dead World, Grave in the Sky, Khanate, Black Mayonnaise, Caspar BrÀÜtzmann Massaker, Trust Obey etc.
BARBARA Peger Heart & Crossbone €10
Juxtaposing noise-core, grind and doom, with strong hints of black metal, it's hard to accept the fact that Barbara's instrumental line-up is comprised only by a drummer (David OPP A.K.A Cadaver Eyes) and a bass player (Re-em H). Both of them also deliver the screams and perverse whispers on their first album in four years, a hectic and mindless anti-musical rupture. For fans of Today Is the Day, VOG, Truman's Water, Burmese, Lightning Bolt and Pig Destroyer.
BARZEL Born to Destroy Amalek Topheth Prophet €8
Israeli Power Electronics
BASTARD NOISE / GOVERNMENT ALPHA Resurrection Xerxes €10
BATHYSCAPHE -11034m Where Are My Records €10
«-11034m.» is Bathyscaphe’s second album. Following the first release, «Road Movie» (Lykill / Chronowax), based in discrete territories, « -11034m.» (recorded at Black Box Studio) is a deep dive into the abyss where an oppressing sensation pulls it close to epic porportions.
Make no buts about it, «-11034m.» is purely a solid work of art; specific, harsh and demanding, balancing between wonder, serenity, and explosion.
It is no coincidence, that scores of producers have seeked out these sounds shapers, to create various soundtracks to accompany their pictures. Bathyscaphe’s instrumental music recalls much more than just words, but rather evokes a huge palette of sentiments, realized and forged by; Fred Charlot (sampling, guitars, sequencing); his brother, Olivier (bass, sampling), and Cyril Moyer (drums).
Make sure to give these songs a listen ! These people are really bringing something fresh to the instrumental-rock community, mixing a whole bunch of dark electronic sounds to a raw, exploding rock sound.
BLOD My Beloved Daughters Segerhuva €10
At last we are able to present this eagerly awaited CD by Sweden’s most hardened sexnoise extremist. No hyperbole needed - if you are at all serious about noise and/or LOVE, you should get this. Guaranteed to leave your eardrums like a pair of flogged ass-cheeks... Sore, numb, and aching for more... [label info]
BLOOD OV THEE CHRIST Master Control Segerhuva €10
BRIAN LEBER Till Alluvial Recordings €10
Alluvial boldly liken the debut of Chicago composer Brian Leber to Organum's seminal albums Vacant Lights and Sphyx- both combine scraping of elements and longform bowing. The comparison sets a very high bar, but fortunately Leber often comes close to reaching it. He's at his best when accumulating sympathetic sounds from acoustic elements (small stones, leaves and rice being rubbed together) into linear compositions alongside shortwave and wind recordings. On "Isobar" these soft masses of white noise slowly evolve into an atmosphere that's vaguely ominous and sublimely contemplative. Leber occasionally stumbles when introducing cello and double bass, especially when he's percussively tapping at the string. But when he limits himself to a growling drone from either of his stringed instruments, he finds a good pairing for the restricted palette of a couple of rocks or a handful of twigs.
C2 Cubed Force of Nature €10
CONCRETE VIOLIN Eyegouge Deadline Recordings €10
CONTAGIOUS ORGASM + GOVERNMENT ALPHA Heartstrings SSSM €11
Third recent collaboration release on Contagious Orgasm's home label, this time with Yasutoshi Yoshida of Government Alpha who's been responsible for the great collage artwork on all these CDs. Over these 12 tracks, Government Alpha's screeching blasts of white-hot electronic noise are cut-up and mixed in with Contagious Orgasm's industrial rhythms, off-beat collages and found sounds. Surreal, unusual and highly listenable.
CORPOPARASSITA Inesorabile Final Muzik €10
Italian project Corpoparassita is known in the industrial underground scene for a few outstanding limited edition CDr releases. "Inesorabile" is their first full length CD, including - trust us! - the most obscure and colder stuff around! Just imagine a modern version of Italian 70's horror movies' soundtrack meeting thrilling dark ambient and morbid black noise. "Inesorabile" is a must for industrial / dark ambient fans, and it is available in a beautiful poster sleeve akin to some Crass and hc / crustcore releases. [label info]
DANIELE BRUSASCHETTO Fragranze Silenzio Sincope €10
Weird Pop / IDM / Doom Noise.
DAVE PHILLIPS ? Heart & Crossbone €10
Assembled between April and June 2009 as part of a therapeutic process during a period dominated by severe disturbances of loss, mental abysses and despair, "?" is the new gospel from Swiss experimentalist Dave Phillips, co-founder of grindcore legend Fear of God, a member of the sense perplexing Schimpfluch-Gruppe and the pulverizing force behind the Rudimentary Peni one-man-doom-drone worship act Dead Peni, among numerous other projects.
"?" offers a 79 minutes album of field recordings oriented compositions that feature murky cello, piano and accordion parts, nocturnal voices, a vast array of concrete snippets and more resonances of existences that give Albert Aylers' "Music is the healing force of the universe" new depths and meanings. "?" sees Phillips observing and carefully dissecting his human psyche into ten intimate and innovative music pieces, confronting them with the bile and degradation of the omnipresent while deconstructing his own ravage with a binding urge to cleanse. And it's a fascinating insight to listen to.
DEADWOOD Ramblack Cold Spring €10
Ramblack is the follow up to Deadwood's successful 2005 album "8 19" (CSR53CD). Over the past 3 years this Swedish artist has been toiling away, creating a new black ambient / death noise masterpiece and "Ramblack" is the result. Cloaked in a more raw and morbid sound then its predecessor, this album truly changes ones perspective of audial darkness. This analogue beast of an album layers the tonal prayers of demons and the distorted cries of angels, sickness and depravity. True Death Electronics. The soundtrack to your end. "Ramblack" features guest vocals from Norwegian Black Metal legend Maniac (Skitliv, ex-Mayhem), who’s vocal approach on the song 'Forakt' shows the full range of his capacity. Truly one of the most sick and twisted pieces of sonic art ever recorded. Enjoy the disease!
DEATHROES Hate Fuck Troniks €8
Deathroes is Gerritt and Sixes. Debut release from this Oakland Black Noise super group. Equal parts harsh and black, filled with spite. [label info]
DEISON / KK.NULL Into Silentes €8
Penetrating “Hi-tech” music, always on the border between sound, silence and noise… Splinters of sonic fragments, buzzings, electronic hisses, pulsations, hypnotic loops, ambient textures, sudden rays of light… A kaleidoscope of syntethic sounds and digital glitches, in a universe dominated by binary codes, that evolves through the cold-hearted control of sophisticated algorhythmic mutations programmed by human entities that already reached a level beyond the borders of our earthly knowledge… [label info]
DESTROYALLDREAMERS A Coeur Leger Sommeil Sanglant Where Are My Records €10
Destroyalldreamers' first album occupies the space between the words dreamy, melancolic, and meticulous. Using effected guitars to sculpt walls of sound like those pioneered by Slowdive and Bailter Space in the early nineties -- and brought forward into contemporary indie-rock by Explosions in the Sky -- Destroyalldreamers is instrumental shoegazing at its best.
DODSDOMD Love Songs L.White Records €11
After his contribution on the COLD MEAT compilation "Esthetics Of Cruelty" ad 3 full-length releases on Solipsism, SSSR and Spatter/Blade here the new album of Swedens DODSDOMD. All sounds are improvised without any instruments, synths, samplers or computer. Only maked by feedbacks and turn the knobs on the mixer, distbox and outboard gear. 12 mercyless noise/harsh noise tracks!
DOROGA s/t Ikuisuus €10
Debut CD by a new Finnish duo. Slow ritual gongs, metals, percussions, loops and free clarinet/sax meditations, etc. Slow and intense... A study in evolving emptiness and truly a hypnotic trip. Comes in a 7" size sleeve. [labels info]
EDWIGE The Inconsolable Widow Thanks All those who Consoled her €8 Segerhuva
EHNAHRE Taming the Cannibals Crucial Blast Records €10
The new full length (number two) from the Boston based avant-black/death/doom band Ehnahre, Taming The Cannibals, is one of the more cerebral and challenging "death metal" albums to have come through the Crucial Blast headquarters this year. After being turned on to their excellent debut from 2008 The Man Closing Up, I've been itching to hear more from these warped death abstractionists; their debut instantly dazed me with its jarring, alien approach to bestial slow-motion death metal, drawing heavily from the twelve-tone serialism of composer Arnold Schoenberg and the outer fringes of free-jazz and free improvisation as much as they do from the foul black pit of early 90's death metal and doom. Even after years of devouring the most dissonant strains of death metal that I could get my mitts on (Gorguts, Demilich, Immolation, Portal, etc.), these guys stunned me with their extreme chaotic dissonance and pitch-black chthonic textures, a combination of atonal 20th century classical music and vicious blackened death laced with squalls of free-jazz horns, stretches of intense choral ambience, and blasts of calcifying glacial doom... [label info]
ELECTRIC URANUS / X-NAVI:ET Voices of the Cosmos Beast of Prey €10
Project "VOICES OF THE COSMOS" is an educational-artistic initiative created by two artists from Kujawsko-Pomorskie: Rafal Iwanski (X-NAVI:ET) and Wojciech Zieba (ELECTRIC URANUS). Both of them have lot of experience in creating experimental and electroacoustic music. In recordings of this album original extraterrestrial sounds captured from space by radio-telescopes (pulsars), sounds from space missions and the space itself.
Every artists created 3 tracks that form the 40 minutes album. Instrumental tracks played and recorded in rhythm with tones of "space sounds", are made manually with use of electronic and acoustic instruments. All that makes this project very unique. It is the only type of it in Poland. The project had also gain reputation in science circles. "VOICES OF THE COSMOS" is the electroacoustic dark ambient (although it should not be genered this way), it's music that in 100% the title itself explains - the voices of cosmos. We watch the sky and the stars, we know many photos of heavenly bodies, other galaxies. All that fascinates us, is beautiful and colorful. But those are not environments kind to us. They are terrifying, cold or extremely hot places. And this how this album is. It can take you out there but it can scare you too.
As a bonus two tracks are added in video version, made with exclusive video-art by Chris Konky. The "VOICES OF THE COSMOS" is released by Beast Of Prey and Eter Records in a three panel digipack.
EMIT Abortions Autumn Wind Productions €10
EMMANUEL TUTS-SCHIEMSKY Rust Voor De Stilte Amplexus €8
Tender ethno-ambient which from the first minutes carries the listener away to the fantastic world of anscient Indo-Chinese civilizations: here everything's idyllic calm, beautiful, and... a little bit sad. Most of the album tracks are woven from patterns of vibraphonic percussion, against the background of which appear airy synthesizer figures interlacing with fairy sound of flute. Having created very kind and beautiful ethnic-coloured musical work, author nevertheless managed to avoid this frequent new age superficiality and sugary in sound. And one more thing: the last track differs very much in it's mood from the other tracks - here it's all very pensive and full of melancholy. A stunningly beautiful sad composition. The album will fit to those listeners who respect the creative work of Robert Rich, Steve Roach, Tuu, Voice Of Eye. A very strong meditative release.
ENTEN HITTI Giant Clows of the Solar World Amplexus €8
A rare sort of ambient work, 'Giant Clowns Of The Solar World' sounds more like an orchestra of voices, instruments and song. Crave a new Mandible Chatter, IAM Umbrella or Voice Of Eye disc? Well, here's a great experience that will grab your imagination. You can almost see people dancing odd steps in some oak grove for a crowd. But there are the drifting, cloudy moments too. The ambient drones ornamented with the sparse instrument: guitar, violin, female voice like an angel, a piano ghost. Very orchestral, inspiring, an orchard of sound... And for you artwork freaks, this one's really nice. It is a six panel, large-sized fold-out display book on heavy artpaper, full-color printing of surreal images and landscapes.
EXXASENS Beyond the Universe ConSouling Sounds €10
After Exxasens' debut cdr Polaris sold out at lightspeed it was clear we had to take up to the next level. So, here we are: Beyond the Universe! This debut full album picks up where Polaris left: beautiful unearthly melodies somewhere on the line between post-rock and post-metal. Impossible to pinpoint an exact genre or reference point: Barcelona's Exxasens maintains a unique musical journey. A journey that leads the listener somewhere... Beyond the Universe. [press-release]
FABIO ORSI, GIANLUCA BECUZZI, (ETRE) So Far Porter Records €11
FAMILY UNDERGROUND Salt of the Sun Ikuisuus €10
New minimal full-length album from Family Underground that abandons the drug-hit-sally-inside feel of early Velvets jags for the sound of the last gasp of Lou Reed's long-suffering amp in the final seconds of 'Black Angel's Death Song' extended to oblivion. Comes in a fold-out four panel digipak.
FIRST HUMAN FERRO Homo Shargey New Nihilism €10
Alexander Shargey (also known as Yuriy Kondratyuk) is a representative of passionate enthusiastic inventors who put their lives at stake to accomplish the mission for the future good of the whole mankind. Shargey belongs to a cohort of scientists who were the first to foresee the space conquering. They were great yet mocked-at dreamers and had to fight against all odds twice as hard. Shargey is a "recognized" space theoretic of unique unconventional genius. The name of a self-made engineer since decades has become well up to par with famous scientists like Tsiolkovskiy, Tsander, Korolyov... Ukrainian First Human Ferro project led by Olegh Kolyada pays a long overdue tribute to its compatriot composing a well-crafted vintage dark ambient album with both poignant and mesmerizing layers of sidereal voyage... Homo Shargey was pre-mastered by Italian ambient magician Vestigial. The packaging consists of a luxurious A5-sized digipak with silver finish and gloss varmish, conceptually designed by Marcin Lojek at Ibsen Design. [press-release]
FISTULA Goat Crucial Blast Records €10
Ohio is rotting. Fistula once again team up with Crucial Blast to deliver another heavy dose of their septic, filthy, lumbering death-sludge in the form of Goat, a five-song Ep of low-fi and low-end nihilistic filth and rabies-laced caveman thrash with songs based on the ghoulish discovery and subsequent investigation of the eleven decomposing bodies found in the Cleveland home of Anthony Sowell in the Autumn of 2009. This new disc delivers more of the pulverizing, slime-covered sludge and primitive death metal rot that these Buckeye barbarians have been carving out in the back of Medina garages over the past ten years, continuing to follow in the coagulated blood tracks of Frost, Autopsy and Winter, but filtered through Fistula's uniquely mangled and inebriated scum-haze and utterly negatory worldview.
FLINT GLASS - TELEPHERIQUE Information Gigabyte .Angle.Rec. €10
Musically speaking, many artists from the industrial and post-industrial scenes have addressed the topic of future information shock, be it explicitly or implicitly; for example SPK, as early as 1979-1980…In 2006, it is still a hot topic, more than ever in fact. With a will to sonically explore the intricate and infinite mazes of information spun in the last few dozens years, and illustrate the tremendous changes which have been occurring during that period and which affect us all, TELEPHERIQUE’s Klaus Jochim and FLINT GLASS’ Gwenn Tremorin have joined forces for this collaborative album, which is indeed a concept album about information overload, the speed at which technological changes occur and the negative effects of this information overload on our psychological state. Both artists have sampled and gathered a great deal of sounds taken from computers or conferences on the topic, in a totally digital way from the FLINT GLASS perspective, and in an analogic/old-school fashion from the TELEPHERIQUE perspective. The idea was to confront the technological evolution with itself in the composition process, in a chronological way, by imagining the evolution from 1980 or so, up until now. You can then expect a pleasing and surprising ‘shock’ between FLINT GLASS’ trademark distorted idm-ish beats, intertwined with sinister and expansive atmospheres, and TELEPHERIQUE’s dirty soundscapes and machinesque old-school and sometimes or often lo-fi drifts for which they have been renowned since 1989. Let aural information flood you! [label info]
FLUTWACHT Breath Mask of the Slave €8
New full length album from the wellknown german Power Electronics/Noise projekt. Flutwacht returned to Mask of the Slave Records with this great stuff, after several releases with other labels in the industrial/experimental scene. The best Flutwacht release to date, highly recommended for PE/Noise/Experimental maniacs. [label info]
FLUTWACHT Herbstrost Deserted Factory €8
FORGOTTEN WOODS Race of Cain 20 Buck Spin €11
Black Metal.
FRANS DE WAARD Vijf Profielen Alluvial Recordings €10
Frans de Waard is a busy man, not only publishing Vital Weekly, but above all engaged in a lot of projects such as Beequeen, Freiband, Shifts, Goem and Kapotte Muziek. Occasionally he also releases material under his own name and this signals that the work is based on field recordings. In the case of 'Vijf Profielen', the basic sounds were recorded at the 'Zware Plaatwerkerij' in Vlissingen/The Netherlands. This is a building where so called 'profiles' - elements used in shipbuilding - were made, but which is not used as such anymore, as the area where it is located, is currently undergoing substantial change. 'Vijf Profielen' was originally conceived as a part of an exhibition called 'Mijn Domein' in Vlissingen, for which artists were asked to reflect that transition. Although there is just one long track on the CD, it is clearly divided into five distinct parts. This makes sense, since it emphasizes the unity of the whole, while making the individual parts actually function as profiles, similar to a series of different shots of the same location in a film. The music is neither cinematic in the sense of conjuring up images, though, nor is it a documentation on the site of the recording, but it rather captures the qualities of the original recordings of the rumble and clatter of large machinery in a suggestive way, transforming the original sounds into carefully abstracted drones. The work demonstrates a fine sense for the aesthetic possibilities of sounds found at a given location. It opens with unprocessed recordings of mechanic sounds, which show that the source material is highly interesting by itself. As the piece progresses it gets more and abstract, moving through minimalist fields of opaque sound, that are mostly subdued, but gain a powerful presence at times. In the final 'profile' the sound recedes almost totally and a fine, dark drone, just above the threshold of audibility closes the CD. Considering the contrast to the opening passage, the transformation of the material throughout the piece and the origin of the basic sounds, this is a great ending - a definite last point on the one hand, but on the other hand also like an emptiness, that reverberates in your memory while the location where the sounds originated doesn't exist anymore.
FUNERARY CALL Dark Waters Stirred Fall of Nature €11
Heralded as one of the progenitors of black ambient music, Funerary Call returns from dormancy with his darkest release to date. "Dark Waters Stirred" is a ceremonial maelstrom of ominous electronics and dark ambient textures, an audial descent into ritualistic obscurity and misanthropy. Features guest appearances from the likes of Deathlord (Blasphemy, ex-Conqueror), and Troy Southgate (H.E.R.R., Seelenlicht) amongst others.
FUNERARY CALL The Black Root Fall of Nature €11
Sepulchral, brooding Black Ambient from one of the most enigmatic and spectral entities the genre has produced. "The Black Root" saw it's first edition as a very limited vinyl release in 2004, now completely remastered on CD with new artwork, exclusively for Fall Of Nature.
GEISHA Die Verbrechen der Liebe Crucial Blast Records €10
This hour-long, six track monolith follows Geisha into a psychedelic black storm, their blown-out and raw rock infused with a bone-rattling recording and covered in a thick sheen of white noise and gritty distortion. As with their previous album, the spirit of seminal noise rock / sludge rock (think Cherubs, Melvins, My Bloody Valentine's "Isn't Anything" for coordinates) is combined with violent, chaotic NOISE and tainted with blurred VHS cassette visions and vague allusions to BDSM, and then ammed through an orgone accumulator, forming a ferocious, crushing rock beast that reveals it's powerful hooks and melodies underneath the churning distorted bass rumble and sludgemetal riffage, blasts of psychedelic drone-noise and corrosive skree, percussive pummel, and deranged singing. The sound is immense, and the first five tracks on Die Verbrechen Der Liebe deliver Geisha's in-the-red heaviness and hooks in surplus. "Prelude To Amber Pays The Rent", "A Wilderness, Except By Sight", "Sportsfister" - every one is a crusher. But then Geisha pull out the monstrous thirty-minute, thirty-five second closer "Theme From Diana", and the tone changes completely. This track is a re-working of a "metal percussion" set that Geisha originally performed live several years ago, and it begins as a slowly building fog of voices and effects and shimmering metal that blooms into an expanse of droning, fx-heavy guitar, looping samples, cosmic effects, and improvised percussion. It's a kind of rumbling industrial dronescape that stretches out forever, until suddenly in the last few minutes the drifting drones and psychedelic guitars and sampled voices suddenly explode in an immolating nuclear blast of overdriven, speaker-annhilating noise and the track immediately, terrifyingly changes shape into a monstrous lumbering noise-metal dirge that bulldozes out of your speakers, whooshing Hawkwind effects swooping overhead, the band knotted together into a white-hot blast of ultra heavy riffage, distortion, and a wall of percussive force. "Diana" is one of the most crushing pieces of music that I have ever heard from Geisha, like some majestic and brutal conglom of Swans, Skullflower, Merzbow, and Burmese forged into a destructive space-metal supernova. Crucial Blast is releasing the CD version of Die Verbrechen Der Liebe in a limited edition of 1,000 copies, packaged in a full-color gatefold jacket. [press-release]
GIANCARLO TONIUTTI Qwalsamtimutkw?Italuc'ik (And Now He Almost Did Make Himself Into Hemlock Needles, It Is Said) Alluvial Recordings €10
Giancarlo Toniutti's last solo recording emerged some 20 years ago, with a few potent collaborations in the intervening years alongside Andrew Chalk and Siegmar Fricke. The delay is due to Toniutti's fastidiousness in forging his sound execution within a conceptional framework, often with highly technical linguistic nuances and intellectual sleights of hand. This album is no exception, as he has sourced his material from a self-constructed 'rattle harp' out of drift metal, wire, bells, and bones. The growling drones and clatter of objects from this instrument develop into a brilliant openended composition that comes across as a poetic extraction from the ritualistic scrapping that Organum mustered in the late 80s. Yet Toniutti's pacing and tactile sensibility are entirely his own; and it's one that seems to fit very well with his ideas on "the dynamics of perception itself as an element of a sharing experience". Let's hope that another 20 years won't transpire between albums.
GNAW THEIR TONGUES An Epiphanic Vomiting of Blood Crucial Blast Records €11
Gnaw Their Tongues, an enigmatic project from the Netherlands that has wowed fans of messed-up heaviosity with the phenomenal Reeked, Pained and Shuddering CD that was released on Paradigms along with a host of super-limited CDR and cassette releases, is joining the Crucial Blast roster for the CD release of the new full length An Epiphanic Vomiting Of Blood, which was released as a limited edition vinyl release at the beginning of 2008 on Burning World Records. This undefinable mass of black amorphic horror is one of the most intense listens we've engaged in recently, a nihilistic pit of howling orchestral strings and blackened abstract doom, operatic female voices plunging into a fetid sewer of filth and blackness, equal parts avant black metal and splattered sludge and symphonic horror movie score. An overwhelming deathscape scrawled in jagged figures across pieces like "My body is not a vessel, nor a temple. It's a repulsive pile of sickness" or "Sawn asunder and left for the beasts", and flecked with moments of unbelievably crushing beauty that may surprise fans of Gnaw Their Tongue's previous work.
GNAW THEIR TONGUES L'arrivee de la Terne Mort Triomphante Crucial Blast Records €11
One of the extreme metal/industrial underground's most unique bands, Gnaw Their Tongues arises again with a new album of majestic, orchestral death-terror called L'arrivee de la Terne Mort Triomphante, a series of five hymns to the death shroud, a celebration of dissolution. This Dutch one-man avant black/doom/industrial band is responsible for two of the most chilling albums of abstract heaviness to have been released in recent years (An Epiphanic Vomiting Of Blood and All The Grand Magnificence Of Perversity, both from Crucial Blast), but with this new full-length, Gnaw Their Tongues peels back additional layers of it's bombastic horror to reveal moments of euphonic beauty more than we've heard on the previous albums. This is still harrowing stuff, though. The album opens with soaring choirs of the damned and a cacophony of tortured shrieks and demonic howling underneath a crushing, sludgy bass riff and pounding elephantine drumming, total blackened doom that's soon joined by peals of dissonant strings and softer droning cellos and violins. As you get deeper into " L'arrivee de la terne mort triomphante", there are moments of severe beauty that emerge, brief passages of fragile piano and mournful strings, the soft crackle of ancient vinyl grooves and French horns. These moments repeat throughout the album, lots of symphonic shadow that drifts amidst the pounding industrial blackness, but they never last for long as the spiraling woodwinds and cyclical piano figures inevitably become subsumed into the blasts of malevolent orchestral might. The fearsome martial drums and brass fanfares at the beginning of "Les anges fremissent devant la mort" eventually evolve into stretches of abstract industrial percussive pummel over droning strings and organ, and then into a stunning cinematic finale. That's followed by the clanking doom, swarming black buzz and sheet-metal cacophony of "La mort dans toute son ineffable grandeur/splendeur", the most industrial-sounding track on the album. "Le Chant De La Mort" is a lurching, blown-out death march that shifts into an infernal dubbed-out dirge, and the closing track " Le trone blanc de la mort (de white throne of death)" rumbles through funereal classical drift, waves of horns, strings, percussion surging into a series of dark, mournful shapes at first, but are then shattered by pounding doom metal drums and wailing choir voices, becoming an utterly grim blackened dirge with distorted shrieking vocals that are wracked with agony, ending the album with a suffocating atmosphere of death. At its heaviest, it's like funeral doom bathed in modern orchestral music, a cross between Penderecki and pitch-black doom filth, pulverizing and intensely evil.
GOVERNMENT ALPHA / TORTURING NURSE Countercurrent Xerxes €11
GOVERNMENT ALPHA Venomous Cumulus Cloud PacRec €10
GRAVE IN THE SKY Cutlery Hits China Heart & Crossbone €10
The Sludge-core scene is injected with a poison: Horror movies DVD subtitles are being gargled and forced into song lyrics, backed up by heavy poundings and black metallic space-rock dirges, on this new release from Rani Zager (Poochlatz /Lietterschpich), Maor Appelbaum (Poochlatz/Sleepless/Screening) and Matan Shmuelly (Armilos). Check this out if you're into Hey Colossus, Corrupted, Gravitar, Darkthrone and Electric Wizard.
GREAT AMERICAN DESERT / DREAR Solipsis / Warring against the Sun Autumn Wind Productions €10
Desolate, Luciferian, God-Crushing Blackened Doom Metal. Born in the Osage Plains at the foot of the Eastern Hills; transplanted into the grey, rain-drenched landscape of the Northwest...Great American Desert is the essence of desolation, the sonic representation of Lucifer on Earth, and the emanation of the Demonic philosophy of its mastermind. A vehicle for hatred, disgust and majestic mindscape. On "Warring Against the Sun", Drear play raw blackened Doom, snatching glimpses at the futility of Man and the failure of the universe.
GREY DATURAS / MONARCH Dawn of the Catalyst 20 Buck Spin €11
At its core, this spilt CD has monolithic foundations of thick, oily, viscous slabs of broken-down and tar-black overdriven guitar and feedback. Here, the Australian Grey Daturas' familiar line in bonecrushing doom-laden oppression is ably bolstered and reinforced by the equally weighty French female-fronted Monarch, both outfits commanding an impressive array of heavy weaponry. Between them, their down-tempo gargantuan dirge is seemingly capable of crushing whole continents. One gets the impression that they would like to physically obliterate the miles between Australia and France if they could, and for the most part it succeeds.
GREY DATURAS Dead in the Woods Crucial Blast Records €10
A re-issue of the out-of-print 2004 monsterpiece from the Melbourne, Australian trio Grey Daturas. Originally released through the band's own Crashing Jets imprint, Dead In The Woods is a massive exhortation of lumbering metallic sludge rock, freely improvised amplifier noise and crushing riff splatter, and massive, sky-streaking psychedelic corrosion. The Crucial Blast re-issue of Dead In The Woods features a full remastering by Scott Hull at Visceral Sound, and also comes with a brand new packaging design via a 4-panel case printed by Stumptown Printers. [press-release]
GRKZGL Esque 3"CD-r .Angle.Rec. €6
First release of the .Angle.Records. label in the 3’’ mini-cd format! This format lends itself well to the implementation of a maximum of ideas within a minimum of space. Clocking it at under 20 minutes on the cd player, this release proposes a journey that is indeed short but full of variations. Here is an excellent introduction for this promising artist from Montreal. Grkzgl (pronouced ‘grak-siggle’), once known under various other names, comes from many horizons at the same time. Influenced by the post-industrial universe as well as the minimal or noisy avant-garde, Grkzgl strings 6 pieces together, which represent so many micro-adventures, interrelated and presented in an uninterrupted fashion, the whole forming an entity driven by multiple jolts. His ingredients? Spacious ambiences, cracklings originating from everywhere and nowhere, short-circuits, underlying hummings, psychoactive noise …one already feels, upon the first moments, the presence of each of the many sound components which will compose this mini-album. Except that in the very beginning, each one goes its own way …and very soon, the unison happens, all particles and corpuscles meet with each other and, in concert, all those elements lay the foundations, terribly structured and chaotic at the same time, of a universe that is whacked-out but full of a constant lucidity and direction. The various preferred sound sources of the artist are, of course, triturated and recycled in a peculiar way, resulting in organic abstractions that are carefully thought out, evocative, evolutionary and saturated. [press-release]
GRUNDIK+SLAVA Frogs Topheth Prophet €5
A really cool take on the experimental ambient genre, creating beautiful soundscapes using dark synth sweeps, found sounds, guitars and a bunch of other things. There are a few tracks where they go into completely different territory - especially the second track, which sounds like some aliens kidnapped a funk band - but mostly they stick to the really experimental ambient stuff. "Frogs" also features the talents of Chaos As Shelter, Igor Krutugolov and Victoria Hanna, the latter of which contributes vocals on half of the tracks, giving them a really weird feel, adding a somewhat playful side to the darker tracks [...] There are some more traditional middle eastern elements here and there, but mostly this disc keeps to its really nice experimental dark ambient textures with the previously mentioned Hanna's vocals popping in to add even more texture. There are always new sounds coming into the mix, it never gets boring.
HAARE Funeral of Souls Freak Animal Records €11
HATI Die Mechanik, Die! Beast of Prey €10
The album of the group from Torun - this time under the banner of Beast of Prey. A characteristic trance-gong-drone-music in the release "Die Mechanik, Die!" has been saturated with electronic sounds. Such HATI will suprise many of you! More than 45 minutes long album perfectly recorded during the performance in "the Mechanik" club in Gdansk. This time HATI famous for its acoustic sounds - made propably the darkest CD in its discography, the CD enriched with dark ambient tones. Tarry and heavy backgrounds perfectly harmonized with trance and mechanical instrumental variations of musicians move the imagination and bring nearer the world of the dying mechanics. From one side - harmonic and perfectly interrelated pieces of music, from the other side - increasing and intensifying athmosphere of the darkness which - like a rust - conquers more and more parts of urban areas. The title of this release speaks for itself... HATI has got already few albums released in Poland and Europe, also from the concert aspect is one of the most recognizable projects in our country and HATI's live performances take many people breath away. The group has been performing in many cities in Poland and also abroad: in Germany, Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands. HATI is a music group founded on sounds of acoustic instuments - traditional ones with the industrial instrumentarium. [press-release]
HIROKI SASAJIMA Far East Semperflorens €11
Far east is composed by two different parts. First of all, it hear to a metal, plastic, and several kinds of artificial concrete sounds from an inorganic drone and the noise. Next, it is a soundscape with some organic unprocessed materials. Each different sound material is corresponding as a delicate and meditative tracks. "Far east" will unite the separated different sense at another angle.
HORSEBACK The Invisible Mountain Utech Records €10
As Jodorowsky's Holy Mountain was a satire of the western approach to self-actualization, Horseback's The Invisible Mountain is a work composed as a means to channel the self-destructive tendencies of its maker, Jenks Miller. The channeling process has required a functionally solipsistic worldview based on the efficacy of individual will in ascertaining its specific reality. This worldview, in turn, has caused a sort of fissure between social consciousness and individual consciousness.
In specific, the invisible mountain is an abstraction of the God-self in this whole process, a tenuous and ever-collapsing fabrication that perpetuates the individual psyche amidst processes that would otherwise destroy it or steal its creative power. The mountain itself is false: existing only to the individual as he climbs toward self-realization, and unknowable in any external reality; but it is as necessary as it is false. Without the fabrication, individual reality would crumble and one would be stripped of creative power.
The record itself is based on repetitive guitar riffs and drum patterns similar to mantras in meditation, blackened vocals referencing the uncomfortable tension between one's quest for transcendence and their unresolved relationship with the rest of society The tracks are devices to help maintain discipline in an attempt to conquer. The last track breaks from the mantras into a less rigorously controlled wash of sound. Liberation.
Pressed with black ink on a black translucent paper sleeve. All white inserts with poster.
Art by Russian occultist Denis Kostromitin.
HUMAN LARVAE Home is Where the Hurt is Existence Establishment €11
Introducing the debut full-length of this new Dresden based heavy industrial/power electronics unit following his 3 inch CDR on Silken Tofu. Taking cues from styles as diverse as the cinematic Navicon Torture Technologies and grungy lo-fi …Today I’m Dead, Human Larvae delivers an emotional torrent of self-destructive force with “Home is Where the Hurt Is”. Spanning a running time of over an hour, styles range from rhythmic orchestral industrial to bleak passages of black noise with a good dosage of throbbing feedback and scathing vocals. There is some sick twisted narrative to be found here but the search for these mysterious happenings will bring you to places you may never return from.
IGOR KRUTOGOLOV White Topheth Prophet €5
From Israel comes Igor Krutogolov, who is besides a musician also the designer for Topheth Propeht. Apparently he is mostly known for his 'klezmer core' project Kruzenshtern & Parohod but also a 'toy orchestra' Igor Krutogolov's Karate Band as well as various collaborations he has done with people like Chaos As Shelter, Agnivolok, Bastard Noise, Tidal and Darkwood. For 'White', which comes with a booklet with white pages (funny or arty) he plays bass with bow and strings, voice, keyboards, objects, flute and birds and gets help from somebody playing bells and someone delivering a tape of rain sounds. Divided into seven parts, this is however very much one piece. The musical theme's re-occur in every track, the rain sounds return every now and then. The label compares this is to Colin Potter and Andrew Liles, which, especially in the case of Liles, I can see some parallel. The drone like sounds form the backbone of the piece and with irregular intervals, real instruments are added. Unlike Liles however, Krutogolov doesn't dwell that much of sound effects, and rather uses them in a more natural sounding way. Quite hypnotic and engaging at times, this is surrealist music, with a built in tension that keeps lurking around the corner, and the listener is waiting for something to happen. Wether or not it happens I won't reveal, but it's a pretty strong CD.
IMMACULATE:GROTESQUE Circles Truculent Recordings €8
INCAPACITANTS / TWO ASSISTANT DEPUTY MINISTERS split Self Abuse Records €10
INNER VISION LABORATORY Anywhere Out of this World Beast of Prey €10
This new album by a Polish group explores the phenomenon of Ambient music. The project's use of surround sound, its combination of various styles and field recording methods makes it characteristic and easily recognizable. 'Anywere Out Of This World' will take you on an amazing journey into the world created by INNER VISION LABORATORY, a journey which will inspire your heart and spirit. This journey resonates with echoing sounds and folk songs invariably connected to Mother Earth. This album has a spirit - the spirit of Earth. On 'Anywhere Out Of This World' you will find perfectly arranged and well-balanced ambient compositions, spatial collages underpinned by folklore, which emphasizes the album's specific nature. As usual, suitable piano parts reflect the record's character. This over-50-minute album contains 11 tracks and is available in a full-colour Digipak. Edition of 500 copies. The album should appeal to those who enjoy tranquil, diverse, dark-ambient sounds similar in fashion to Raison D'etre, Desiderii Marginis, Asmorod, etc. [press-release]
IRIKARAH Endstation Steinbruch Blade Records €10
J.TOLVI SEMIBAND Oleilua Ikuisuus €10
The group Semiband have just released a record called Oleilua (Being/Hanging around/Existing). It consists of poppy tunes sung in Finnish language. Responsible for this record is Jaakko Tolvi - a musician, who approaches pop music from a muchly exceptional and experimental angle. There's a many-faced bunch of Finnish experimental music makers, who have enjoyed international praise for years. It includes the international main characters of "forest folk" from such acts as Kuupuu and Lau Nau. Also contained are the less-than-trimmed, tie free Finnish jazz orchestras, like Taco Bells and Rauhan Orkesteri. The experimentation may also come across as a lack of formality, that defies the limitations of the band's definition, as in the case of the groups with a mystery line-up like Kiila and Kemialliset Ystavat. The above-mentioned artists, now in their 30's, have two things in common: they all are respected young artists, whose careers have mainly been built outside of Finland's borders. And secondly, the sound of all these auteurs has been toned by Jaakko Tolvi. Tolvi is known for his skills as a drummer. Tolvi also paints the picture of his sound with a larger palette than just percussion, plastic whistles and electric instruments among other things. He has been performing around the world with several Finnish orchestras and has also played with some of the top names in their field, like Chris Corsano. The drum virtuoso Corsano has gained fame for playing in Bjork's live band. I have heard Jaakko play numerous times: while leaning on the wall in a gallery, standing in a noisy rock club or sitting in a theatre. Although Jaakko plays in very different groups, his most important forte seems to be the gift for creating accessibility. That is why the idea of Tolvi leading a free improv house band on a cruise ship to Sweden would seem totally natural. The most extreme music would go down as smoothly as the morning coffee, when served by Tolvi. What makes this Semiband record so appealing, I think, is its frankness and that it is so laid-back. During its ride, sudden sharp turns - and there is plenty of them - are taken care of without a rush. Deep down in my heart I hope, that Semiband will save the Finnish easy listening popular music from the hands of both DJ's mixing nostalgia 'n sarcasm and household names stuck in the routine of forced repetition.
JARL Parallel/Collapsing Segerhuva €10
JAZKAMER Balls the Size of Texas, Liver the Size of Brazil Purple Soil €10
If "diverse" is the very word for JAZKAMER duet (John Hegre + Lasse Marhaug), it also seems to be the best "Balls the Size of Texas, Liver the Size of Brazil’s" description. None of the band’s previous full-length albums were same or similar to each other, so are(n’t) the "Balls". If "Panic" is band’s ultimate blues record, "Balls" are band’s "London Calling", with each song different not only within the album, ranging from harsh noise outburst to calm to dreamy guitar ambiences. But the blues is still in and on with simple artwork, consisting strictly of landscape pictures to underline the album’s misty, dreamy, nostalgic atmospheres. Full length CD, paper fold-out cover. [label info]
JEPH JERMAN Four Drivers Impulsy Stetoskopu €11
I was fascinated by the attitude of Jeph Jerman towards sound and it's aesthetic and the music itself prior to listening to anything of his creations. If I did listen to Hands To or Jeph Jerman some time before, I cannot remember that. Raw and pure sound, music made of ordinary sounds and field recordings that your ears are so used to that you simply ignore them. Confrontation of silence and sound - all that you hear is music, you just need to learn and listen to it. Four Drivers is the new work of Jeph Jerman, released in limited CD edition via Polish label Impulsy Stetoskopu. Non standard packaging though I couldn't say that it's beautiful - canvas envelope with album title and number of disc written on it and plastic envelope with disc and minimal information about it inside. Almost an hour of static ambience is played with, if I understand correctly, strings of grand piano, resonating from vibrations of four battery-powered fans. In the description it's said "upright piano harp driven by fourbattery-powered fans". Conceptual and good record that starts from single sounding string and spreading through the album into massive construction of dissonances in the end of the release. Disc is absolutely minimalistic that you need not only to listen to, but to hear it too (paradox, heh?). It's like meditation in sound when you hear minimal changes in the material, stretched to an hour of length. Like watching the flower burst into bloom - into big and colorful blossom. Four Drivers is divided into two parts - the first one takes 3/4 of the whole length and it's opening of the blossom. And the second part - florescence. In fact I don't quite understand why this monolithic record was divided - maybe a part of development of sound was cut out and only full intensity left in the end of the album or something like that. You almost see how new sounds are born while you listen to this disc - from the most silent, microscopic allusions, growing and evolving, and imperceptibly flowing into the sea of resonances. I like to dissect HNW releases in such way, so I could say that at least conceptually this album is similar to wall-like releases. An interesting disc and its ideas are backed-up by a nice sound foundation. I think people who are into statics will surely enjoy it. [Terror]
JEPH JERMAN Prayer * Tactus Semperflorens €11
Track 1 is made from Tinguely's machine, Tibetan prayer wheels, burden basket, drum; track 2 - from stones, volcanoes, shortwave, wire, VLF. Constructions of field recordings mixed with object improvisations. "Prayer" is peripheral sounds existing around "religious" activities of different faiths. "Tactus" deals with geologic or geophysical sound traces finely layered. As above, so below... [label info]
JODA CLEMENT Movement + Rest Alluvial Recordings €10
Somehow Alluvial knows where to find young and exciting and above all serious composers. Joda Clement (1981, Canada) started out when he was fourteen and ever since he has been working with sound. On this CD he works with instruments (Harmonium, Korg MS-20, PS-3200 & Polysix Synthesizers) as-well as field recordings. Everything goes into the computer and is melted together in a very good, but, I must admit, also a very traditional drone fashion. Things move unearthly deep in the low end, and on top, occasionally, there is something of a melody humming, such as in 'Song Of Threes' or traces of a small rhythm in 'Heliotaxis'. That makes the music of Clement only slightly different from that of Monos, Ora or Mirror (and such like), but it also means he has thought about where to put the icing on the cake. Next to Keith Berry another promising new name in the world of drone music.
[Vital Weekly]
JOE COLLEY Waste of Songs ORAL_records €10
JOHN GRZINICH Surface Scripts Semperflorens €11
Surface Scripts was composed from field recordings, site-specific actions, environmental installations and wire instrument sounds recorded from 2008-2010. The title refers to my interest in the time-worn processes of nature and the effects this has on various materials such as stone, metal or wood. Much of the sounds we hear around us are the acoustic effects of these processes taking place while the visual patterns are written as ancient scripts. A set of small lines carved into a stone by water may have taken thousands of years, yet the sounds we hear are momentary.
K2 HA-GA-NE Triangle Records €8
A member of 80s mail-art-scene, the King of metal Junk Noise of 90s - Kimihide Kusafuka - a surgical pathologist and a scientist started his musical activity. After early period of ambient/industrial works, then blasting metal collages, in the end of 2009 K2 started a new chapter, changed the method and the style of his noise. “HA GA NE” is made with processed old metal tape recordings and distorted Korg MS-20 synth, recorded and mixed traditionally on MTR. Loud'n'fast cut-up noise! Kimihide Kusafuka says: “Punk rock gave me both the concept that the persons who cannot play the musical instruments professionally and skillfully are even able to play “music”, and the loudness of the aggressive rock sounds. (...) I have been considering on the relationship between the loudness and complexity of noise music and the biological (or scientific) and social influences. “Noise” is a factor, which should be excluded in the post-modern “clean” world, but I think that “noise” - like factor needed for acquisition of healthy balance between inner (personal) and outer (social) sides. If no noise exists in the world, I think that we will self-destroy. Loudness and complexity of noise give us the paralyzing of our logical and rigid thinking circuits, and speed of noise give us the freshness or relaxation of our firm right brains.” This is real CD, limited to 250. [press-release]
KADAVER This Time… It's Cancer Topheth Prophet €5
"This Time... It's Cancer" is the latest release by Israeli death industrial prodigy Kadaver originaly was supposed to be released by Italian Slaughter Productions but due to the circumstances changed to Topheth Prophet. "...Death needs time for what it kills to grow in..." (William S. Burroughs). [label info]
KAWABATA MAKOTO Tales of the Dream Planet Housepig Records €10
The mastermind behind Acid Mothers Temple (and a zillion other projects) parked his spaceship long enough to fish this cd out of his beard and give it Housepig, before closing the hatch and rocketing back into the stratosphere. What he brought back from the Dream Planet is two tracks of long, overlapping guitar drones; glacially melodic, meditative and a touch otherworldly. Curl up in your favorite dashiki, let your hair hang down, fire up some incense (or anything else) and let Kawabata spin you a tale! This cd is presented in a dvd-style clear poly case with full-color four-panel jacket, and is limited to 500 copies.
KAZUMOTO ENDO + KAZUMA KUBOTA Switches and Knobs Phage Tapes €10
KEIJO Boom Town Ikuisuus €10
THESE SONGS ARE ABOUT DISTANCES.
TRAVELLING DOWN THE ROAD, WHERE THE SONG COMES FROM.
SOMETIMES IT TAKES YOU TO THE SEAS, SOMETIMES IT TAKES YOU FLYING TO THE STARS.
TRAVELLING AT SPEED, LIKE IN A DREAM, IN THE MOMENTS OF WONDER, ONE AFTER ANOTHER.
HOME IS FAR BEHIND, DUST BLOWS, WE'RE ABANDONING THE ALREADY ABANDONED TOWN STRUCK DOWN BY THE STOCK EXHANGE SWINDLING, JUDGMENT IS GIVEN, THE GIRL LEAVES, BUT GEORGIA IS STILL ON YOUR MIND.
THO THE RANGE GETS COSMIC, THE GUITAR IS PLAYING SOMEWHERE NEAR AND NOT ONLY THAT.
KLAUS WIESE Divine Orbit Stillclouds €10
This album was recorded in 1987 but still hasn't been released until now. Acoustic drone-ambient in the classic style of Klaus Wiese in vein of his works "Qumra" and "Samarkand".
KNURL / KORYPHAIA Triflura / Longomontamus Galactique Records €10
Three tracks of Metal Noise from Knurl, and one Track of Electronic and Metalic sound manipulation form Koryphaia.
KNURL Thiocarbamide Phage Tapes €10
All new recordings from June 2009 made with assorted Metal junk and Violin
KNURL Vermifuge Troniks €8
Canadian Metal Junk Noise at it's finest
KOMMANDO Necroinvasiv L.White Records €11
They digged very deep in the UMB-archive, and finally brought some really rotten, dirty, sticky "audio-corpses", dated from mid of the 90`s,to the surface. The material had been digitally cleaned and partly restructured for being presented for the very first time on cd. Well arranged power-electronics with distorted screams and aggressiv vocals, leads to the roots of this pre-THOROFON project. [press-release]
KORPERSCHWACHE Evil Walks Crucial Blast Records €10
Evil Walks is the first widely available cd release for Crucial Blast from Korperschwache after almost a decade of smaller, limited-run discs released through the label's Crucial Bliss sub-imprint. It's also the most focused work yet from this utterly demented Texas outfit that started out in the mid 90s as a pure noise project but gradually evolved into this weird, lumbering black-dirge that we hear now. The eight songs that make up Evil Walks feature the signature Korperschwache moves: thumping minimal drum-machine pound courtesy of the relentlessly decisive Doktor Omega, droning dissonant riffs that veer from hypnotic noise to dismal quasi-black metal buzz, RKF's narcoleptic croaking and malevolent sneer bathed in reverb and amp skuzz, guitars humming and droning against cranked-up amps while creepy news sound bites, the distant sad howling of wolves and ear-piercing screams drift across the background... Strange post-punk reverberations rumble all throughout this disc, nothing new to those who are familiar with the myriad other Korperschwache discs that have come out since 2001 when RKF first began flirting with his odd mix of simple, mesmeric gloom-guitar and black mechanical slime, but it's never sounded better to my ears than it does here, when the music forms into this stoned blackened hypno-rock thing, the buzzing guitars and acid-scorched melodies looping over the skittery industrial beats and weird dubbed-out snares and concussive Godflesh-esque rhythms, turning into something that sounds remarkably like a mutant cross between late-80s British psych/drone rockers Loop and those notorious improv-black metal freakazoids Abruptum... [press-release]
KOUFAR The Purity of the Cedars Topheth Prophet €8
Power Electronics. Topheth Prophet is proud to present the latest from Maronite Resistance unit KOUFAR. 7 tracks assault on current Lebanese state unleashed with genuine brute anger. Middle East politics were never that harsh! [label info]
LARVA 108 99.09 | Inside the Stones Greytone €11
"99.09 Inside the stones" is a collection of the most significant tracks made by LARVA 108 during the first 10 years. 12 songs for 60 minutes. A sountrack for walking alone through a winter snowstorm or between the trees during a grey day of november. Experimental, electronica, drones create organic gloomy atmospheres... LARVA is born in 1999 when Guido (also known as 108) began to make some experiments with a PC, an old DOS software called Fasttracker and some other tools, instruments and pedal effects. Strongly influenced during his youth by people like William Burroughs and by movies like Decoder, he finally found a way to express himself with an old computer. The main goal was to produce a sound inspired by nature, a soundtrack for landscapes, moments and for abstract visual productions, to make something disturbing or just a way to escape from this world for few moments. LARVA is heavily connected with the 108's visual productions so the project name turned in to LARVA 108. Since 2002, Guido is also active with the dark ambient/noise band called CORPOPARASSITA and from this moment the sound of LARVA 108 changed a bit becoming more organic and less noisy, with more electronica on it. During these years he released many pieces, always strictly limited to few copies on tapes and CDr, home made most of the times and very hard to find. In 2008 108 created some soundscapes for the installations called "La bolla di legno" inside the Triennale di Milano and in Wroclaw (Poland) at the BWA gallery. During the years he collaborated with many artists and with the coreographer Tamara Gvozdenovic. [press-release]
LCEDP De L'Utilite Des Convoyeurs .Angle.Rec. €10
Coming from the speedcore/hardcore area of electronic music, Montreal's LCEDP now delves into the world of rhythm'n'noise. His first CD creation, De L'Utilite Des Convoyeurs, takes up where urban exploration leaves off, and strives to return all that decaying matterÅ to life. A vibrant life, a powerful cry of joy, sadness, anger and bliss altogether. The machines are operational again, and they have a lot to say. LCEDP listened to their message and translated it into his elegant yet stormy and abrasive musical style. The result, you hold in your hands. Noisy and punchy and ultra rhythmic, with a few more introspective and abstract momentsÅ 21 impressions transcoded by LCEDP + 1 additional impression revised by ORPHX. Grey sleeve with tone-on-tone embossed patterns and insert. [label info]
LIETTERSCHPICH I Cum Blood in the Think Tank Topheth Prophet €8
"...The power electronics and death industrial on this cd sound like Skin Chamber, Irm and Master/Slave Relationship crashed into each other head-on, afterwards the broken and mangled remnants were used as good or as bad as it went to build a new vehicle. The tortured electronica hums, growls and fluctuates; the slow and refractory music with sluggish rhythms has been outfitted with distorted, mentally deranged sounding vocals of the kind that instigates nightmares to boot. One track even inclines towards breakcore, but the insanity on this disc is quite different from the madness of Venetian Snares or Hellfish. Besides Merzbow-style white noise there are also discernible structures apparent in the sonic waves, this makes “I Cum Blood In The Think Tank” a listening experience which is all the more imperative. Drone lovers might want to check this out as well, by the way. This is digital doom for advanced nihilists."
MAAAA / K2 split Triangle Records €8
MAAAA Decay and Demoralization Mind Flare Media €8
MAAAA's "Decay and Demoralization" comes at you with 6 tracks well over 60 minutes in length. This stuff is harsh and without a doubt the most extreme band coming out of Poland's underground today. Decay and Demoralization includes tons of power electronics and bizarre recordings that create an odd, otherworldly atmosphere stuck in a white noise frenzy. Banging metal, shrieking, dying, the cover of this album should say it all. These guys like to take the energy of punk rock and fuse it with noise, creating a sound all their own. An excellent showcase of what's to come. [press-release]
MAAAA Sampo Distortion 24919 Records €8
New album of ex-Karelian project Maaaa, now residing in Warsaw. Maaaa has created completely pitiless thing, both in sound and in it's sense. The mythical coffee-grinder of Kalevala like mighty annihilator rises from the bottom of the sea and grinds all this ugly world of evil and progress down. "Everything crashes, at out place everything crashes, here, now and then" - as one unknown lady said. And she was right, "Sampo Distortion" comes to you! [label info]
MAEROR TRI The A.V.E. - Tapes / Live in Nevers Zhelezobeton €10
The German band Maeror Tri existed from early 1988 to the end of 1996. Over these nine years they have made a serious contribution to the development of the European post-industrial scene and had significant influence on many young musicians. Much of this was also achieved by their own record label Drone Records which has discovered a lot of talented artists. Even now, after the break-up of Maeror Tri, the band members continue to excite fans with recordings of their new projects Troum and 1000schoen... Unlike many industrial and noise musicians exploiting the themes of violence, politics and social problems in their creativity, Maeror Tri turned attention to the transcendental quality of sound, to its ability to expand consciousness and to awaken timeless and non-personal spiritual experiences. They recorded their music, which can be formally called industrial drone ambient, with the use of guitars, percussion, tape loops, various objects and effects, turning everything in a coherent flux of unconscious drones... This compact disk contains the last previously unreleased recordings by Maeror Tri. Four tracks are fragments of the band's 12-hour concert at the "Audio-Visual-Experimental" festival in Arnhem, The Netherlands, on November 11th, 1995; the fifth track is a part of their performance at the "Musique Ultimes" festival in Nevers, France, on May 14th, 1995. The material was thoroughly remastered by Sergey Uak-Kib (Kshatriy) and the artwork was prepared by Sergey Ilchuk (Vresnit & Vetvei Art).
MALACHI + THE BASTARD NOISE The Immortals Housepig Records €11
MATHIAS DELPLANQUE Ma Chambre Quand Je N'y Suis Pas Mondes Elliptiques €10
This album is the stereo version of a sound installation presented at Montreal’s Studio Cormier in December 2004. It is the second part of the « Ma chambre quand je n’y suis pas » series. The piece is based on the recording of « silences », i.e. the recording of sound produced in spaces with no human presence. The sound of an « empty » Studio Cormier was therefore used as the material for the production of this piece. The sound takes were done during the quietest moments of the day, by means of microphones placed strategically throughout the Studio by the artist. The sounds gathered were then amplified, and their frequencies, accentuated to the extreme. In the installation itself, the sound was broadcast in multi channel mode over 11 loudspeakers, including a subwoofer, in four Studio Cormier spaces (« Hall », « Living room », « Bedroom », « Lab »).
MATHIEU RUHLMANN Gravity Controls Our Myths Semperflorens €11
With previous works released by such labels as Mystery Sea, taalem, Afe Records and Gears Of Sand, it's pretty easy to understand that this musician plays fine drone ambient with elements of electroacoustic and field recordings, and this is 100% true for the 13 tracks of "Gravity Controls Our Myths" CD, released by the label of [S] (Exit In Grey / Five Elements Music / Sister Loolomie).
MAURIZIO BIANCHI Menstruum Regles Silentes €10
Decomposition instead that composition. De-structured music that instead structured music. Not to complex and articulated technologies for recording, mixing of the parts and mastering; not to one sophisticated production and maniacal and defined participations correct in post-production... This the new "challenge" capacity to the extreme limit from Maurizio Bianchi, a new musical effort, "directed", "raw", immediate, absolutely uncompromising new, to outside of every law and from every pre-constituted rule... Fragments of music, short fragments of sonorous material of varied extraction, now short, now long, placed in sequence one behind the other, in a "dry" way, following absolutely unforeseeable times and dynamics. Continuous loops, raw unexpected cuts, noise alternated to musical parts, single sounds, drones, notes of piano, buzzes, soft pads, electric current workers... Two long traces, 75 minutes, a listening experience over any edge and reliable definition... This CD was released as part of a trilogy entitled "An Absurd Trilogy", the other titles being "The Self Portrait Of M.B." (sme 0715) and "Dead Colours" (sme 0717). [label info]
MEM It Was a Very Good Year Alluvial Recordings €10
Mem is one Kamil Antosiewicz from Warsaw. Kamil existed in a previous incarnation as one third of the now defunct Polish trio, EA. Mem’s work typically attempts to link sonic anomalies with electronics. His most recent interests include the decontextualisation of sound material. He is currently experimenting with primal structures of non-organic origin, such as white noise and sine waves, and melding them into sounds of organic nature. He works mainly with a PC platform. On “It Was A Very Good Year”, Mem takes source material from perhaps the most popular version of a standard American classic of the same title from the early 1960’s. Mem uses isolated sections of string sounds from a big band orchestra and draws them out into slowly cascading layers. We hear humming, vibrating, drawn out drones that build very slowly into a massive crescendo of noise that eventually include others sounds from the orchestra. Many of the sounds are manipulated, but nothing outside the original recorded version is added. The piece results in a stunningly beautiful hour with hypnotic qualities that build in giant ebbs and flows. As a point reference, this is reminiscent of some of the best work from Charlemagne Palestine and Vidna Obmana. In addition to his work as a composer, Kamil runs the Salvia Association with Vion, and formerly worked as a music journalist and cyberculture writer-editor for the first Polish internet magazine titled "WWW". [label info]
MERZBOW Don't Steal My Goat No Music Records €10
MERZBOW Here L.White Records €11
The undeniably premier Japanoise artist Masami Akita with 54 minutes brand new noise manipulations and audio deconstructions. 3 lengthy tracks blistering walls of relentless noise from the heat of this summer - ultra heavy and brutal electronic assualts!
METHADRONE Better Living (Through Chemistry) ConSouling Sounds €10
Methadrone has come a long way since its conception as a 2-bassed sludge/drone monolith. Craig Pillard (who has been part of Evoken, Incantation, e.a.) gradually expanded his sound through experiment with acoustic guitars and other vocal collaborations. Better Living (Through Chemistry) is pushing beyond the boundaries of traditional doom music, resulting in well balanced atmospheric pieces of music which make this third full album the apogee of Methadrone's oeuvre this far. On this innovative journey, that bridges the gaps between doom, drone, dark ambient, wave and even neo-folk, Pillard sided with Jason Wallach (The Unquiet Void), Tara Vanflower (Lycia) and Thierry Arnal (fragment.) to present their next step in the evolution of gloomy music. [press-release]
MICHAEL MANTRA D#m/Gm Purple Soil €10
D#m / Gm is an album of extended ambient listening of sonic icebergs, slowly shifting over time. The album is based in ultra minimal atmospheric dronecore — an exploration into the dark unknown of sombre sonic states, of the mysterious unknown, leveraging changes in states of feeling and states of consciousness. Presented in a stunning 6-panel digisleeve with images courtesy of NASA.
MICHAEL NORTHAM + JATIN VIDYARTHI Golden Shadow Semperflorens €11
"A document of the Khoj residency, Jatin and myself took a bit of time (with the help of the Khoj crew) to make a short edition of a collection of our sessions and recordings we did together... Strange mix of improvisation, minimal acousmatics and field recordings (perhaps the first project of its kind from India)."
MINAMATA Politkovskaia L.White Records CD+DVD €15
Fantastic new MINAMATA stuff as collaboration release between Les Nouvelles Propagandes&L.White Records! New studio CD and a DVD with live recordings from MINAMATA's Russian tour in 2009. Hypnotic industrial, ambient-noise with a touch of power electronics at the best! Please look for their started European tour with the new material!
MIRKO UHLIG & DRONAEMENT Farewell Fields Nextera €11
MOLJEBKA PVLSE Zojo Greytone €11
The Moljebka Pvlse album Zojo was recorded during the Mathias studies at the Royal Institute of Art. He was inspired by the longest night of the year in Stockholm, the day when there is almost no daylight. His ambition was to make an acoustic album of minimal music without any musical instruments. Moljebka Pvlse setup long nylon strings across his entire studio at school, which he then plucked and bowed and recorded with his favorite contact microphones on that very night. These recordings became the fundament of the album and set the tone for the rest of the work. Moljebka Pvlse are very grateful for the contribution by the Japanese artist Michiko Kashiba on this album. [press-release]
MOLNIJA AURA Utopian Suns Topheth Prophet €10
Molnija Aura is an electronic ambient/glitch project of Davide Del Col and Andrea Marutti from Milan, Italy. "Utopian Suns" is the project's first full-length album. Recorded and mastered between 2007 and 2009, the CD is inspired by science-fiction themes and space-age relics.
Consisting of six tracks created mostly with analogue and digitalsynthesizers, the album is a long and engaging journey through sidereal dephts: shrouded in the darkness of immense and untouched vastness, beyond the great unknown, hovering in the void of zero gravity landscapes explored with slow and unreal movements.
The uneasyness of silence and the absolute void of impenetrable gloom, the infinite and overwhelming distances, the fear of solitude and isolation, the anxiety of no return… And then the emotion of discovery: other worlds, unknown universes and impalpable beings, undefined and unidentifiable entities, close encounters, the unutterable and the unthinkable.
Molnija Aura trace new and absorbing lines, and set a wider border to that area of electronic music inspired by space exploration, astronomy and science-fiction. "Utopian Suns" is a must for all those interested in Dark Ambient, harmonic resonating drones, eternal reverberating cold soundscapes, and atmospheric dilated sequences.
MONARCH! Dead Men Tell No Tales Crucial Blast Records 2xCD €12
The North American version of the upcoming MONARCH! double CD set, Dead Men Tell No Tales, a colossal collection of not one, but two full length albums previously released on vinyl only by the French glacial sludge/feedback/lava rock behemoth known as MONARCH!. Hailing from the picturesque Northern Basque Country of France, MONARCH! unleash a slow motion avalanche of impossibly glacial, blackened sludge and hypnotic feedback, each song a series of epic tarpit riffage stretched out eternally over lumbering drums and the cavernous rumble of speaker cabinets. Over these yawning expanses of black void appears the demonic, throat-shredding shrieks and ghostly singing of Emilie, whose petite appearance belies one of the harshest throats in the underground Doom spectrum. Beyond heavy. MONARCH!'s mega-crawling ambient doom/drone/sludge follows in the grand tradition of fellow tarpit adventurers Melvins, Corrupted, Noothgrush, and Black Sabbath, and accompany their music with an iconoclastic design style that decorates their material with deceptively cute imagery drawing from the collective influence of Sanrio, Japanese animation, European graffiti, weirdo hardcore, and skateboard culture.
MONARCH! Mer Morte Crucial Blast Records €10
Yeah, this was supposed to come out ages ago, but a variety of impediments stalled it's release until now. The Crucial Blast release of Mer Morte is finally freakin' out, though, and I gotta say, it looks and sounds just as great as the previous Monarch collection on C-Blast, Dead Men Tell No Tales. If you've been following Crucial Blast for a while, you probably already know all about Monarch, the extreme slow-motion sludge/doom band from France who plays so slow, so glacially, that Decibel said in their review of Mer Morte that "even at their fastest, Monarch! sound dead". They ain't kiddin'. Monarch's previous releases pushed the envelope on just how slow and miserable and anguished one band can sound, but here their crawling black drones and tectonic doom rumble seems to actually be decaying. If you're looking for some big, fat riffs to bite into, this isn't the place to look. Like our previous Monarch release Dead Men Tell No Tales, Mer Morte is a reissue of a vinyl release that came out on the Spanish label Throne Records, this one from back in 2008. The Lp featured the monolithic track "Mer Morte" split into two halves across the two sides of vinyl; now, most Monarch fans find it pretty hard to not lust after their vinyl releases, which are all beautifully packaged and always super-limited, but it's also cool to hear the song uninterrupted, to hear it unfurl it's rotting black wings in it's entirety without pause, which is why we wanted to make this available on disc. And it's truly gargantuan sounding on this re-issue. “Mer Morte” is a single unbroken thirty-four minute sludge-and-feedback feast that sprawls out even further into the dismal black void that these French doom junkies have been lurking in for the past six years. As with previous releases, Monarch move through massive blackened tar pits of low-end riff and sheets of gluey feedback that are stretched out into monolithic slabs of sound across "Mer Morte", a grim, glacial ultra-doom monolith that crawls at a saurian sub-tempo. It's the most droning, static, deathly doomdrone that Monarch have so far released, not really that propulsive, certainly very little of anything that you could call a "groove", but instead just floating, decaying and corrupted, massive rumbling crush hovering in a sea of yawning blackness. And vocalist Emilie sounds as gaunt and ghostly as ever, her vocalizations materializing across the spatial doomscape as distant ululating wails, breathy whispers, and putrid death shrieks, at times disappearing almost completely into the black fug for minutes at a time, or lurking as a hushed lullaby whisper way off on the edges of the crushing subterranean thrum. At the same time, this disc captures the band at their most formless and distended, with long sections of droning buzz where the band collapses into waves of pure amp-rumble and minimalist percussion, smoldering black clouds of ghostly cooing vocals and howling feedback drone, and eerie tectonic melodies...definitely one of their most extreme and dismal slabs of doom yet, more ambient drone than doom really, but still completely CRUSHING. And once again, we've worked with the artisan printers at Stumptown Printers to create the packaging for this Monarch disc, presenting Mer Morte in a black offset-printed jacket with gold metallic printing and more artwork from Monarch's Michell. Might have taken awhile, but the wait was worth it!
MONOPIUM Mesmerized Beast of Prey €10
Debut album of polish project MONOPIUM is definitely something new and different on our Polish music scene. Based on fascinations of dadaism, avantgarde, atmosphere of old Berlin cabarets and surrealism is unusual music project.
Over 40 minutes of psychodelic and avantgarde music. The mix of different genres and styles that cannot be described in one word. If dadaists were anarchistic negation of European heritage, rejecting todays conventions and restrictions for the sake of free and unbound fantasy and bit of trivial mistification, so what is MONOPIUM today? Dada works with all his might to incorporate the idiotism all around. But creatively. And how MONOPIUM did this...?
MONSTRARE / WILT Graveflowers .Angle.Rec. €10
For the last few years, the enthusiasts have been enjoying the evolutionary sound creations of CORDELL KLIER (MONSTRARE) and JAMES KEELER (WILT). The first, very often, in his solo adventures, works in a register which one could hail as "dark glitch", or a close encounter of the third kind between modern technology and the abyss, as the second builds us somber sonic monoliths, raw blocks of black bruitist matter and dark lo-fi atmosphericsÅ It was no doubt that the collision, or fusion, between these two aesthetics tinged with psychotropism was going to give way to a genuine journey, a unique and peculiar epic, in the image of the respective projects of the two creators. There is a natural fit between these projects as both focus on dark mathematical projections. In this monumental production, MONSTRARE feeds us with new-school sonorities as WILT opts for old-school sounds, an it goes without saying that one used the source sound material of the other to crystallize his own visions, and vice versa. Side by side, the intemporal, uncompromising and often arrhythmic sonic fluids secreted here sometimes have a textured minimalistic feel, sometimes reflect a will of nuanced saturationÅ Here one will easily recognize the traditional ambient and subtle black noise WILT feel, just pushed to the utmost level, with MONSTRARE doing the dark-clicked drone he is renowned for, but in an especially demented way. Alternately, the listener finds himself wandering through the uneven meanders of subterranean cathedrals and flying over futurist cities radiant with an aura of strangely coloured neons. But there are a thousand and one other possible interpretations. Organic yet bleak, the music presented here symbolizes the passing of life into subharmonic spirituality. Now is your turn to make yourself your own interior movie while listening to this album! [press-release]
MOTH DRAKULA + YELLOW SWANS They Do Not Always Remember Obsolete Vernacular €10
MOURMANSK 150 No Volunteer 4 This Society Topheth Prophet €10
With every new album these French noise extremists define their sound more and more clear, improving the style of their own, and "No Volunter 4 This Society" is another proof. The style is somewhere netween power electronics / harsh noise and death industrial soundscapes. Excellent material for the fans of this genre.
MT. Teach Your Children How to Think, Not What to Think ConSouling Sounds €10
It has been a while since we heard new tunes by the band branded by The Silent Ballet as “one of the shining new lights of the UK post-rock scene”. The EP contains 4 brand new tracks that push beyond 2006 critically acclaimed Lethologica. During the years of silence the band progressed as songwriters, which is reflected in every track on the Teach Children How To Think, Not What To Think EP. Intelligently layered structures entwined with amazingly crafted melodies leave no room for interpretation: Mt. are back and determined to permanently claim a place in the spotlights. [press-release]
N. Memories from Before Being Born + Belligeranza €10
Italian Power Electronics
NADJA Desire in Uneasiness Crucial Blast Records €10
Following a wave of recent reissues and re-recorded versions of older CD-R titles, Desire In Uneasiness is an album of all new material from the acclaimed Canadian dreamsludge weavers Nadja. Five colossal jams of eternally-fuzzy, ethereal dirge that are powered by the interlocking bass guitars of Leah Buckareff and Aidan Baker, who set loose a wave of monstrous grinding bass riffs amidst a fog of beautiful, swirling electronic effects. Desire also marks the first Nadja album to feature a live drummer in place of the drum machine programming that has driven the band's previous recordings, and the difference in the band's sound is apparent from the first crushing beats of album opener 'Disambiguation'. The organic drumming here takes Nadja's music into new realms of spacious jazzy exploration, dubby rhythms and cavernous psychedelia, while also delivering some of the band's most grooving, crushing hypno-bliss yet. Desire also stands out from the rest of the Nadja catalog for it's bizarre artwork that Aidan commisioned from his friend The Reverend Aitor. Aitor's bright, bold lines and textured magic marker artwork gives the gatefold jacket we've presented this disc in the look of a twisted children's book on acid, with weird images of chickens, trees growing through chairs, and more. The package is a sturdy 4-panel gatefold jacket printed by Stoughton, and it looks killer. [press-release]
NEKRASOV / MOON / NEKROS MANTEIA The Haunting Resonance Fall of Nature €11
"A conceptual work has been forged, and three of Australia's most obscure bands come forth with ghastly fruits from beyond the tomb. A horrid exploration of ghosts and spirits; Close your eyes and experience... The Haunting Resonance".
Three lengthy tracks of ghastly, cavernous sounds. Blending the boundaries between dissonant Black Metal, hypnotic droning soundscapes and destructive sounds of dark ambience. This is audial darkness in it's purest form.
NEKRASOV Extinction Crucial Blast Records €10
...Riding atop the recent wave of black metal/noise hybrids who combine the bleak frosty riffs and blackened ferocity of underground BM with blown-out and corrosive strains of industrial noise (see also WOLD, Emit, Grief No Absolution, Enbilulugugal, Vargr), the Australian one-man band Nekrasov has so far made a substantial mark in the realm of extremist necro-racket with a series of limited edition, brutally abrasive albums (Cognition Of Splendid Oblivion, The Form Of Thought From Beast, etc) that have mostly been self-released, save for some recent offerings on labels like Siege Of Power and Chrome Leaf. Early on, Nekrasov's sound was steeped in caustic noise, a blazing industrialized black metal assault that was doused in heavy levels of irradiated distortion and Merzbowian skree. But more recently, it's mutated into less metallic regions, alternating the hyperblast black metal with forays into crushing, demonic wall-noise and blasted ambience. Now, Nekrasov is back with a new full length (the first for Crucial Blast), and it's the most advanced slab of their blacknoize terror that we've heard so far. An octagonal prism of isolationist drone, flesh-rending mechanical black metal, abstract otherworldly beauty, claustrophobic industrial dread, and the most violent, suffocating strains of harsh noise, Extinction is pure cyclonic contempt for humanity.... [label info]
NEKROS MANTEIA Deus Otiosus Fall of Nature €11
With 'Deus Otiosus', Nekros Manteia present obscure and brooding layers of texture. Rusty coils of aural depravity act as a catalyst to self-reflection and lucid contemplation. This work seeks to confront the listener with ill-concocted hymns of lament. "Deus Otiosus; Leave the universe, let stars devour abominable life!
NETHERWORLD Kall: The Abyss Where Dreams Fall Mondes Elliptiques €10
Always concerned with pushing even further its explorations on the side of "drone" drifts, angleREC adds to its parallel series, that is the MONDES ELLIPTIQUES label, a new release in the form of the first official CD production of Italian project NETHERWORLD. This CD has the rather evocative title of ''KALL - The Abyss Where Dreams Fall''. Alessandro Tedeschi's project previously gained a fair share of attention with CDR or mini-CDR releases on fine labels such as UMBRA, GEARS OF SAND, TAALEM/KOKESHIDISK! Alessandro also runs the GLACIAL MOVEMENTS label, which gave us, in 2006, the acclaimed CRYOSPHERE compilation. In a tradition that is anchored, at the same time, in avant-garde, ritual soundz and dark-ambient, with a typically Italian touch, NETHERWORLD gives a peculiarly and elegantly organic and palpable feel to sounds that, in the hands of others, would maybe fall flat ...and it is as if the sound universe conjured by the magic of NETHERWORLD was strangely how could one say? OCCUPIED. Each moment, each twist and turn of this sound adventure bears infinite richness and elasticity, at all times ...those are rather "busy" sound layers but each of the elements has sufficient breathing space and can differentiate itself from the other surrounding components. This antagonism represents one of NETHERWORLD's greatest strengths. Another noteworthy antagonism: this tendency to propose us ambiences that are excessively introspective, subdued, withdrawn into themselves, but which, at the same time, expand, subtly dilate to occupy an incommensurable space. Upon the first notes (or pulses??) of the opening track, "KALL", this infinite abyss, envelops us and our dreams sink, dissolve, reinvent themselves... The sound propositions found on "KALL" have enough movement and density to please the ones fond of depth in their music, but the overall 'purified' feel will please the most discerning purist. For the occasion, MONDES ELLIPTIQUES once again used the mastering talents of JOHN SELLEKAERS @ METARC and it is CHRISTIAN SALETTE who put his savoir-faire in our service for the design of the sleeve and images. Limited to 441 copies! Deluxe cardboard sleeve. [press-release]
NICOLE 12 Black Line Freak Animal Records €11
NIMH Subterranean Thoughts Silentes €8
About one year after the release of The Impossible Days, Nimh (Giuseppe Verticchio) explores the innermost paths of electronic experimentation again with his new Subterranean Thougths. The album showcases a kaleidoscope of many different sounds, from the lysergic visions of Rewind to the cinematic suggestions of Recovered Memories, from the tight and dark atmospheres of Back to Laudomia to the ritual elements of Perpetual Cycles, from the rhythmic distorsions of Subterranean Thoughts to the hypnotic stasis of The Liquid Dream and the lyrism of the title-track reprise at the end of the disc. [label info]
NIMH The Impossible Days Weird Amplexus €8
Point of arrival of a long course of sonic research and experimentation, The Impossible Days sees Nimh (Giuseppe Verdicchio) summarizing a long time experience in combining obscure and static resonance, electronic plots, sound-effects, tensions, pulses, voices and real life ambient recordings, acoustic and electric sound sources treatments, in a high emotional impact diversified alternation... An impressive utilization of articulate sonic stratifications, mixings of electroacoustic material and samplings, original sounds, analogue and digital noises, generated by electronic machines, collected through both traditional and in contact microphones recordings. [label info]
NIMH Travel Diary Silentes €8
Finally collected on a single CD, and released in a completely re-edited and re-mastered version enriched with new sounds and parts, Silentes present all the music created by Giuseppe Verticchio/Nimh during 2001/2002 using ethnic instruments only, in a total “unconventional” way, with the addiction of treated/processed field recordings. A real challenge beyond every stylistic and “geographical” border; an original and evocative dark-shaded ethnic-electronic-ritual music, born from the “voice” of ancient and often unknown traditional ethnic instruments mostly collected in the Far East, without using synthesizers and any other electronic/synthetic source at all. An absolutely original “Travel Diary, unpredictable and unrepeatable… [label info]
NOCTURNE Vers Le Vide Final Muzik €10
Limited to 600 copies, digi-file sleeve. File under: martial industrial, experimental, dark ambient. After some CDs and vinyl releases on Steinklang, Tesco, Old Europa Cafe and other international labels, Nocturne is back masterpiece of somptous sadness and powerful melancholy, where black and white memories and drums of war collide. One of best Nocturne's works to date!! FOLLOW THE VETERANS!
OBJEKT4 Space Jungle Slums Ajana Records €10
The 'Space Jungle Slums' consists of two sessions recorded between 2005-2006, rooted in the realms of experimental chilled downbeat ambience.'
OMEI When All Your Ghosts are Tired Misanthrope Studio €10
SICKNESS side project. 2 long grinding, minimalist & turbulent droning tracks.
ONDO Mahavishnu Paradigms Recordings €10
Brooding and menacing Drone Doom.
ONTAYSO Magical Tone Tricks Silentes €8
Magical Tone Tricks was created during the silent night hours as Ontayso's third full lenght album and their ninth release since their birth in 2002. Ontayso frequently collaborates with several musicians and acts but for this release Ontayso exists mainly by their two core members Koen Lybaert and Esther Santoyo. For this release Ontayso has been mainly focused on electronic manipulations and field recordings. The overall atmosphere spread over the 4 long tracks come close to the well known early Basic Channel sound. Magical Tone Tricks still keeps it's unique experimental Ontayso sound. It is their response to the excellent Rod Modell's releases on Silentes and shows their mutual love for this early 90ties Berlin sound and their joy of working with field recordings and minimal sound manipulations. [press-release]
ONTAYSO Procesamiento Digital Dos U-Cover Transparente €10
ORIGAMI REPLIKA Kommerz - Merzbow in the Hands of Origami Replika Segerhuva €10
OSCILLATING INNARDS Nadir Emergence Troniks €8
Fierce and solid burst with shrill metal junk roar, whirl high-frequency feedbacks
PAINTING PETALS ON PLANET GHOST Fallen Camellias Small Voices €10
Second full-lenght album from Italy's Painting Petals On Planet Ghost, aka brothers Maurizio & Roberto Opalio (My Cat Is An Alien) and vocalist Ramona Ponzini (also involved in the duo Praxinoscope, as well as a new project with Z'EV). 'Fallen Camellias' is a tribute to one of the greatest poetess ever, Japanese Yosano Akiko, whose work in literature in the early 1900's is considered as manifesto of the Japanese Romanticism. Imagine a Vashti Bunyan or a early Marianne Faithful singing sweet melodies in Japanese language, and you can have an idea of the musical and poetical universe of Painting Petals On Planet Ghost. Here Ramona Ponzini's singing comes from the use of Akiko's selected original poems in Japanese along with Ponzini's own typical soft and enchanting wordless vocals style, a out of time muse-like chant hypnotizing the ears and the minds of the listeners. The songs of 'Fallen Camellias' are built on acoustic guitar melodies composed by Maurizio Opalio,and are made of the same pure, melancholic essentiality of the legendary Nick Drake; while, after contributing arrangements of the most ecstatic nature, the other brother Roberto Opalio has played the role of producer of the whole album, searching for not only an aesthetic, but especially an emotional ideal of perfection. In the heart of winter covered by snow, let 'Fallen Camellias' be your warm blanket, as well as the promise of a new future spring. Here's a special Painting Petals On Planet Ghost's dedication: 'For those who drink the wine of love springtime is forever'.
PARANOIA INDUCTA Evil Angel Beast of Prey €10
Here it is! The newest work of A.A.Destroyer has came to be, "Evil Angel" is an album touching the deepest emotion in human being, tender, subtle, uneasy. PARANOIA INDUCTA has gain a lot of respect for it's earlier albums and it's one of the most valuable projects on Polish dark sounds scene. With "Evil Angel" it shows that it has a lot to say, as it is one of the most personal albums of PARANOIA INDUCTA, and one of the most sensitive albums released on Beast Of Prey. With great pride and joy we present this album to the world!
On "Evil Angel" we have tranquil and balanced dark ambient soundscapes, tender whispers and voices... - and fading in distance. Big dose of incredible industrial sounds, dying machines that represent PARANOIA INDUCTA's music so well. And the quality of individual sounds... beautiful album.
PBK Life-Sense Revoked Lunhare €10
PEENEMUNDE Peenemunde Obscurex €10
Named after the army research facility where the V-2 rocket was born under the supervision of Wernher Von Braun, Peenemunde is a grimy industrial noise collaboration between Pentti Dassum (UMPIO) & Pekka PT (Sick Seed and Gelsomina). Crumbling steel, metallic howls and incinerator blasts.
PER ASPERA Nil Desperandum New Nihilism €10
vast array of elements, Per Aspera once again achieves remarkably introvert but vibrant style. Eerie industrial atmosphere seamlessly blends with serene harmonies of almost orchestral form. Cinematic, monstrous drone formations morph into pulsating abyss of dissonant disturbances and uncompromised sonic experiments, overlaid by subtle beauty of human voice and minimalist acoustic instrumentation. All those skillful, multiformal explorations establish Nil desperandum one of those albums of complex yet stable musical concept—reflecting the incoherencies of human nature and its immanent affection to chaos and order merged together. Per Aspera tends to render tragically compound heritage of the mankind, being constantly shaped by cultural, ethnic and religious or ideologic discrepancies. Definitely not your average dark–ambient buzz, this album stands out of the dull cliche. The sound may appeal to the admirers of T. Koner, Parca Pace, Nocturnal Emissions or Neubautens to name a few but still, expect no pattern follower. Complemented with special A5–sized glossy digipak designed by Ibsen studio, this CD is limited to 500 copies only.
PIZMO i.P Tiramizu €6
Abstract project of Yannick Dauby
PRAYING FOR OBLIVION Turm Schweigen Obscurex €10
56 minutes, 7 long tracks of Harsh Industrial Noise and Power Electronics. All tracks recorded: 1998-2007
PUSSYGUTT She Hid Behind Her Veil 20 Buck Spin €11
Pussygutt consists of Brittany McConnell on bass and Blake Green on drums. The couple, both multi-instrumentalists, reside in the rural landscape outside of Boise, Idaho, where they create their dark, foreboding sounds away from the chaos of America’s large cities. Pussygutt takes many forms. Often in the live environment they add a guitarist and pummel through a set of blistering, Melvins-style low-end heaviness at impossibly high volumes. Other times they manifest as a dark, string-based doom duo. And occasionally, the pair collaborates with the experimental noise project A Story of Rats, as they do when performing material from their Sea of Sand double-LP debut.
Pussygutt’s new album, She Hid Behind Her Veil…, is comprised of a single track over 45 minutes in length. The sound occupies a dense space where the heavy, metallic drone sound of Black Boned Angel intersects with the minimalist string arrangements of Phillip Glass and the more ambient doom tendencies of Japan’s Corrupted. With its use of violin textures, the album sounds as much like a classical movement as an art-doom LP. Draped in a cloak of gothic black doom ambiance and eerie, unsettling moods, She Hid Behind Her Veil… is an apparition of ghostly vision from one of America’s more isolated environments.
PYLONE Black Grains Sound On Probation €10
RE-DRUM S Zoharum €10
An excellent piece of work by Pavel Aleshin whose drone soundscapes were released by Oophoi's record label Umbra and Slovakia-based Black Orchid Productions. The album explores the area of sacral and infinite, hence the title. S can be seen as the symbol of them. Re-Drum was founded in 2002 by Pavel Aleshin. The sound of Re-Drum varies from deep drone/noise soundscapes on the first albums to light, warm, even melodic textures in the last works. For fans of Robert Rich, Lustmord, Troum, Maeror Tri, Lull, Yen Pox. [label info]
REFUSE TO DIE Collection of Agnostic Flies The Eastern Front €5
Neo cabaret / Industrial / Avant-garde. This album is a hidden treasure of Israeli underground scene. Industrial cabaret. Industrial Dada! Futuristic collection of Refuse To Die music shadowed by operas samples, noisy and heavy sounds alternated with cabaret tradition accompanied by ironical verses on mix of English, German and Hebrew languages. [label info]
RICHARD RAMIREZ / BLACK LEATHER JESUS Scrapyard Phage Tapes €10
ROEL MEELKOP 5 (Zwischenfaelle) Auf Abwegen €10
RULLA / MONTAGE Split Series #03 Monotype€10
SACHIKO zUnya Musik Atlach €10
Sachiko is a Japanese female vocalist (ex-Kousokuya, Overhang Party). She produces fantastic drone and noise. Her ritual psychedelic drone guides the listener to a quiet Great Beyond. This album is a live recording from summer 2008. This is different from her studio albums - her voice is modest in expression and she concentrates on the performance of drone, developing a psychedelic sound, both organic and hypnotic. Sachiko also performs with the meditation drone unit 'Tangerine Dream Syndicate' (lead by Fumio Kosakai), the shamanic duo Vava Kitora and other projects. Outsize gatefold sleeve.
SALA DELLE COLONNE Cronache Autumn Wind Productions €5
SCOTT HULL Audiofilm I Crucial Blast Records €7
Scott Hull is already well known in the grind/metal underground for his devestating riffage in Pig Destroyer and Agoraphobic Nosebleed; outside of extreme metal, however, Scott has also worked on dark, sumptuous soundscapes and ambient film scores at his Visceralsound lair that have just recently began to appear in recorded form over the past few years. Scott's Requiem CD that came out through Relapse Records earlier this year was one of the first official releases of his film score/soundscape work, and was widely embraced by fans of bleak cinematic ambience and chilling electronic sound sculpture. Crucial Blast is following that amazing disc with a series of limited-edition 3" CDs that each feature a short, 10+ minute piece of fearsome dark ambient music from Scott that showcase his skill at blending blackend Lustmordian drift with terrifying mixing techniques that clot the mind's eye with unnerving, nightmarish sound events. [label info]
SCOTT HULL Audiofilm II Crucial Blast Records €7
The second installment in our series of limited-run 3" CDs from Scott Hull. Best known for his amazing thrash/grind riffage in the bands Pig Destroyer and Agoraphobic Nosebleed, Scott has been gradually revealing another side of his musical persona over the past few years, an obsession with cinematic soundscaping and dark evocative film scores, mutant electronic textures and pitch-black isolationism that employs brilliant production trickery to immerse the listener in a vibrant, active aural environment. The first disc that we released, Audiofilm I, was a terrifying, lightless driftscape, filled with creepy vocal loops, massive low end ambience, and an all-around horrific vibe that had us comparing it to works from Lustmord, Lull, and the Ambient disc from Painkiller's Execution Ground. But on this follow-up, Scott creates a much more frantic and energetic soundscape, this one alive with minimal bass-shuddering pulses and keening tone manipulations, layered swarms of insectile electronic chitter, swells of shadowy ambience, brain-melting plasma blasts, and vast tectonic drones. A brief (at 12 minutes) but amazing dose of abstract dark ambient/noise that will appeal to fans of Bastard Noise, Astro, and freaked-out 70's sci-fi synth soundtracks. As with the first disc, this 3" CD is packaged in a full color miniature folder with awesome artwork/photography from Seldon Hunt, and pressed in a one-time run of 1,000 copies. [press-release]
SETH NEHIL Amnemonic Site Alluvial Recordings €10
Perhaps Seth Nehil is better known from his collaborative work than for his solo work. He worked with jgrzinich and Olivia Block, but his last solo work was from 2002. In the years between he worked mainly on different projects that couldn't be released on CD, such as multimedia installations. The new work 'Amnemonic Site' is covered with obscurity. Besides his name, the title, label name and catalogue number, the cover holds no information. 'Play Loud' it says on the label, which always raises the question here: why? I usually like to make up my own mind if I want to play music loud or not. The whole time I was playing this CD, I couldn't stop thinking 'what are these sounds'? It's of course a question that I constantly ask myself when playing new music, certainly when covers are as obscure as this one, but in Nehil's case, it can be anything really. Are these field recordings? Perhaps. Or closely miked objects? Also likely. And what about the nature of sound processing? It seems likely there is some. How and to what extent? And do I also detect some real instruments, like wind instruments, or perhaps organs? It's all likely. Each of the pieces is a large mix up, I imagined, of all of these. There is field recordings, closely miked objects falling to the wooden floor, but also long sustained sounds of wind instruments. It all makes up a particularly strong CD, that is very much alike the latest Olivia Block release, in which a similar treatment of 'real' instruments and field recordings is used, and Nehil easily reaches to a similar height in his 'Amnemonic Site'. Full of tension, he offers a strong interplay between all of his soundsources and it's easily the best release I heard from him to date.
[Vital Weekly]
SHIFT / SICK SEED split Freak Animal Records €11
Shift at his most aggressive here. Monolith track from harsh crackling industrial noise with aggressive voice to thick and heavy droning sounds with subtle spoken word sampling. Sick Seed presents 3 tracks of caveman power electronics. Ugly, fierce and nasty stuff. Packaged in jewelbox with 3 full color insert cards. [label info]
SHINJUKU THIEF The Scribbler Cold Spring €10
SICKNESS Mudlark Self Abuse Records €10
SILENCE AND STRENGTH Opus Paracelsum The Eastern Front €5
Second full-length esoteric dark ambient/alchemical experimental opus full of weird sounds composed by Silence & Strength. The album is inspired by life and works of Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim, medieval Swiss physician, chemist, alchemist, one of the fathers of modern medicine and rebellious thinker, developed his own system of medicine and philosophy. All music by Stephan Friedman. [press-release]
SIMULACRA There is a Fountain Filled with Blood ConSouling Sounds €10
Degradation, degeneration, fear, sadness, loneliness, the end... these and many other negativities, "dressed in a dark ambient garment" can be felt in the new work of Simulacra. The five foggy pieces of work that overwhelm the listener with a feeling of a total solitariness while waiting for something that is not avoidable and can’t be stopped create the musical whole. The sounds used in the new album of Simulacra are, as usual, the minimalist form of dark ambient, that emanates with hypnotic attraction. The main motif of the new album is a fountain filled with blood that symbolizes the source of death, the place we constantly head on in our gloomy existential pilgrimage. The atmosphere of the album grabs the listener’s heart... to stop its beating with one grip. [press-release]
SKINWELL Tunnels .Angle.Rec. €10
Doors cleverly concealed unexplored abandoned industrial sites. The angleREC and Mondes Elliptiques labels had the opportunity to work with many sound artists whose explorations are accompanied by a will to uncover on the field, in the abstract as well as in the concrete, different mysteries or secrets, or at least, to probe the enclave, the place they haunt. The SKINWELL project is no exception; its two protagonists, CHRISTIAN CORVELLEC and MARTIN DUMAIS, concoct music for TUNNELS, those places, where, at the end, one is beginnning to see the light, as the old proverb says, but in the present case, we do not really care; we can see the light in the distance, it also penetrates different interstices or fissures along the walls of the tunnels where we progress, but we prefer taking the time to pace the premises, to permeate ourselves with the sound echoes with which they fill our ears and head, and it should be mentioned that the ambiant-drone styling embraced by SKINWELL contains, like the music of some well-know artists of the genre (here we shall name CRANIOCLAST, TROUM or ZOVIET FRANCE with the unique goal of giving people a better idea as to where they are on the map of sonorities), a whole assortment of subtle electronic pulsations, concocted here by CHRISTIAN CORVELLEC, which always adequately support the sound fabrics woven by MARTIN DUMAIS, and which also are their starting point. One only has to imagine a minimal tech project gone the drone-ocean way Åpulsations are there, always, but tinged with a sonic fog that is heavy, damp and fluid at the same time and which always suggests, in the end, uncertain twists and turns in this crossing of tunnels. But who would complain? [press-release]
SKULLFLOWER Malediction Second Layer Records €12
SKULLFLOWER Orange Canyon Mind Crucial Blast Records €10
The new full length from the legendary UK free/drone/psych outfit Skullflower, featuring some of the most searing, synapse scorching droneworks that Matthew Bower (the man behind Skullflower, as well as Sunroof! and The Hototogisu) has unleashed to date, in our humble opinion. Orange Canyon Mind is the follow up to 2002's awesome Exquisite Fucking Boredom (Tumult Records), and continues that albums utter mutation of stoned out riffs pulled taffy-like into eternity/oblivion and star-rupturing blasts of sonic white light. Over the 8 tracks/60 minute running time, Bower and cohorts build massive horizontal drones and melodic supernovas. Superb, beautiful, brain melting stuff. [press-release]
SKULLFLOWER Pure Imperial Reform Turgid Animal €12
New Skullflower CD now available on Turgid Animal Records. Recorded last year live on an Antwerpen radio station comes this new guitar wall "composition" from Matthew Bower and Lee Stokoe. This is a real CD (a first for Turgid Animal) limited to 1000 copies with artwork desinged by MB himself and pro-printed on quality grey paper in standard jewel cases. This is a seriously solid release and is for fans of modern Skullflower recordings and anyone who just loves a good harsh racket! [label info]
SMELL & QUIM Lavatory Paleolist Press €11
New album of the greatest band singing about dicks, cunts and Jesus Christ. The extended booklet contains memoirs of one of the founders of Russian Milovan Srdenovic Appreciation Society, and some canonical texts by Milovan Srdenovic himself. Print run of 200 copies, A5 booklet, 24 pages, offset print. [press-release]
SOUVENIR'S YOUNG AMERICA Souvenir's Young America UndeRadar €10
Monstrous instrumental post-metal from Richmond, Virginia that crushed our skulls! We've heard previous recordings from these guys that we really liked, which saw them working with a mixture of spare Neurosis/Godflesh informed heaviness and cinematic post-rock like Godspeed You! Black Emperor or Explosions In The Sky. Really good stuff, very pretty at times, and heavy n' crushing at others. Well, this debut full length on the ever-stellar Underadar label takes those basic ideas and carries them into a whole new realm of beautiful, flowing, HEAVY instrumental music that we have totally fallen in love with. These songs are heavily layered, masterfully assembled instrumental creations, emotionally moving and majestic like Red Sparowes, filled with dense shoegazer buildups and gorgeous droning electronc swirl, massively heavy prog-rock dirges and sludgy piano-accompanied rock, never descending into boring noodling or overextended jams. A range of instruments are used here, keyboards, percussion, samples, guitars, accordion, xylophone, cello, and much more. The whole album sounds like a soundtrack for a killer lost road-trip movie scored by members of Neurosis and Godspeed You! Black Emperor doing a weird mix of 70's prog and biker rock, and 80's soundtrack metal, but with all sorts of forays into lonesome, dusty country guitar-twang, long droning expanses of floating electronic drones, supremely beautiful and often super-crushing !!! This is ABSOLUTELY A MUST GET for fans of heavy instrumental ambient metal/post-rock (Red Sparowes, Mogwai, Mono, Pelican, Isis, etc.), and soundtrack-influenced heaviness (Zombi, Chromelodeon). Very very highly recommended!!!! [Crucial Blast]
SRMEIXNER Ten Thousand Ways to Die Segerhuva €10
SSHE RETINA STIMULANTS Ketsuieki No Eiga Self Abuse Records €10
STEEL HOOK PROSTHESES Atrocitizer Malignant Records €10
STEVE RODEN Ecstasy Shorewed Its Petals with the Full Peal of the Bells Ferns Recordings €7
STIMBOX The Time between Eugene and Victoria L.White Records €11
new album of these american cult noise artist from San Francisco / 13 merciless harsh electronic noise tracks with a touch of true crime electronics / listen what sounds noise created
STRATVM TERROR This is My Own Hell Existence Establishment €11
Welcoming the return of Peter Andersson (Raison D'etre, Necrophorous) and Tobias Larsson (Ocean chief), Existence Establishment and Reverse Alignment present "This is My Own Hell" with over an hour's worth of the darkest, bleakest industrial soundscapes these artists have delivered. Spanning minimalist dark ambience to doomed industrial passages Stratvm Terror portrays an absolutely hopeless atmosphere of pure desolation. With artwork featuring the paintings of Mia Makila, "This is My Own Hell" may just be your own pleasure. Limited to 1000 copies in 4 panel full color digipak. [label info]
SUBARACHNOID SPACE Eight Bells Crucial Blast Records €10
...Eight Bells is the first new release from Subarachnoid Space in four years (following 2005's The Red Veil on Strange Attractors). Featuring the recording lineup of Daniel Barone, Melynda Jackson, Lauren K. Newman, Daniel Osborne and Steven Wray Lobdell, the music of Eight Bells continues in the heavy lysergic vein as their last couple of post-Release albums, fusing wicked metallic crunch with ethereal fx-laden guitar freakouts and some of the band's most narcotized jamming yet... [label info]
SUBKLINIK Musik For Dekomposition Fall of Nature €11
Since 1996, Subklinik has continued to create some of the darkest Death Industrial / necro-soundscapes in existence. Enter "Musik For Dekomposition", the latest full length from Subklinik, featuring six torturous expressions that convey a foreboding atmosphere abundant with feelings of death, and isolation, manifested through a sonic vortex of analogue filth and decay.
TABATA MITSURU Mankind Spree Fourth Dimension Records €11
TAPHEPHOBIA Access to the World of Pain Greytone €11
TARDIVE DYSKINESIA feat. SIKHARA White Flowers Steinklang Industries €10
The second album of this ritual dark ambient noise artist from Germany, this time in collaboration with the american artist Sikhara. Traditional portugese chants and ritual drums are coming over metallic soundscapes, mixed with strange orchestrations and piano.
TEHO TEARDO Tower / Microphone Final Muzik €10
Experimental Drone / Industrial recorded in a tower.
THE BASTARD NOISE & CHRISTIAN RENOU Brainstorming II Housepig Records €11
THE BASTARD NOISE & GOLEM GROSS Universe of Dishonor Housepig Records €11
THE GOSLINGS Spaceheater / Perfect Interior Crucial Blast Records €10
Spaceheater/Perfect Interior collects the first two EP's from husband-and-wife duo the GOSLINGS, originally released as short-run CD-Rs on low-fi/indie noise imprint Asaurus Records in 2003-2004. Working with a signature palette of melted, low-fi indie pop and muggy/smeared psych-drone ambience ground through overdriven amplifiers and shot out into pools of swirling basement shudder, The GOSLINGS adorn their gorgeous powermurk with eerie field recordings, ghostly subterranean vocals, and crackling cable buzz. If SUNN O))) had, in actuality, been a late-80's dreampop outfit on 4AD Records, or if cult shoegazers MEDICINE had ever collaborated with drone-axe sorcerers EARTH, the resulting fug may have been similiar to this black-sugar avalanche. Simultaneously ethereal and blown-out, angelic strains of four-track mud-majesty shaking the walls of the ancient well it's buried beneath. [press-release]
THE HUMAN QUENA ORCHESTRA Politics of the Irredeemable Crucial Blast Records €10
...Crushing and oppressive, a crawl through abstract fields of low-end sound that move from punishing blasts of ultra-heavy machine-doom and earth-shaking tectonic riffs, to thick fogs of black electronic ambience that shimmer with subsonic pulses and celestial drones, the presence of malevolent electricity crackling in the air around the lumbering, nightmarish electro-sludge monstrosity of the Human Quena Orchestra. And at the same time, there are passages of immense beauty on this album that lurk at the peripheries of HQO's malevolent crush; the track "Aspirations" for instance, where pummeling slow-motion industrial percussions grinds in an infinite loop beneath a swirling nightsky of kosmiche synthesizers and heavenly, blissed-out ambience... [label info]
THE MISSING ENSEMBLE Hidden Doors Mondes Elliptiques €10
THE NETHER DAWN Well Song Porter Records €10
THE RITA The Rack Handmade Birds €10
THEME Valentine (Lost) Forever Heart & Crossbone €10
The third album from Theme, a band comprised of Stuart Carter, Jeanne Boyer and Richard Johnson (from'90s influential industrial-experimental band Splintered and head of the Lumberton Trading Company label), is a hallucinogenic intersection, where the exploration of twilight spaces, dreams, bitter reflections and hopes collide with a sense of escape (to better places?) or an abandoned 'self', either lost or searching for much needed identity... More 'song'-based than their previous album, on Valentine (Lost) Forever Theme often witnesses barbed yet oblique words cut-up and formed into mantras over a mesh of cascading drones, textures, blissed-out guitar strums, submerged tamboura, metallic sheets of electronic frah, occasional drum pounds and chilling swells'n'flecks of musique concrete. Overall, it catches the group exploring their environment, in more senses than one, with renewed vigour and nothing but questions left either open-ended or vying for interpretation. It's a world of rubble, dust and sprawling collapse, psychological or otherwise, screaming for meaning and purpose in a world gone mad where inner conflicts, vulnerability and regret are drowned in vast existential pools... With an additional remix by ex-Siouxsie & the Banshees bass player Steven Severin, this genuine album offers an apocalyptic sound mirage that recalls the experimental and post industrial works of :Zoviet*France, Throbbing Gristle and Coil, as well as the occult-like numbness of Current 93, the bleak avant-electronica of Andrew Liles and the psychedelic drones furrowed by the group's own previous work in both Splintered and Theme. In that sense, Valentine (Lost) Forever is a definite masterpiece in the ever-evolving legacy of the U.K. industrial scene, and if this is the end, then it's time to burn the truth. [press-release]
THEOLOGIAN The Further I Get from Your Star, The Less Light I Feel on My Face Crucial Blast Records €11
The Further I Get From Your Star, The Less Light I Feel On My Face is the latest chapter from New York power electronics/synth-death demon Leech. This is the first full-length, widely available release from Leech's new incarnation as Theologian, which picks up where he left off with his long-running project Navicon Torture Technologies. Over the past decade, Navicon Torture Technologies blurred the edges of power electronics and dark industrial on albums like The Church Of Dead Girls (2002, Malignant), VTERVS (2008, NCC) and The Gospels Of The Gash (2009, Malignant) before ceasing operations in 2009. Now reconstituted as Theologian, Leech again explores the further realms of experience with a new form of blackened synth dread that combines many of the sounds that made up NTT's crushing electronic attack (Swedish death industrial, classic power electronics, harsh noise, powernoise) with a new level of heaviness and droneological power... [label info]
THISQUIETARMY Blackhaunter Elevation recordings €11
TODD FLETCHER Star Amplexus €5
Electronic drones unvaryingly generate a pleasant environment of passive sound, exploring minimalism tempered with Fletcher's innate creativity. Extremely tranquil percussion does little to disturb the sonic veil, even enhancing the serenity with its languid, muffled beats. The textures of delicate tonalities are almost ephemeral, expertly filling the void with an delectable resonance that neither rises not plummets, maintaining an unobstructed course through the air, not unlike sunlight bathing the spectacle of an ocean undisturbed by winds or waves. Electronic pulses are elongated to impossible duration, wavering in the embellishment of secondary sweeps that cross the audience's perceptions like washes of tinted light. While intended to convey celestial concepts, this music possesses an earthy quality that touches the listener's soul with soothing reassurance.
TOPOGRAFIA Genius Loci Greytone €11
TOTAL Exploded Star Sad Servant Self Abuse Records €10
TRAMA AFONA s/t Greytone €11
TREES Freed of This Flesh Crucial Bliss Records €10
The mysterious Portland ensemble Trees return with their second offering on Crucial Blast, Freed Of This Flesh, with two new fetid death rituals scraped from the crypt. Each of these tracks averages around fourteen minutes, an extended death-rattle formed from black glacial riffs suspended in space, tectonic percussive rumbles, anguished shrieks of torment and abject suffering, deep guttural demon-toad throat singing, and endless sheets of glistening metallic feedback that spill and drift to the far edges of their extreme time-stretched ambient doom, a crumbling, blighted majesty, noxious ambient blackdoom adrift on putrescent tides. The wretched vocal effluvium creeps formlessly across austere slabs of crushing heaviness arranged into ghoulish constructs of atmospheric dread, moving so slow that the music seems to lose all sense of propulsion at times, becoming lost in a fog of howling amplifiers and buzzing feedback, the guitars stretched into massive decomposing drones, the spaces between infested with controlled bursts of drums that skitter and rumble, almost "jazzy" in a vague sort of way, but still incredibly slow and ponderous. Freed Of This Flesh inhabits the same sort of black-tar depths as the likes of Burning Witch, Monarch, Khanate, and Bunkur while stripping the slo-mo heaviness into their own twisted, skeletal configuration. [press-release]
TREES Lights Bane Crucial Blast Records €10
The debut album from the Portland quartet Trees delivers two epic tracks of monolithic, blackened doom metal with a twisted, noise-damaged approach and a dank basement vibe. Trees craft glacial abstract riffs and rivers of ashen amplifier goo that fans of feedback-laden heaviosity will find highly satisfying, a kind of grinding, slow-motion black hole psychedelia that has a similiar hypnotic death-ritual quality as artists like Bloody Panda and Khanate, but with their own unique trance state of swirling guitar textures, horrific jet black dronescapes and ghoulish, excoriating vocals. Features members of the PDX psych-sludge outfit Tecumseh (Important Records). This CD edition of the TREE's debut comes in a Stoughton printed 4-panel gatefold case. [press-release]
TROUM Autopoiesis / Nahtscato Zoharum €10
Two elder vinyls first time on CD. These vinyls materials aren't unvailable + bonus tracks. Packaged in exclusive 3-panel digipack. 'Autopoiesis' was originally released as picture LP on Small Voices in October 2004 in limited edition of 567 copies. 'Nahtscato' was originally released as a 12"EP on Paranoise Records in July 2005 in an edition of 300 copies. The bonus tracks were recorded in 2003. [label info]
TROUM Symballein Small Voices €10
A collection of rare & early tracks from 1997-1999 previously released on various compilations.
UEDINENIYA Red Meridian 7 Hz Records €10
Uedineniya is a one-man project by Alexander Elin (the doctor by a trade) from forests of Tambov, Russia. Uedineniya is not the first project by the author but it’s the first project which has level with the physical carrier. The genre can be characterized as dark / drone ambient with big experimental and isolating elements. The author speaks the album is a musical support for the 8mm-record with videomaterials of travels on the first Arktika’s series icebreakers were born at the middle of the twentieth century. This record has been found in the garage of the Alexandr’s relative (the former seaman and polar explorer) Sergey Borisov. The main idea of this album is making the atmosphere of infinite cold and very long days during travels in ices, to remind listeners about places where life and short stay are very dangerous for people. For this reason the album has been named “red meridian” – dangerous line, the place for strong spirit people capable on heroically acts... Single CD edition without inserts in digisleeve. [label info]
UEDINENIYA Red Meridian 7 Hz Records 2xCD box €12
Uedineniya is a one-man project by Alexander Elin (the doctor by a trade) from forests of Tambov, Russia. Uedineniya is not the first project by the author but it’s the first project which has level with the physical carrier. The genre can be characterized as dark / drone ambient with big experimental and isolating elements. The author speaks the album is a musical support for the 8mm-record with videomaterials of travels on the first Arktika’s series icebreakers were born at the middle of the twentieth century. This record has been found in the garage of the Alexandr’s relative (the former seaman and polar explorer) Sergey Borisov. The main idea of this album is making the atmosphere of infinite cold and very long days during travels in ices, to remind listeners about places where life and short stay are very dangerous for people. For this reason the album has been named “red meridian” – dangerous line, the place for strong spirit people capable on heroically acts... Boxset double CD edition with lots of inserts, second disc contains video in SVCD-format with unique records with one of the first arctic expeditions. [label info]
ULTRA MILKMAIDS Live USA 02/03 Psych.KG €10
ULTRA MILKMAIDS Vorely Relay Noctovision €10
Ultra Milkmaids started their career in mid-90s and have later collaborated with lots of other musicians. In 1997 both members were just 20 years old! But the fact that just after a couple of albums many musicians agreed to make their own remixes on their tracks just prooves the remarkable quality of their music. This is the album of remixes from the original "Vorely" CD (1997, Noise Museum). Remixes recorded in 1998 and released in 1999, and all of them are completely different: dub (Etereo Expandeum Club), ambient (Telepherique, Troum and Vance Orchestra), minimal techno (Goem), electro and breakbit (Icon Zero, Celluloid Mata and Captain Black). Those who didn't listen to the original album only have to guess - how it sounds at all?
UR Trieb Topheth Prophet €10
Ur was born from the collaboration between Federico Esposito and Mauro Sciaccaluga, both hailing from the hardcore-punk scene and from bands like Heartside (F.E.), Never Was, Downright, Kafka, Stalker (M.S.). The two joined in 2003 to work on F.E.’s industrial solo-project (a.k.a. Den LXV) live set, later they decided to collaborate and improvise together to create a new entity. Andrea Ferraris joined the band in the early days of 2005, contributing to define further on the sonic identity of the combo. A.F. is well known for having played and recorded with different bands ranging from hardcore to indie-post rock to experimental music (Airchamber3, Deep End, Burning Defeat, Permanent Scar, Onefineday, Ultraviolet Make Me Sick, Permanent Scar, etc…). Ur music is mostly based on improvisation that usually starts with drones or samples (with no pre-definite structure), to which they superimpose layers of electro-acoustic noisescapes coming from objects, field recordings, analog and traditional instruments processed using a load of pedals and effects. The sound ends painting a solid, harsh and dramatic industrial lounge where archaic instincts and modern obsessions meet. To use the words of a sound engineer after one of their live sets: “…it all sounds like early Pink Floyd on acid...on muriatic acid”. [press-release]
v/a Cataclastic Fracture (A Noise Collection) Deadline Recordings €10
v/a Diacetylmorphin Steinklang Industries €7
Brilliant new Power-Noise compilation with well-structured, rhythmic and catchy compositions by: TARDIVE DYSKINESIA / ATROX / THE MUSICK WRECKERS (ex-Thorofon) / LEICHE RUSTIKAL / CONTROL compiled and organised by Mr. Tardive Dyskinesia with stunning artwork by Leiche Rustikal. 2 tracks by each artist (except Atrox is one 14 min. track). [press-release]
v/a Music Should Hurt Self Abuse Records €10
v/a Noise.il Topheth Prophet €5
Israeli noise and power electronics! Mortalmanifest, Drone Lebanon, Gedem, Gaop vs Aboolele, Wreck&Drool, Aboolele vs Gaop, Barzel.
VAZHES Seid Vegvisir Music €10
Ritual noise / Folk.
VELEHENTOR From the Gloom of Graves. Stonewells of ?ternity Desolate Catacombs of SMERSH €10
Classic dark ambient: cold echoes of the unknown rituals, roaming in te utter darkness of resonant stone labyrynths. Paranoiac trance induced by the feeling of lifeless presence in the anscient crypts, breathing with deadly dampness. Icy calmness of indifferent doom. The album was recorded in winter 1999-2000. Packed in an absolutely black digipak (double-sided print, double black paint), the pictures are applied with varnish.
VENNT Vennt Housepig Records €8
VOMIR Application A Aphistemi Maisonbruit €11
VOMIT ORCHESTRA Antecrux Autumn Wind Productions €8
VOMIT ORCHESTRA Bridges Burnt Autumn Wind Productions €8
Ambient / Noise / Experimental. The experimental sounds of Vomit Orchestra revise what is known as reality, permeating the decomposition of spiritual blindness and absolute-nihilism. [press-release]
WE WAIT FOR THE SNOW Lullabies from Our Dreams Final Muzik €10
We Wait For The Snow project was born in the Winter season of 2004/05. The founding member of the project is Andrea Penso, alredy active with Selaxon Lutberg and Cold Current label , helped by her old friend Simone Zuccolin. The sound is deliberately lo-fi, and it is created exclusively with economical instruments: acoustic and electric guitars, cheap keyboards, accordeon, farfisa, varius non-musical objects, flute, toys, percussions, tapes ...The aim is creating a confidential atmosphere through the balance between "dream" and "sadness". You can find this sense of precarious balance in the songs that alternate moments of pure improvisation with much more studied and controlled tracks. "Lullabies From Our Dreams" is the band's first official album; the songs are about dreams, lullabies and tales from the forest, stories of stones, woods, leaves, dead men, big trees, and girls that speak with demons ...for fans of raw, occult and lo-fi recordings, Fursaxa, Troum, Current 93, Jackie O'Motherfu**er, Islaja, drone music and neo psych-folk, folk noir, field recordings, concrete noise and acoustic melodies...in few words, Troum meet Espers, or something like that! Beautiful digi-sleeve, limited to 600 copies.
XIPHOID DEMENTIA Might is Blight Existence Establishment €11
Xiphoid Dementia is Egan Budd's noise project based in Boston, Massachusetts. Mr. Budd has been active in the noise underground since about 2002 and creates a powerful sort of ambient-noise music. His latest release is a numbered, limited edition CD titled "Might Is Blight" and therein begins a bleak journey through the possible end times of life as we know it, the ruination of Earth, and the death of illusion. This noise artist has in his artistic grasp the means of creating sound structures that are metaphors for such ideas even though to find those places requires certain lengths to be gone to... What Budd has accomplished here is impressive, not too many noise artists are attempting something so ambitious, a hybrid style of composing that incorporates modern classical avant garde, droning electronic noise and atmospheric ambience to create a strong, cinematic music... From the orchestral title track opener to the lilting, tossing, aptly titled 'Your City Crumbles' to the profoundly disturbing final composition, 'None Shall Inherit The Earth', every one of these soundscapes moves in fascinating ways, morphing from powerful Penderecki-style string sections that teeter on the brink of collapse, then break down giving way to noisier electronics, heavy (metallic) droning, or screeching, anguished vocals, each sound texture seemingly always moving in a constant state of flux...
YAO 91404 D Coal Valgriind €11
YELLOW6 Disappear Here Make Mine Music €11
YELLOW6 Melt Inside Make Mine Music €11
YELLOW6 When the Leaves Fall Like Snow Make Mine Music 2xCD €12
ZONK'T Purr Sound On Probation €10
Third full album for Zonk't, following his remarkable "Itching" on Brume Records. This French act (former member of Nox) presents another very well-written album made of ultra-deep basses, flowing atmospheres, small clicks'n'cuts, and a rather massive sound. Ranging from smooth, minimal dub pulses to drone-oriented, ultra-deep bass, "Purr" takes distilled techno under the microscope and well below freezing with its infinitesimal examination of slow-motion electronic minimalism. It is a work of astonishingly deep character, with an undeniable undercurrent of unease.
Cassette
ALTAR OF FLIES Let New Life Rise in the Face of Death Sprachlos Verlag €6
The fourth tape release on Sprachlos Verlag not only introduces a new piece of work by the unrivaled Swedish master of ghoulish analogue electronics, but also presents the first part in a Sprachlos sub series investigating the shadowy aesthetics of the grave and the night. Beneath the rugged elms and the yew-tree’s shade in a desolate Mjolby churchyard, Mattias Gustafsson salutes the lost souls of Svartan, taking you on a chilling night ride to the sound of a beat up tape echo...
Fans of the two recent seven inches on Mattias’ own Hasten & Korset label ought to take note as Let New Life Rise delves further in the same direction but benefits from the longer playing time in developing the sound and the compositional structure. Although the trademark oscillator, synth and feedback work of Altar of Flies still echoes in the tracks, the tape references classic avantgarde composition as much as it embraces the seedy grit of industrial and noise music. Taking Mattias' tape loop work to new heights it presents a haunting blend of environmental and found sounds that seriously throws out a challenge to the established canon of Swedish concrete. Let new Life Rise is as far away from a »basement jam« you’ll come while still listening to music recorded in a basement!
Mentality-wise, file this next to your death wishing-loner folk-country tape collection, your Graham Lambkin and IFCO records, or alternatively sandwich it between your Vladimir Ussachevsky radio bootlegs. Add two shovels of (un-) holy soil and you’re home.
ANAMNESES Isolation Modern Arrangements €6
ANTI-VERSTAND Kak govoritsa, chelovek MC+3"CD-r YAOP €8
YAO 91404 D project.
ARCHITEUTHIS REX Foam My Dance The Skull €6
As near as can be gleaned, Architeuthis Rex is the solo project of a young italian composer who has named himself after a variety of giant squid. The sounds he uses here are a blend of guitar, electronics, glitching and various other things collaged into a busy fudge fountain. It keeps reminding me of the sort of thing you can hear in your head on a very long car ride, a kind of rumbling drone with teeth chattering softly in the foreground and drool spreading everywhere, especially if your car had a muffler that sounded like a robot playing the tabla.
ARGONAUT Saltvatten Ar18 €6
Swedish Industrial.
BONESFIELD / FACIALMESS Sabotage Phage Tapes €5
BRANDKOMMANDO / SETH RYAN / FEAR KONSTRUKTOR / DISGUST split Phage Tapes 2xMC €9
BRANDKOMMANDO Now! Phage Tapes €5
Power Electronics.
BT.HN. Rawmada Lake Shark Harsh Noise €6
THE RITA project.
CHLOROFORM RAPIST Chloroform Rapist Untergeschoss €6
Disgusting post-mortem power electronics sleaze. Evil and minimal. True crime and abduction fantasy inspired. For fans of Filth & Violence, TF/PE and such. Professionally duplicated tapes with bodyprints.
CHURNER Frequency Fornicator Symbolic Productions €5
Harsh Noise.
CONCRETE MASCARA The Answer in the Ashes Untergeschoss €6
Best new US power electronics. Completely rotten and broken sound, fierce vocals, dark and morbid atmosphere.
Professionally duplicated tapes with bodyprints. 70-minute tape with same material on both sides.
CONCRETE VIOLIN Anthropogenic Axis Mundi €6
CRANK STURGEON / STERILE GARDEN split ZUIVERINGliederen €5
CUSTODIAN Destructive Resonance White Centipede Noise €5
Icy harsh noise with an industrial undertow, lacking any trace of emotion or humanity. Hellish feedback, cavernous mid-range torture, and blinding crunch.
DAMIEN DUBROVNIK The Vanity Set Jartecknet €6
This danish duo just released their second LP on Posh Isolation, "Europa Dagbog - Europa Diary". Indeed one of the highlights of this year. Jartecknet is proud to release "The Vanity Set". A fullength recording that bears all the trademarks of past releases although shows another side of the coin. A very atmospheric and bleak recording divided into three long tracks. Even if it?s moving from minimal industrial compositions to fierce noise outbursts it is always covered with the cold and distant hands of despair.
DEDICATED TO BOB FLANAGAN Dedicated to Bob Flanagan Untergeschoss €6
Minimal electronic noise dirt for bondage and humiliation sessions. Not wall of noise but Wall Of Pain. Dedicated to late S/M Superman. Explicit artwork.
DEPRIVATION s/t Diazepam €5
old school death industrial - power electronics
a mix of harsh attacks and monotonous, obsessive moods
inspired by the old italian masters: M.B., Mauthausen Orchestra, Atrax Morgue...
feedbacks, tape manipulations and pedal abuse
recorded straight to tape
hiss and raw "stop button" editing
DEVELOPER Developer White Centipede Noise €5
Psychedelic crash-up harsh noise edited entirely on tape. Heavy static stereo blasts, accented with surreal acoustic
EARTH INCUBATOR Sexual Noise III : The Bath of Pleasures Symbolic Productions €5
ECOUTE LA MERDE / HARSHCORE split Underground Pollution Records €3
EN NIHIL Pyres Maniacal Hatred €6
Six tracks of industrial noise/power electronics from EN NIHIL. Aggressive electronics with sounds of oscillators, feedback and some samples. Heavy dark industrial noise.
EXIT IN GREY Peaceful Landscape / Environment Despair YAOP €6
Psychedelic Drone Ambient, sometimes peaceful, sometimes oppressive. Colour cardboard box.
FECALOVE Wrong Sincope €5
Two really noise pieces from the italian harsh master. constanctly destruction and great powerful dynamics. limited to 29 hand numbered copies.
FOUR FLIES Choking on Your Own Spit and Blood Phage Tapes €5
The gruesomely entitled “Choking on Your Own Blood and Spit” finds Four Flies, which is another project of the hugely prolific and muilt-project linked Richard Ramirez- the project started off as a four piece but is now thinned down to a two piece and features Ramirez & Robert Newsome (White Gimp Mask). The tape offers up two 15 minute slices of intense and bombarding walled matter with a bloody & sadistic Giallo theme running through them.
FRUSTRATED DISSECTOR Your Enemy is My Friend Axis Mundi €6
GNAWED Purge Maniacal Hatred €6
Power Electronics
HANDER SOM VARDAR Bakatbojning Jartecknet €6
After last years self released cassette "Korridorblick" HSV is back with another great recording! Still very minimal and bleak with a unique and interesting nerve to it. With the use of loops and piercing electronics HSV builds up disturbing sounds of anxiety and nausea. Hopefully we will hear more from this promising Swedish act.
HUREN AQUARIUM Olenka [not on label] €5
On various tracks I play violin, "Accord" record player, tin tank, bleeping feedbacks and sax player M. Pozin, but he doesn't know about this. I have asked the tape guy, Igor, to dub the tapes at maximum record level, so I don't even know what's gonna be in the end.
ILLICIT RELATIONSHIP Flaunting Axis Mundi €6
INKUBATOR Berusad Ingen Vag €5
K2 IsoDoping Robert & Leopold €6
KANIBA Transcendant Decadence Through Ruination €3
Black Ritual Noise
KRIMINAALISET METSANHALTIJAT Nato Triangle Records €5
Pure power electronics, filled with hate and pain. Aggressive vocals and harsh pulsations of noise. Fucking great.
KYLIE MINOISE / GOD PUSSY Narcotics Puzzle Records €5
LANDVARELSER Stralning B Sprachlos Verlag €6
Landvarelser is yet another alter ego of the enigmatic Stockholmer and family man (un)known from Time Deleters, Sphynxs, Johan Rohbau and more. As the keen listener might have noticed, elements of noise music (and more importantly: the mentality of it) has always been present in his work, although its blunt forcefulness has often been restrained within the warped melodious framework characteristic to his peculiar sound. Until now that is.
For his Verlag release he was asked to let go of any constraints and unashamedly give room to the C.C.C.C. and Incapacitants worship implicit in his discography. Landvarelser thus delivers a sublime mess of a junk-infused psychedelic miasma, retaining the weird edge from the Time Deleters sound while forcefully transforming it into a feedbacking maelstrom of pulverizing capacities.
LASSE MARHAUG Angelica 2011/05/20 Robert & Leopold €6
LOVE CULT Sobaki, Volki My Dance The Skull €6
This duo from northern Russia craft their tunes from guitar, swishers and a couple of lonely voices howling. Reminds me of when I visited Goddard College in 1971 or 72. My dad and I went walking on a trail through the campus and ran into a tipi full of students making wolf sounds. I thought it was hep as hell. He was less jazzed. But if you like Atman or that sort of thing, this has many features that will make your ears wiggle. Almost Finnish at times, which I guess isn’t all that odd.
LUST FOR YOUTH Solar Flare Jartecknet €6
Armed with unhealthy doses of red lipstick and defunct keyboards these two Swedes have spread their gloomy and bleak mix of trashy synthpop and industrial filth. After several tapes and tones of shows they are now releasing their first fullength recording. Solar Flare consists of 11 tracks filled with melodic keyboard hooks, pounding drummachines and muddy electronics. 100 copies.
MAAAA Burning the Kukkovka Cock Triangle Records €5
Completely acoustic album, recorded in an abandoned building standing in the woods near Kukkovka. This building was projected in the beginning of 90-s for a TV-center, but after all was desolated like many other neverending projects. In the last decade it has been visited mainly by the lovers of strong drinks and other mutants. During several record-sessions we have recorded some tracks inside the basement of the building, and on the roof too. This is power acoustics. A scream for destruction of the symbol. An international line-up: two Karelians, one Finnish and one Pole bawl and destroy stone, glass and iron. Limited to 41 copies.
MILJONER DODA 76° 15’ S 113° 10’ O Oh No, More Tapes!€5
Drone Noise.
NECKHOLD Last Exit White Centipede Noise €5
Harsh noise from two brothers from Australia. Rough metallic textures, buried vocals, and a fair share of violent cuts all plowing straight forward on a path of grinding crust.
NORMA REAKCII Dying Land YAOP €5
Deadly Noise Ambient / Musique Concrete, based on abstract drone, industrial noises and field recordings. Archive material from 2007. A visionary esoteric work. Comes with a bonus from 2009 "Agartha (In The Shadow Of Ragnarok)". A5 cover. [label info]
NRYY / WORMHEAD Part 2 Puzzle Records €5
PAINFUL VIGIL Bad Memories Axis Mundi €6
RACK / SJALVHAT split Phage Tapes €5
HNW
REDSK / I DREAMT OF HER BEAUTIFUL TENTACLES split Scorze Records €5
REPTILE WORSHIP Obeisance Nictitating €6
Reptile Worship are two guys from Wisconsin who, to my knowledge, make their own analog electronics. Really bleak industrial sounding drones. Great stuff. My new project with Neil Jendon and Mike Weis played a show with these guys a few months ago and they were amazing. You can pick up the tape here. Apparently they are a “tribute” to David Icke and his conspiracy theory that a secret group of reptile humanoids rule the world and that many world leaders are merely reptiles disguised as humans.
SANDOR RADO / MILJONER DODA Ingen Vag €5
Drone Noise
SEKT / TERROR REGIME Learn / Ominous Drones Ominous Recordings €5
The Sekt-side is an experimental ambiental journey into darkness, frustration and control. So hypnotizing and scary that it is a must have! The Terror Regime-side is as usual misanthropic harsh noise, complete Terror Propaganda. Less vocals than earlier, but a live(?!) track has been added.
SELYMES VIRAGSZIROM / P*RCL.SPN split Phage Tapes €5
HNW
SEXTERMINATOR 69 / AUTOCANCRENA Fattura a Morte con il Sistema di Putrefazione Scorze Records €5
HNW
SHIVER They will Feed on Us Diazepam €6
"there dies a man in the depths of the vale:
a bird takes flight from the top of the mountain down into the depths of the vale,
and it feeds on the corpse of the dead man there: then, up it flies from the depths of the vale to the top of the mountain:
it flies to some one of the trees there, of the hard-wooded or the soft-wooded,
and upon that tree it vomits and deposits dung"
treated tape loops and field recordings together with violin and cymbals from eerie noise ambient to harsh noise chaos
c-30 chrome tape in handmade bag with small insert and bones
SSRI Korperanalysis Untergeschoss €6
Sick Seed side project. Tape noise tribute/mockery. Done by playing old new found lost great crap noise experimental tapes on walkmen, manipulating them with fx, blasting the mess out of loud amps and capturing it with analog four-tracker. Detailed, hissing, heavy, fvcked, rumbling. Wall torn down by growling demons.
STRESS Caffeine Addiction Phage Tapes €5
HNW
STRUP / BACULUM / ALISA-YHTYE / OBOZDUR split [not on label] €5
Noise from Russia, Belarus, USA.
TCHERNOBLYAD Singles Collection 2004-2010 YAOP €5
Tracks from compilations, splits and mini-albums, two absolutely exclusive tracks and a lot of rarities from long sold out releases. Special cover. [label info]
TELEKASTER At How Many Beats Per Life My Dance The Skull €6
Telekaster is Berlin-based musician Matthias Grubel and video-artist Stefan Bunnig. Together they create a universe of abstract narration and associative beauty consisting of Grubel’s shimmering noisy soundscapes and Bunnig’s perfectly crafted yet always universally minimal real-film sequences.
TERRORGOAT ...A Plague upon All Men Cthulhic Dawn Productions €3
Unrelenting blackened Ritual Noise violence.
TERRORGOAT Days in the Red House (This is the Strangest Life I've Ever Known) Cthulhic Dawn Productions €3
Ritualistic Dark Ambient Noise; a work that explores the destructive and constructive aspects of life.
TERRORGOAT De Vermis Mysteriis — Worshipping the Worm Cthulhic Dawn Productions €3
Ritual Noise in glorification of those who walk, yet who should not walk.
TERRORGOAT Dreams of R'lyeh / An Unknown Era Cthulhic Dawn Productions €3
Re-release of two long sold-out Terrorgoat-tapes; Dreams Of R'lyeh is brooding, mysterious and minimalistic Ritual Dark Ambient, whereas An Unknown Era combines this with the brutality and violence of Demon Scarification.
TERRORGOAT From the Cathedral of Disgust, We Rise… / Demon Scarification Cthulhic Dawn Productions €3
Re-release of two long sold-out Terrorgoat tapes. Harsh, brutal and extremely violent yet at times also haunting, eerie and evocative Ritual Black Noise.
TERRORGOAT Nemesis (Speaking the Words of the Prophet) Cthulhic Dawn Productions €3
Ritual Black Noise.
TERRORGOAT The Glorious Dawn of the Light of Our Lord Cthulhic Dawn Productions €3
Blackened Ritual Noise and Ambient in glorification of Cthulhu.
TIME DELETERS At Poly Ferox Ingen Vag €5
drone experimental folk noise progg
UMPIO / SSRI split Untergeschoss €6
Remember what computers were like in old scifi films? Size of a room with knobs, levers and flashing lights. Umpio's track is a field recording of one of them malfunctioning, crashing (in all senses of the word) and finally exploding.
SSRI track is a recording of the project's first live gig on New Year's Day 2011. Lo-fi tape hiss, embarrassing anti-guitar and bits of metal junk. No trend, no mosh, no fun.
UNNVALD GRANHEIM / MEURTRE ATOMIQUE split ZUIVERINGliederen €5
UR / REGOSPHERE split DumpsterScore Home Recordings €5
UR Gettin' Rid of the Albatross Taxi Driver €5
VAST GLORY Vast Glory Lake Shark Harsh Noise €6
WAILING OF THE WINDS s/t Diazepam €5
droning acoustic jams:
guitar, violin, bells and percussions
influenced by early Amon Duul, Tangerine Dream and Popol Vuh in their worst acid trips
including a Thergothon cover
WAPSTAN Of Zero and the Void Rundownsun €5
Drone
WILL OVER MATTER 7 Impulses Obscurex €5
WILT + MARAX + GOOSE Harshfields Phage Tapes €5
WINCE s/t White Centipede Noise €5
Four tracks of perverse noise. Crushed out metal, obscure samples, and gasping static all crudely layered and thoroughly degraded.
WINCE Vasovagal Syncope White Centipede Noise €5
Damaged yet thunderous harsh noise injected with lots of hiss and laced with feedback. Meditates on vasectomies, testicular damage, the prostate gland and other stimuli that trigger cold sweats and fainting spells. Available as standard edition or art edition packaged in 6x9 bag with 12 page booklet of gross Xeroxed art with color covers, as well as the standard tape case inside (ltd. 30).
WOMEN IN TRAGEDY / CRANK STURGEON split ZUIVERINGliederen €5
ZEBRA MU Extinction Volume 4 Quagga Curious Sounds €5
v/a Nyrkki & Kyrpa Filth & Violence €6
v/a Sonno Ferum [not on label] €6
v/a FOLKFORAKT / SOLO ARCHIVIST / URBERGET Ingen Vag 3xMC €12
Vinyl, 7"
DUAL Klanik Drone Records €7
Mighty drones & slight rhythmic structures, total transcendence.
LICHT-UNG Kristall Drone Records €7
LICHT-UNG (German for "glade") is the name of a label, art- (publishing lyrics, pictures, etc.) and sound project from the western part of Gemany with a very peculiar and rather dadaistic approach.
The two pieces on "kristall" seem to be based mainly on feedback- and metal or glass sounds that are carefully put together for a queer-sounding trip.
R.Y.N. Whistle and I'll Come to You Drone Records €7
Drone Ambient, / Field Recordings.
SLUGHOG Hangman / Hanker Self Abuse Records €5
Powerful viscous Sludge with two bass guitars (!) and brutal vocals.
Stinky psychedelic swamp. Stamped cover, poster inside.
TARKATAK Skarva Drone Records €7
A North German drone-project that has since this EP developed to one of the main german atmospheric deep droners... Beautiful & dark transcendental noise. “First full-lenght E.P. of a quite unknown German project, which only appeared on 3 cassettes so far and on a split-7" with DEEP. TARKATAK uses synths and other electronic devices, the music is slow & dull, non-impulsive and dream-like. Very low rumblings, dark harmonies, some subliminal & dense backwards-effects, this is sensible "archaic music" which could be easily compared to old Zoviet France and the likes. Another Mind-Drone. If you're able to go INTO the sound, the sound will pulsate in YOU and have effects for a long time...”
THE INFANT CYCLE Secret Hidden Message Drone Records €7
THE INFANT CYCLE is a long operating experimental project from Ontario (Canada), active since 1992 with many releases on MC & CDR on different labels and the home imprint THE CEILING. The three pieces on this EP were created using sounds from various instruments as Trombone, guitar, windchimes, marimba, birdcage, etc.. The result sounds rather electronic & hypnotic, with bright shining drones & repetitive rhythmic patterns & loops moving into more amorphous & multilayered sounding electro-acoustics. In spite of the rather experimental working-methods the outcome is very compact & condensed. THE INFANT CYCLEs approach to sound is based on the belief that words and explanations can only fail to describe or explain it, what is needed is a non-verbal, intuitive understanding of the work: "The artist's ego must not inhibit the piece's effect. It is the sound you are hearing, not the artist." Is the artist playing the sound or the sound playing the artist? Filed under: Multilayered Drone-Hypnotism more info: www.myspace.com/the_ceiling FOGGY VINYL; BLACK COVERS WITH DIFFERENT SIZED BLACK SPOTS ON IT & TRANSPARENT COVERAGE USING INFANT CYCLE-LOGO
TOMASZ KRAKOWIAK A / P Bocian Records €7
Tomas Krakowiak uses a cymbal and a stereo microphone on his 7". Both sides last exactly four minutes fifty-nine seconds, and one piece is called 'A' and the other is called 'P'. He plays the cymbal by using objects to create rotating sounds, to lift up the cymbal make it sing in overtones. 'P' is the more droney version of the two, 'A', the more acoustic one.
ULTRASOUND Death Comes from the Left Drone Records €7
Coming originally from Texas, the trio ultrasound (partly ex-STARS OF THE LID) are now located in Den Haag, Netherlands, and Austin, Texas, USA. They did a couple of fantastic guitar-drone-releases in the 90s, climaxing in their so far latest CD-album Hamesh, that went into new musical territory combining melodic songs with drones. With this, their first ever 7 EP, they present two unbelievable emotional touching pieces of guitar & bass-drone-music, where long echoes of overtone guitar-sounds melt in one stream of pure sensible acoustics... ultrasound submerges the listener into a deep salty sea to float on the frail border between air and water, light and reflection, perception and knowing. This is pure yearning transformed into sounds.
VELEHENTOR Ceremonial Death Vegvisir Music €7
Ritual Drone Ambient. Two long untitled tracks. Resonant enveloping sound, ritual and meditative... Dungchens, dunkars, kanling, rolmo, percussion and bells, gong, without any electronic or electric devices. Two chtonic trance hypnotic rituals. Sonic incarnation of the firstborn chtonic darkness alike ritual practices from the Eastern mountains and mountains under the Polar Star. Ritual death, mystical death, irreversible transformation into unhuman. Alienation from identity, depersonification, dissolution in primordial substance of absolute blackness that was before light and darkness, leaking through the holes of reality.
YUI ONODERA Synergetics Drone Records €7
Recorded in Japan last year by Yui Onodera, the Synergetics 7" is based on the sounds of piano and guitars. On side A this source is kept a secret through the many very well done manipulations, while on the reverse side a minimal tune on the piano slithers through in the drone. A little bit like Sakamoto, but more melodic and coherent in nature.
Video
HIERS XXVI Shoots. Poetry. Stahl 3"DVD-r UFA Muzak €7
Power Noise with archive video from the Russian history of the 20th century.
GELSOMINA + RULLA / SEWER ELECTION + TRERIKSROSET Tender Wreckage DVD-r Freak Animal €7
Live performance.
T-shirts
BASTARD NOISE Skull Servant (M) €14
Fuck Stupid Music (L) €14
GNAW THEIR TONGUES All the Dread Maginificence of Perversity (L) €14
MAAAA Karelian Harsh Noise Attack (S) €10
SKULLFLOWER IIIrd Gatekeeper (L) €14
