Louise Landes Levi - IKIRU or The Wanderer

Whereas the previous solo albums of experimental music priestess Louise Landes Levi (here and here) had a more soothing and meditative effect, this one sounds more dramatic and dystopian; this is due to the theme of the album being the monarch butterfly, a species whose numbers have greatly plummeted in recent years. There is an immense feeling of loss and mourning in Louise's wailing sarangi, while in Ira Cohen's poem she recites at the beginning of the second she juxtaposes the strength and resilience of a creature whose brain is the size of a pinhead but knows how to fly to Mexico against the imminent extinction brought about by human negligence. On this album she is accompanied by Bart DePaepe of Sloow Tapes (who had released From The Ming Oracle) and Timo Van Luijk (both members of Ilta Hämärä) who recorded/mixed the album and probably had a hand in the instrumentation too, as there are drones and instances of some sort of dulcimer apart from the sarangi. Proceeds from this album will go to a buttefly conservation center, and since this album is supremely beautiful, I strongly recommend you offer some sort of financial aid straight through Oaken Palace. 2018 LP on Oaken Palace.

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Filthy Turd - Buxom Psychic & Reptilian Revelator

Disgusting skronky dictaphone noise and musique concrète by everyone's beloved turd sandwich. Unsettling almost singing too, ideal for any uptown expensive restaurant. 15 tracks here but I'm not sure if I've separated them correctly. Tape on Beartown Records.

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Female Borstal (Culver/Mutant Ape/Haikai No Ku project)

As mentioned in the previous post on the Wasp Bomb/Female Borstal split tape, the latter is a project consisting of Lee Stokoe of Culver on bass, George Proctor of Mutant Ape on drums and Jerome Smith of Haikai No Ku on guitar. Their music is sort of a mix between Lee's Marzuraan super-heavy sludge and Jerome's Haikai No Ku psychedelic vastness, something like a more energetic and less sleep-inducing Bong or Let Us Prey-era Electric Wizard (my fave Wizard album btw). The riffs are real nice and there is an epic and agonizing feeling that usually culminates in noisy feedback and echo-drowned jams. Here are some of their releases:

2011 - Female Borstal cdr (Turgid Animal) - Download



2012 - Women In Prison...In Manchester 12.04.12 cdr (Turgid Animal) - Download



Live Split with Drunk In Hell - Free Download

NIHL/Female Borstal split tape on Matching Head - Get it from the label itself - get active!

Wasp Bomb / Female Borstal ‎– Live At The Dog And Parrot 28.3.14 (Fuckin' Amateurs)

Another obscurity brought to your family's entertainment by Blyth's finest record label is this live recording of Wasp Bomb and Female Borstal. Wasp Bomb was a (one-off I gather) project of Lucy Johnson (Smut, Witchblood, Indian Lady, Dark Bargain), Jamie Stewart (Fuckin' Amateurs, Wrest, Oppenheimer, Satanhartalt) along with two other people and played feedback-fog-heavy screaming punk/noise rock, and I'm not sure if I separated the tracks correctly. Female Borstal was one of the myriad projects of Lee Stokoe, accompanied by George Proctor (Mutant Ape, Karst, Turgid Animal) and Jerome Smith (Oppenheimer, Charles Dexter Ward). One of the most band-like musically ones at that, since they played a more psychedelic and energetic version of Marzuraan, that is, lysergic doom metal/drone. Expect much noise and intensity, proceed with caution. 2014 tape on Fuckin' Amateurs.

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Various ‎– Noisenet # 7: UK Noise Compilation tape

Very nice tape featuring loads of UK noise artists, both classics and then-emerging ones,  including Ashtray Navigations, Coits, Neil Campbell, Smell & Quim, Culver, Expose Your Eyes (the tape's highligh IMO), Mlehst, Con-Dom, and Grey Wolves. Do you need anything more than that? 1996 tape on the Taiwanese label Noise (no, not the German label releasing Running Wild records).

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Various ‎– Fuckin' Fifty? (Fuckin' Amateurs compilation 6 X cdr)

The two recent posts about Xazzaz and TQ Zine were more or less related to Fuckin' Amateurs, so I thought to post this. In short, F#A was a ten-year-long project started by Martin Gregory and Jamie Stewart, documenting the life of the North-East English no-audience underground, mainly by bootlegging gigs of those artists and bands located or playing there, many of whom have received posts about here, or are going to get! That scene is really vibrant, diverse and creative and F#A did an amazing job keeping the light alive, until its folding of operations last year, which has fortunately been taken over by No-Audience Underground tapes. In this mammoth six-cdr compilation celebrating the fiftieth release of the label, a long series of artists ranging from drone, noise, punk, dictaphone and free jazz are compiled. Some are blog favorites, such as Jazzfinger, Posset, Waz Hoola, Culver, Wrest, Basilica, MC Blazin, Mechanical Children, Hapsburg Brananza, Lobster Priest, Charles Dexter Ward, as well as enigmatic car-race radio broadcast dictaphone worshipper Chris "Pause" Richardson. The highlight, though, is the last track of the last cdr, which is a band called The Nice People From Straightsville doing a cacophonous lo-fi castrato-voice cover of Hawkwind's "Silver Machine" renamed "I'm Going to Ashington." 2009 6-cdr set on Fuckin' Amateurs.

Disc 1
Disc 2
Disc 3
Disc 4
Disc 5
Disc 6

Vampyres (Lee Stokoe & Martyn Reid)

Vampyres is a hot new project by Lee Stokoe of Culver/Witchblood/Matching Head tapes/millions of other projects and Martyn Reid of Depletion (2017's  Lost Signals tape on Matching Head was a masterpiece of grey industrial synth bleakness) and in their releases they play intense and dense droning industrialized noise quite close to Depletion. If Culver is the all-devouring primeval drone of the Great Old Ones lurking out of space to engulf us, Vampyres is the dark daily presence of Nyarlathotep, the carrier that brings the message that our technology-infested world will be engulfed in evil.

Since Lee prefers Culver and  MH material not to be uploaded online, I will provide links to anything that has been posted online by labels, and links for potential purchases.

Astral Sacrifice (2017, At War With False Noise) - Free streaming 

So hypnotic and miserable is the sound that I fell asleep listening to it while waiting at a public service.

Century Scars (2017, Invisible City Records) - Free download

Damaged screaming poisoned-wind-swept noise drone.

Bloodstream (2017, Matching Head) - Buy it

Like a pool of green toxic fluids dripping from big evil factory machines.

Voyeurs At The Gates Of Hell (2018, Matching Head) - Buy it
Caustic like acid on throbbing flesh wounds with deceptive moments of lull.

At The Altar (2018, Cruel Nature Recordings) - 1 tape remaining

Impenetrable sprawling ringing drone on a real bad trip.

Despondent Kingdom (2018, Narcolepsia) - Samples and ordering

The most recent one and possibly the best one yet along with Bloodstream. Three tracks of evil modular synth industrial drone of the order of Maurizio Bianchi and early Wolf Eyes.

Vampyres & Rust Ruus - Live At Club Ponderosa, Gateshead, 30 September 2017 (No-Audience Underground Tapes)

Ali Robertson & Joyce Whitfield, Vampyres, brb>voicecoil, Spoils & Relics - Live At Soundroom Gateshead 23 June 2017 (No-Audience Underground Tapes) - Contact the label for free tape copies

Two live documents of gigs of Vampyres, where they are even more deafening, abrasive and threatening. On the other side of the first tape, Rust Ruus plays high-pitched sounds which sound to me like they have been created with wind instruments - but I'm not sure. On the other tape, Ali Robertson of Usurper and Joyce Whitfield play a live set of dictaphone sounds and Posset-like autistic mouth sounds. brb>voicecoil offers a set of pulsating and slightly rhythmic/a-rhythmic electronic weirdness. Spoils & Relics sound like they are constantly connecting live wires to each other along with samples of some robotic talking are heard in the background.

Also, Vampyres have set up a soundcloud account, where they have posted two more tracks that I haven't seen anywhere.

(and of course, these tapes can be got via email contact)