Chow Mwng - Mollip & Reptile tape

The theme of Chow Mwng in this tape is Seasonal Affective Disorder, accompanied by a bleak written pieces. And the sounds are slightly bleaker as well, in relation to the more playful aspects of most of his releases. The sound is more lo-fi, decidedly darker, there are of course lots of moments with prepared guitar and found objects, and there's also more screeching, tape manipulation and ringing keyboard depression. And as with all Chow Mwng releases, it's a great one. 2018 tape released on the New Zealand-based Independent Woman Records.

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Sangraal ‎– Wolves Of Armageddon LP

Fuck yes. Side project of the unforgiving Gehenna from San Diego/Reno, one of the most legendary metallic hardcore punk bands of the 1990s alongside Integrity, Ringworm, Catharsis. They played raging nuclear warfare black metal with generous measures of hardcore and thrash; in fact they're very similar to the recordings Gehenna did in the late 90s and early 00s, Negotium Perambulans In Tenebris and Upon The Gravehill (especially the latter one). Mike Cheese's gnarly nasal delivery takes on an even more characteristic tone when he sings in black metal rasps, and the music is as violent as it gets to start a moshpit in your living room with Celtic Frost-via-Darkthrone-via-Infest riffs. Speaking of Da Frost, there's also a really cool cover of "Morbid Tales," filled with blast beats and spacey wah leads. Awesome! 2000 LP on Wicked Witch Records.


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J.G. Sparkes - Past Lives, Near tape / less than 1/ The Wyndham Research Institute

J.G. Sparkes is an ambient musician from Stockholm, and he was kind enough to send me this tape to listen to. First of all, I loved the artwork depicting this picture of Jupiter, and the music was entrancing. We're talking really good ambient, shuffling between calming, soothing sounds created mostly with processed guitars and synths, and somewhat unsettling environments. This is music ideal for the early mornings of spring, when it is still somewhat chilly and the sun just begins to show over the buildings and the mountains. Another elements I liked was the kind of abrupt ending of the tracks; I like this in recordings because it provides a feeling of snippets into life, a documentary tactic of fleeting moments of existence, not a grande scenario of fully-fledged artistic-ness. 2019 tape on the beautifully named Do You Dream of Noise? label.

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I checked a little bit more in J.G.' bandcamp, and I saw that he's collaborated twice with the great dark ambient artist <1, once for a self-titled release of ambient/space/darkness exploration, and once as The Wyndham Research Institute, for sci-fi soundtrack atmospheres. Check and download both for free.

Daniel Gregory - Kebab Shop Will Sell Ice Cream / Gardbuk - Fantasy of Dying Lights

In my town there's a kebab restaurant run by political refugees of the important Turkish undeground communist party DHKP-C, who have been waging an urban guerilla struggle against the oppressive Turkish state for decades. These people have come to the country where I live to escape certain death and they run this amazing kebab shop as a family. Every time I go there it's a feast with beydi kebab dishes, ezme salad for starters, and sometimes we also order their homemade deserts. I definitely would find it a great idea if they also offered some ice cream post-feast to calm down the spice, and the immense amounts of fat received via the doner meat-red tomato sauce-yoghurt-pita bread-melt butter-all-over of the poem that is iskender.

This ain't relevant though with the music hereby, which is none close to Turkish music. Daniel Gregory does guitar improvisations mainly on prepared acoustic guitar, with his sounds trying to stay as away as possible from actual music, which makes it quite similar to the also great Chow Mwng. What I like in musique concrete, and it is also present here, is the urgency; it's very live and very active. The last track is an unstructured atonal blues dedicated to Neil Campbell, and it's a nice melancholy ending to a short trip to essential no-audience underground music. 2018 tape on Structured Disasters

The tape can be bought in a bundle with the incredibly lo-fi mid-tempo black metal epic tape Fantasy of Dying Lights by Gardbuk, which is ideal for letting your waist-long hair hanging while you also keep your head down and move it slowly in a circle while walking in the local park while snowing. Xasthur fans will definitely dig this.

Stuart Chalmers - Sound Environments 2: Woodlands

Following his Sound Environments 1, which Stuart Chalmers recorded in caves in the UK, for this releases wandered around forests in Cumbria and Yorkshire and made a series of recordings out in the open with sounds of birds, insects, and flowing water interfering. He used his beloved swarmandal, a destroyed piano, bones, pieces of wood, and other things and created a hauntingly beautiful collection of material that shifts between pagan ritual music and magnificent physical ambient created mainly by the swarmandal. I love Stuart's noisy and loop-centered stuff, but when he plays on this Indian instrument, the results are always outstanding. This is a digital-only release accompanied by a number of pics of the forests where he recorded, but don't be content with downloading for free. He gives half of the proceeds from this release to the Woodland Trust that is in charge of preserving these forests, so I highly recommend you give something back through bandcamp, mmmmkay?

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Fuji Yuki, Michel Henritzi, Harutaka Mochizuki - Shiroi Kao

The most mournful record of 2018 is this one, a collaboration between Japanese singer Fuji Yuki, Japanese alto sax player Harutaka Mochizuki, and French lapsteel and various strings Michel Henritzi, whose collaborative LP with Rinji Fukuoka and Luca Massolin received high praise here. On this one, Henritzi collaborates on two tracks with each of the two Japanese artists, creating a hazy soundscape of despair, grief, and fragile beauty on the two tracks with Fuji Yuki, which are some kind of drone folk with banjo, lap guitar and noise, while the two tracks with Mochizuki are noisier, with the latter achieving desperate sax tones over a grinding droning noise. A true masterpiece. 2018 cd on An'archives.

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Lipowski - Groń Umarł tape

If I remember correctly I discovered this at the disc stalls when I went to the Obscene Extreme Festival in Czech Republic in 2006. I've never found any information about this band, which is a shame because we're talking some really hard-hitting dark apocalyptic and violent metallic hardcore punk in the vein of His Hero Is Gone and Artimus Pyle, but with their own personality, some really hymnal-almost black metal-parts, and sung in Polish. Check it out-it rocks. 2001 tape on Insane Society.

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TQ Zine # 18, 19 & 20

Time's very limited for reading the latest TQ issues in depth, let alone write about them, but there's been some cool that is worth mentioning.

On #18 the most interesting piece was the interview with Bloxham tapes, which has released the stellar All Is Quiet At the Ancient Theatre by Alison Cotton, a superb album of pagan drone. There's also an interview of Graham Thrower of alt.vinyl, in which I discovered the amazing Vampire Blues tape Knocking on the Dragon's Door, an offering of ecstatic guitar drone folk. The free cd offered with the issue is a label sampler from Bloxham Tapes and its sister label Stars, Dots and the New Junk, showcasing experimental folk, drone, and ambient. Some tracks are really good; I distinguished Greenidge Lambourne's track. Check it out here.

#19 is dedicated to minimalism and is centered around Tone Quanta, a double-disc compilation of minimalist tracks offered by artists worshipped in the blog such as Posset, Chow Mwng, and Xqui. Proceeds from the cd's sales will go the Westgate Ark, an action providing homes for stray cats. Half of the issue is filled with artists reflecting on the tracks they created for the compilation, something TQ had done with its previous compilation, too, and I think it's a great way to get into the working styles of noise musicians. The most important part of the issue is a piece on Arvo Pärt, plus an interview with legendary French experimental composer Éliane Radigue, whose Triptych album I completely adore and crave for when I feel sleepy.

The new issue (#19) offers a cd of Sheer Zed featuring cool ambient soundscapes and field recordings, plus a free download of the album Glass In Your Ear by Robert Weis, which features electronic compositions generated by glass sounds. I like it because it has a Coil quality to it. The mainpiece in this issue is a bio of Eurock zine and label, keeping at promoting experimental music since the 1970s. I got to know Eurock through its collaboration with the amazing Urban Sax/Gilbert Altman, and of course the contributions of owner Archie Patterson to underground music cannot be diminished. His praise of Richard Branson, though, as a "music legend," without referring to his political activities, which now include a financing of a concert aid in Colombia which acts in support of US-backed self-appointed president of Venezuela, Juan Guaido, and aims to assist in the overthrow of the government of Venezuela, is kind of too naive and apolitical. Of course, this isn't TQ's fault, I'm just noting that music and politics cannot be completely separated.

As always, TQ Zine is a great endeavor that requires the support of undeground and DIY music fans, so go to http://tqzine.blogspot.com/, and land a subscription!

Inseminoid ‎– Waiting For Ms. Hayden cdr

Well, this will be the last one. Deep drone burn, with Culver tones having the upper hand here, especially on track two. 2008 cdr on Bells Hill.

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Shit Creek - Prozac Rainbow

Shit Creek became a household name to me through TQ#15, when the guy behind the project (and the Luxury Bucket label) Lewis Duffy was featured in an interview. The early Shit Creek material I head on his bandcamp featured fleeting/epic/fairytale ambient experiments for violin and loops. But it now seems that Lewis has moved into an entirely different territory, with several recent releases and this new album called Prozac Rainbow. Here we get hyper-modern hypnagogic electronica and soundscapes. There's a very fizzy and liquid feel to the sounds, which tempts me to label it as muzak for aquariums; it's kinda like the aquatic levels on Sonic the Hedgehog 2! One could find similarities to the more recent James Ferraro material, or even Vektroid; there's also a hint of labelmate Xqui's material; that said, there's a strong personal identity, not a rehash of said artists. Preorder it on Wormhole World and get lost in the waterworld.

Inseminoid - Plague tape

More dark and hazy black drone wall. 2014 tape on Turgid Animal. Last Inseminoid release I'll be posting; there are more tapes brought out by Lee Stokoe's Matching Head but he's not into having audio links of Matching Head tapes being posted, so you can find them out and buy them.

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Inseminoid ‎– Coven cdr

The harshest, most visceral noise Inseminoid have ever made, reaching black metal levels in terms of trebly screeching. 2010 cdr on Turgid Animal.

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Inseminoid ‎– 20 Eyes Live tape

More live filth patently ending with disco music released again in 2008 by Turgid Animal on tape.

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Inseminoid ‎– Vanessa Howard's Night Light cdr

 Wonderful psychedelic/industrial dark trip here. Excellent. 2014 cdr on Sheepscar Light Industrial.

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Inseminoid ‎– The Whitest Eye tape

This is as close as it gets to Culver awesomeness: first track starting with a beautiful synth melody degenerating into the harshest of low-frequency rumble, while the second track is an awesome hypnotic trebly guitar stasis. 2013 tape on Wealth Of Abuse.

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Inseminoid & Jackal - Live In Newcastle split CD-R

Jackal: a mix between Skullflower and space rock by Mike Vest (Bong, Space Victim) and George Proctor. Inseminoid: deep drone wall haze. Live cdr released in 2010 by Turgid Animal.

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Xazzaz / Space Victim / Inseminoid ‎– Live At Morden Tower 21.04.2013 cdr

Awesome violent guitar dissonance on the Xazzaz set, LOUD psychedelic chaos by Space Victim (Lucy Johnson of Smut/Witchblood, and Mike Vest of Bong), and a return to the icebreaker ship engine room by Inseminoid. 2013 cdr on Turgid Animal.

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Inseminoid - Nightmare cdr

It's obvious that when Inseminoid decides to play drone they do it better. Think of this a noisier, more improvised version of Culver or even Harm and you know that it rocks. 2013 cdr on Turgid Animal.

Drone