Live improv noise the way I like it: shouty, all over the place, clumsy, fun. 2004 cdr on Time Stereo.
Wednesday, December 30, 2020
Tuesday, December 29, 2020
Nzetwork Down – 1/1996/1997
Exploratory noise, field recordings and musique concrete by the Japanese Miki Naohiko. 1998 cd on Hasikamke.
Sunday, December 27, 2020
Runzelstirn & Gurgelstøck – Asshole / Snail Dilemma
Rudolf Eb.er bringing the sounds of the season courtesy of a Christmas dinner meal turned into a dysentery festival. 2000 cd on Tochnit Aleph.
Friday, December 25, 2020
Monday, December 21, 2020
Hair Stylistics
I haven't abandoned the blog, but it's been incredibly difficult for me to steal away some time to write up anything here. Work, PhD duties, and spending time with my son and wife is taking up all of my time. I hope to be able to work here a little bit at Christmas.
Reader Friend of a sinner asked if I could upload some Hair Stylistics material for a friend of his called "sinner" whose mood would lighten up with these things, so being the positive and free-hug guy that I am, there it is. By the way, yes I know that dump posts suck but frankly I wouldn't be able to finish up with this if I didn't do it this way.
2010 - After Death Party Time - download
2010 - Forever Shibuya HMV - download
2010 - I Hate Your Dream - download
2010 - Portrait Of Psychic Ventriloquist - download
2010 - Punkrock Rape Scandal - download
2010 - The Blood Sucking Animals - download
2010 - The Heavy Metal Lessen - download
2013 - Dynamic Hate - download
Tuesday, December 1, 2020
Sudden Infant – SICV
One of the best short bursts of drone noise attack you'll be able to hear. 2005 b-card cdr on Audiobot.
Sunday, November 29, 2020
Sudden Infant – Cut-Up's
What the title says. Cut-up improv noise and musique concrete of the highest order. 2013 cdr on Soja-Sauce Bolognese.
Saturday, November 28, 2020
Ak'chamel, The Giver Of Illness – Fucking With Spirits
That untuned guitar underneath the vocal incantations just kills me. 2015 tape on Centipede Farm.
Thursday, November 26, 2020
Ak'chamel, The Giver Of Illness – Foreskin Of Enlightenment
Yes, here they are appropriately lo-fi and mescaline-infested. 2015 tape on Jeuness Cosmique.
Tuesday, November 24, 2020
Ak'chamel, The Giver Of Illness – Lowlands Of Hteklum
A slightly more energetic and hi-end recording by Ak'Chamel? Sounds like there's a full band playing here and the spirits of Sun City Girls are twirling above. 2014 tape on Moon Glyph.
Monday, November 23, 2020
Joke Lanz And Allon Kaye – What Will Be, Wird Sein
Static noise and heavy radio frequency interference looping and gradually closing in your ears and brain. 2005 cdr on Entr'acte.
Saturday, November 21, 2020
Violent Onsen Geisha – Que Sera, Sera (Things Go From Bad To Worse)
Would it be far-fetched if I said that VOG was the only noise act that could match Gero in terms of
diversity and madness no matter what musical style they played?1995 cd on Rail Recordings.
Thursday, November 19, 2020
Tuesday, November 17, 2020
Monday, November 9, 2020
Million Brazilians - Higgy Dins EP
Early MB showcases a more rock/hippy jam approach that feels slightly naive if I might say. 2008 self-released cd.
Friday, November 6, 2020
Bandcamp fee-waive recommendations: Goodparley, Alex Zhang Hungtai & Pavel Milyakov, Clear Gash, Mobius, strom|morts & Aline Spaltenstein
Yet another bandcamp no-fee-for-artists-day is here, so here are some recommendations.
Goodparley - Delay Cycle: Becoming
Guitar ambient loops for extensive zoning. On the excellent Recordiau Prin, which is associated with Chow Mwng.
More zoning, but more bass-heavy this time. On Wormhole World.
Alex Zhang Hungtai & Pavel Milyakov - Styx
I can't say how much I love Alex Zhang Hungtai, whose musical explorations after Dirty Beaches get always more intricate and engaging. Here's he's doing some epic drone sax/guitar meditations, somewhere between Deep Listening and Blade Runner. On Psyx.
Clear Gash - What You Want To See
Immensely noisy punk, somewhere between Killing Joke and Celtic Frost played through the amps of Disclose.
The ritual vocal drone duo is back with a more nature-oriented approach here, not so much black witchcraft but nereid-reverie seduction. On TQN-aut.
strom|morts & Aline Spaltenstein - R4 - Plasmic Mist Precipitator
The inimitable strom|morts (with hero of my youth Knut member Didier) initiates a collaboration with classical musicians, and this track is away from their usual tectonic plate moving power-drone towards subdued classical drone, close to Stars Of The Lid, but with their eyes not looking at the stars but at the abyss. This is how Sunn O)))'s Monoliths and Dimensions would sound if it had been written by Alfred Schnittke or Olivier Messiaen.
Tuesday, November 3, 2020
Ak'chamel, The Giver Of Illness – The Totemist
This new blogger interface is breaking my balls when I'm trying to upload pics. Three out of four times the pics won't be uploaded. Whatever. If any of you have any ideas how I can bypass this, or even better revert to the old interface, your advice will be deeply appreciated.
Mysterious duo of fourth-world cannibal witchdoctors plays guitar/percussion hymnal incantations of desert folk psychedelia. 2020 LP on Akuphone.Saturday, October 31, 2020
Jacaszek – Music for Film
Polish experimental musician's compilation of film soundtrack work, filled with beautiful yet dark and menacing sounds at the intersection of Bohren & Der Club Of Gore, Tim Hecker (minus the noisy moments) and Johann Johansson. 2020 cd on Ghostly International.
Wednesday, October 28, 2020
Bart De Paepe - Laatste Stuyver
The master of zoning at his most zoned out and slooooooowwwwww. 2020 tape on Sound Holes.
Sunday, October 25, 2020
Mummy Dust Trippers – Song Of The Cactus House
By request of a reader, here's yet another release from the Million Brazilians universe by two of their members with a deeper emphasis on their ambient and new age side. I wouldn't place it too far from Robert Rich's mid-late 1990s material or O Yuki Conjugate, or even SPK's Zamia Lehmanni, and there also seems to be an affinity with Razen. 2018 LP on Lost Discoveries Exotic Music Shop.
Saturday, October 24, 2020
Dan Dlugosielski – Solo Horn
Solo sax free jazz improvisations. 2020 tape on Sound Holes.
(Been a while since my last post, as I have been very busy with work and PhD and my mega accounts weren't working)
Sunday, October 18, 2020
Million Brazilians - Geodelphic Jazz Nocturnes
Gamelan psych and funeral lounge by Maine's prime musical archaeologists. 2018 2 X CDr on Lost Discoveries Exotic Music Shop.
Download
Friday, October 16, 2020
Tuesday, October 13, 2020
Maurizio Bianchi / FRAG - Psychation
Collaboration between MB and Frag (Stephen Burroughs of Head Of David!). It deceptively starts in a very hypnotic and psychedelic manner but it ends up being one of MB's noisiest albums in recent years, while of course maintaining its mind-altering basis. 2020 cd on 4ib Records.
Removed by request
Sunday, October 11, 2020
Maurizio Bianchi & Pharmakustik – Zersetzung
The sounds of a submarine research lab beneath an ocean of bubbling toxics. 2019 cd on 4ib Records.
Tuesday, October 6, 2020
Vampyres – Mina, Lucy And Me
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Sunday, October 4, 2020
Maurizio Bianchi - The Sacral Inhabitat
A question to other bloggers: with the new blogger.com interface do you have problems uploading pictures? It takes me a long time to do it, and if I put the posts in draft mode they are frequently lost.
New MB cd is celebrating 40 years of noise creations. The sound is quite subdued here and it takes effort to recognize them. It sounds a lot like a palimpsest of noises (some of them sound quite old school actually!) and I somehow get a Residents feeling here.... 2020 cd on 4ib Records.
Friday, October 2, 2020
Bandcamp fee-waive Friday recommendations: Ron Morelli, Anna von Hausswolff, Stephan Thelen, strom|morts, Lucy Railton
It's yet another bandcamp monthly fee-waive Friday. Family, studies, and trying to survive in a dangerous and covid-infested working environment takes up all of my time, which means very little energy and mood for writing up posts, so here's a little something of things I have managed to hear a little bit that deserve to be supported financially. Oh yeah, and you fascist covid denier who is going to come here and spread your worthless conspiracy theories, this time you are going to be deleted. Fuck off.
My new favorite sleep-inducing noise piece is Betting on Death by Ron Morelli on Hospital Productions. It's the sound of the long, deep and tortuous crash of stock markets as expressed through droning analog modular synths and toxic industrial darkness. Among the contenders for album of the year.
Anna von Hausswolff never ceases to make excellent music and with her new album All Thoughts Fly on Southern Lord she returns to her basics, which is making funereal pipe organ epics. Sure I miss her voice and her latest Swans-like influences but this is exceptional.
I haven't heard Stephan Thelen before but I just saw he's composed violin pieces performed by Kronos Quartet and a Polish female string quarter called Al Pari Quarter in this album called World Dialogue on Rare Noise. The track played by Kronos Quartet called "Circular Lines" is an intense 13/4 chopping marching violin epic and the track by Al Pari is of equal dramatic anxiety (there are two other tracks but this is a pre-order). I'm going to order this because it sounds really nice.
strom|morts is a Swiss drone group consisting of Didier Severin (singer of one of my all-time favorite math/sludge/experimental hardcore groups Knut) and members of Abraham. They play massive tectonic drone both with rock instruments and modular synths. They have a new song called "Sixteen Warehouses," which is for free, as most of their stuff on bandcamp, but you can support them anyway.
Finally, Lucy Railton has posted a recording of Louange à l’Éternité de Jésus from Olivier Messiaen's Quatuor pour la fin du temps played in a church by cello and organ, with sounds of a kid crying. The sound is primitive and deep and utterly dark. It's for free and money goes to refugee aid. Depressing but stunning.
Friday, September 18, 2020
Nurse With Wound – Shipwreck Radio
The ice-cold sounds made by Nurse With Wound during their residency at a radio in the Arctic Lofoten Islands. Included are the Final Broadcasts and Gulls Just Wanns Have Fun bonus cds.
Shipwreck Radio Volume One (Seven Sonic Structures From Utvaer)
Volume Two (Eight Enigmatic Episodes From Utvær)
Shipwreck Radio - Final Broadcasts
Gulls Just Wanna Have Fun
Thursday, September 17, 2020
Various – Sage Rage
Live gig recorded in Gateshead in 2007 featuring Jazzfinger, Marzuraan, Monoblock, Byron Coley/Alex Neilson, Culver and Noisebastard. 2007 cdr on Fuckin' Amateurs.
Download
Tuesday, September 8, 2020
Little Skull - Collected 7"s
A collection featuring (oh surprise) Little Skull's five 7"s released betweeen 2003 and 2007. There isn't any info in the booklet (just a cryptic note by Dean Brown asking you to give him 10 bucks for another 7" to make up for lost communication) about the order of songs, and the tracks themselves are not separated, so you get one track for each 7", so let's hope that they are at least in chronological order. This is the beginning of Little Skull, so the sound is somewhat cruder, with less acoustic parts and more percussive/accordion driven ritual drone folk at play, but still very evocative and mystical. 2008 cdr on PseudoArcana.
Saturday, September 5, 2020
Bandcamp Fee-waive Day Recommendations: Culver & Fordell Research Unit, Bolivian Fireships, Rovellasca, Lust Rollers, Wyndham Research Institute, Ian Joyce, Plurals
It's the Bancamp monthly fee-waive Friday so here are some recommendations to spend on as artists are going to get all proceeds from orders.
Yet another piece in the long run of Culver and Fordell Research Unit collaborations and splits, Memento Mori is one of the most ambient ones, effectively superseding both acts' distinctive styles. There's a church quality here that reflects the massive deaths in the UK due to covid, although I don't know whether the sounds were conceived during lockdown. Released on May 1 by Steep Gloss, there are only 2 copies of the tape left (as with all Culver releases there aren't any samples), so act now and buy it here or regret it, because I won't be posting this!
Another great one by Steep Gloss is just out and it's Lust Rollers' Cassette With Collage, a mix of free jazz and skronk/prepared instruments improv, with slabs of harsh noise too. Nice! Check it here.
Bolivian Fireships is another moniker for J.G. Sparkes, who has been covered and praised here before, and he was kind enough to send me this tape Vol. 1 released by Doomstund during lockdown. The basics behind his dayjob projects are present here in full strength, tape loops, dreamy and dark guitar/synth psychscapes, and the great feeling of leaving compositions incomplete to avoid grand narratives of perfection. Yet another great release you must listen, so go here and do yourself a favor.
Wyndham Research Institute is a project of J.G. Sparkes working with dark ambient master <1, playing sci-fi ambient, something like a more structured Bjerga/Iversen. Excellent stuff, check out Articles I-IV here,by TQN-aut, the label run by Andy Wood of TQ zine and David Howcroft of No-Audience Underground tapes.
Another nice new release by TQN-aut is If We Believe in Nothing by Ian Joyce, playing ambient synths sort of like Burial's beatless ambient pieces and space age ambient. Check it here.
Rovellasca is one of the monikers of Craig Johnson, visual artist, as well as musician playing as Death In Scarsdale, and owner of the great Invisible City Records. After a series of releases on Matching Head (you must check out Initiation Well) and collaborations with Culver, here's a new release called Empty Vitrines on the Japanese Kirigirisu Recordings, offering two very deep drones of industrial factory quality; you know, the stuff I like that makes me fall asleep. Check it out here.
Rovellasca's most recent output is the tape Delirium, Or Sonata on Crow Versus Crow, which features three more slabs of industrialized ambient drone greatness, with an additional cinematic touch here. Nice, get it here for free, or contribute something.
Finally a new tape called Tour Extracts by Plurals culled from live recordings. There is sublime low-key improvised drone and some epic Robert Fripp-meets Sunn O))) climaxes. Plurals is a guarantee so go here on Panurus Productions' bandcamp and grab it fast.