This one doesn’t exhibit the outright gloomy, pessimistic or violent themes which we sometimes get from this label, but apparently there’s a very critical edge to their lyrics – yes, these are all songs in the Depeche Mode style, but pared down to the sternum with a sharp knife and sung in Polish with an accusatory glare audible in the tone of their disaffected voices. If I’m reading the blurb correctly, these two idealists spare nothing and no-one in their contemporary surroundings, ever-ready to point out systemic failures or lapses in ethical conduct. This is no doubt the message conveyed by the image of the broken mirror on the cover, suspended in near-blackness and held by the hands of an anonymous accuser. In no uncertain terms, this image is addressed directly to us in the audience and demanding that we account for ourselves.

I’m sure we’d all like more politicians, world leaders, tech bros and media moguls to step up to the whiteboard of Truth, but in today’s world where obfuscation, denial and lies are part of everyday discourse, there’s small chance of it. All power to Alles for holding up their beacon of honesty, making their idealistic stance with passion and conviction. (09/01/2025)

It would be good to hear more voice work in the contested field of free improvisation. These particular three larynx-adapter types seem poised on a precipice between civilisation and the jungle, some of them only too ready to return to a feral state. Collectively the group has taken the name Almufaraka and press blurb confirms they take “inspiration from a mythical primitive tradition”. One fave moment is ‘Story Telling’, which overlaps gibberish-speech and talking in tongues with wild and untamed whoops and neighs from the male corner of the act.

Besides doing the recording, mix, and mastering work, Orins also did the cover art, where to convey the themes of “disorder” he simply turns photographs of ruined buildings through 180 degrees, hoping to reveal powerful forces in the unexpected shadows and planes that appear. Jointly released with Tour De Bras. (21/01/2025)

Escape From Warsaw here with Transit / The Specter of War (ZOHARUM ZOHAR 343-2), a very poignant title given the disastrous state of world affairs, and now in 2026 that “specter” is looming even closer in everyone’s hearts and minds. Karol Su/Ka proudly describes his hard-hitting music as “lo fi distorted electronic beat” on the cover; only the records of Kotra come close to delivering this degree of steely punch, landing with precision on chin of enemy wearing army boots. The record label are always looking for material that yokes together dance beats with the powerful surge of “dark industrial”, and here’s a record that aligns perfectly with that plan. The militant subtext of this album surfaces not only in the title, but in songs like ‘Panzerbrigadier’, the relentless forward-march mode of almost every track, and even the sound of gunfire represented as synthesised stabs. Drum machines have rarely seemed so ominous. (09/01/2025)

We’re still in the “war zone” with Bunker Musick (ZOHARUM ZOHAR 342-2), a heavy-going record credited to Düsseldorf…in fact it’s a German-Polish collaboration, conceived by Tom Axer of Düsseldorf and played by Elektrokraft, the German duo of Leander Rönick and Patrick Woitaschek who have been releasing their brand of “EBM” electronic music since 2017. I hope this record is not sailing too close to the sort of territory previously staked out by other industrial and “dark folk” players, and I worry the swastika may surface at any moment, but no – it seems Bunker Musick is intended as a story-telling piece that depicts a symbolic bunker of the mind, a “place from which there is no return”. It might refer to memories of past wars or to current conflicts in Europe, say the creators. Hmm. Not an easy listen, if you have no appetite for strident vocal chants set over equally strident electric music, and the samples of jubilant cheering crowds aren’t helping much. We heard Tom Axer in 2022 on the very melodramatic Amok, with his drummer Jacek Sokołowski. (09/01/2025)

Entering a mystical and unfathomable realm with the album by Galaktyka Mięsa, a band name which translates as “galaxy of flesh”…yes, there are still people in the world who worship at the altar of David Cronenberg and wish for nothing more than to recreate the themes of his 1980s movies such as Videodrome or Scanners, in audio terms. However, there’s a lot more going on in the strange groovular indentations of Lejek Bólu (ZOHARUM ZOHAR 341-2), evident even to non-Polish speakers. These songs are mostly intense, chaotic outbursts of strange screes of information, situated somewhere in a nightmarish version of experimental techno with added electronic noise-mayhem, plus the declamatory vocals which seem to be reaching us through a distorted telephone receiver with their urgent, cryptic messages. Quite untypical of the slow drone ambient-scapes which often feature on this label, this Galaktyka Mięsa item is packed with teeming life-forms. The incomprehensible press release suggests influences from shamans, apocalyptic imagery, and even Korean culture (which apparently is very close to Polish culture – perhaps they share a certain pessimistic frame of mind). This might be a duo of Jakub Knoll and Łukasz Bejnar from Wroclaw, and either they have composed soundtracks for troubling futuristic movies, or they have a strong desire to do so. (09/01/2025)

All from Zoharum Jan 2025

The track titles indicate a preoccupation with harmless pass-times mostly drawn from 1950s American culture, such as baseball, hot dogs, tacos, and an ‘Executive Bonus’ which might refer obliquely to an increase in the pay packet of a wealthy button-down suburbanite. Even the institution of the family is not immune from the quirky daydreams of Hasco Enjoyments, as suggested by the intriguing title ‘Sometimes My Dad is an Eagle’, which would probably be a very charged phrase in the mouth of a proud 12 year-old lad performing in a Little League game. The music baffles me, though. The group claim to be shooting for an “ambient-easy listening” vibe with their playing, but that clue might be one more ironic layer intended to throw us off the scent. Each instrumental is a carefully-sculpted confection of pleasantness, with colourful chord changes, tasteful arrangements, and every element placed just so in the mix.

I think after a few more listens we might begin to spot the very brief moments of freakery when the synth player goes slightly nuts, which is about the only time we can savour an experimental nugget in these buckets of candy-coated popcorn. On the other hand, it’s not especially vivacious music either; most of these Wow! tracks are sluggish and dreamy, almost introspective, and don’t quite align with the colourful motifs (like pop versions of images from an old 17th century emblem book) which innocently decorate the front cover. For a time, the band offered a limited vinyl edition of this item with colour prints (now sold out). (09/01/2025)

The Sound Projector Radio Show
Saturday 30th May 2026

1. Veuglaire – A Pattern of Deceit
   From Demo 2025, FRANCE DECIMATION SOCIALE DSTAPEVEUG CASS (2025)
2. The Gate, excerpt from Side A
   From Almost Live, USA IMPLODING SOUNDS #901 CASS (2025)
3. A Handful Of Dust – Twelve Turns of the Rail
   From Dream Songs, FRANCE DECIMATION SOCIALE DSCDHOD 2 x CD (2025)
4. Tomoyuki Aoki et Harutaka Mochizuki – excerpt from Live at Instants Chavirés, FRANCE DECIMATION SOCIALE CD (2025)
5. Romain Perrot – Acousquantics One, 2022 (studio mix)
   From Acousquantics, FRANCE DECIMATION SOCIALE DSTAPEACOUS CASS (2025)

Torgeir Vassvik is a unique folk singer and guitarist here representing the Sámi, the indigenous peoples who live in Norway, Finland, Sweden and parts of Russia…unenlightened souls used to refer to them as “Laplanders”, a term which is now considered inappropriate. The Sámi are fishers, farmers, and fur trappers; you’ve probably seen them on the telly when BBC Four broadcast The Great Reindeer Migration show (a rare piece of TV which was very long-form and dispensed with any annoying voice-over narration, much to my relief). Your current listener knows next to nothing of the traditions of the Sámi, but today’s record has a lot of experimental adventure and zest along with the folk elements…Juhani Silvola is supplying intense electric guitar licks and heavy strums, the better to showcase the eerie vocalising wails of singer Vassvik.

The growly expressions of the latter may put you in mind of throat-singing, but the combined effect of the duo somehow arrives at roughly the same area as LPs by Dredd Foole or (sort of) Jandek, or any singer who jettisons the restrictions of verse-chorus structure in their songs. The songs rarely depart from a root note and the joy of listening is to be found in the open-ended free-form extemporising of the singer, as he recounts these stories intended to connect the traditions of the Sámi with contemporary modes…so that “the past reaches out to the future”, selon the liner notes. Indeed the term “Joik Noir” has been coined to encapsulate the achievements of this duo, and the “noir” aspect reminds us that the songs are in fact quite turbulent and troubling, and even if we don’t speak the language it’s evident that life is difficult and all is not well on the snowy flats.

Norwegian-Finnish Silvola has amazed us on previous solo outings, such as the astounding Wolf Hour Roundelay which demonstrated his deep connections to ritual and mythic notions, making him the ideal partner for this very special musical adventure. (02/01/2025)

Once again the pleasure we get from this music is due to many elements – strong melodies, watertight arrangements and playing by the team, the superb synth and electric piano work of Chaudhary, tasty jazz chords. And of course the bright upbeat mood of these very accessible pieces. Her music isn’t always especially “experimental”, apart from perhaps the cyborg-inflected episodes like ‘Ghanaplasticity’, but then it’s also not easy to pigeonhole it for a mainstream audience. It’s not just the fun-loving approach to musical genres (including steel pans, sitar-like instrumental breaks, funky rhythms, 1970s soul, psychedelic touches and electronic decorations), but there is something endearingly “quirky” about her song lyrics which may trip up the unwary. I personally think it’s great people still care enough to compose an entire “jazz ballad” song in praise of the “Rambutan” fruit from South-East Asia, or use a song to propose “National Chocolate Oat Milk Day” as a national holiday in the calendar. As a life-long reader of Mad Magazine, I am well aware of Don Martin’s 1963 story about “National Gorilla-Suit Day”, which (absurdly enough) became a real “thing” across the United States with at least one city where we can find devoted zany-types dressing up as gorillas once a year. Which shows us that satire can never go far enough.

I should perhaps add that Amanda Chaudhary is not a satirist as far as I can see, and she and her band are clearly having a great time making this gorgeous music – the joy is infectious as soon as you listen. When Frank Zappa wrote “silly” songs about details like dental floss and tweezers, there was very little joy in his heart, and he took a perverse pleasure in the absurdities of everyday life. No such misanthropy here, just beautiful tunes and great playing and real warmth. But she loves cats, so what else could we expect? (16/07/2024)

The music is non-specific object-based noise with electronics – Bohman’s specialty area in fine – ditto for Crow, who is credited with amplified objects, electronics and projections. Furt of course are all electronics – Richard Barrett and Paul Obermayer, from whom we would love to hear more…we do glimpse Barrett now and again playing in Han-Earl Park groups, but what about his classical avant-garde compositions? Hospital as it turns out is a “classic” 1993 performance of that vintage…and was even recorded at a site of high experimentation and avant-magnetism, the London Film-Makers Co-op. Some lucky souls may even have heard it on cassette through Vintage Productions at the time. It would have had an Elastoplast stuck to the cover.

Now thanks to that German label that takes Komnmissar Hjuler seriously, we have this reissue – which already is growing as rare and collectible as the cassette. I think it’s got a CD and CDR inside the bandages. I refuse to open the package. I savour the hand-written messages in felt-tip pen. This patient will live forever in a bed of healing in my private wing. But you can stream it on Bandcamp and enjoy an amazing passage of slow, deliberative strangeness and charm.