Mario Diaz de Leon, Hypnos, Shinkoyo, CD SHIN040 (2012) Third solo album for this musician / composer and apparently a major departure from previous work which was a mix of electro-acoustic instrumentation and power electronics, “Hypnos” is a wonderfully delirious and immersive work done entirely with electric guitars and synthesisers. This could very well...
Miminokoto, Hitoyogiri, Important Records, CD IMPREC338 (2011) Featuring the kind of bleak, dark noisy psychedelic blues that I usually expect from the PSF Records guy, Miminokoto’s “Hitoyogiri” maintains Japanese psych-guitar rock’s strangle-hold on my fragile psyche. Generally the music on this CD is melancholy and wistful, or at the very least has a dark,...
Francisco López and Xabier Erkizia, Elektra Bidasoa, Ferns Recordings, CD ferns_stem_02 (2011) Environmental field recording expert Francisco López teams up with Xabier Erkizia to go a-sailing down the Bidasoa river in the Basque country to capture the sounds of hydroelectric power plants and then independently convert these recordings into two sets of abstract experimental musique...
Caïna, Hands That Pluck, Profound Lore Records, 2xCD PFL-082 (2011) This double CD set is Caïna’s swansong release and what a way to go with nine originals and nine reworked songs. Andrew Curtis-Bignell hired some big names including Imperial from Krieg, Rennie Resmini and Chris Ross to help out on vocals and lyrics, and the result...
Alcest, Ecailles de Lune, Germany Prophecy Productions CD PRO 106 (2010) Bands like Alcest sure do like to mock the arbitrary boundaries separating black metal and softer, melody-based forms of what was once was called indie shoegazer pop. One can combine harsh music like BM, noise or industrial with melodic and sonically smooth song-based...
Ride for Revenge, Under the Eye, KVLT Records, CD KVLT004 (2011) Finnish act Ride for Revenge traffic in a filthy-sounding, slurpy, encrusted form of black metal that happens to assimilate whatever bits and pieces of other music genres that take RfR’s fancy and Under the Eye demonstrates this cosmopolitan side very well: the opening track...
Carbonscape, Artistry of Exhaustion III, www.carbonscape.bandcomp.com (2012) Another online ambient offering from Tad Piecka who masterminds the black metal project Petrychor, this follows on from “Artistry of Exhaustion II”, also available online. Whereas that project drew on the sounds of nature, this offering takes on orchestral music, space music and ambient music from the...
Porter Ricks, Biokinetics, Type Recordings, CD TYPE 100 (reissued 2012) Originally released by the Chain Reaction label in 1996, this reissued album by the Porter Ricks duo (Thomas Köner and Andy Mellwig) still sounds as beguiling and mysterious as it must have done sixteen years ago. Somewhere in my heart a small flame still...
Various Artists, The Very Best of Ethiopiques, UK, Union Square Music Ltd, 2 x CD MantCD245 (2007) For many years now Buda Musiques has been issuing a highly regarded archival series of CDs of Ethiopian jazz and pop music and the series itself has built up into a rather daunting set that can put...
Earth, Angels of Darkness, Demons of Light II, US, Southern Lord, CD LORD149 (2012) Following its predecessor of the same title, this album continues the style of that other recording: quiet, laconic and minimal in expression yet seeming to say much more than it actually does. The mood is dark and gravid with foreboding...
Corrections (3)Current listening (26)Live performances (5)News (59)Radio show playlists (370)Recent arrivals (384)
Recent Comments