Francisco López is one who has famously used processed field recordings of urban areas and arrived at results that are totally different to Gill Arno’s impressionistic pictures. On Untitled #275 (UNSOUNDS 26U), which we received in November 2011, López turns his craft in a more musical direction, applying a live multi-channel recording system to the prepared piano of Reinier van Houdt. On the first movement, Houdt’s piano is to the fore, and that instrument pounds out a series of quite alarming percussive minimal strokes that sonically sit halfway between machine-gun fire and the keys of an old-fashioned typewriter, said device being operated by a loopy Dadaist poet composing a vitriolic message against the petit bourgeoisie. About mid-point the piece enters a mood of dangerous seething calm, before gradually building up the tension again with carefully-orchestrated keystrokes, each one a bundle of constrained emotion – isolated notes, dissonant chord combinations, and a relentless metronome-like patter characterise this section. It’s almost a relief when this neurotic torture ends, and the remaining half of this 22-minute opus drifts away on a sea of near-silence and suffused slow chords that resemble the ghost of Satie paying a fleeting visit to the salon. If there is indeed a mechanism involved somewhere in this prepared piano set-up, it’s as though the clockwork device had run out of steam halfway through, leaving us to confront a void.

This torment is positively benign compared to the horrors of ‘Movement 2′, where López takes the above recording away in a tumbrel cart and subjects it to what he describes as “evolutionary studio treatments”. There’s a euphemism if ever there was. It’s more like a radical reconstruction of sound, occupying a nether world between composition, field recording and electro-acoustic music, and in this rather nightmarish zone each percussive bleat of the prepared piano is transformed into the clankings and groanings of an infernal machine. Even the smallest of Van Houdt’s keyboard-playing gestures has been fiendishly detoured, such that he is now pressing the buttons that operate a factory of doom, a winch of death, or a murderous metal robot. Thankfully, the violent and dramatic opening does subside eventually, and the piece mutates into a bleak, desolate world of abstract cloudery where the horizon starts to fade away and we lose our footing. Occasional forlorn piano notes, by now heavily disguised and muffled, attempt to peek through the canopy of gloom and provide some warmth, but it’s a desperate, futile action. There’s a strange beauty to be found in contemplating this washed-out environment, an activity with which we can occupy ourselves before the mechanical watch-grinding effect start to reassert itself after 20 minutes. Thereafter, it’s merely like being mashed in the gears of a gigantic clock for ten minutes, praying that we can somehow avoid being clubbed into a pulp by the chiming hammers when midnight finally strikes. López has indeed created a very “immersive” record here, it just depends if you can face being immersed in its bittersweet combinations of machine-like violence and baleful gloom.

A Blanket In My Muesli

Here’s some unusual acoustic experimental music made by the German foursome of Quadrat:sch, deliberately emulating the traditional instrumentation of 18th century Alpine chamber folk with their set-up on Stubenmusic (COL LEGNO WWE 2CD 20305). Using hammered dulcimer, zither, guitar and double bass, the quartet turn in 12 short-to-medium pieces on the first CD of this double-disc set, all of them composed by the zither player Christof Dienz, and they are lively, taut renditions of pieces which follow song-like structures with their winning and bright melodies, complex time signatures, and brilliant inventive interplay of instruments. These tunes probably aren’t directly inspired by folk tunes as such, but some of them refer to dances, and the title of the opening track ‘This Way or That Way or the Other’ feels like a simple homespun philosophy that could easily apply to the gentler life of 200 years ago as much as it does to the strategies of a post-modernist musician. Apart from a couple of slow “pastoral” pieces, the mood of this disc is upbeat and cheerful, and you’ll soon be ordering a pair of britches and leather buskins so that you can join in this merry dance on the slopes of the Finsteraarhorn. On the second disc, the set-up is “extended” by the arrival of the great Zeena Parkins with her harp under one arm and a bushel of alpine fruits under the other. The percussionist Herbert Pirker also joins the team, and the six players use plucks, drones, groans, swoops, zangles and many other pleasing effects in very abstracted ways. These open-ended semi-atonal and non-rhythmic instrumentals (which are also composed rather than improvised) are intended to explore sonic structures, and while the set may not be a direct “answer record” to its more danceable brother, it is very indicative of the way that short, compressed compositions can be “opened out” into these labyrinthine buildings, full of twisting corridors and pathways. Oswald Egger supplies an interpretative text to this fine package of interesting music.

The Man with X-Ray Ears

The lovely Felix Kubin has released TXRF (IT’S ITS008) as a double LP, albeit not an excessively long one – some sides are just 11 minutes in length. It’s a fine set of irresistible and enjoyable electronic music made with such tools as the Sherman 2 filterbank and the Electrix Repeater, which is a loop sampler device – in short, a combination of analogue and digital devices to create patterns and processed sounds. As ever, Kubin manages to draw convincing lines of convergence between Kraftwerk, techno club music, and the more extreme modes of academic experimental electronic music of the 1960s, compacting his ingenious thniking in short and portable statements that remain somewhat enigmatic yet also very accessible. He also retains his very droll sense of humour, and I sense an undercurrent of hilarity which informs even the most austere of these cuts, which Kubin performs completely deadpan. According to the press release, of which I don’t have a physical copy, there’s also a scientific dimension to the set, involving the action of firing X-Rays at solid matter in order to determine something about their surface properties. This feels like a throwback to a certain time in the 1990s when Disinformation, John Duncan and others were exploring ways to make electronic music using scientific devices like particle colliders and shortwave signals. We’re not told exactly how Kubin managed to process X-rays into sound, and the plausibility factor is pretty low to say the least, but through the power of suggestion (a strategy also picked up by the cover image) it does pre-determine how we as listeners will approach the music to some degree. As a double LP, it’s structured in four connected sections titled ‘Total’, ‘Reflection’, ‘X-Ray’ and ‘Fluorescence’, suggestive of a process that might lead the listener through an experiment to its successful conclusion. In case any of this makes Kubin’s work sound pretentious, let me reassure you it’s quite the opposite; when you listen you’ll be won over instantly by the clarity of his thinking and the straightforward way he presents his ideas.

We Imply, He Infers

Another German composer is the excellent Marcus Schmickler, usually known for his extreme electronic music pieces. Rule Of Inference (A-MUSIK A-37) however showcases his compositional skills, with three substantial suites scored for percussion, orchestra, and chamber ensemble. The title piece is in four movements and allows the Cologne Schlagquartett to exercise their upper body muscles producing the strident, explosive portions of the first section, and the more approachable gamelan-like passages of the second part; we also hear bone-like rattling effects, brooding rumbles like thunder, and even some quasi-African polyrhythmic passages. Apparently all this percussion music was derived from complex ideas about logic, mathematics, and astronomy, and we’re advised to look for parallels in the music of Xenakis, Grisey and Stockhausen. It’s enough to restore your faith in systems-based music when it achieves such powerful results.

Quite different to the above is the 10-minute ‘Symposion’, an orchestral work which presents an eerie series of very mixed chords to create an effect like a slow-moving Ligeti or Penderecki piece. Though no stranger to micro-tonal compositional ideas, Schmickler here is in fact exploring something about the history of equal temperament, about which I know less than zero other than it’s a tuning system. ‘Symposion’ contains enough dissonances to curdle your internal organs, yet unlike Ligeti or Penderecki’s music it refuses any sort of narrative, religious, or philosophical associations and remains largely an exploratory, “process” experiment.

The album finishes with four short chamber-instrumentals which are intended as direct tributes to Carlo Gesualdo, the madrigal composer whose colourful life was about as bizarre as the music he composed; it seems Gesualdo broke all the rules in this very rarefied medium, but being the murderous nobleman he was, he could afford to do so and the audience for madrigal music was in any case incredibly limited (I like to think the Renaissance was a simpler more innocent time before globalisation, lucrative TV deals and instant internet coverage was the order of the day). One of the rules he broke was using far too many chromatic effects per square inch. Chromatics is another musicological term which I don’t really understand, but I’ve heard not a few records by Gesualdo and his scores make singers jump through hoops to produce musical clashes and dissonances that can jar the fillings loose from your teeth. Schmickler’s approach has been to eliminate the vocal elements completely and attempt, through his arrangements, to compress all those delicious chromatics into handy bite-size pieces. I’m no expert as I hope I’ve made clear, but I feel Schmickler has somehow missed the exquisite jarring factor that is to me the essence of Gesualdo. Even so, these four succeed nicely as modernist takes on Renaissance music. If this CD appeals, may I recommend you rewind to 2006 and hear a copy of Demos by this composer, also released by A-Musik, for a fascinating mix of orchestra, choir and electronic music.

This is a very beguiling double set of psychedelic electroacoustic folk by Budapest-based multi-instrumentalist Zsolt Sores Ahad and his band. In the manner of gypsies the musicians wander high and low through different soundscapes of varying atmosphere: sometimes intimate, friendly yet airy, a little sinister and ambiguous even. As the album’s title indicates, this is indeed soundtrack music for movies, plays and other dramas yet to be made: each track is its own self-referential world and evokes particular visual associations, sounds and even smells.

An early highlight is “On the Top of the Darwin Tillite – Climb the Aztec Siltstone”, an arduous climb up a mysterious pyramid dominated by a long drone that alternately urges us on and warns us of the curse that might await us at the top for disturbing the Aztec gods’ rest. Perhaps we might be sacrificed and our hearts offered to the sun god to ensure his continued travels through the sky. “In the Dry Valleys” offers up searingly hot desert landscapes in which a Cormac McCarthy western might play out. “The Sands are Running Out” features very distorted sounds that sound like they might be coming from an electric guitar, a very lethargic saxophone and unusual percussion that reminds me of a large floating hollow container in a tub of water.

“Potlatch on the Beach of the Dirty Little Hoare Pond – The Heart of a Poet” might be a spiritual quest as suggested by the sitar and an expectant mood early in the piece. The piece develops slowly and seemingly in a disorganised way but the whole thing is held together by the large spaces within and the questing mood.

The second disc is taken up by one track “Lessness (Meeting with Godot)” which is a highly abstract piece featuring very long tones and spoken-word Hungarian-language recordings of Samuel Beckett’s “Endgame”. The track was composed for a theatre performance of this play. For such a long and sparing piece that’s not very immersive and lacks much atmosphere, the music holds very well and generates on-going tension. It does get better in its last five minutes when proceedings turn very hysterical.

The whole set is perhaps best heard as two separate discs: trying to hear both CDs can tax the endurance and the long track does take its time to build up to the climax.

Contact: Fourth Dimension, Zsolt Sores Ahad

A very pleasant psych-pop amble through his home town of Cambridge in the UK this recording seems to be for The Doozer, to judge by descriptions on the Pickled Egg Records’ website. The doozy one sings and plays all instruments (guitars, keyboards, percussion) save for three tracks where someone else takes over on drums. Gentle surf music of The Beach Boys’ sort and a slightly dark and melancholy ambience meet exotic foreign, even tribalistic, influences to create a subtly rich sound tapestry that, however modest and small-scale its aims are, suggests it is capable of scaling great Himalayan heights.

An early highlight is “Hornbill”, boasting rhythms that might be based on gamelan orchestra and bamboo instrument rhythms and sounds and featuring a voice-over that might have been sourced from an old recording made by Edgar Lustgarten (died 1978) as the voice sounds so much like that writer’s. Spoken-voice recordings are also a feature of “Semut 1″ along with a gentle blurry electronic drone. Most of the time the CD lopes along at an easy pace, quite relaxed with sometimes unusual rhythms that come to be anticipated rather than surprise. The title track starts off as a fairly ordinary piece but expands into a quaint folksy jaunt with strange electronic connections. Imagine a bunch of hillbillies in the Ozark hills building their own spaceship from scrap metal using instructions left behind by aliens that last visited Earth a thousand years ago and you get some idea of the song. “Decisive Mind” gives us a deranged and twisted lead guitar melody.

The album does feel as though The Doozer is holding back something, perhaps because this is his second album and he’s not yet confident enough to tackle larger-scaled themes and ideas that could expand his music’s scope and take him into more ambiguous territories. At times the recording sounds as if it’s retracing parts of itself and is in danger of falling into a rut. The bland vocal does start to grate after a while and you start to wish Dooz would try some actual singing instead of pretend-singing, even if very out of tune and with a breaking tone.

Contact: Pickled Egg Records

One already senses that Piermattei is a self-taught maverick with ideas so potent that only he can express them, notwithstanding the contribution of Napo Camassa. I click forward to ‘Hex-Exercises in Stalinism’ to endure a shape-shifting bed of rattling china plates for percussion, on top of which eerie unnatural horn or electronic voices make their plaintive moan. Again, we have the sense of a framework that is barely hanging together, a fragile sculpture or mobile built of spindly wire which is somehow defying gravity as it spins and rotates its beautiful colours and planes in mid-air. In the time it’s taken to write that sentence we’ve already shifted into a halting acoustic guitar tape-loop that stutters and clops, having emerged from the warp of a Terry Riley-styled organ figure. Now come half-hearted ghostly voices whispering what might be two stanzas from a lost 1960s pop song about lost romance. There’s also ‘Hey, Rube!’ which applies tape delay to scattered woodwind notes, combined with a bass guitar that has clearly wandered into the wrong building, a spooky cheap organ drone, and other foreign effects. Five minutes later we hear a sneering pop singer chanting from behind a distorting sheet of glass, then fragments of atonal free playing electric-guitar mayhem. Scattered liberally with precious moments of heavy-duty psychotic weirdness within beguiling open-ended structures, this record is just too good to be true. Piermattei may be using his own personal version of the bricolage method (although frankly, I have no clear idea what he’s doing), but it’s done with imagination and skill, and he’s not simply another prankster with a sampling device and a computer. This record is a hand-made work of skewed mutant genius, its fragmentary nature in a direct line with such important records as The Faust Tapes. CD in jewel case is decorated with puzzling texts and collage images. You need this record!

From 16 December last year, we received Not Far From Here (PFMENTUM CD065), a set of impressive jazz-based improvisations by the Los Angeles musician Dick Wood, who composed and led the sessions as well as playing the flute and alto. He’s built a strong small combo with the cornet player Dan Clucas, the trombonist Dan Ostermann who sometimes adds a “space mute” to his trombone, the drummer Marty Mansour, bassist Hal Onserud who joined by way of Cecil Taylor, tenorman Chuck Manning, plus live electronics from Mark Trayle. Together, these energised and expert players harness mucho free jazz energy while also managing to negotiate all the wild twists and turns of Wood’s freaky, pretzel-shaped compositions; some startling dynamics on offer throughout all six tracks, showcasing instruments in highly imaginative and unconventional ways, all of which makes for a very satisfying listen. More often than not with this set I bethought me of a 21st-century update on Art Ensemble of Chicago with the added hookery-pamookery of digital whoops from the Supercollider electronics section, but it seems Wood has a very large range of musical ambitions in mind which feed into his elaborate mind-circuits, not all of them from the jazz world either. Blues, avant-garde composition, and Zen philosophy are all strong forces which Wood intends to marshall in his private army. In fine, a glorious listening experience of jazzy brass toots, percussion, bowed and scraped bass sounds, and generally mutated loopiness managed with the sparing use of electronic treatments and breathy growling effects. I like the lively stop-start angularity of ‘Cook The Books’, but if in need of something more “out there” you might enjoy the electronics-heavy diablery of ‘No Known Knowns’, which samples the voice of US defense secretary Rumsfeld and combines it with the octokoto instrument (a hand-made modified zither) of Dan Clucas. In the semi-shady mystery world of this cut, the rhythm section manage to sound positively cynical and blasé at the same time with their ramshackle percussion and resigned bass sighs. The record also boasts an exciting, bright sound, for which we must give due credit to Scott Fraser, the technician who recorded it at Architecture in LA in just two separate sessions. The mangos are in!

The English trio of power-jazz players Hession Wilkinson and Fell opened many ears to what the English could really do with the free jazz mode, particularly in 1992 when Foom! Foom! was first released and even veteran jazz writer Byron Coley waxed lyrical at that time about the raw blastage coming from Alan Wilkinson’s bell. Now here they are again on 2010 date released as Two Falls & A Submission (BO’WEAVIL RECORDINGS WEAVIL44CD), and the passage of 18 years has done absolutely nothing to dim the fire nor crack the binding of these three, as the opening cut ‘First Fall’ bears witness – over 32 minutes of uninterrupted sustained jazz-improv energy which is as welcome as a roaring bonfire in the middle of a cold and damp May Day field. The album and track titles are derived from the metaphor devised by drummer Paul Hession, who sometimes likens the act of improvising to a wrestling match. By his reckoning, the trio of Hession Wilkinson and Fell have a “playful, grappling style”, and it’s this very physicality which asserts its unignorable presence on almost every minute of this disk…you can almost feel the three players interlocking their very bodies, if that isn’t too indelicate an image. There’s something about Hession’s drum rolls in particular that seem to suggest acrobatic back-flips and rope-bounces aplenty as another body flattens against the canvas, but mostly it’s the way the rhythm section work together that creates an endless flow of forward-moving complex musical information, an express train packed with a delegation of University professors and toting 5,000 doctoral theses piled in the caboose. Meanwhile Wilkinson, switching between alto and baritone with the gusto of an Italian gourmet visiting the sweet trolley, exhibits a huge range of techniques – crazy overblowing shrieks, sad and mysterious basso-burbling, sonorous growls and grunts, and (mostly) endless streams of free-thinking diatribes flowing through his supple fingers at a speedy rate of knots. It’s pure streams of abstracted emotional wallop, set to a syncopated beat that makes every sinew in your body pop. In short, the album is a hip throw…from the hippest of the hip!

No less generous when it comes to the delivery of atmospheric clouds of mixed sound is Nord/Ouest (NEXSOUND NS67), a three-part piece of performed electro-acoustic music made by four Ukrainians. Alla Zagaykevych composed this enigmatic and dense statement on the “geo-poetical” condition of the world today, and he performs live electronics, Theremin and computer programming on the record; Sergiy Okhrumchuk adds a skittery violin to induce further tensions and stormy headaches into the mix, while Vadim Jovich supplies restless and nervy percussion blows that resemble the rattling of dry twigs on parched bones. Lastly there’s the vocalist Iryna Klymenko, hollering her strident folk-music inflected ululations with a sinewy assurance, thus completing what is a tasty and nourishing blend of chamber instruments, electronics, and human voice. This judicious small-ensemble approach is undoubtedly what keeps the music sounding so intimate and vivid, even when the gaseous billows of atonal music are so wildly unfamiliar to the ears. There are musicians who attempt this sort of thing and can’t seem to escape the trap of “blended frequencies”, by which I mean a steady decline into a flat, soupy morass of similar-sounding droniness. The Electroacoustic’s Ensemble ², by contrast, maintain crisp separation throughout, such that all performers are clearly identifiable as surely as if they were specimens of insects pinned to a board. Which brings us neatly to the underlying theme of this unusual and enlightening record, which draws its inspiration directly from the folklore of North-West region of the Ukraine, a culture which is apparently characterised by its untethered and free-spirited thinking, yet also remains sunk in a very closed-off, isolated enclave. These central conflicts, mixed with a healthy interest in “primitive mystery and elusiveness”, have produced the sumptuous blends we now enjoy. Zagaykevych is a graduate of the National Music Academy in Kyiv and has studied at IRCAM, but the academic programme has not transformed him into a dry, patronising composer who wishes to fossilise folk culture through the medium of serious music. On the contrary, when you spend 15 or 20 minutes in the company of this mystical warbler, you will find yourself instantly attuned to the natural energies of the birds, fish, snails, trees and flowers which adorn the cover drawn by Alex Vorodeyev. What dark secrets might that sentient bird hold in its skull?

By chance, the composer Lubomyr Melnyk also happens to have been born in the Ukraine, although is based in Canada where he released much of his work on the Bandura Records label in the 1980s. The Voice Of Trees (HINT 12) was originally written in 1983 and now surfaces on the Swiss Hinterzimmer label, with an evocative photo and engraving collage of a stag in a forest, and may indeed constitute a thoughtful reissue of the Bandura original. A dance piece scored for two pianos and three tubas, it’s a prime example of the composer’s “continuous music”, a musical form which is largely based around Melnyk’s own personal technique of playing the piano using large numbers of notes packed densely into a compacted space, quite often performed at some speed. The important thing is that he’s able to sustain this approach for a generous length of time, as these two suites – both over 30 minutes apiece – will attest. Contrasting with the very tonal and melodic arpeggios of the three high-speed multi-note pianos, we hear the tuba section holding down a slower and slightly more sober counter-melody. The combined effect of all this is little short of majestic. It would be a pleasure to recommend this beautiful record to all listeners who enjoy the arpeggiated sonorities of Glass, Palestine and Riley, but Melnyk is free from any sort of conceptual-minimalist expectations and is free to soar high on his romantic wings. The wings of a Golden Eagle.

Also arrived late December and also with trees featuring prominently on the cover is Frieda Harris (HEART & CROSSBONE HCB036) by Katchmare, which happens to be another alias for the American musician Nick Hoffman. Katchmare’s intention here is not to expound on the joys of nature, but rather to dwell on the occult rituals embedded in the Winter solstice, to arrive at a meditation on the cycles of life and death. The opening track ‘Winterreise’ is, in title at least, a nod in the direction of classical composer Franz Schubert, but the underlying theme of the record is rooted in occult matters and makes explicit its homage to Frieda Harris. She was the wife of a baronet in England, mostly known for her association with Aleister Crowley. She became a sorceress in her own right, developed the concept of Projective Synthetic Geometry, and applied its rules to the design of the Thoth tarot cards which she painted for Crowley. Katchmare evokes all of the above evil complexity by using musical designs of almost pristine simplicity and purity; the opening 25-minute track, described as a “saturnine and freezing drone”, is a superbly bleak piece of gently-pulsating music with a thin, lugubrious and eerie tone, and the piece turns into a brilliantly enigmatic conclusion of gentle thumping as of unwanted poltergeists in the attic space above. ‘Wind Canticle’ is, I suppose, more conventionally threatening and unlike its washed-out twin it has as much presence as the instant thunderstorm whipped out of nowhere by Karswell, the magician in ‘Casting The Runes’ by M.R. James. I also appreciate the creeped-out effects on ‘Shifting Snow’ and ‘Ulrikke’; both are quite short yet evoke infinite landscapes with an economy of means, and I like the way the uncertain electronic sounds morph into even more uncertain shapes. This is a fine release which improves significantly on the basic model of Depressive / Cold / Ambient Black Metal, by dint of its restraint, discipline, and intellectual subtext. Originally recorded in 2008; here it is as a limited CDR.

Recorded over a twelve-month period in venues around the eastern United States, this live album is a frightening work of death-doom-sludge metal / industrial / power electronics, all made more creepy and terrifying by front woman screecher Kristen Rose. The music, if it can be called that, emanates from the very bowels of a gigantic machine sauropod monster, its metal entrails pouring out of its steaming carcass with as much crash, bang and sub-sonic rumbling as the human ear and brain can stand. The noise is not as chaotic or bombastic as similar acts I’ve heard – Gnaw Their Tongues comes to mind as a comparison – and the sounds have a definite rhythm and structure going at a steady pace so the band obviously relies on rhythm looping. Atmosphere overwhelmingly reeks of despair and a fatalism that humanity is condemned to unending slavery and existential anguish: titles like “Chained to the Edge of Existence” and “Condemned is the Unborn One” leave us in no doubt about Sewer Goddess’s opinion of the human condition.

I’m glad the six songs were recorded on separate occasions: if they’d been sourced from the one gig, I’m pretty sure the crowd that attended would have been set to commit collective suicide, such is the monstrous and heavier-than-heavy, often ponderous delivery: drums and percussion are crashing everywhere, guitars grind harder and grittier than giant stone mill-stones, and Rose herself screams as though being rent apart slowly and surely in the death of a thousand million knife-paper cuts. An army of Laibachs and Einsturzende Neubatens, enough to do a recreation of a Leni Riefenstahl propaganda film like “Triumph of the Will”, could pretty well be swallowed up in your average Sewer Goddess performance.

Pride of place is given to the double set “Chained to the Edge of Existence / A Lifeless Dreaming” which begins with Rose barking out orders over a simmering, seething cauldron of stretched-out guitar tones and stuttering percussion. The track continues steadily with Rose now screaming for her life while guitar and drums hammer out a desolate and malevolent riff. In parts this sounds much like the kind of noisy experimental doom-metal improv the Australian band Whitehorse used to do, only Sewer Goddess are more grinding and pitiless. “Slavepiece” cleaves closer to the early-Whitehorse style with more squealing and blaring feedback guitar while drums knock out a monotonous bash and Rose howls the howl of the lost and the damned.

Worth your while checking out if you love Gnaw Their Tongues and similar blackened doom industrial sludge with a bonus of a woman screaming fit to die … and die she very much sounds like she’s doing all the way through, and you may well want to follow her and the rest of the band to the bitter, intense end. Are you as tough as the sucker-4-punishment polite audiences featured on this album?

Contact: Malignant Records
Sewer Goddess

“Oskoreien” is an intriguing addition to the world of nature-oriented Cascadian black metal, all the more so as Oskoreien is a solo project of a young musician, Jim Valena, aged 21 years old when he recorded this. A photograph of Valena in the CD package shows a serious and determined young fella with a bold look in his eyes. His style is an aggressive and raw-sounding battering-ram of churning distorted rhythm guitar, thudding percussion and vicious BM vocals; I only wish the whole thing had been recorded with a clearer production because I suspect it would have been much sharper and more 3-D in shape. But as it is, it’s heroic stuff to listen to and even quite epic in parts with plenty of atmosphere to thrill to.

Opener “Illusions Perish” does just that, sweeping away any idealistic notions that the materialist life we currently enjoy and all the pretensions and delusions about our place in the world that go with it are temporary and will disappear, leaving us void of substance and purpose. The mood is melancholy yet sure of itself. There is something desperate and tragic in a Romantic way here: the song comes from a prophet fresh out the wild forests crying out a message of apocalypse to humanity, only to be jeered and insulted, then persecuted and executed for daring to question our way of life and our unthinking race into self-destruction. “Entropic Collapse” is an astoundingly meaty track with a slow, pounding beat and a massive raw sound. A chorus of male singers is the unexpected stand-out element of this track which also features some death-metal drumbeats in parts and a searing lead guitar solo. As the track progresses, it becomes post-rock melodic and repetitive.

Trust me, it gets better … “River of Eternity” is an introspective dark forest folk-guitar instrumental with near-flamenco touches. The theme is interesting: it might be based on German writer Hermann Hesse’s novel “Siddhartha”, about a man who seeks enlightenment and finds it in the most unexpected ways. “Transcendence” follows with a gentle meditative introduction that turns abruptly into all-out epic post-rock / BM melodic juggernaut battery with thunderous rolling drums, occasional acoustic mood guitar and more savage reverb-touched vocals backed by a heroic choir. Outro track “Ashen Remains” is an all-acoustic funereal dirge played on piano with strong reverb; the melancholy atmosphere here is strongly reminiscent of old Godspeed You Black Emperor and its off-shoot The Silver Mt Zion Orchestra.

The album isn’t much different from much other Cascadian black metal I’ve heard; Wolves in the Throne Room are an obvious point of comparison and they have used some music that veers close to a desert-Western sound. Other Cascadian BM bands like Fauna and Echtra use more ambient and even some synthesiser-based effects and it wouldn’t hurt Oskereien to use some synthesiser sounds or even some orchestral touches like the odd cello or harp.

With this album, imperfect as it is, Jim Valena has emphatically called attention to his project as a potential major player in Cascadian black metal and beyond. He needs an original angle on his themes of the coming environmental apocalypse and humanity’s need to overcome its materialism if the music is to stay fresh and vigorous. Wolves in the Throne Room could provide an inspiration with their musicians’ life-style, based on farming and sustainablity, and L’Acephale could be an intellectual role model.

Contact: Jim Valena, Pest Productions

No doubt about it, this is one seriously stoned-out doomy drone band blasting out its own monstrously grinding clarion call to the opiate-swigging, pentagram-wearing (or tattooed if they’re really devout) followers of Baphomet out there. The Bongsters set their guitar engines for a journey into the darkest reaches of the inner cosmos and go in search of the Point of Singularity where the Big Bong Bloke himself must reside. Highly rhythmic and immersive, slow and at times arduous – some effort into self-enlightenment is required! – the moaning, groaning guitars are enriched by bewitching sitar melodies that thread their way around the rough-edged drones.

Admittedly the journey is very long and in the middle track “Across the Timestream”, the music grows darker as if riddled with self-doubt and faltering confidence about the nature of the journey – are we on the right track? how do we know when we come into communion with BBB? what if we’re being led astray? – and as if in response to our despairing thoughts, percussion begins to bang hard as if to say, “Come ON, folks! Chin up, keep your minds on the main game!” while lead guitar tracks out the path to follow and the whirling drone follows in its wake.

“In the Shadow of the Towers”, in some ways a continuation of the previous track musically and non-musically, is even more arduous (and very repetitive as well) and darker still. Drums dominate this track and the effect is to make the journey seem a lot harder than it should. Guitar gradually makes its presence felt as though to inspire us laggards.

A destination is reached but whether it’s the real deal or a temporary stop is one for the listener to decide. The album starts out well but runs out of puff as if Bong quickly get stuck in a particular groove and no matter how much the musicians try to get out of it, it has a quicksand effect: the more you struggle, the deeper you sink. That wonderful sitar featured in the first track disappears from the rest of the album and that was a major disappointment for me. I’d have liked something more challenging in this music rather than mere droning; even Earth and Sunn (the bands) realised there’s only so much you can do with the drone, beautiful and mind-expanding though it can be. Music such as this requires more thought about structure, how the listener’s experience of it could be hugely different from the musician’s experience and how to incorporate that awareness of the difference into the concept.