Tagged: dark

November 5, 2013

Body Horror: a brooding work of heavy industrial metal dub and ambient dronescapes

Iron Forest, Body Horror, Crucial Blast, CD 020 (2013)

Iron Forest is a fairly new experimental music project by US Midwest artist Brandon Elkins that combines heavy industrial metal rhythms and riffs with drone, dub, noise and doom elements. “Body Horror”, the project’s second album, is a lavish effort: eight tracks of layers of power electronics, digital noise, warped dub, crushing machine rhythms, sharply cut reverb and space atmosphere, and elements of black / death / doom metal. The plastic case is a large DVD-style container with several postcards of pictures of mutant body parts that have a strange if repulsive and disturbing beauty.

The recording revolves around themes of mutation, deformity and transhumanism. Track 1 is a gentle introduction of reverb and fuzz, very spacey with spurts of dub rhythm, and highly atmospheric. Subsequent tracks range from fierce and threatening dub guitar-noise splatter with washes of shrieking vocals to doomy dronescapes set against an ambience suggesting post-apocalyptic industrial wastelands of polluted ponds of water and winds sweeping up fine sand mixed with industrial chemical dust. Although the music can be highly robotic and its rhythms dominated by echoing machine sounds, I always have the impression that here is a world in which biology and technology have become completely fused and to treat the two separately is an antiquated notion. All machine noises seem to come from cyborg creatures with self-awareness and cunning natures.

For music that draws its inspiration from past industrial metal heavies like Godflesh and Scorn who also included very liberal doses of dub rhythms and sounds into their work, “Body Horror” is as much atmospheric and meditative as it is harsh and grinding robot doom machine music. The surprising thing is that the music is very accessible and much less menacing than its title and artwork suggest. (The album is also much shorter than I would have liked – at least an hour would have done for this style of heavy industrial dub.) There’s a lot of murk along with the knife-sharp skittery quicksilver rhythms, the crunchy bass riffs and machine-gun synth percussion beats but the music never sounds chaotic or overwhelming. Parts of the CD remind me more of Keith Fullerton Whitman’s old Hrvatski act with the flighty rapid-fire blastbeat electronic rhythms, though without the playful attitude.

This genre of music has a lot of potential to be a mighty monster and I feel with most recordings I have that the artists are scraping just a thin layer of it. “Body Horror” doesn’t advance the known parts of the territory much but as it is, it’s quite a good work: it has a distinctive airy atmosphere in most tracks and there is a psychedelic trance element as well. Each track has enough in it that could generate a family of long remixed tracks.

October 29, 2013

Chaos is Come Again

Contrastate
A Breeding Ground for Flies
UK DIRTER PROMOTIONS DPROMCD91 CD (2011)

Contrastate is back! The well known British band was hitting the ground since the late 80s with a row of essential albums released by Tesco Org. and their own Black Rose Recordings, delivering outstanding post-industrial music penetrated by the cold atmosphere of England and social depravity causing the deepest melancholy and disaster in minds. Their epic works like A Thousand Badgers In Labour and A Live Coal Under The Ashes were absolute masterpieces of doomed, grotesque and sinister electronic music which remain incomparable with anything else. After the fabulous Todesmelodie, released by the now-defunct Noise Museum label at the turn of the millennium, it was pretty quiet in the Contrastate corner, and only a few re-editions appeared over the next decade. Rumours said that they were disbanded, confirmed by a few solo albums by former Contrastate member Stephen Meixner who was still running Black Rose Recordings but moving in another musical direction, dealing more with installation/soundtrack works. For me, this new Contrastate album was a true surprise, an unexpected but (now I can say) long awaited comeback. And without the shadow of a doubt, the glorious one! A Breeding Ground For Flies was released in 2012 by the ever-evolving Dirter Promotions label delivering the best underground works of post-industrial music masters like Ramleh, Andrew Liles and Con Demek. It features all new material recorded with the full lineup of Grieve/Pomeroy/Meixner. But since a lot of time passed by, the Contrastate sound has changed. No more abandoned industrial area sounds, no gloomy songs accompanied by guitar, and no theatrical spoken word nightmares. Cold as steel, intrinsic and dehumanised, minimalist electronic sonorities raised from the frozen land of sorrow and chaos. Paralysed by fear, you will listen to this mechanized symphony and forget about your neighbourhood, personal disdain and everyday struggle. This is the sound of overall sickness, claustrophobia and hopelessness. Without relying much on scary noises, pounding rhythms and grave vocals, Contrastate build another kind of horror reality, creepy and dull, merciless and uncompromising. As I’ve said already, no comparisons are possible – you should just hear it with own ears and feel the difference. If you are a long-time follower just like me – you will not be disappointed. If you never heard about Contrastate, this is your chance! And of course I need to mention the great packaging design conceived and carefully realised by the label – the CD housed in a massive cardboard box with the booklet inside the oversized slipcase, with the great and deep coloured artwork all around. More than just “recommended”!

T.A.C.
Chaosphere
ITALY OLD EUROPA CAFE OECD 170 CD [2013]

Another band with a history, T.A.C. defines the epoch. From the early 80s, the ingenious Italian band (with Simon Balestrazzi as mastermind and many other luminaries involved) created many albums of a totally different nature, starting from the jazz/funk influenced self-titled debut in 1983, to the chamber rock music of Ouvrez Vos Auditifs Canaux (1985) and the prog elements of Il Teatro della Crudelta (1987), going further to industrial/ambient/goth obscurity in the classic A Circle Of Limbs (1992) and dark folk, neoclassic and experimental electronics hybrids in Hypnotischer Eden and Apotropaismo. After the T.A.C. trilogy for the Italian Smallvoices label released in 2002-04, there were years of total silence. Some T.A.C. classics were reissued recently, but this album is also not that brand new stuff you may suggest. Yes, it was released in 2013 but actually recorded in 1998. As the label says, the masters were lost and damaged, so the material needed to be restored. Well, now we can say – it was worthwhile to complete this job, because the music looks fresh and up to date, still retaining this “lost in time” attitude. Chaosphere is much influenced by our favorite Tarkovsky films, and you can hear some samples from the cult Solaris movie behind the clouds of analogue synths and sparse arrangements. Looks like Simon Balestrazzi recorded the music alone, so this is the exception in the row of multiple albums featuring many other musicians at their best, with many instruments and techniques presented. However, I can’t say that the music is minimalist or totally different from other T.A.C. works. It keeps the same spirit of adventurous experiment, and the sincere austerity you can feel from the start to the end. The vintage sound of the VCS3 synthesizer is the main driving force behind the tracks, but the clever use of samples makes the music more vivid and reflective. For me, this album also announces the powerful return for the one of the best Italian underground projects, so let’s look forward to see more new music coming out from Simon’s NeuroHabitat studio!

October 22, 2013

Ectoplasm and Adrenaline

Ken Hyder / Z’EV / Andy Knight
Ghost Time
HINTERZIMMER HINT 16 CD (2012)

As initial reactions go, the question “what is this scary music?” is certainly auspicious, offering assurance that I’m playing something interesting. The group goes by the name of ‘Ghost Time’, and is an ethereal, instrumental trio of overlapping interests, all peripheral to jazz. Most (in)famous of the three performers is Z’EV, known for his molten, multi-kulti-meets-industrial approach to percussion. In these four post-mortem ‘jazz’ pieces he is joined by composer and fellow percussionist, Scotland’s Ken Hyder, whose predilection for prog/jazz fusion puts him on first-name terms with the likes of Tim Hodgkinson, Phil Minton, Keith Tippett and Elton Dean. Finally – and most enigmatically – Andy Knight is, according to the group’s website, simply ‘an English trumpet player’. The group’s moniker offers ample indication of what to expect: ghostly, post-mortem ‘soundscapes’ steamrolled by sub-bass and streaked with spaghettified phantom yowls. The formula may not be rare, but the product permits little more than a passing acquaintance: depersonalising all participants and foregrounding none into the bargain.

The tracks are largely cymbal-led, shimmering with glassy, growling backdrops coloured by a faint pull of pocket trumpet. Though potentially generic to casual listeners, the riches of this dark ambience will be revealed to the patient. The press claim that there is ‘a feeling of something you felt before… A hint of music you might have caught on the wind, off the water, in your sleep, or in someone’s eyes’ is not inaccurate, though by the same token, specific influences such as Canntaireachd (‘a vocalisation of bagpipe playing’), Tuvan Khoomei singing and Tibetan ritual percussion playing will be evident only to ‘those who know’. Not until ‘Faint’ are we treated to any significant tonal variation, where a more menacing air of rolling snares and guttural sub-bass enshrouds the careful listener, while in ‘Glimpse’, a sharper strain of muted trumpeting pierces the atmosphere like it does the ‘Silencio’ scene in Mulholland Drive.

Generally, there’s little to differentiate one track from another, as all possess the same ingredients and ideas, leaving us with a subtle, longform exercise in theme and variation. Not that there’s anything wrong with this of course. The music can be easily enjoyed, especially if one assumes a horizontal position and surrenders to the near-darkness it articulates.

Terrie Ex / Paal Nilssen-Love
Hurgu!
PNL RECORDS PNL012 CD (2011)

On the other side of the jazz divide we find – in this exclamatory effort, ‘Hurgu!’ – Norwegian drummer Paal Nilssen-Love and guitarist Terrie Ex (of Dutch troublemakers, The Ex) in singularly confrontational and uncompromising mind-states, both in jazz-flag burning mode. Little need be said about proceedings other than the fact that they are a) loud and b) fast. However, lest the reader experience apprehension at the appearance of yet another jazz-rock wank-fest, I hasten to add that it is c) completely captivating from start to finish.

The recording rocks and rolls with an itch that begs for relief: like two lion cubs tumbling playfully in the savannah, Ex and Nilssen-Love tussle with dental intent. In ‘Harar’, Ex’s guitar is edged and muscular, withstanding every pummelling beat of Nilssen-Love’s relentless percussive rejoinders. The mood becomes more jagged in ‘St. George’ – Ex chipping off chunks of flaming scree, which Nilssen-Love volleys with thundering skin rolls and searing cymbal smashes, the two colliding like masochists in a moshpit. Initially of a more sinister species is ‘Bedele’, which begins with a bassy rumble and a rant of agitated strings, but soon enough becomes another high-pace terminator chase through a collapsing metal works. Not until ‘Meta’ does the blistering meter relent, slowing to an agonizing howl of abrasive growl and angular twang: atonement expressed with the most depraved definition of ‘grace’. This comedown comes across like one of DNA’s primal scream therapy sessions hijacked by an enervating lecture on entropy. Utter perfection.

October 14, 2013

Moon and a Mask

Stuart Chalmers is a fiendishly witty and capable mangler / masher of cassette tapes, blending his outputs from that aural activity with other sources (field recordings, radio signals, synths) to produce moments of delirious joy on Daydream Empire (LF RECORDS LF029). As with many geniuses in this genre his plan is to give the ear/brain a overload of information to process, spewing it out in slightly haphazard order to allow maximal surprise to the listener, while underpinning each composition with a steady flow of musical or verbal patterns. Each piece just floats like polystyrene on a lake. Chalmers is not in the game to shock or outrage; rather his balmy, hazy and opaque works spread a fine surreal gauze over the surface of the world, and everything appears slightly askew. The titles act as an index to his intentions: ‘Fall of Reality’, ‘Melting of time’ and ‘Theatre of the Absurd’ are poignant and accurate descriptions of his process. Chalmers is associated with improvising collectives in Oxford and Cheltenham, and also records as tusK and skarabee. (27/12/2012)

A shortish 7-track sampler from the Slovakian LOM label arrived 19 December 2012, showcasing the sound art of MRKVA and BOLKA (respectively, Jonáš Gruska and Matúš Kobolka). The label proposes itself as a meeting point for the assistance and encouragement of experimental art of all stripe, including field recordings, music, literature, books, images and poetry, and they tend to favour all of these cultural jewels when expressed in digital or web-based formats. The sounds hereon are ingenious compacted statements using intense digital glitchoid effects in abundance, the results quite often folded into pleated shapes that resemble swarms of insects – a trope which clearly preoccupies both their brains, if the fractured press release speaks true. They would like to help us to “channel our inner insect”. While each short slab of whoopery bounces with teeming life and transports you bodily across a field of grass, none of the sounds ever distress you with unpleasant noise nor threaten you with despondent gloomy drone. A charming and understated piece of imaginative electronica.

Nad Spiro is Rosa Arruti. This Spanish creatrice works mostly with heavily processed electric guitars, and builds intricately detailed patterns and textures from tiny samples, occasionally adding distorted voices on her CD Atomic Spy (GEOMETRIK RECORDS gr gsg 01). In an extremely precise manner, she weaves psychologically unsettling dramas which execute themselves with the deathly accuracy of a 1940s suspense movie – indeed the high-contrast photography of a film noir would seem an apt keynote for this whole album, with its mysterious jet-black shadows. This particular mesmerising outing has a vaguely “urban” theme, all eight tracks linking to suggest the narrative of a journalist or private eye who is tormented by unknown terrors in the city, including ghostly voices emanating from the old-fashioned valve radio set. The nocturnal mood and story are enhanced by the very strong cover image, a photo-collage by the artist Josep Renau which resembles a Weegee news photograph going horribly wrong.

The Chasms Of My Heart (CRUCIAL BLAST RECORDS CBR98) by Theologian is a strong dose of pounding industrialism, an overpowering abundance of powerful drone characterised by smothering intensity and relentless drive. Theologian plans to pursue his seething emotions with the determination of a pile-driver, rather than the stealth of a nimble hunter, and he’ll keep on screaming and howling in anguish until the very chambers of his own heart are rubbed raw. His record cover (and many of his other releases too) betray an interest in the frail flesh of the human body, the assorted juxtapositions here implying some sort of painful surgery for the torso, or the use of x-rays to reveal the hidden movements of the inner man, as if any felt emotion were a form of cancer that we must purge ourselves of. Track titles likewise allude to themes of despair and bodily decay; in some ways you could read the album as a gloss on a Hamlet soliloquy. While I personally strive to eschew artistic works which appear to wallow in self-pity and sentimentality, I am drawn to the compelling sonic surface of this heavy album, which veers between suffocating ultra-drones and hideously overloaded noise; technically it’s an admirable achievement of overdubbing and layering. Theologian is Leech, who also calls himself Navicon Torture Technologies, or Theologian Prime, and this is his third album for the Crucial Blast label.

October 5, 2013

Three Rotary Roarers

Boy, are things frustrating me lately. Maybe I just need a half of minim…mind you there is nothing like starting off a crisp autumn morning with some twisted and alienated guitar noise, and that’s exactly what is on offer from Clifford Torus, a three-piece whose self-titled cassette (DRID MACHINE RECORDS DMR4) in a lurid orange dayglo cover was sent to us on 19 October 2012. I felt much better after immersing my bonce in these rich metallic shrieks for 30 mins. The guitarist Horacio Pollard has made his electric-shock presence felt to us on at least one CDR of his scalding and bittersome electric noise, but here he’s opting for a slightly more traditional avant-garde rock setup. For this activity he’s aided by two of the best like-minded players a man could hope for: the bassist Kjetil Brandsdal from Noxagt, and Anders Hana who drums for MoHa! That’s a dream team in anyone’s book. Just six tunes on this little power-pack, but it’s enough to recharge the flagging batteries of any jaded nightclubber as they stagger back from Vauxhall on any given Sunday morning. This trio’s particular take on the excessive amplified doom-noise thing meets many of our exacting standards: monotonous, flailing energy, mumbled half-screamed vocals when they appear, and a continual sense of teeth-grinding alienation underpinning every moment of luscious grind. Kjetil is an asset, rarely departing from a single root note for most of th’ tunes; he almost hammers his bass like a percussionist. Although only guitar, bass and drums appear in the instrument credit roster, there are occasional burstings of strange and unidentifiable screech which somehow leak into the sounding-box, at times resembling a mangled saxophone or a crushed synthesizer. Maybe Pollard is just very well-equipped with hideous FX pedals purchased from planet Jupiter. Only sometimes does the energy level droop a little, and I wished they coulda sustained that power for a few more minutes (especially on the crunch-worthy opening number) but when these three lads get into their “groove”, it’s obvious they are mesmerised by a higher power from the dreadful zones, and nothing short of a steamshovel will ever dislocate them. When this tape was sent, it seems the threesome were about to play a free gig at Bohemia in Hackney. True to form, this blog is a year late with the hot news!

Here’s another fine cassette, also realised by a trio, but this time the players weave a somewhat more abstracted and dynamic form of electronic noise. Destruction Des Animaux Nuisibles #1 (ALTERACTION ALT01) features our good friend Xedh (i.e. Miguel A. García), the Prince of Spanish experimental music who has proven himself a nonpareil when it comes to realising fatalistic nightmares and uncanny experiences in sound, often with a grim caste. Here he is joined by Enrique Zaccagnini, the two of them forming an eerie backdrop of sinister electronic purring and grisly loud noise, tempered by the unsettling vocalising of Marta Sainz. I suppose it is she providing the strange whimpering sounds on side one, a ghastly sobbing effect which arouses our empathy as much as it sends tremors of terror running up and down our spinal columns. We could be hearing the voice of an exiled ghost, doomed to replay the same traumatic moment in her life for all eternity. Enrique and Xedh produce an accomplished tapestry of complicated noise for this after-life symphony, where the startling eruptions into ear-splitting volume are reined in and controlled, forming part of a fascinating and constantly-changing slow-motion whirlwind of textured sound. The B side feels a tad more pedestrian somehow, not as “composed”, and emerging as a jumble of clatter and screech which is heaped up into a pile rather than arranged in a garden by architects using rakes and blueprints. Even so it doesn’t stint on serving up the manic energy that noise-freaks go for. Marta’s excessive vocals make it clear she’s aiming for a gold medal in next year’s Junko-soundalike contest, to be held in 2014 in Budokan. Lastly we have the grisly cover image of ten dead rats caught in traps and apparently pinned up for display in a shop window in France. Since the title of this release translates into “destruction of harmful animals”, evidently we’re supposed to use this cassette as a cheap alternative to mousetraps or cockroach poison ¹.

We’ve also been sent four cassettes in a box from André Foisy in Chicago. As well as playing in Locrian, it is he I suppose who masterminds the Land Of Decay label and blog, specialising in doomy rock and noise that inculcates decrepitude and ruin. Cultus Sabbati – another trio – have about five albums released at time of writing, not to mention a few video works whose titles betray an interest in the written works of Poe and Lovecraft. This anonymous band conceal their work in a fog of mysticism and cast about references to ritual trance magick, witchcraft, and Norse mythology, revealing little of their musical methodology as they foregather in unknown locations to emit strange dark ambient drones. Thanks to Sunn O))), pretty soon every metal band in the world will end up sitting in a circle in a lonely forest wearing cowls. To some extent all of this does cover ground already well-worn by many other projects in this and related genres, but The Hagiography Of Baba Yaga (LOD 039) does evince some powerful moments of doom and horror in among the general murk and turgidity of its throbbing drones. Echo and reverb effects are used with scant regard for good taste, and evidently Cultus Sabbati believe in saturating every other musical utterance with as much artificial enhancement as they can generate from their small black boxes of evil, undercutting the swampy sludge with whispered chanting vocals and crazed guitar solos so acidic you could use them to unclog a kitchen sink. Track titles like ‘The Attestation Of Vasilissa’ or ‘Koschei The Deathless’ are like the titles to lost Lord Dunsany stories, and when raging at full stretch, the threesome can produce music that will either instil a deep supernatural fear in the listener, or suffocate us within the writhing coils of a deathly inescapable curse. Nice typography on the cover with its saturated golden-brown autumnal colours, images of forests and deadly mushrooms, overprinted with runes and magic circles. From 17 October 2012.

Savage Pencil also used this trope in the 1990s for the noise band Ultrasonic Attack Wave Pestrepeller. ↩

October 3, 2013

Transcending into the Cold: epic debut for up-and-coming UK post-black metal act

Rosaceae, Transcending into the Cold, Red River Family Records, cassette 007 (2013)

Rosaceae is an apt name for this English black metal act: the music may be beautifully crafted and melodic but hidden are sharp thorns that prick where least expected. After releasing an EP and some tapes, Rosaceae finally brings out its debut album “Transcending into the Cold”. Powered by rapid-fire tremolo guitar buzz and heavy thrumming percussion, the recording is a monumental post-BM epic.

The opening track delivers moments of dramatic and often intensely emotional guitar riffing along with harsh distorted guitar buzz and rasping vocals. The song builds up steadily to a heavy, layered, pummelling climax that throws listeners straight into the next track. “Solar Descent. The Crimson Sky Casting Immemorial Darkness, Throughout the Pine Glade” is a similarly epic piece combining runaway minimalist riffing, crashing percussion, a distinctive heroic ambience, muffled rasp and stark moments of guitar slash in which one might be confronted with a crisis, the resolution of which is the difference between living and dying. The atmosphere and emotion can be intense and overwhelming as the song progresses.

By a long mile, the star track of the album is “Deforestation, Depravity, Corruption” and a harrowing monster it is with thundering drums, bombastic rhythms and savage cutting guitar riffs. Vocals roar, percussion rhythms punch repeatedly and guitars tear through the track as forests born and matured millions of years ago are mowed down by giant machines that leave devastation in their wake. The music is highly dissonant, jagged and uncompromising. Final track “From the Footprints of Amaranthine Knowledge, Forever Mourning” is a lament for Nature raped and destroyed; beneath the sorrow though is a steely resolution to restore and renew the natural world. While the music is often intense and overpowering in its layers of guitar and rhythm, it has grand ambitions in attempting to understand and convey to listeners the connection between the destruction of the natural world and the power structures of capitalist / consumerist societies; the music achieves moments of shining magnificence in doing so.

Rosaceae main man Liam McGeorge has done a sterling job in shaping and crafting this concept work. The thought and care that he has invested radiate throughout. The music is well-paced and follows a definite narrative. In contrast with some black metal recordings on the destruction of Nature by humans, the album does not merely dwell on human thoughtlessness and the wreckage left behind, it looks ahead to the hard work of repairing and rebuilding damaged ecosystems and finding joy and new hope in giving and creating new life. There may sometimes be moments where the listening experience becomes an ordeal to endure due to the nature of the music and its subject matter, but this is the kind of recording that repays repeated hearings. Listeners may find tremendous inspiration in the recording.

Of late, young black metal and post-black metal acts I’d never heard of are emerging from the woodwork in the green and sceptr’d isle, and if Rosaceae is typical of this new wave, we are in for some real treats!

September 7, 2013

Sang Des Bêtes

David Kirby used four tape recorders to build a large-scale collision event of music, sound and noise on Cittakarnera (COPY FOR YOUR RECORDS CFYR007), a title which to my way of reading implies something about “carnage” in a “city”. If you accept this hypothesis, you will hear a very appropriately urbanised and chaotic mashup on this lively sprawler. Kirby manages to lift himself away from a linear trajectory in his composition, and produces blocks of sound that are almost “sculptural” in the way they are assembled, hammered together by means of sledgehammers with all rough edges protruding. It’s also good to hear the essential wobbliness produced by tapes spinning on capstans, real machines working in real time, that reminds us that not everyone in the world is completely sold on the notion that all things have to be done “virtually”. Kirby’s sounds may not be especially innovative in their treatment, but he’s collected an incredible jumble of exotic surprises on his tapes. The real art lies in the way he’s assembled his materials: the edits are vibrant and vivacious, offering glimpses of the oddness and unpredictability of life through an illogical, free-associative method. (09/08/2012)

“Base Material?” Oh, not more musicians who want to persuade us that they’re actually “alchemists”, rather than musicians – that’s a layer of mystification we can do without. Fear not reader, because on this occasion it’s our good friend Tim Olive, the Canadian improviser who has never short-changed his audience with a careless release nor faltered once in his selection of imaginative and innovative sparring partners in the practice arena. His comrade in arms this time is Kikuchi Yukinori, the fellow behind the TestToneMusic label and also founder of the extremely odd what-is-it project Billy? in the early 1990s. The duo collaborated in 2010 on Difference And Repetition, but for Base Material (TESTTONEMUSIC TTM-011) they did the collaboration by mail, Olive recording his amplified electric guitar and electronic set-up in Osaka and then sending it to the electronicist and computer-man Yukinori for his additions and final mix. As such the record is not a document of collaborative performance, but is all about the raw sound – a darkly elemental churning mass of crunched-up metal writhing below the surface of the earth. At worst, it may be no more diverting than a battle between two motorised toy aeroplanes, but at its best, it can produce a powerful grind: as indifferent to the petty concerns of mankind as an unknown agency working underground, quietly biding its time and eroding the very stones on which we stand. (26/09/2012)

Now for some remorseless and heavy noise music from France. The French really know how to deliver a good clobbering to the nervous system when they get their amps warmed up, using their feet as well as their fists (Savate, in short) when they face the enemy, enabling them to reduce all opposition to ten pounds of Steak Tartare. The CD 2011 (TOURETTE 030) features the amazing team-up of Vomir, our favourite all-black nihilist who for a long time was the undisputed champ of “harsh noise wall”, with Marc Hurtado – one half of the famous French group Étant Donnés, one of the more bizarre exponents of the Industrial school of the 1980s and 1990s (I for one never really “got” their music). Hurtado also did the cover art, producing primitive symbols rendered in effective splatter-mode painting. Clearly the two collaborators hit it off as only the French can, bonding over many a bottle of Merlot, then retreating into a cast-iron casket armed with wooden clubs to record these claustrophobic horror episodes. The listener is treated to solid walls of roaring abstract racket, chugging tape loops that dig themselves into the ground like pile-drivers whose operators have gone insane, and (very occasionally) the howling voice of Hurtado pitching his wordless hurlements of despair like a jackal being throttled by his own metal collar. Hurtado also contributes certain unnnamed instrumentation and produced the album. On evidence of this, he’s still a major heavy hitter. And just look at those titles! Single words, all elemental images of electrifying power…Fire, Shadow, Earth, Sky, Flesh, Heart…Besides the palpable aura of grief and despair, what we have to admire on this album is the utter single-mindedness with which the sound is pursued, the ambitions realised…no quarter is given, no respite offered from the pounding madness. Much as we love Vomir’s early records, we would have to admit (as he himself often did) that they could be very flat and monotonous, but the surface of this recording is far more varied – well, just varied enough to make it somewhat more bearable while still insisting on the solid core of insufferable Hell. 12 tracks of interminable misery…if you can get past the harsh screechy-hiss which opens each cut, you’ll soon find yourself immersed in a lake of solid clay-like filth which clings clammily to every pore of your body until you can’t breathe. How can you resist an experience like that? (12/10/2012)

Hmm, this post seems to be taking a rather morbid turn. In keeping with that perhaps we should conclude with an album that bears a skull printed on the cover. Sky Burial‘s There I Saw The Grey Wolf Gaping (SMALL DOSES DOSE115 / FIRST LIGHT FL01) is not actually that morbid at all, and instead the American musician Michael Page and his talented crew of collaborators have built a brooding and mysterious piece of “epic” solemnity, redolent of unknown ceremonies and the dangers faced by primitive man in prehistoric times. We have noted Page some years ago with his noisier project Fire In The Head, which is a personal outlet for his more extreme and brutalist statements, but Sky Burial (started in 2006) reflects another side to Page’s troubled soul, more contemplative and melancholic, producing stern-browed and deeply-layered droney dark ambient music. Where most of his releases have been solo exploits, he’s joined here by numerous collaborators: Jarboe of Swans; Danny Hyde of Aural Rage, Coil and Psychic TV; the German duo Troum, who used to be Maeror Tri; the vocalist Annie Hogan who appeared on certain Soft Cell records; the introverted electronic musician Xiphoid Dementia; and the Icelandic vocalist Jóhann Eiríksson. I mention these names which may help you situate the tenor and tone of this music, and to point out the large number of guest vocalists; although there aren’t any songs, this is apparently the first time Sky Burial has featured the human voice so prominently. The surface sound of this record is incredible – lush and well-polished sounds reverberating into infinite imaginary distances. But some may find the very slow and solemn pace grows wearisome, and Page exhibits little interest in structuring his music with dynamics, changes, or other musical signposts. Consequently, most of the album is a diffuse mass of long-form ambient murkiness. (16/10/2012)

August 31, 2013

Key Acoustics

The plaintive cry of Loren Connors and Suzanne Langille is I Wish I Didn’t Dream (NORTHERN SPY RECORDS NSCD 031), on a highly opaque CD of intense experimental guitar murk and equally plangent vocalising. These short, clipped poem-songs are exemplary manifestations of the Emily Dickinson approach taken to its post-modern extreme – broken images, unfamiliar emotions, and nascent ideas stumbling into the world scarce half made-up. Who better to delve into these uncharted seas than the two talented Americans in this duo, who singly or collectively have been producing musical puzzles for over thirty years, producing a large body of work that’s proving impossible to decode – and the problem only increases when you have obtuse, distanced and frown-inducing releases such as this one. We last heard from them as two-thirds of Haunted House, a group producing the wonderful Blue Ghost Blues for this same label in 2011, whose hard-rocking and lengthy guitar noodlings may well have struck a chord with all good lovers of avant axe-excess, but this particular sleep-talking mystery bucket of murmurations and unfinished utterances is quite another brisket of bones. The guitar meanders and squeaks, producing icy cold tones from a meat locker situated thirty miles from the studio. The vocalist is closer to hand, her urgent whispers magnified in a small echo chamber, but her cryptical half-sung sketches – fleeting portraits etched on a frozen window pane with a dusty twig – will have you straining to catch the implications behind each intimate gasp. This is blanked-out, impenetrable minimalist art music of the highest water, a more austere version of Annette Peacock and Joni Mitchell running across the snow with the distorted and attenuated guitars of Japanese ghosts in pursuit of their threatened souls. It also comes with a booklet of stark abstract paintings by M P Landis, completing a package that’s guaranteed to confirm everything you ever suspected about the emptiness and futility of life. Gradely! (01/11/2012)

Another American who, I suspect, is no stranger to staring the Gods of futility in the eye is our good friend Nick Hoffman, the sullen and stern genius who utters little while issuing great but perplexing music on his Pilgrim Talk label. One such batch arrived in November 2012. Cockroach Boy (PILGRIM TALK PT22) is a teamup with Satoshi Kanda, one of his many connections in the steaming continent of the East, and they also made a split cassette for this label in 2010. Kanda has been improvising since 2003 using nothing but an electric bass and some empty milk bottles. Well, he certainly delivers the cream on this recording! It’s one of Hoffman’s “play it and guess” recordings where absolutely nothing is explained and it’s up to the listener to decide when the duo have started or ended performing, and whether or not what they are creating can even be called “music”. Ultra-minimal, confusing, yet it’s full of the unbearable tension that these dangerous situations can often create. Soon you too will be drawn into contemplating these strange tones and lengthy silences, and wishing you were nailed inside a coffin at the cemetery in Fukuoka, where this was recorded. The lengthy title to this 40-minute work, if indeed it is a title, compacts references to demons, corpses and Gods and also retains the air of a schlocky horror movie, in keeping with the grotesque Insect-Fear cover art by Hoffman. I love the way this music consistently refuses easy digestion, and all these Pilgrim Talk releases are recommended. (09/11/2012)

The Polish trio Sonda recorded Sonda (AUDIO TONG AT26.2012) in Sopot, a little town abutting the Baltic Sea, performing in an attic space in 2006. Now released on Audio Tong, it’s an engaging set of music played by the drummer Krzysztof Topolski and the guitarist Marcin Dymiter, with vocalist Tomasz Pawlak “Czaszka” joining them with his husky yawps for three tracks. In their endearingly untidy music, the group make a point of confusing musical genres, aiming to indulge their love of “rock, blues, metal, drone, punk, electronics and improvisation”. Two of the seven tracks are a species of obnoxious guitar grindcore racket that should grease the wheels of die-hard Napalm Death fans, while two other tracks are meandery improvisation of the rattle-and-creak variety, with much emphasis on the metallic resonances produced by cymbals and metal-wound strings. Other pieces are just plain impossible to categorise, although the 12-minute ‘Wszystko Dobre, Co Sie Dobrze Konczy’ has a definite vibe of Can threaded into the sinews of its drumming and electronic drone, making snake-like movements across the carpet with the help of the violinist Marek Dybusc. Competent enough performances, but the trio ultimately lack force and conviction, no matter which style they adopt. Lovely deep sea cover art. (02/11/2012)

Strange furry thing from Jüppala Kääpiö, the duo who brought us Spring Promenade in 2010. Despite their Finnish name this band is actually two Japanese musicians Hitoshi and Carole Kojo who live in Belgium. Rewound Grooves (OMNIMOMENTO OM 07) may be a concept record telling the story of the Krampus, a vicious and hairy beast drawn from Alpine mythology who is associated with Winter and may be the enemy of St Nicholas – a sort of early manifestation of the Grinch. The music by Jüppala Kääpiö is however anything but beastly, and comprises four lengthy and limpid drones of ambient swirlery, all created from numerous layers of gentle electronic tones, breathy vocals and endlessly spinning tape loops (probably enhanced by digital means). The album strikes a thoughtful and contemplative pose, and is generally soothing and positive, with only the third track ‘From Veins To Nebulae’ introducing an element of drama or danger. Somewhat diffuse and static music, but there is much craft in the Kojos’ sound-generation technique, and they rarely commit a careless or half-baked statement to tape. Besides the fake fur wrapper, there is also a screenprinted band of card which can be worn like a mask. (29/11/2012)

If you’d prefer drone music with more darkness lurking in the corners, then as ever Sum Of R will satisfy your thirst for all that’s lugubrious and sombre. The sounds on Ride Out The Waves (STORM AS HE WALKS SAHWLP001) are produced mostly by Reto Mäder working in the studio overdubbing his keyboards, bass, electronics and percussion, although Julia Wolf (what a brilliant name for a supernatural horror combo like this one) adds poignant stabs from her fatal guitar at chosen stages on the forest pathway. I tend to remember Sum Of R records as an unbroken feast of thick occluded dark ambience, but Ride Out The Waves has a lot more variety and incident than their usual output, each track quite unlike the last, until the LP becomes the soundtrack to a very disjointed and episodic horror film. Said film, if it exists, is characterised by much bloodshed, sabres, and men on horseback cutting down villagers with a pitiless scowl of contempt. Aye, there is still plenty of the characteristic bubbling black tar music which induces fear and misery, but the heavy metal guitar swipes add a very welcome element of tension, plus the spare percussion will appeal to all you hard-boned stoner freaks – just check out the slowed-down battering effects on ‘Alarming’, the truly apocalyptic nightmare that brings the album crashing down into ruins. I’ve always said Reto Mäder should have made a Black Metal LP, but I feel that genre may sadly be in decline now. Even so, Mader should join forces with MZ.412 some day, and the results would be truly monstrous – they could produce the ultimate “atmospheric dread and cold death” album. The photo shows a promo CD, but the release is vinyl.

August 25, 2013

The Lost Entrance of the Just: soft and pretty black metal pop with an ominous, brooding edge

Official sleeve image from handmadebirds.com

Circle of Ouroborus, The Lost Entrance of the Just, Handmade Birds Records, HB-020 (vinyl release 2012, CD release 2013)

Originally released on vinyl in 2012, this was one of two full-length recordings put out that year by the idiosyncratic Finnish black metal / post-rock / shoegazer pop duo. These guys can always be relied on to deliver something, usually a few EPs and one or two albums, each year and 2012 was no exception. Compared with previous recordings of theirs that I’ve heard, this album seems softer and fuzzier, and the lyrics seem less melancholy, even appearing to aspire to hope and positive emotion. The feeling that CoO may have mellowed and adopted a more settled, more accepting and less angry attitude is never far away.

Opening track “Cast in Clay” suggests this new outlook with its softened though slightly ominous clouds of guitar blur through which lazy percussion and Antti Klemi’s vocals emerge and proceed at a loping pace. “Black Hole Womb” might just be a return to the CoO of old with its sharp, arch sound and mood and an extended section with angry spoken word against a backdrop of rising and falling sea-waves. But there’s a jauntiness in the music that suggests a relaxed attitude of going with the flow of the universe, absorbing what it offers or deals out, treating everything as part of one’s journey through life and beyond.

Throughout the album there are a lot of very pretty tunes and even Klemi’s famously individual style of awkward, seemingly off-key singing and occasional shouty declamations doesn’t detract from the warm glow that emanates from the muddied melodies and easy-going drumming. The music serves as a vehicle for the lyrics and to create a highly immersive atmosphere so it tends towards minimalism and loose structure. Melodies and riffs exist in an almost formless way and slower songs like “Mirror Universe” are on the verge of falling apart from drunkenness. The album ends with the only Finnish-language track “Toivosta Syntynyt” (roughly translating as “Hope born” – I hope, I’m only using Google Translate!), a darkly edgy piece with an air of wariness whose meaning and place as closing track must be wondered at.

This is a poppy album with good if not distinct melodies, riffs and rhythms though with a dark and sometimes menacing atmosphere. The music is not one of the band’s best but makes up for the lack of aggression and energy by being a heavy, almost formless and brooding presence. The emphasis on repetition and monotony has a trance-like effect on listeners. This is the kind of recording that grows on listeners over time.

The vinyl issue run is already sold out – CoO fans are nothing if not loyal.

August 23, 2013

Abrahadabra: a dark black metal / shoegazer pop album of despair and foreboding

Circle of Ouroborus, Abrahadabra, Kuunpalvelus, LP (2012)

One of my favourite Finnish bands, the black metal / shoegazer post-rock duo Circle of Ouroborus has been prolific over the last several years and in 2012 alone released two studio albums, several EPs, a split album and a compilation album. “Abrahadabra” is the second of the two studio full-lengths; the title is a reference to the musicians’ interest in the occult and magic, the word being made up of one vowel appearing five times and six consonants, making a total of 11 letters. (In 2011, an album “Eleven Fingers” was released.) The recording under review sees CoO in their melodic dark depressive black metal pop mode with plenty of despair expressed in the lyrics. The band’s style just about bleeds melancholy and a dark feeling of foreboding: the music is often very doomy, vocalist Antti Klemi half-sings / half-chants like a lone Cassandra warning of trouble ahead and the texture of the music and instrumentation has a forlorn air.

The sound of the album is less muddy and steamy than some of the band’s previous work and the drums are actually very crisp to the extent of dominating the music at times. Klemi’s voice, touched with reverb as ever, still sounds awkward but he hits the notes spot-on. The guitars have a slight buzzy sound but the clouds they form are light.

To be honest, no great melodies or riffs hit me on the first hearing and it’s with subsequent repeats that the album’s charms start to dawn on me. “These Days and Years to Kill” is a cry for understanding and empathy if not for help, and on this song at least Klemi finally finds an emotional depth and range in his singing that took a long time over the band’s career to coax and nurture. “Remembrance” is a slower, heavier, doomier track and might be the most metal-sounding song. “Six Hands” has an otherworldly air: Klemi’s voice is dreamy and almost floating away, and the entire song, starting with the beguiling long introduction, is urging listeners to drift away into a trance with it. For once there is a backing vocal as though Klemi’s soul has split into two and a part of it is already advancing into a realm of non-existence.

A couple of reviews I’ve seen rate “Like Silent Meadows” highly and it has a good riff in parts but otherwise it seems no different from the rest of the album. “Dementia Praecox” is the album’s longest track at 9 minutes and it’s more distinctive than the others in its rhythms and beats

I’d rate this album as fairly good but not near the band’s best. Klemi’s singing is sometimes monotonous across songs and the minimalist style of music basically serves as backdrop for the singing and lyrics. The dark melodic post-BM music rarely ventures away into another music genre. Still, CoO followers are nothing if not a devoted bunch and the band’s releases always sell very well so if TSP readers are keen on buying this album, they had better hit the Kuunpalvelus link quickly. The album cover artwork has a dreamy, mystical appearance that might have a secret message behind it.