PLAYLIST with COMMENTS/REVIEWS

[Baglady]

JIM HAYNES "Inconsequential" CD
(...) any further Jim Haynes recommendations are welcome.

Sever CD (Intransitive, 2009)
Electrical Injuries LP (aussenraum, 2017)
Turbulence LP (Verlautbarung, 2022)

Sever differs alot from what he does these days - field recordings are more present  or perhaps more in the spotlight. But you can hear where he's headed already on this way earlier album. Great and cheap!

Electrical Injuries consists of several shorter tracks rather than a few longer pieces, but it's such a strong industrial album. Sort of how one would have HOPED Bianchi to evolve over the years. Just spine chilling evocative masterful stuff. One of my favorite industrial records ever.

Turbulence has the same atmosphere as Electrical Injuries, but is a longform type of affair, where the sounds slowly spiral off into oblivion. A hint of Joe Colley on this one as well, I think. Seriously great stuff.

[minimal.impact]

Word of Life Church SS - Amen (Trapdoor Tapes, Magik Crowbar)

Cult project I have sparingly heard material from. Had this release mixed up with another of theirs in my mind, so went in expecting 'tracks', however was met with a more long form approach to power electronics. Heavy synth throughout with an overall steady pace, only occasionally breaking out into a more cacophonous industrial noise flourishes.

Bain & Marie – Alive in the Fishery (Cretin Tapes)

More now familiar(ish) looped cronch, occasional vocal emanations either live or maybe sampled. Feels at times very put together, and others somewhat improvised. Another project I have heard at least some from prior, however of course as with the above I wanted to hear this on tape before exploring further. There is a video clip for the track 'Knots' I saw on YouTube around the same time I saw this tape first circulating. It featured one of the heavier tracks set to rather mesmerising vintage footage, again looped, of couples casually waltzing such as you may expect to see at an Australian small town community hall at the monthly dance event. There's a few points where the track eerily matches up with the dancers for a moment, but is otherwise unsynchronised.

Striations - Feast Day (Fall of Nature)

Definitely one of those releases which grows on you with subsequent listens. Feels for some reason a lot more minimal than other Striations material I have heard, but definitely has all the hallmarks. No sampled reports or testimonials this time, these tracks feel more akin to direct magical rites. Not sure what production there is on this, the jcard notes that it is studio recordings of material created for shows with Ride for Revenge which would go some way to explaining it's absolute heaviness.

[k.p.g]

Some weekend listens...

Star - Hormone Lemming (History Buff Records [Under Exclusive Distribution Agreement with Gumbal Distribution])
Of all the acts announced for Hospital Fest today, Star would have been the only one I would want to see.  This 10" is a great reminder of why.  It hypnotizes and bulldozes its way through with a thick grime.  It's also one of those rare instances where a record can work being played at any speed!  Tried it at 33rpm today and found myself loving it.  Apparently it has locked grooves on Side B when played at 45, but the player I had it on today skipped right over them on 33.  Talk about a freaky record for such a freaky project.  Star ... fuckin' freak.

Merzbow - Electric Salad (Etherworld)
One of Masami's strongest on both visual & audio end. Love the back photo taken inside his house, with tons of other Merzbow releases thrown about. Hah!  This one takes a while to pick up into the heart of what makes it so great, but it is more than worth taking that journey.  By the time it sounds like he is messing with some jazz/muzak style stuff, you are in the zone.  This is the man at his best in the realm of sampling.

Demoon Skirt - Live France/Spain for the Sleeping (American Tapes)
Olson creaks and cracks what sounds like metal and wood. Maybe it's something else; who knows. It's a drugged up haze as always.

Man is the Bastard/Aunt Mary - Split (Deep Six Records)
Two sides with some abrupt and jarring editing to them. MITB sticks more in the traditional song side with only a little noise. Aunt Mary takes the opposite with spastic blastbeat cut-up that makes it sound like the record is skipping around the entire time. I can see why this side of the split is held with such high regard.

Prurient - Silent Danger (Impotent Arsenal)
Bootleg of 2 rejected comp tracks from 1999. Properly crude, but nowhere near the heights Dom would eventually soar to. Not bad though.

Number of the Beast - Devil's Night in Stereo (Dead Gods)
Current listening as I type this out.  I guess it's not officially out, as no Discogs page has been made for it/it was never announced by the label, but it was for sale on the band's recent American tour, so what am I to do?  That feels like it's out to me.
As far as the noise is concerned - two tracks of dark psychedelia in the long-form setting.  It's very much a "lose yourself and the enveloping vibe" type of release.  Only thing that really knocked me out of the listening so far was one section where they implemented scrap metal in track one. The duo's metal sounds were very good when I saw them this summer, but on record here, it is just drowned in delay and reverb.  Its punch is sorely lacking.  No worry though.  Track 2 already off to a very intriguing start.  Going to see how the rest of this one plays out before the (devil's) night comes to a close.

[DBL]

Émilie Payeur - Moon Sound
Cassette, Pai Tapes And Records, 2019.

This tape was just dropped on my lap, and luckily so as its glitchy and crummy color artwork would've likely kept me from checking it out otherwise. I have no previous encounters with neither the artist nor the label, even though the latter is from Finland. According to the publisher, Émilie Payeur is a multidisciplinary artist who obtained a Master's Degree in electroacoustic music composition at the University of Montreal. This tape was recorded at Titanik-Galleria in Turku in 2017, and to my understanding the only instrument used was the DIMI-A synthesizer by Erkki Kurenniemi. Gear nerds can read more about it here.

The tape offers experimentations with pretty bare, vintage and tangibly electric synth sounds. At times the results are really tasty, with the quite narrow-scoped signals offering surprisingly effective sweeps, rewind-like sounds and interesting drone-like ambience. The artist's experience in electroacoustic music shows in how she can create something interesting using very little, just by combining steady or restlessly breaking synth ambience tones with more rhythmic and physical snippets of sound. At other times it seems likely that the artist is just trying out things, and this can come out as moments of quite dull and random beeping, getting stuck on the most tinnitus-like notes or unmoving oscillator ambient. I would assume Payeur had limited time to get familiar with the instrument and record with it, which makes the fairly short tape's uneven quality understandable. As a listener it's still a little disappointing, though. It's hit & miss, but at least the hits are really nice.