Zeno, much thanks for the Nebris recommendation. Sometimes a link is worth a thousand downloads. I confess I was completely unfamiliar with the work of James Hamilton; found his Bandcamp, got Bleak Angels, halfway through the second track I realized I needed it all. I've since acquired everything I can, which from Bandcamp means over 10 items, several of them released in January of this year -- all excellent. Not particularly harsh, rather a controlled, painstakingly applied, tempestuousness, only the merest hint of boiling over. Mr Hamilton refers to it at one juncture as "power acoustics", but I can see where he's coming from. Sources include branches, stones, hailstorms, wind, bones, all brought to life with a compositional skill that is undeniable. I'm not sure I've ever heard anything quite like it; if so, not anything as well executed. Wonderful textural studies. Nebris has occupied the bulk of my listening over the past few days, in between Loud Louder Loudest sessions... it has been a very good week. Of most immediate relation to this thread, as they are of the slightly louder persuasion, I would recommend: Shear, Erg, Sarfa, Trace. In that order.
Listening to one F.Douris, tape with no cover, the inevitable fate of all special artwork releases. The aqua-blue side sounds like a field recording taken on a busy street corner, but with amplified noise – possibly the acoustics of the actual recording – almost completely submerging the concrete elements. The effect is that of said field recording being conducted in an heavily trafficked expressway tunnel, with what could be heavy machine noises fighting shudders of ill-tempered wind-swell. If someone told me this was an early Vivenza outing I'd readily believe it. The yellow side might be an out-take from his lp on RRRecords, but with much longer stretches of tape hiss punctuated with the occasional electronic fart.
S-Core. Don't think this guy needs much introduction. There's at least one SI thread devoted to him. I associate the material with 80's industrial / tape culture; but I think his best work, and that most applicable to this topic, comes in 90's, in the latter half of his career. S-Core could be my go-to unit for very heavy, industrial-strength atmospheres; low-key, grim, free of melodrama, certainly not hesitant to noise it up, and always willing (a bit too willing, perhaps) to experiment. Given that he tends to favor relatively short tracks, even the less "successful" experiments are interesting in their given context. Flavors of ritual "ambient", but a very peculiar kind of ritual, devoted to a god of decaying machinery, with an ambiance of rusted out sewage drains. My pick for Ferial Confine and similar would be Deformation (1993), in which harder-edged electronic scrapings attempt to scour their way through the densely forested confines of an unyielding factory machination. Or something. Shedder (1999) also up there. But most of the later stuff is stellar. Gush. Sediment. Tarnish. My Candle Has Died. Several highlights throughout.
tinnitustimulus, thanks for clearing up the One Dark Eye thing. Funny, but in all his rambling correspondence, Roemer never once credited ODE to Stella. The first time I remember specific credit being allotted Stella was in response to a review I wrote for Macro's excellent Crack tape – one of their better efforts from the period - in which I half-jokingly suggest that Macro were trying to steal Incapacitants' thunder*.
*EDIT Heh.
