PLAYLIST with COMMENTS/REVIEWS

[Andrew McIntosh]

Just picked up the Nord "NG Tapes" re-release today, and (apart from my usual misgivings about vinyl) have been blasting it hard all day. There's just something about Nord's blatantly blatant use of simple synth warbles and noise that gets to me each and every time. More re-releases from this project would be well welcome.

[FreakAnimalFinland]

ZYKLON SS tape
Unrest
Insanity of packaging is the first thing. I think this probably goes right there with very top things. Zyklon-B comp, MSBR kind of things. Lots of hand made work, lots of weight, lots of difficulty in handling. Broken glass, rusty nails, etc in metal box, where tape is buried underneath all that...  And material itself? Really nice. I think its harder from tape than some online samples. In my head this connects instantly to some instrumental STREICHER works, MANIA and do I dare to say that opening piece on B-side is very close to '94/95 kind of Grunt stuff where bass & kind of spontanous sounding electronic noises meet. But most of all, it has heaviness, hand made & metal junk dominated feel. Obviously links to Hal Hutchinson's metal junk works, but more to darker and poisonous direction. Shorter tracks too, which I like. Definitely a must!

KATHARSIS TRANSSI MEDITAATIO tape
Ikuisuus
Finnish obscurity. Not 100% sure about name either. But I think it is the name of project and the release. Originally 3x tape box self financed by artists, now one long tape on Ikuisuus. Experimental synth works, drone, guitars, percussions,. collecting 4-track tape recordings between 2006-2012 together. Its not noise. More atmospheric music that leans towards kraut experiments, old hippie synth muzak, psychedelia etc. but nevertheless surprisingly good!

[tiny_tove]

ZYKLON SS tape
Unrest
Insanity of packaging is the first thing. I think this probably goes right there with very top things. Zyklon-B comp, MSBR kind of things. Lots of hand made work, lots of weight, lots of difficulty in handling. Broken glass, rusty nails, etc in metal box, where tape is buried underneath all that...  And material itself? Really nice. I think its harder from tape than some online samples. In my head this connects instantly to some instrumental STREICHER works, MANIA and do I dare to say that opening piece on B-side is very close to '94/95 kind of Grunt stuff where bass & kind of spontanous sounding electronic noises meet. But most of all, it has heaviness, hand made & metal junk dominated feel. Obviously links to Hal Hutchinson's metal junk works, but more to darker and poisonous direction. Shorter tracks too, which I like. Definitely a must!

Quick one to quote in everything.
I was very impressed when I opened the package.
Best artwork in along time, gave me the feel to be back to when these sort of complex handmade artworks were one of the great things to follow noise and related.
Soundwise is perfect and deliver the goods at its best.
One of my fave releases for 2014.

[TS]

Agreed on above statements regarding Zyklon SS. Heavy in sound and presentation. Safe to say this will stay in my tape deck for a while. Loving the shameless samples of machine guns and artillery, and of course, proud German proclamations.

[kwk]

Hal Hutchinson - Wreckage Installations And Metalworks cd on Crucial Blaze.

a monster.

[ANDROPHILIA]

just listening
N. s/t  Urashima reprint

incredible penetrating minimal vibe from one of the few to have learned the lesson of Atrax Morgue

[FreakAnimalFinland]

KLEISTWAHR "This world is not my home" CD
Fourth Dimension Records
New CD from Gary Mundy. I was quite skeptical at first. And maybe due my slight prejudice and too low listening volume, it felt ok, but nothing phenomenal. Not sure whether one should call this "phenomenal" anyways, but revisiting few days later with proper blasting volume, revealed obvious strengths of the album. First of all: Project is not retro crap, but investigating new possibilities and new technology, but still relying on all trademarks of Gary Mundy as well as Kleistwahr past. Distortion. Eerie keyboard drones, guitar noise, feedback, howling and wailing vocals. Distorted whispering. In theory its 7 songs here (titled in cover), but CD is one continous track without any index numbers. It flows well through entire album, and despite all the multieffects and digital distortion, it's not unpleasant. Certainly if you can handle later days Prurient (before dance) or later days Whitehouse or SJ etc, you will have no problems with this either. Infact, Mundy manages to pull out more textured, more interesting and diverse sonic elements than most artists just mentioned. 300 copies in cardboard gatefold cover in classic Broken Flag design style, but modern computer lettering.

[bitewerksMTB]

CONCRETE MASCARA "the pursuit of hedonism in a police state" tape- holy shit! most violent vocals from any U.S. PE/HN act, ever? super impressive packaging & booklet. pretty much a must-own release.

PUCE MARY "ultimate hypocrisy" tape- this is good, only low point for me was the 2nd track on s2. i was led to believe her vocals would be like "woman with sand in her cunt" but i haven't heard that yet (i have two more of her tapes to listen to)...

[Human Larvae]

where to get the concrete mascara tape?

[Duncan]

Well, I finally got round to spinning my copy of the long awaited Hard Panning comp and have mixed feelings...

All of this is based on a first listen so I've not really absorbed it properly yet, but it does unfortunately seem to suffer from something I saw mentioned elsewhere about modern cut up noise sounding all very similar due to the same editing techniques being apparent in each track.  There is always the chance that it could just be my untrained ear, but many of the tracks blend together in such a way that you often can't tell when one ends and another begins, which is not really helped by the instant transitions from piece to piece.  I think that if only a couple of seconds between tracks had been inserted there would be a dramatically improved quality to this disc.  I appreciate the way that the curators have tried to possibly give the album a feel of continued flow, but it kind of detracts for me and prevents each piece from standing on its own merits.

So, this - at least to my tastes - kind of tarnishes the whole experience BUT I wouldn't say that any track on there was bad.  Everything at the very least delivers the kind of frantic, cut sound you are expecting and there are many great moments that make you stop what you're doing and give a sultry groan, perhaps even a fist pump or two if listening on the weekend.  Stand out stuff from Facialmess and Lettera 22, with parts of MAAAAAAAAA, Kazuma Kubota, Encephalophonic & Developer catching my attention too.  As I say, something of worth in every single track though.  Seems to be some sort of uncredited 'secret' track at the end, not sure what it is but I can take it or leave it.

So there you go, sorry if this is a negative first mention. I'm looking forward to revisiting and finding out if I'm full of shit.

[SiClark]

where to get the concrete mascara tape?

I have a couple copies left if you are interested. Details - http://blackpsychosis.blogspot.co.uk/p/blog-page.html

[scumwalski]

Well, I finally got round to spinning my copy of the long awaited Hard Panning comp and have mixed feelings...

All of this is based on a first listen so I've not really absorbed it properly yet, but it does unfortunately seem to suffer from something I saw mentioned elsewhere about modern cut up noise sounding all very similar due to the same editing techniques being apparent in each track.  There is always the chance that it could just be my untrained ear, but many of the tracks blend together in such a way that you often can't tell when one ends and another begins, which is not really helped by the instant transitions from piece to piece.  I think that if only a couple of seconds between tracks had been inserted there would be a dramatically improved quality to this disc.  I appreciate the way that the curators have tried to possibly give the album a feel of continued flow, but it kind of detracts for me and prevents each piece from standing on its own merits.

So, this - at least to my tastes - kind of tarnishes the whole experience BUT I wouldn't say that any track on there was bad.  Everything at the very least delivers the kind of frantic, cut sound you are expecting and there are many great moments that make you stop what you're doing and give a sultry groan, perhaps even a fist pump or two if listening on the weekend.  Stand out stuff from Facialmess and Lettera 22, with parts of MAAAAAAAAA, Kazuma Kubota, Encephalophonic & Developer catching my attention too.  As I say, something of worth in every single track though.  Seems to be some sort of uncredited 'secret' track at the end, not sure what it is but I can take it or leave it.

So there you go, sorry if this is a negative first mention. I'm looking forward to revisiting and finding out if I'm full of shit.

Wow, it's actually the first such detailed opinion on the compilation. Thank you so much for taking the time to share your thoughts in detail.
I'd like to address some of the points you raised.
First of all, the main idea behind the compilation was (in a nutshell) to document the evolution of the genre. In my personal, subjective opinion, the cut-up subgenre is an area where the most interesting things happen. That is due to the fact that most artist who operate in that area utilize a number of interesting compositional and production methods (again, in a nutshell).

I definitely agree that some of the techniques such as drills/micro-loops, hard panning, silence/noise contrasts etc. are omnipresent but at the same time every track on that compilation has a significant degree of originality to it. To me, there's a huge difference between, say, FACIALMESS and Jake Vida or T.E.F. and Kazumoto Endo. All of those tracks are easily distinguishable because they have a different flow, atmosphere and simply sound different in general.
The decision to press a gapless CD was difficult but both Sergey and I believed that we should make it as condensed and as powerful as possible. Introducing 1 or 2 sec. gaps might cause the compilation to lose the punch and unrelenting energy we wanted it to have.

All in all, I believe that the comp might require several focused listening sessions because of the sheer amount of extremely varied content.

Again, thank you for sharing your opinion Duncan, it means a lot.

[metalpunk]

Yeah, that review wasn't bad at all. As Dawid said before the decision to make this non-stop CD wasn't easy and to set up a tracklist in general. We had listened the stuff in many different orders, personally I had listened at least about 50 times the whole thing.
The idea was to make it "in your face", noise without stops, from the start to the end with proper flow and energy. This CD for sure needs multiple spinnings and to my mind it's one of the greatest things about the stuff. It has a lot of everything so you can discover it again and again and this non-stop noise flow force you to listen to it carefully, holding the tracklist in you hand, huh... 
When I listened to it for a first time I also had mixed feelings, but after 10+ listenings I started to love it.

And yes, this compilation was about the contemporary cut-up noise, and shows well how things looks like in this camp nowadays. I'm a big fan of older cut-up style like earlier K2 or some MACRONYMPHA style, but what we should do if nobody submited a single track like this? But tracks like JAAKKO VANHALA, ENCEPHALOPHONIC, MAAAA and let's say LETTERA 22 and MANTICHORA are much different from the rest which is for sure very spastic and modern. Anyway everything about this compilation is very subjective and for sure everyone will find something for him there. We are happy to see more hate or love about this.

[Duncan]

Cheers for the replies lads. It is one of those difficult cases where even if your own ears don't quite wrap around the end results you still know that everything is there because of careful planning, thought and consideration, so maybe I should have stressed more that my criticisms stem from quite specific tastes...what I want to see and hear from a comp etc,  rather than attempts to pin objective standards of what works and doesn't on the album.

Anyway, I'm keen to listen back and see what changes.  Wonder what others think?

[Zeno Marx]

VASILISK "Tribal Zone" CD on Steinklang
needs more playtimes, but pretty good stuff! Considering it's c. 20 years from the old industrial style Vasilisk, this is very good comeback on modern standards!

This is a really good album.  For the most part, it is more refined than old Vasilisk.  "Riot In Lhasa" is a powerful, Dead Can Dance-like track.  I can listen to that kind of tribalism for hours.  Lots of ghostly current throughout the album.  I wouldn't call this "industrial".  It's too dark to be considered world music, but it is firmly rooted there.  Also reminds me of Tuu, Temps Perdu?, and what some of the ethno-ambient artists toyed with in the 90s.