PLAYLIST with COMMENTS/REVIEWS

[FreakAnimalFinland]

V/A "INDUSTRIAL AKTIONS OAKLAND" CD
Syzmic Records
Long compilation CD including 15 artists. CONTROL and CONCRETE MASCARA stood out for me. Lots of decent tracks from the rest, but also some quite "clumsy" tracks, where glitchy sound or slightly uninspired tracks barely present artists at their best. This is the absolute challenge with compilations these days. It seems like one should not "waste" best track to compilation very few will listen, yet collecting CD of "less than best track"... Well, that's why compilations probably are not as interesting. However, I can say that this is decent stuff. Lots of names you can trust deliver decent material even if it wouldn't be their absolute "hit song", hah... BDN, IFOTS, T.O.M.B., Xiphoid Dementia, Swollen Organs, Gnawed, and so on...

BRUME "Drafts of Collision" CD
BRUME "The Sun" CD
BRUME Featuring VRISHIKA "s/t" CD
Old Europa Cafe
Brume is something I have mentioned several times on forum, and it is project I like, but can't name my favorites. Not even "top 5" or so. These three releases, mostly a bit older, doesn't change it. I like the experimental, ethno-percussive, industrial-soundscapes, yet it's hard to really tell which is absolute best. Perhaps Drafts and Collisions is most abstract, and appeals the most. Yet the musical and percussive qualities are what can often make me listen Brume.

S.P.K. "Live at the Crypt / London - April 25 1981" CD
Old Europa Cafe
At first I was like... so digging from bottom of the barrel now? I mean, percussion is thin and distant and quite separate from electronics. Audience chats occasionally fairly loud.... But, soon either I get used to it, or it just gets better. Hard to say. But RAW and PRIMITIVE industrial from the early stages. If one likes stuff like this, it certainly is good to listen to. Not as amazing as the VOD box set, but certainly live set I'm pleased to have on my shelves as CD!

[Peterson]

Red Wine and Sugar "A Population of Indoor Cats" (Index Clean, 2019)
        Must be something in the water down there. Matthew Hopkins, Matthew Revert and these gentlemen sure do manage some strange contrasts in their music. Simultaneously mundane and surreal, minimal and extremely detailed, haunting and oddly comforting. This is perhaps RW&S' best effort yet. A more "musical" approach where vocals/lyrics take a backseat to the collage of sound, there's a lot of emotion in the tonality/melody here (which plays more a role here than on the first LP). The more "concrete" details are of course equally moving and intricate, in particular, the electroacoustic feedback work which plays a role in almost every track. Treatments of the sounds via tape are so delicate and natural as to seem accidental rather than deliberate. Vocals are mixed noticeably quiet compared to previous releases with less emphasis on effects than on tape muffle, with lyrics as intimate and stream-of-consciousness as ever: anxieties, anecdotes, dark humor, therapy-speak. I suspect some of the delivery is from Fieck as well as Groves this time around, but it's hard to tell. Essential realist experimental non-music for regular people.

Amph "Hudson" CS (Joy De Vivre, 2013)
        Well-worth the six-year wait it took to find a copy! Beautiful and desolate Amph as always; weird yet serene atmosphere. More surreal side A, more "industrial krautrock" side B. This might be their most tape-loop oriented stuff other than the sample I've heard from the recent "Control" LP. One of those projects that sounds just as good coming out of an old boombox as from high-end headphones. Only real complaint about this one is that sides seem to end before the tracks actually do. Essential listening (as is the entire output) from a project in no hurry to prove that they never wane in quality, even slightly. Somehow I get the picture some of the "loop fans" who I sometimes hear from who would like this project haven't heard it – to them I say, go get some Amph! (Heh.)

Mercury Hall "The Floor Above" CS (Clandestine Compositions, 2017)
        Despite this being one of my favorite current projects in tape music, for some reason I didn't like this the first time I listened. I don't know what was up with me that week. It's probably that some elements stand a little further out from the rest of MH's more-or-less recognizable sound – the glacial synth drone, the whispery voice work, the linear repeat clunking. Eventually, as with all MH releases, more elements revealed themselves and the way they work together and bleed into one another with further listens. What was at first off-putting became immersive and enjoyable, a feeling I find surprisingly rare in experimental music. The mark of a well-formed if challenging vision, which is basically the point. Weird, unclassifiable stuff.

[totalblack]

Thought Broadcast - Social Acid + Voided

Cryptic rhythmic industrial music in the classic format and produced in the classic method. Dubbed out drum beats, vocals that can be mistaken for synths, and an odour of isolation accompany the tracks on both of these tapes. These recordings are the closest thing that one can get to re-creating the sounds of real deep japanese electronic music circa late 70s- early 80s. Vanity Recordings, Yasuo Sugibayashi, Tomo Akikawabaya. I'm missing a few of the releases from this project, but am on the hunt.

Living Currency - Accessory

Thought Broadcast side project, swapping out synths for a guitar but still maintaining the same atmosphere as the artists main project. Post-mortem music with dub influences. Tape echo units really help to make this cassette sound ghostly, cover art aside. The other tape on Seed Stock sub-label Personnel was great as well - Looking forward to more material from this project.

[ConcreteMascara]

Mania - Untitled 7" - Total Black - first off this sounds really good for a lathe cut. kudos to those involved in making this happy reality. I'm immediately reminded of the revelation that was the Grotesque Mirth which kicked Mania into the next gear. I'm not left quite as floored by this one on first listen as I was on Grotesque Mirth, but impressed nonetheless. I'd say it's an even further refinement of the creeping menace that Mania can do so well. lower energy, but more atmosphere and a lot of room for the individual sounds. almost Skin Crime territory. and the vocals on the a-side are nicely modulated as they go along which I really like. If you dig Mania, I hope you picked this one up before it sold out.

Solmania - Evil Bed CD - Alchemy - just came in the mail today. as far as "major" Solmania release go I'm now only missing the first full-length on Alchemy and the latest. Even without a complete collection, I think I can say Solmania is my favorite Japanese noise artist/unit at this point, which surprises even me. I certainly listen to more Solmania than Japanese noise artist (excluding Linekraft). but I read a description of this album claiming it was the one where they really let it rip and deliver the harshness. I can confirm. it's definitely the "heaviest" i've heard by them but still avoids that full on wall of noise assault. so many crooked loops and squiggly sounds come in and out. layers of crispy distortion. seasick internal rhythms. but definitely fuller sounding here, more all encompassing. I think the first track is best with its nice build in and really nice outro, but there's not a weak one in the bunch. loving it.

[wonderland_media]

Sutcliffe Jugend - Live Assault 01 (RRRecords)

Got this a little while back from Ron and recently it has been in rotation constantly in my car stereo. I assume this took place sometime around the "Victim as Beauty"/"When Pornography is No Longer Enough" era (though I don't care to actually check the dates on those releases). Absolutely love the ambient intro music as they come on stage, though there is some type of low end crackle that shows up periodically through the quieter/less noisy sections which is a little irritating. Otherwise, for a live recording I'm absolutely floored by this release. First track is straight high end feedback worship reminiscent of the early stuff on Campaign and We Spit on Their Graves with manic vocals from one of the earlier mentioned releases. Great part midway through the first track where there is a bass pulse followed rhythmically with lines like "I wish, I wish your mother could be here to see this!" Absolutely fantastic. Second track a little more low end, rhythmic, with intense and clear vocals delivering a nihilistic diatribe on religion (at least as I heard it). Third track more rhythmic sections, high end feedback worship, brutal vocal delivery, more of the same. Love hearing the crowd's response after sections with no vocals, can only imagine what was happening on stage beforehand. Overall, an outstanding live album.

[cr]

After Pusher trilogy now another threefold punishment:
Bizarre Uproar: Liha Evankeliumi 3CD - damn I like these, and my neighbours have to like them too, haha.

[Bloated Slutbag]

Treriksröset ‎– Kristen Musik Från Rågsved
Dutiful submission of faith from Frere Carlsson. Jesus, this shit's fierce! Starts in the familiar Trerik mold: thick rich chocolaty. Fat densely packed fudgily punchily- rapturous, rupturous, sphinct-rupture a la bulging bass-rapture. Ripping spiky-headed bulbous bung-fury plunging the tightly constricted depths without so much as a get thee behind me Satan. Then, well... well, my brothers and sisters in Filth, suffice it to say: thy holes be done.
   Seriously though, if I may take this moment to curtail the soddly digression. What we have, here, essentially, is five-minute tip of the hat to the Trerik we know and love, followed by long, hard, downright nasty digression into shockingly severe ear-bleed severity. Toward the end, several loads of filth are hastily shoveled onto the platter, but no. Nice try there. The damage has already been done. Treriksröset will never for me be the same again.
   Still, those opening five minutes are quite, um, bilge encrusted. Think jazz, think punk atti-FUCK OFF!  Whoops, wrong piece of wax. WANKER! Sorry bout that. Think filth, think shit, Real Shit(tm), thick turds of green-tinged glistening putrescence. Reams of it. Think of all that good stuff, forced with patient and loving cruelty into packered up, bone dry, earholes. Now comes large, spiky, dildo-shaped object. A carefully selected length of cactus might do. Okay m'boyo: ram that fucker through. Just ram it. Keep ramming it. No cheating, no stops for air. Replay it all in slow motion, dragging out the lower end, letting the bilge-loaded bass urgings surge and buckle. Pay special attention to the most deliciously agonizing intervals of pure aural torture, the ground-down grit, the throat-fisted gristle, the unvarnished crunch-up. Feast of flatulent overload, overbilge, overbulge... buncha stuff pushing hard to escape its unyielding, pitch-black, confines.
   Now by all this you may imagine high scores in the areas of HARSH and RAW. For the latter, at least, we are talking at least an eight. Very rumpled crumbling rumpsty pumpsty, dumpster-ready power shit-tronics, heavy on the meat-gristle, flits of feedback squeaking through, plus what could be backmasked voice reciting the Lord's Prayer somewhere way down the mix. As the screechier feedback elements start to dominate so too a certain deferral to HARSH, by which point we are about ready to cue the remainder of the plate.
   The remainder of the plate, as alluded to earlier, serves something so far removed from expectation that I almost ripped off my Trerik tee in exasperation. Fuck you, stupid shirt. Alright, well, in all honesty there is nothing here that makes me imagine anyone other than The Carlsson at work. Just that the man seems to be indulging a newfound respect for TOTAL EAR RAPE. This at least may be apparent in apparent commitment to hearing damage proper. Crank the shit and shave another couple years off yer diminishing ability to hear. A prevalence of mids n highs, the highs occasioned a good several intervals to vent at their ear-bleed scorchingest. Still fairly tightly reigned-in range of materials and frequencies on hand, concentrated bursts dragged out to achieve almost droning, feedback-laden, viscosity. Severely pitched, screeching, feedback-laden, droning viscosity. I'm not going anywhere says EAR RAPE. I can do this all day. Your audiologist will thank me later.
   With great trepidation comes the flip side. The title track. Plainly the main event. Ka-blow! Sharp percussive hit, extended out to continuous mid-riff bludger. Avalanche of rough-cut granite chunks inundate close-walled crevices, drilling fairly straight-ahead groove through the center of the aural cavities. Feeback flecks again fight the rougher edges, compressed layers of analog-cum-possible-vocal incursion duking it out for dominance. EAR RAPE takes a bit of a back seat as more bottom ended crunch starts to surge into the field. Sudden dumping of several shovel-loads full of grit, fat meaty bilge-dongs of tracheal choke, hammering ill-effectually against iced-smooth metallic grind, to net sheering rasp of blistering scree. It is the blistering scree that ultimately wins the day, EAR RAPE served cold, almost stealth-like, aural passages reporting damage of the possibly permanent persuasion.
   That was three days ago, my brothers and sisters in Filth, and the shit...just...refuses to stop. I seem condemned now to serve this punishment for my sins for all eternity, locked into an unforgiving groove of malevolent repetitive strangulation, burble-retched wretched epilepsy, scorched to Kingdom Numb.
   Thy holes be done. On earth as it is in Mikawa's stinky butthole. Amen.

[ekastaka]

White Medal - East Riding Cart Burial
One of the most consistent black metal projects. This recent full length offers a bit more melody and catchiness compared to the last two LPs. At first it took me by surprise, but after a couple listens I like it as much as preceding material. Songs traverse through triumphant passages sounding both ancient and contemporary at once. Really memorable and great tracks.

Thor's Hammer - Fidelity Shall Triumph
Absolutely strong and hateful classic. Vocals resonate with the powerful music quite well. I'm not one to be all about "the RIFFS \m/" when it comes to black metal, but the leads on this are absolutely superb. To me, this is the standard bearer of the Polish scene. Also good knowing he never cucked like Behemoth and others. NOTHING BUT HATE.

[bitewerksMTB]

Linekraft ‎– Delusional Disorder

Received yesterday, play last night. It's a good one. I'm late to the game and have the recent LP but have not played it yet. Going to have to find the Black Plagve cd along with whatever else that doesn't cost an arm and a leg.


VERIKIIMA
by BIZARRE UPROAR


Listening to it on Bandcamp right now... Vocals on first track are nice & the second track is just excellent with the constant hum, processed metal/voice/whatever..

[FallOfNature]

Graustich - Morality Ends LP
Recieved in a trade just yesterday. I've listened to earlier releases a few times each and after 2 spins I believe this has surpassed them all and stepped the project up to another level. Get onto this if you have not already.

Geheimnisvoll ‎– Venomous Sorcery Through Hidden Darkness tape/digital
Tape arrived recently, but I've listened to it 1000 times via bandcamp already. Best way I can describe this is early Black Funeral / Xasthur type vocals meets French style Black Metal similar to Seigneur Voland, Bekhira, etc etc. Really good and a notch above the rest in the current wave (and ten notches above utter trash like Hand Of Glory)

[Bloated Slutbag]

Incapacitants – Zouvneree cd (Alchemy)
Holy laser noise, Batman!

Erm, still reading? A word then on the previous missive, Survival Of The Laziest. SOTL is, put simply, a ripper. Very pleasant surprise, the best of the banker buds in the better part of a decade. A fine fresher as to why, when so many of the old guard have relinquished their claim to the noise throne, the grip of the The Mikawa (and Kosakai) is as firm as ever. Valuable lesson, too, for all them young whipper snappers, rushing about from one release to the next. Meanwhile here come the Kings, to casually stroll onto the scene and, to just as casually, rip shit up. The ripping up of the shit owes much, perhaps ironically, to the blown out crunch textures of 90s classics like DDDD and Asset Without Liability, fed though with seemingly newfound penchant for wildly dynamic flailing, a purely - and almost perfectly - rapturous reflection of near cosmic chaos such as might be witnessed in the live incarnation.
   Now, I will argue two things. First, the Incaps greatness, and essential brutality, has always been in the studio- re No Risk No Return, FLS Syndrome, What A Stupid Bureaucrat!!!. Second, the dynamic variation has always been at the flailingest extremes, if somewhat submerged in the cosmic ooze.
   The difference here, with Zouvneree, is with the subtlety- or total lack thereof. If you can make it through the initial laser fight you'll find room dynamics harnessed to quite persuasive effect. The effect is of very live-in-the-flesh re-incarnation despite the range of digital effects in the offing. Near silent intervals (by Incaps standards!) humming in wide open acoustic space. A note too on the sheer alien oddity of outcome. Whatever criticisms or cringe-ings one may be inclined to propose- and in the wake of SOTL one may be inclined to propose plenty- this is still, frankly, unlike anything else I've heard. The Mikawa once divulged that the noise comes from outer space. With the prevalence of open-ended Sun Ra-ish wheedling oscillations some might envisage incoming signals from Saturn. (Personally, I've always preferred Uranus. Mine's purple btw.)
   So too the second and third tracks. Development Hell In A Cell is like a digital rework of Half Acoustic Night Of 80, trading steel bars for phased piano-like percussive prong, plink, and dong. Development slow and unsteady, intervals of drawn out whine punctured by horn-like electro honk. Air-raid sirens keen over drizzling psyche-streams of wet-flushed drainage funnel, only in the very closing minutes to achieve a full out and proper raging, unabated as track the third rips it up a notch. "Ear Health By Stealth." Riiiight, of course. A harshnoise outfit that cares about the permanent damage so severely being done. Naturally. That persistent ringing in the ears? Sign of a good aural workout. Smoke rising from the speakers? Freshens the air. But all in a days work from Their Royal Majesties. Per track two gaping holes again hollow out the center to render a fluttering half acoustic in-consisistency, even as the overarching dynamic flails about with grossly erratic, spectrum-length, swings. Let's not undersell the harsher commitments shrieking through the gapes. Full bore, full spectrum, psych wailings flailing at ringing holes with all epileptic fervor.
   (A side note that if you order direct from Alchemy you get eleven minutes worth of "raw materials" on cdr, upper register squeals against fuller wind tunnel droning. Nice to have, hardly essential.)
   That's three tracks over thirty-eight minutes. Now to the thirty-three minute closer, live and much in the flesh. What to say, if you liked the studio efforts, you'll love this. Essentially the same range of materials, oscillations, frequencies, tendencies, turned up to eleven. So perhaps to concede that any sense of space is pretty much crowded out, obliterated, in the massed clusters of overload. Nothing, let's be clear, to match the overbilged extremes of SOTL, but certainly unencumbered by any artsy-fartsy need to futz about with acoustic space. Much more of the DENSE and the HARMONICA. A marked SPASTIC inflection in the sense of two elder statesmen completely losing their shit. Bulging burly undertones overtones swinging up under over and through one another with very little regard for anything less than total cosmic rapture. Supernovas of exploding sonics, orgies of erratz excreta hitting, blasting point blank at frenzied fanatics, splattering the venue with ozone charged particles of exuberant hysteria magnifique. Ho hum. Just another day in the life of the BushBashWhackers.

[Baglady]

I love Zouvneree. It's not for everyone though. But it's not an entirely new direction for Incapacitants, what's new is the magnitude in which they do it. You can trace this particular style of theirs back to the 1980's. Listen to "terrible hallucinations" or "It's a blue day, bloody girl", both from the (mandatory) T.MIKAWA - I, Noise 2CD set, for example. It's not all supernova chaos as in Zouvneree, quite the contrary, but it's there. What they've done on Zouvneree is they've picked up that certain strain that's always been present in their work, sometimes buried and and sometimes more audible and out in the open, and expanded upon that certain strain and multiplied it by ten. An early thought of mine when hearing this for the first time was that it sounds as if some early Swedish electronic music pioneer, such as Sven-Erik Bäck or Leo Nilson, tried to do harsh noise.

[Bloated Slutbag]

Damn, I'm gonna have to to re-listen to the suggested items from I, Noise (agree- mandatory!). As Baglady may suggest, or as I maybe wanted to suggest but didn't quite, Zouvrenee seems to occupy its own particular, peculiar, space- somewhere possibly, if only occasionally, outside of noise. Or perhaps to say that, when you've been in it for so long it is also possible to be outside it. For instance, to be completely oblivious to what one should and shouldn't do. I mean, pretty much any contributor here would be at least somewhat acquainted with the sorts of things that are and are not frowned upon. And then here come the Kings to, decisively, not give a shit one way or another. I think the reference to early Swedish pioneers is astute. I've at best passing familiarity with the names, but Mikawa often references semi-obscure shit from... well, if not that far back, at least from the sixties. To draw parallels or connections where I would never have otherwise thought to draw. Also: Borbetomagus!

edit edit
For another reference to fairly straight-ahead harsh-ish noise that occasionally occupies a space some steps off center, The Return Of Gomikawa Fumio could be worth a re-listen. If I recall correctly, the main of it is the result of Gomi-Kosakai post edit / mix, less the Mikawa there.

[Bloated Slutbag]

Cosey Fanni Tutti - Tutti
Leaving aside the essential purpose here- to revisit my twelve year-old schoolboy crush - it is hard to find fault. Kick off into the expected ice-cold disco beats but then the submergence to latent blackened unwind. All the higher scores to reside almost entirely in atmosphere, an atmosphere of repetitive down-pitched skulk, soft sensual slither suggestive of sedulous trance induction, bippily boppily incantation, persuasion, you gotta get some, feel me, feel this, wet whispered wafts sliding silken-like across the satiny ruffles, fabrics shucked n jiving, grooving, groovin, deep deep blue velvet, it takes me down, wraps so tight, around.

[Zeno Marx]

That Tutti is indeed mellow and fluid.  Had me in Clock DVA territory at times, and in others, I was wondering if it was a Hearts of Space/Fathom release.  Not a bad album at all.