PLAYLIST with COMMENTS/REVIEWS

[eyestrain]

Un Festín Sagital - Deimos (Black Horizons): Bestias Solares was just straight Zuehl worship (a great thing in and of itself), but this next offering gets a little more inspired. While the vocalizations still have that Zuehlian structure, but synthesized guitars and rhythms throughout the tape make for something not so prog rock. The flip side is a bit different; a sinister quasi-Persian, quasi-Bo Hansson, dark-kraut ride and a possessed, mocking keyboard piece that finishes it off. No vocals on this side I believe. Definitely a killer tape, and makes me even more excited for their bit coming out on Beta-lactam Ring soon.

Swans - To Be Kind (Young God): This was nothing like the wet fart I found their recent live show to be, but I'm also definitely just burnt out on Gira's stardom. This disc is more interesting in that there's something besides way too long post-rockish 30 minute tracks (although they teeter on the edge a few times). A handful of the songs, particularly the first few, are something very fresh and there's lots of instrumentation you wouldn't expect - VCO warbles, a new approach to vocals. Things also aren't as outright goofy as their live jams were, but again they teeter on the edge once and a while. I liked The Seer for being emotionally evocative, but it was way too drawn out. This album does little for me in that department, and while it's cool to listen to, I guess I'm just over the hype. Not bad. Not great.

Mike Weis - Don't Know, Just Walk (Type): First off, I love the cover - captures something really relevant to my childhood night walks. Weis was diagnosed with prostate cancer prior to the recording of this album - all solo - so that gives some perspective on his purpose/process. I'm not familiar with his group works,  but this is a really spectacular album made mostly from drums. Field recordings and tape, amongst some other things I suppose, are sparingly used throughout as well. I'd expect a drummer to work with rhythm regularly, but Weis barely does. When it happens, its not much to make your head bob, but to bring you back to a stable ground. You lose one within the drifting, dark ambiance of the album. I'd say this could easily appeal to the Cyclic Law, CMI, etc junkie. The work is very meditative, not in a Radigue or Pitre sense... something else entirely. Also love the field recordings of crickets and cicadas interspersed that, again, make this album a memory of my childhood in some way. Really great album.

Santa Espina - Blue Yesterday (Black Horizons): I thought I was investing in some sort of Kirschstein or Nový Svět-type release, but that's not really the case at all. In some ways, you might argue that you can hear Chappaqua in certain places, but that's a stretch even. This is very meticulously crafted dark ambient/industrial, although it's never either of these things in their essence, with a folk touch that is masterfully added all throughout. A wonderful, lusty female voice carries the whole 60 minutes through. It's just all dreary and I love that.

Perispirit - Spiritual Church Movement (Digitalis): Had to check this out after Mikko's mention. This really does have that heavy "digital" sound, but I would agree that it spoils nothing. It's like if Kassel Jaeger and Lionel Marchetti collaborated; graceful spontaneity, never cartoonish. Gotta check out more.

Aaron Dilloway - Beauty Bath (Rockatansky): Admittedly, this is the first Dilloway album I've every purchased - the breadth of his discography always made it sorta impenetrable for me. Wish I wouldn't have waited so long. There's something out-of-time about this LP. It's got similarities with others, but there's so much tasteful variety - tape experiments to almost-outright harsh noise - that it's like a mixtape to my love of noise (and noise-like) music. Really, really digging this. Any recommendations on where to start with Dilloway? Regardless of whether or not they sound like this album.

[Baglady]

Aaron Dilloway - Beauty Bath Any recommendations on where to start with Dilloway? Regardless of whether or not they sound like this album.

I'm no expert on Dilloway either, but Modern Jester is a challenging but rewarding work. Corpse On Horseback is more accessible, and well... Bad Dreams is some seriously great music, and it's available for 3-5$.
I'm sure others can fill me in with Dillo recommendations here?!

[P-K]

Concrete Mascara "the pursuit of hedonism..." tape
...imho price seemed kind of high for 'tape+some inserts' but no complaints now i'm holding it, online pics don't do it justice, it's big! very nice package, awesome artwork by Si, style most don't link to powerelectronics but certainly works for me (must dig into his other work)....good tape, compared to the Unter & F&V work less raw & more contained but very good. several spins. solid theme. recommended.

[FreakAnimalFinland]

STAHLNOY PAKT / RATHOF DACHAU split 10"
Der Angriff
Great split. Killer material from SP. Utterly noble feel of mixing blunt industrial noises with classical "state art" kind of music.  Orchestration, speeches. Industrial music to the bone! RD is some of the best of their works I think. Trademark style of theirs. Two layers of sound and vocals. Rhyth and synth pulsations.

THOROFON "Privat" 10"
Achtung Baby!
Uh.. some good stuff here, but most of all this is the disco industrial in old fashioned style.

BIZARRE UPROAR "Vihameditaatio" LP
Urashima
Great new album! When thinking how much more band can progress without losing identity, BU has proven than basically forver. Shift from style to another happens little by little and basically BU continues from where he left with previous album, but takes it further - and may I say better! Better sound on a-side than previous album. And B-side here takes band to new kind of sounds. Essential.

Sonic Violence  "Transfixion" LP
Dreamtime
1992 industrial music from UK. Occasionally I think Godflesh, but then nah.. Not that good or heavy to justify reference.

AARON DILLOWAY "Concealed" LP
No Fun
I see people talking of Dilloway, and also quite curious of what exactly is his best works. This isn't. This isn't bad either, but it's kind of typical tape loop session with rugged broken tape loops of semi-musical elements, slowly decaying, and appears like on longer session cut on two sides. Not bad, but heard better from him.

[FreakAnimalFinland]

Rudolf Eb.er  "Rudolf Eb.er's Runzelstirn & Gurgelstock" 12"
Sieben
The Sieben label is run by A-Musik's Georg Odijk and Frank Dommert (Entenpfuhl, Sonig), who said that the "basic idea was to release techno-lookalike-maxisingles with really extreme music". So what we have here is white disco sleeve 12", only artwork is printed labels of vinyl. What more to say that good stuff what sounds exactly like R&G tends to sound like! Maybe even notch more abrupt cuts. Sounds nearly don't even happen because they are cut out so quick. Insane.

S.T.A.B. ELECTRONICS "Instruments On Operating Mutant Women" LP
Urashima
Killer! Hard to compare with past material, what album is the best, but this certainly mixes together oppressive industrial strength of more Germanic heavy electronics style and perhaps lethality of Atrax Morgue like synth minimalism on background pulses, but maintaining filthy and noisy edge on aggro vocals, feedbacks and distortions! Especially very nice what how vocals saturate among the sound. It's kind of weird to think all STAB vinyls are c.100 copies editions and therefore came and disappeared? Don't be late with this!

[ddmurph]

re: dilloway, my favourites are infinite lucifer, modern jester, chain shot and the rope and the dogs. as a starting point, i'd probably recommend the rope and the dogs, it's one of the most diverse dilloway recordings i've heard, a really good overview of various styles. seems to be still available cheap (~8/9 euro) direct from hitomi 777was666 also ... http://777was666.com/777.html ... also, i haven't seen him in a good few years but he's delivered some of the best live sets i've ever seen ... totally hypnotic/trance-inducing/shamanistic/whatever you want to call it.

currently listening to lily greenham - lingual music (paradigm discs) ... amazing sound-poetry/tape-music dating from the late 60's through to the mid 80's. not much to say really. pretty essential if you're a fan of bernard heidsieck, ake hodell, etc.

i think i'm gonna do a paradigm binge after the lily greenham. such a consistently great label ... personal highlights: adam bohman bunhill row lp (absolute all-time favourite lp!), all the morphogenesis discs, the trevor wisharts, anal magic & rev. dwight frizzell, gravity adjusters expansion band, daphne oram, the pauline oliveros electronic music disc, lafms i.d. art

[P-K]

VCMG : ssss cd ...the Yazoo and Depeche Mode guys doing instrumental synth-noodling, minimal techno, ...some excellent tracks with pounding pulse and fat basslines. Some boring tracks but can imagine it would work on a club system.

[FreakAnimalFinland]

SPEARHEAD "Stand your ground" LP
Barracuda
Italian label put out LP version of debut back in 2002. UK studio project of members of Avalon and English Rose. If you know how those two bands sound like, you can pretty much guess exactly how Spearhead sounds like. Trad british rac all the way.

SPECULUM FIGHT "Live in Tokyo '95" LP
What The... ? Records
Intense noise drone. It starts very piercing and broken and develops into kind of harmonic and droning, yet almost painful and noisy sound. Good quality live recording! Very good.

MSBR / Richard Ramirez "Negative / Offensive" LP
Ecstatic Peace!
Tribute to The New Blockaders. Third and final collaboration of these two artists. MSBR side is pretty lazy and boring stuff. Ramirez is actually quite tasty! 2009 release, so not too old. It has good texture and nice drive forward.

AMERICAN BAND "Low Fiction" LP
Hot Releases
2009 release. Their live gig in one of No Fun Fest was amazing. Just pure harsh noise wall, of course, but lots of members. Jason Crumer, Matt Franco, Lee Counts appear on this LP, but there was more at gig? One has some animal rib-cage contact mic'ed. Was just holding this piece of ribs with some wires, meat still hanging from bones, screaming. Big guy. Got this LP later on. It's less of "just HNW". 7 tracks, each slightly different. Mostly loud noise nevetheless. It perhaps isn's as innovative as for example Jason Crumers solo work, but still very good harsh noise stuff here, certainly way way better than MSBR/Ramirez LP mentioned above. Still, funnily enough, take a look at discogs and you find SEVERAL copies of this LP for sale for 5euro or less! Huh. I guess the noisebiz has gone down the drain almost all around the world, but come-on. This good noise LP's for 3 euro? And nobody bought it?! WTF!? I consider this easily regular retail price worth.

[Bloated Slutbag]

Swans - To Be Kind (Young God): This was nothing like the wet fart I found their recent live show to be, but I'm also definitely just burnt out on Gira's stardom. ... and while it's cool to listen to, I guess I'm just over the hype. Not bad. Not great.

That's an interesting comment. I generally make an effort to insulate myself from the hype to which you refer and perhaps that's why To Be Kind is for me much more immediate – fewer steaming piles of bullshit to wade through. (No worries, though. I've got buttloads of other bullshit to swim in, self-ladled and otherwise.) I would say this is the most Swans-sounding Gira has managed in a  long time. Mind you, in my warped view the last true Swans album was New Mother (under the Angels Of Light incarnation), where the two prior Swans Rehammered offerings, while for me enjoyable, were more like an extension of where Angels were going in their last album (a direction I did not particularly like). Years back, if someone had told me TBK was the follow-up to, say, Children Of God, or some of the later albums, including Soundtracks, I wouldn't have batted an ear. In any event, I have no real expectations from Gira at this point. Even Swans Half-Nailed would pin me to the stake and burn me to a crisp. And that he now seems to be moving in the right direction is pure gravy (at least, I hope it's gravy...)

[Zeno Marx]

The more recent Swans songs are better live...sometimes.  The albums proper are on the uninspired side, but they nail those songs live on occasion.  Maybe they've always been more of a live band, but that hasn't been my personal experience until lately.

[Dr Alex]

S.T.A.B. Electronics ‎– Instrument For Operating On Mutant Women LP (Perfection!!! Somebody should re-release all his works on cds!)
Bizarre Uproar ‎– Vihameditaatio LP (still can't deal with this. Previous two albums was much better IMHO)

[HongKongGoolagong]

CONSUMER ELECTRONICS - Estuary English - advance copy kindly sent by Philip & Sarah - a very short album at just 21 minutes. Russell Haswell is listed as full band member and there are 29 different brands of electronic sources, effects etc used - it's varied in its sonic palette and very professionally recorded. Hideous and nightmarish sounds throughout. Two tracks do use beats and those tracks also feature especially extreme and deranged vocal delivery. Long lyric booklet full of dirty words and worrying thoughts, obviously a lot of work went into that. There's a funny William Blake detournement on the first track, and the last track is a mysterious spoken word poem, accapella.

[FreakAnimalFinland]

Borbetomagus &  Shaking Ray Levis "Coelacanth" 10"
Agraric
1991 release. First was little "blah". It's absolutely nowhere near as good as for example the recent live LP release. However, started to get into mood after a little white. Free jazzy noises.

HELM "Inpasse" LP
New Images
recorded 2007-2011. Droning electronics, some very loop oriented as well. Like with 10" above, I felt like all other HELM has been better, but can't say exactly why I think so. Didn't awake any special mood here, but still decent stuff. I think first track perhaps makes the album hit with less impact.

LE SYNDICAT / SEKTOR 304 "Geometry of Chromium skin" LP
Rotorelief
Album is quite hit & miss. Some really nice moments - which probably lean towards S304 sound. But when sort of break beat drum machines and hi-tech electronics are in, oh... it gets old so fast in my ears. If all good stuff would have been compressed to one side of LP, it would be probably positive experience, but I just can't handle this kind of "techno" things...

AMPH / ARV & MILJÖ LP
Järtecknet
Am I somehow depressed on noise today? AMPH is pretty good, although hardly mindblowing. But A&M also sounds very forgettable. It's like the HNW stuff he likes to criticize, hehe.. ? Maybe I should relisten this soon with zero background noise, but how you do it on summer times when windows may need to be open?

V/A TEN JIN -LP
Urashima
Postponed listening this a lot. I admire Lust Vessel a lot, and while this LP is good, I think it still isn't as good as LUST VESSEL label tapes has been. Maybe many of projects benefit from longer tracks? While its good, it's not mindblowing. Artwork is some of the nicest ever seen on Urashima releases. Utmost care on design.

[eyestrain]

Swans - To Be Kind (Young God): This was nothing like the wet fart I found their recent live show to be, but I'm also definitely just burnt out on Gira's stardom. ... and while it's cool to listen to, I guess I'm just over the hype. Not bad. Not great.

That's an interesting comment. I generally make an effort to insulate myself from the hype to which you refer and perhaps that's why To Be Kind is for me much more immediate – fewer steaming piles of bullshit to wade through. (No worries, though. I've got buttloads of other bullshit to swim in, self-ladled and otherwise.) I would say this is the most Swans-sounding Gira has managed in a  long time. Mind you, in my warped view the last true Swans album was New Mother (under the Angels Of Light incarnation), where the two prior Swans Rehammered offerings, while for me enjoyable, were more like an extension of where Angels were going in their last album (a direction I did not particularly like). Years back, if someone had told me TBK was the follow-up to, say, Children Of God, or some of the later albums, including Soundtracks, I wouldn't have batted an ear. In any event, I have no real expectations from Gira at this point. Even Swans Half-Nailed would pin me to the stake and burn me to a crisp. And that he now seems to be moving in the right direction is pure gravy (at least, I hope it's gravy...)

Admittedly, it was aimless of me to even mention the hype, although reading Gira's pompous, but interesting nonetheless, interviews always seems to be the number one thing making me hype the music up. I've played the album a few times since, and while I enjoy it more than I thought at first, I don't think I'll replay this much. Anyway...

Skin - The World Of Skin (Product Inc./Rough Trade): With all my pondering on Swans, I wanted to dig through some related favorites. Whether this is aurally successful or not - there's a few duds (Iggy cover...ugh) - it feels like a much more earnest and "real" look inside a person. Not just a selfish attempt at "ecstacy" or whatever seems to be the current trope. Jarboe'd Swans was definitely my last exploration into their universe, and while I don't think I enjoy her music much, she can sometimes be the greatest accompaniment to Gira (and crew). There's something accidentally timeless in some of these songs. Just gotta keep the skip button near a few times.

Kassel Jaeger - Ritual De La Mort Du Soleil (Unfathomless): More like Toxic Cosmopolitanism (although slightly less "digital" still) than his energized and subtly vicious recordings. Calm, perplexing use of outdoor/natural sounds in the beginning of evening. On a long train ride today and this is the best thing I've heard.

Allerseelen - Heimliche Welt (Ahnstern): Running up with Stirb Und Werde as my favorite piece from Kadmon. Occasionally intense, almost-always fascinating album of collected sounds without any of the "caricature-ness" of many of the recent albums. Again, an individual that can be rather fascinating that somehow makes me seek out current works even though I might be guaranteed to feel "meh" about it.

Knækkede Stemmer - Første Portræt (Et Hult In Menneske) (Järtecknet): Been a while since I spun this. Better than I remember - or the mood is perfect today, I dunno. So bleak, so miserable, so wonderful.

V/A - Sacral Symphony (EE Tapes): Sometimes I struggle to stay awake with this one; very entrancing. The same way I am with many of the Steven R. Smith works that I adore. I assume, judging by certain characteristics of the tracks, that the artists are manipulating or recreating sacred music. Cisfinitum (whom I rarely enjoy) definitely is the highlight for me - reminds me of the totally ignored Silbernacht disc on Ajna. 1000schøen - never heard anything else - takes the silver with a nice electroacoustic-ish piece. Troum is surprisingly my least preferred, but it's still decent.

[moozz]

THE NEW BLOCKADERS "Schadenklang" LP
Hypnagogia
Jesus Christ!! Finally arrived this pre-ordered special edition LP. Took something like... 2 and half years? Probably. Long enough time to forget even when it was made.

I hope this means that Rupenus is actually shipping out all those pre-ordered records from more than two years ago! Anyone else received this or the TNB/Vomir/Haters collaboration lately? Or is Rupenus sending these only to the scene superstars? :)