PLAYLIST with COMMENTS/REVIEWS

[Bleak Existence]

THE RITA - Eyeliner Into Nylon Back Seam (cd Sickcore)
no crackle studies here only pure perfect blown up HNW

[Andrew McIntosh]

Been listening to a lot of silence lately.

[urall]

Been listening to a lot of silence lately.

can you listen to silence ?

[Andrew McIntosh]

Can you not?

[XXX]

Coil once released Bottled Silence. Think around 2000?

[eyestrain]

Been listening to a lot of silence lately.

After 20ish years of never not having music playing, this becomes more and more precious to me. But I still consume constantly:

Rudolf Eb.er - Brainnectar (Schimpfluch Associates): This is no quick flip through one of the Gruppe member's universes of quirkiness. It's self-indulgently long, for sure, but the song durations are always short enough - primarily 2 to 3 minutes. While containing many atmospheres; from Dave Phillips-like field recordings of jungle environs, to Senufo Ed. type drones, to super-imposed shamanistic percussion, the singular, paranoid and cavernous mood of this double disc never slackens, nor does it fall into any moments of Schimpfluch humor. The editing is perfect to the extreme. Any abrupt cuts, instead of opening the door up to criticism, leave you picking your jaw up off the floor. Disc two presents little in terms of freshness; a lot sounds from the first disc are utilized in new ways and the mood remains linear - this will be a pro for some and a con for others. Been years since I did this, but I watched this over Apocalypse Now with subtitles...I don't think there could possibly be a more complimentary alternate soundtrack. Rock solid album.

FWY! - Arcadia/Culver City EP (Moon Glyph/FWY!): Other than being more "accessible" than past efforts, Xavier has presented nothing new and I'm perfectly fine with that. These songs certainly stand more firmly in the kosmische and, also, mainstream landscapes than past efforts, yet it's perfect driving muzak still.

Spoils & Relics - Sins Of Omission (Harbinger Sound): Finally snagged this album. It's like the perfect symbiosis of Hands To and Nurse With Wound that maintains its own unique sonic sphere. Perplexing and utterly satisfying at the same time. Still, after hearing this, the interview from Fördämning remains to have no light shed on it haha.

The Haters - In The Shade Of Fire (Silent/Hanson): Sorta like finally deciding to dig into a work by Sudden Infant; I am left so pleased and giddy by this album that I just want to dig and dig and dig but I'm at a loss as to where to start. Anyway, this was a very nice follow up to Spoils & Relics. Each track treads a slightly different path: grating harsh noise, minimal contact mic work, more Hal Hutchinson style junk sessions and just about every type of beat-less material you could expect on an 80's/90's cassette comp. Loved every moment of it and can definitely see why Dilloway/Hanson would give this a repress.

[urall]

Can you not?

Well, silence, by definition, is the absence of sound. One can only listen to sound i'd imagine..?
You can hear nothing, that's something different.

anyway, i'll get me coat ;)

[FreakAnimalFinland]

TREPANERINGSRITUALEN "Perfection & Performance" LP
Cold Spring
Seems almost like pop album in a way. It's still rugged sound, but short songs with easy beats and vocals what often resemble rock kind of delivery. Dark hoarse voice, but very structured and rehearsed sounding. Listened this couple times and while I like it, it also leaves me wanting band to have some free flow in their stuff. Some noise that takes tracks beyond the song structure, evolves into something or operates more loosely. Maybe this is also non-musical element. That bands high effiency in making itself "product" starts to creep into experience of music. Photos of the artists, patches, back-patches, stickets, collectibles, sigils, facebook, instagram,.. ehm...

SEWER ELECTION "Nära" LP
Järtecknet
Also new Swedish stuff and spinned this couple times. A-side appears quite similar to his live gig in Finland. Piercing electronic drones and field recordings. Tape manipulation and extensive hiss. B-side has more variety and shorter pieces with distinctive sounds. Lots of air in the sound, never really noisy, but good stuff! As opposed to TREPANERINGSRITUALEN, minimalism of presentation starts to be lame in Järtecknet stuff. Big white surfaces. Some circles, couple numbers or like this LP. It has something, but that's almost nothing.

PSYCHIC TV / Z'EV "Atonal vol 1" LP
Atonal
1983 festival live recordings. Good, yet very usual stuff from both artists. Metal percussion works and old school industrial music.

DIE TÖDELICHE DORIS "Fallersleben" 12"
Vinyl On Demand
Lengthy linernotes explain some curious details of the material here. What I think it gives impression to be, is lost live gigs recovered by almost supernatural powers. What it sounds like, is early 80's live improvisations processed through modern computer effects. Not bad actually, but sometimes too obvious sounding.

HÄNGD "Med Repet Runt Halsen" tape
Järtecknet
This early labels release (#2) is good example how more civil swedes and Finnish brutes are not always that far apart. If this was released on F&V, it would most likely be seen as totally logical. Raw, fierce, noisy, but kind of tape-works/industrial music feel to it. Cheers for label replacing my copy this late. Just found out some weeks ago my copy was blank...

[FreakAnimalFinland]

GENTLE EVIL / PYMATHON split LP
Verdura
Gentle Evil is actually really good stuff. It's Finnish duo consisting drummer + mr. Keränen. Old style free noise chaos, what remind good moments of Hijokaidan - without vocals. Obviously when tripped down to just jazzy, yet aggressive drummin and just one guy making noise, there is less density than in Hijokaidan, but what it loses in lack of layers and insanity of female screams, it wins simply with being simply great and energetic noise!
Pymathon in the other hand is most of all free-form metal of some sort. Think of free jazz transforming into free metal. Jammin some random stuff. Noisy sound, ok. Music itself, not really interesting. Unfortunately blending in impro and metal often results failure of both.

ROEL MEELKOP / FRANS DE WAARD LP
Stiching Mixer
Experimental electronics. What else to say? Not bad, but neither capturing my mind in any special way.

[FreakAnimalFinland]

Turd day...

SSHE RETINA STIMULANTS "HEaven 39" 2xLP
Diophantine discs
Damn.. It's old stuff from 1997, remastered 2006, issued in crappy cloth cover and text insert (packagin is related to theme). Packaging isn't the problem. Problem is that SRS delivers utterly boring, crappy electronic noise signals. No interesting sounds, no interesting tracks. Collection of rubbish anyone could pull out from any electronic gear. Too bad stuff like this ends on such a massive format as (3 sided) double LP.

MLEHST "Vilification of the english peasant class" LP
diophantine disc
After 3 or 4 "new" sucky Mlehst LP's, I'm 100% sure I won't be spending any money on (new) stuff of his. Also packaged in pic LP plasticbag, appears that vinyl has reacted with it and covered in weird texture and results extensive surface noise..

PRURIENT "Adam Tied to stone" LP
Blossoming Noise
Huh. Finally some honey to the ears. Or maybe that's exaggeration. Digital distortion, keyboard tones, distorted vocals. Very typical for Prurient of the time, but still pretty good. His croaking style of voice is quite unique here. Almost like modern day version of Streicher. Not as ugly. Not as blunt. But not violent scream of talk, but hoarse croaking growl, hah. Of course also expected screams.

[Piety and Iron]

Ashley C - Drift (Freak Animal)

This album has had some mention before in connection with 'tape music' but with more and more listens for me I want to say something more about it, as it's certainly a high rated release for my tastes. First of all its important to mention that this is more than simple rough and ready product of tapes. There is a lot of cutting between sounds here, sourced from subtle metal sounds to rugged synths with lots of interesting details from the overloaded mixer, clicks, cracks and cuts in the sound. It's a good diverse work with some mastery of primitive tools of noise making. Secondly the emphasis is on the development and movements in the tracks. The label write up underplays this a fair bit. Definitely this is not stuff that builds up to harsh momentum but the track 1 has a lot of montage and track 2 shifts through distinct phases with the emphasis on the murky low end. Something for the connoisseur in my opinion. Definitely valid to present this on CD to be clear that this is not just to be confused with a run of the mill murky lofi tape release.

TR Kirstein/Jacob Kirkegaard - Imperia (posh isolation)

I don't have any special fascination for the Danish materials suffice to say my certain respect for the Ashley C stuff, but again today on a quiet sunny day in UK after moving house I have chance to listen to Imperia, also a high rated item. Its pretty simple but just a great example of fine quality depth and lots of frequencies in this. In past I have enjoyed this for evoking ghostly industrial deserted images in my mind but listening today I just got pinned on the frequencies. Pinpoint perfect and lots of clear sub base which is impressive for a vinyl. Its essentially a sound art work so I can understand that it does not have as much detail as a lot of good darker industrial ambient might have. Actually too short finally on one side. Yet its very classy job by the label in presentation.

[FreakAnimalFinland]

Divided Void "The Last Limb Of Putrefaction" tape
Supreme Analog Torture Records
Didn't know what it was. Just grabbed from merch table of live gig as price was very cheap. Turned out to be way better than expected! Black-noise from Finland, but curiously manages to excape almost all the generic flaws of genre. Theoretically it is JUST what you could expect. Generic links towards black metal iconography and track titles. Screamy vocals and lots of guitar noise/feedback. However, it somehow manages to be much more. They could try to get people check this out by mentioning it's somewhere between Deisel Guitars, KK Null and later days Skullflower, but with wall-like mass of guitar sound. In fact, I'd prefer this over any new Skullflower I've heard. That says something about this material. Even Beherit cover manages to avoid being cheesy. It is just slow and distant trance indicing melody of Salomons Gate buried in dense guitar noise.
check here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXs3xQB57jM

Ejaculating Luftwaffe "Third Reich Cocaine" tape
Supreme Analog Torture Records
Supposedly 9 songs in c. 7 minutes on this tape, but it really is non-stop noise rubbish. While certainly juvenile humor pasted on top of everything, think about Annihilism era Streicher. Raw, non-effect plagued noise rumble. Nothing neat, nothing fancy, but nevertheless good stuff. Due being limited to mere 13 copies, I guess this is hardly meant for large circulation? Sample online sounds VERY different than the sound on tape... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrnrliElthk

HANGMANKIND "Ad Extirpanda" tape
Supreme Analog Torture Records
hmm.. black noise? At least logo looks like of black/death band, but music is simply good old blown up harsh noise. Something what could have come from mid 90's Texas or under MSNP roster. 3 guys. Solid wall, yet always on the move. I hope they'll keep doing more! Stuff that can be found from youtube seems totally inferior to this. Italian noise, that has so far appeared only on these smallest-of-the-small d.i.y. labels...

[ConcreteMascara]

不失者 ‎– 来たる時 [The Time Is Nigh] CD
Inspired by listening to a lot of other Japanese psychedelic rock i purchased my first Fushitsusha album. I was supposed to get a copy of the Live 2xCD on PSF but the seller fucked up. I guess it's easy to make the mistake when most of the album covers are identical This is a lot a noiser than I expected, reminding me a bit of Hijokaidan's shrill noise chaos at times. I can't compare to any of the other releases by the band since I haven't heard them, but really enjoying this. The first track is very mellow and minimal but it goes balls out after that for the next 70 minutes.

Hijokaidan - Windom CD, Noise From Trading Cards CD
Since the Fushitsusha album reminded me of Hijokaidan, I figured I'd listen to the two albums I have by them. Of the two I definitely prefer Windom. The production is a little less caustic but I feel like the noise is better. I don't really listen to much straight up noise these days, so these albums hit me much harder than I remember. at the same time I'd describe it as a joyous racket, because there is an underlying vibe that i hear that's like an utter celebration of noise. Or maybe that's just because I've been in a good mood for the past few days?

Incapacitants - 箱愚か Box Is Stupid 10xCD
to continue on with my Japanoise trend I listened to my favorite disc from this box set, The Tongue. This type of relentless, monolithic noise where elements seem to be always competing and snuffing each other out, I love it. it's super harsh and sharp, but lacking any kind of digital sharpness. Reminds me a bit of Finnish harsh noise. or maybe it's the other way around. When I first got the Box I listened to all 10 discs back to back, getting a bit drunk while I did it. The Tongue stood out to me then and still does, but I should probably give the whole thing a listen again with a clearer head.

listened to some Solmania stuff on youtube as well. I never listened to their recorded output, because seeing them live was so intense I figured nothing could measure up to the memory. wound up buying the Psycledelic CD on Discogs yesterday because the cover art really struck my fancy. Can't wait to listen to it and see how my memory stacks up against their recorded material.

it's nice to get back to listening to pure noise. lately i've just felt really grateful to have the opportunity to listen and own so much amazing music. it's the one pleasure that never gets old. and i'm constantly amazed by how much shit there's is still out there to listen to and how many records i have that i can barely remember what they sound like...

[FreakAnimalFinland]

wound up buying the Psycledelic CD on Discogs yesterday because the cover art really struck my fancy. Can't wait to listen to it and see how my memory stacks up against their recorded material.

It's good, but not best. It was first I heard, and I was kind of thinking "so this is Solmania?". Nowadays I appreciate it simply because its kind of.. odd? Not sure how to describe it best. But later days duo Solmania is certainly heavier and noisier.

[Zeno Marx]

不失者 ‎– 来たる時 [The Time Is Nigh] CD

Great album, and likely Haino's/Fushitsusha's most ferocious.  You can go a lot of other places with Haino, but you aren't going to get to this space again.  One of my top Haino releases.