For everyone who missed out on that last Nekrasov, which is probably most folks as it was a cd-r limited to 50 copies, half of which we got and sold in a flash, here's another new full length, from this Australian black metal / blacknoize terrorist, and this one is also limited, but never fear, not nearly as limited as that last one, and it's an actual cd, so we should have these for a while, a little while at least.
Which is good news, cuz this might be the best Nekrasov yet, let's start with the packaging, wow, a gorgeous and grim 6 panel sleeve, with intense black and green paintings, each panel featuring variations of the new super intense NKRSV logo printed in reflective clear ink, so striking, and pretty representative of the sounds within.
For those new to Nekrasov, his sound is a blasting blackness almost entirely ensconced in blacknoise, a swirling chaotic squall of hiss and grinding skree and blown out howl, within which lurks frantic riffing, relentless drumming, although much of the time, it feels implied more than actually heard. Like WOLD, Nekrasov rewards close listening, headphones strapped on, reveals a crumbling, abject hellish sound world, hateful and harsh and harrowing, it doesn't get much more brutal than this, or noisy, but on Cognition Of Splendid Oblivion more than even, Nekrasov finds a balance, letting the noise swallow certain portions whole, but dialing the noise back in places, giving us glimpses if riff or melody, of blast, ror texture. And the noise itself, is not straight up Merzbowian brutality, there's definitely nuance, almost like the noise is an artifact of the guitars being TOO distorted, the drums TOO crushing, the vokills TOO brutal...
"Psychic Epilepsy In The Butcher Of Light" might be the heaviest thing Nekrasov has recorded, the riffs seemingly MADE out of noise, churning, throbbing, the vocals struggling to be heard through the sheer crush of the riffs, the drums no more than a distant pulse. But within this black buzzing void, the sounds grow epic and majestic, soaring and struggling to shine through the thick black clouds of sound.
The other cool thing about Nekrasov that we may have mentioned before is the breadth of tone and timbre, the noise is multi dimensional, and varies from track to track, because it's not just noise for noise sake, it's part of the composition, an integral part, so sometimes the sound is hissy and brittle, other times murky and muddy, some track get all shoegazey and blissed out, others threaten to gouge your eardrums out. The second to last track starts out all dreamy and washed out, then the BM kicks in, sans noise, and we're treated to a rare glimpse of the buzz and blast behind the curtain, before the final track crushes everything in its path with some of the densest and pummeling noise possible, and even then, it's weirdly listenable, twisted and textured, a swirling blackness that grinds and howls and blasts and buzzes until finally slipping into oblivion.
Not one, but two new missives from mysterious blackmetal/blacknoize merchant Nekrasov, an Aussie one man horde who crafts some of the most twisted sickest noise drenched black metal we've ever heard. Elsewhere on this list you'll find an older title, a split/collaboration with Canadian doom-ed black metal peddlers Humiliation, but this right here is the latest bit of filth and fury, transmitted from NKRSV headquarters directly into your rotting blackened earholes. And weirdly enough, while it's still noisy as fuck, it seems Master Nekrasov has dialed back the noise a bit, right out of the gate, the awesomely titled "We Are Just An Indifferent Interpretation Of The Black Plague" explodes in a frenzy of lightning fast programmed beats, of insectoid riffing, of hellish howling vokills, but the whole thing weirdly and impossibly melodic, it's all relative of course, but woven into the fabric of the furious grinding black blast, is a distinctly hooky undercurrent, which not only makes it crazy catchy, also infuses the rest of the track with a distinctly weirdo black vibe. The second track is another blast of pounding grimness, this time the harsh vox are balanced by what sounds like monks chanting and yet still more strangely pleasing melodies, all buried under the relentless pound and churn, the result is a strange bit of almost orchestral sounding brutality.
After a lengthy bit of blackdrone drift, all muted rumbles and buried industrial percussion, a sort of militaristic windstorm ambience, the record slips back into blackened buzz, this time, much punkier, not blasting so much as pounding furiously, the vocals super hot and in-the-red, swallowing up all the other sounds with every shriek, while in the background the new surprisingly melodic side of Nekrasov struggles to shine from behind the black curtain of frantic buzzing and machinelike pound. More ambience follows, some field recorded creepiness, laced with buried bits of melody, culminating in an avalanche of crumbling distortion and harsh blurred black crunch, the final bit of pure buzzing metallic blackness comes in the form of "Chant The Name Of God In A Thousand Languages Until All Is Blood And Feces", a return to the noisy Nekrasov of old, a buzzing old school black metal smothered in thick sheets of hiss, the distortion so blown out, the vocals so processed and inhuman, the whole thing threatens to crumble to pieces, and is constantly blurring into an almost full on blackdrone.
The record finishes off with two lengthy tracks, nearly 22 minutes, of creeping, haunting, abject, miserable black ambience, the first a thick black churning dronescape, heavy glacial guitars smeared into dense streaks, trudging across a sonic wasteland, all industrial filth, whirring church organ (!) and mysterious melodic drift. And finally, the 16 + minute title track, a corrosive blackened noise drone, layered and dense, also industrial, but less rhythmic, heaving crumbling swells, the sound of cities crumbling, of collapse and decay, of death and oblivion. Brutal and intense.
We always thought rap and metal would be so good together, but then rapmetal happened, and well, you know the rest of that story, granted there are a few moments on the Judgment Night soundtrack that truly shine, but not enough to erase all the other unspeakable abominations created in the name of rapmetal. To be fair though, we were envisioning something much more brutal and avant garde. Not metal bands playing funky for rappers, we were thinking insane rappers trying to flow over grinding thrashing blasting brutal metal. Say Onyx rapping with Cannibal Corpse. Or Carcass with Sensational. We still think that shit would work.
Anyway, we felt the same way about noise and metal, and well, that worked out much better. As metal bands incorporated all manner of buzz and grind and hiss and blown out production. WOLD, Portal, Vargr, it's definitely a good mix. And then there's noise bands who started introducing riffs and black buzz into their already caustic soundscapes. That too is pretty fucking cool.
Which brings us to Nekrosov, an Australian one man band, whose black metal is as noisy as all get out, but who spends so much time droning and buzzing and crafting bleak noisescapes, we're just as inclined to lump him in with the noise camp, incorporating riffs and blast beats into his distorted crumbling abject bleakscapes. Either way, it hardly matters, the point is this shit is fierce, and heavy as fuck, black and buzzing, but also hissy and blown out, lo-fi, crumbling and NOISY. Like we said, two great tastes, and for the iron eared, this is the stuff that will definitely hit the spot.
The opening is full on noise, there might be some metal going on in there, but if so it's pulled apart and flung into a roiling cauldron of black his and chaotic industrial clatter, followed up by a track that begins all rumbling and dark ambient, but quickly erupts into some grim primitive buzz, howling thrashing blackened buzz, furious and frightful, an old school black pummel, with guttural demonic croaks and insectoid riffing.
But then the third song, the longest on the disc is all ambient, field recordings of what sounds like rain, grinding coruscating feedback in the distance, thick reverberating rumbles, super grim and abstract, a song Wolf Eyes could have recorded if they were jamming with Prurient, a truly haunting soundscape, creepy and ominous, harsh and harrowing.
The rest of the disc careens from demonic squalls of black blast, to churning, roiling doomic dirges, to sprawling abstract minimal shimmer, to pounding primitive metallic crunch, to thick SUNNO)))-like glacial sludge to processed fields of scrape and creak, groan and whir, often more than one of those at once, for a truly inspired noise metal hybrid. Now if we can just get Sensational or David Banner or Bone Crusher to rap on the next Nekrosov...
The return of Australian black mental noizemonger Nekrasov, with another ultra limited, beautifully packaged disc of buzzing blackness and grim blacknoize. And this time we do mean LIMITED. Only 50 copies made, already sold out, we have 20 copies, and that's it, which as always is a shame, cuz this stuff is killer, and WELL deserving of more ears...
But for the lucky 20 of you who are quick on the trigger and who have an ear for this sort of furious filth, On Certainty definitely does not disappoint, Taking the black metal / white noise hybrid we were already so into, and pushing it even further out, making it more psychedelic, more space-y, the opening track sets the stage, a gorgeous post industrial noisecape, all warped muted melodies, grinding metallic textures, a churning, looped sounding corrosive drone infused with a weird melodiousness, which is quickly obliterated by the second track, and incendiary white hot speaker shredding black noise blow out, there seem to be riffs and blasting drums, and howled vocals, but they are so over saturated, so in the red, that they seem to be coming apart and bleeding into the sounds around them, the result a blast of Merzbowian blackness, like an even more abrasive and harshly heavy Wold, but like Wold, there's tons of stuff going on below the caustic surface, strange little melodies surface occasionally riffs coalesce only to split apart into shards of crunch and buzz, the vocals seem to be set on constant howl, a thick layer of anguished blur. The cool thing is that the tone and timbre is super varied, one track will be brittle and blasty, a swirling sea of high end skree, while the next will be a churning chunk of low end, or all drums, so heavily effected they crumble and crunch and stop sounding like drums at all.
Maybe too harsh for the unadventurous metalhead, but for those who like their heavy noisy, and their noise heavy, this should totally hit the spot. And be sure to stick around for the closer, maybe the prettiest song on the disc, still plenty noisy, but underneath it all a woozy washed out bit of mournful melancholia, which infuses all sorts of intense emotion into the crumble and crunch and rrrooooaaar around it.
Gorgeous packaging too, a full color oversized 6 panel fold over sleeve, lots of stark shots of landscapes and wastelands, and a super cool logo / diagram adorning the front.
Record number two from this grim one man nekronoise black metal horde from Australia. We raved about the first one, Into The No-Man's Sphere Of The Ancient Days, a few lists back, but we're led to believe that a handful of you may have not made it past the first paragraph, the intro, the hook. If that was you, well, you should be regretting it now, and when you finish reading this review, listening to the sound samples, and most likely buying one of these, go back to the No-Man's review, skip the beginning and jump right in and read the whole thing. And everything will be right.
The point of that intro, and that review, and to a certain extent this one too, was that adding noise is not always as simple as just, well, adding noise. Mixing to genres, even if they're related, just as often leads to something messy and pointless, as it does to some genius fusion. And there is definitely plenty of noisy black metal, but much of it is either thick noise over shitty metal, or just metal, with the noise an afterthought. One must have a serious handle on both THE NOISE and THE RIFF to make it work. And if you hadn't figured it out by now, Nekrosov is most definitely a master of both the noise and the riff, and manages to fuse the two into something blackly transcendent.
That said however, the opening one two punch here are a bit misleading, in that the noise and the riff are kept well separate, the first, an ominous glitched out landscape of bleak minimal buzz and drone, hiss and crackle, almost like a black metal Philip Jeck, and the second track, the furious buzzing blasting "Mountain Ash" sounds amazing, only noisy in as much as black metal is inherently noisy, super well produced, the riffs HUGE and heavy, the drums lightning fast, erupting in squalls of impossible blasts, the vocals grim and harsh, the melodies soaring, even some hooks buried beneath the buzz.
The next track however finds Nekrosov returning to more familiar blacknoise ground. Deep swirling waves of static buzz, the vocals stretched into sheets of abstract whir, churning and roiling, beneath melodies lurk and struggle to surface, held under by the buzzing blackness. It's almost like some black metal song was frozen, a single moment played over and over stretched into some sort of infinite loop, but it's not a loop as it slowly grows and sprawls and spreads out into something expansive. It's almost ambient, and strangely soothing in its droniness, without losing any of its grim buzz or black mystery.
The next few tracks veer back and forth between, blown out soundscapes of samples and percussion, blurred into a windswept buzz, what sounds like ghostlike vocals underneath processed sounds of whipping winds and the click clack of a railroad, to noise drenched old school raw black metal crush, to slow burning deep ambience, to full on classic eighties style riffing, the old masters rendered in new shades of black and buzz, finally culminating in the twenty minute closer, which begins as some bleak, post industrial Wolf Eyes-an dronescape, all haunting whirs, and strange clanks and clunks, distant moans, bits of percussion and mysterious samples, building to a wall of white hot blackened buzz, sheathed in streaks of feedback and pulled apart riffs, this is the sort of shit that would put most cd-r dronescapers to shame, but it's not over yet, the wall of noise slowly takes shape, riffs emerge from the murk, drums explode from beneath the veil of hiss, the track barreling along churning wildly, riffing and blasting, but gradually sinking ever deeper into a morass of gorgeous textured noise, crackle and buzz and hiss, blown out and super distorted, eventually swallowing the blackness whole, leaving just a brief glimpse of the black buzz, before blinking out.
Fucking AWESOME! Absolutely essential. As is the first disc, if you haven't gone back and re-checked that one out already.
Killer handmade packaging too. The cd housed in a printed fold over black and white cardstock sleeve, that sleeve, housed in an oversized sealed envelope, hand painted black and red and silver, very abstract, and super striking. And as you might have guessed. ULTRA LIMITED!!! But the special print handmade versions are limited to 100 copies and we have the very last copies. Once these are gone, you'll get the normal version. Same music, mostly the same packaging, just minus the painted outer sleeve...
We just got in a handful of these super limited cd-rs from Australia's Nekrasov, the project of one Bob Nekrasov (no, really), formerly of Melbourne based doomsters Whitehorse, and current purveyor of abject post-industrial blackness. Tramp And Void is, as we like to say in the business, a real motherfucker. This ep is just teeming with filth and despair, the sounds within melding noisy as hell blackened ambience with super heavy black METAL. The first song is an awesome slab of crumbling electronics abuse with hateful vocals gurgling about in the slowly rumbling chaos, very cool and somewhat reminiscent of that Cities Last Broadcast cd we reviewed a while back. But when track two kicks in, it's like being launched out of an abandoned high rise and into a waiting hurricane. The sound is like a more traditionally metal WOLD meeting up with Australia's psychedelic doom/grind lords diSEMBOWELMENT. In a dog fight. Or something. Pretty intense stuff, regardless, the non-stop double kick drum gives you the impression that you ain't coming out of this one alive. Track 3 sounds like the last day of existence, with windy electronics dominating as Mr. Nekrasov spews out anguished, hateful musings until everything is overwhelmed by electronic skree. Following another vignette of slowly moving ambience, Tramp And Void concludes with an ultra depressive, mid-tempo dirge, the relentless kick drums once again letting you know there is nowhere to hide. The piece is brutal but melancholy, not to mention quite beautiful, and one of those perfect songs to end a record as you assume the fetal position and wonder what horrors await. Though brief, this ep is an intense and demanding piece of work, refusing to confine itself to any one genre in particular. That said, forward thinking metalheads will be scrambling to get their grimey hands on this one.
Again, this thing is insanely limited, not sure how many were made, but you're gonna want to act fast. Comes packaged in an awesome black and red mini-poster with an image of a forest dwelling black winged angel staring right into your soul.
A pretty strange, but in many ways pretty perfect pairing, cult Aussie black metal / black noize horde Nekrasov, and industrial cinematic black doom project Aderlating, which just so happens to be an offshoot of the mighty Gnaw Their Tongues.
Both blackened, both noisy, here the two drift together and end up meeting somewhere right in the middle, floating in the hellish black abyss, heavier on the ambient than the black metal, more abstract and atmospheric than harsh and harrowing.
Nekrasov offers up a side long stunner, which begins as a roiling minimal dronescape of textured blackness, muted streaks of submerged melody, buried vocals, creeping slow motion pulses, constantly shifting layers, deep dense overtones, creaks and scrapes, utterly haunting and otherworldly, occasionally building to a SUNNO)))-like wall of sound, before slipping back into something more slithery and cinematic. By The end, the sound has reached a fever pitch, a swirling, caterwauling cacophony of inhuman vocalizations, tangled black tendrils of buzz and skree, all woven into an organic, heaving blackened ambient drone driven sonic beast, before finishing off with a stretch of hushed minimal shimmer.
Aderlating, aka Gnaw Their Tongues, otherwise known as Mories, counters with a set of three interlocking soundscapes, abject and industrial, set amidst a sea of softly swirling black tones, shapes and sounds seem to creak and groan, like some hellish machine, churning away just below the surface, spewing gouts of feedback, and sinking ever deeper into the vile black void that somehow keeps it afloat. Fragments of voice, melody, surface here and there, only to be swallowed up again. Occasionally the proceedings seems to almost coalesce into some sort of garish subterranean cabaret, but still cloaked in swirling swaths of hellish hiss and black buzz, and epic rumbling low end that threatens to devour all the other sounds. Fragmented barely there rhythms lead into an avalanche of crumbling distortion and in-the-red psychedelic blacknoize, which roils and churns and explodes in a frenzy of sonic chaos, before returning again, to its more tranquil state, which even itself is rife with industrial clatter and swaths of muted caustic noise, finishing off in a blaze of brilliant bristling blackness.
Gorgeous packaging, stunning cover art, black inner sleeve and pressed on sick green, white and black splattered vinyl.
LIMITED TO 300!!!
This is not actually brand new, it's from last year, but we've been doing our best to track down enough copies to list for ages now, and were finally able to get some direct from NEKRASOV HQ. And holy shit was it worth the wait. Nekrasov, the one man Aussie blacknoize wrecking crew who have long terrorized aQ with epic blasts of furious blackness, teamed up with Canadian black metal misanthropes Humiliation, for a seriously malformed chunk of audial evil. And while it's a split, it's also a partial collaboration, each band contributing three tracks, one of which has been augmented and fucked with by the other.
The proceedings begin with Nekrasov unfurling drifting clouds of muted murk, which give way to a barrage of blurred riffage, then blown out tumbling blast beats, all gnarled and blurred, weirdly pretty and washed out, Humiliation adding various sounds to the already dense racket. For the next two tracks, Nekrasov goes it alone, first the epic (and epically titled) "From Where I Sit The Sky Was Full Of Wrath And Ill Will", a sprawling 11 minutes of tangled spidery guitar melody, creeping droned out drift, hushed industrial ambience, ominous orchestral swells, harsh howled vokills, a brief blast of black metal crush, and then a tripped out squall of twisted effects drenched blackened noise. Finally, things finish off with a a super abstract final jam, all lumbering machine like lurch, rumbles and creaks, clatter and processed grinds and buzzes, eventually smoothing out into a deep subterranean sounding low end thrum.
The first Humiliation track begins as a haunting whirl of strange processed winds and voices, almost like some sort of EVP style field recording. Soon the voices become more pronounced, wreathed in effects, the ambience peppered with disembodied riffs, bits of chug, soaring bits of minor key melody, all suspended in a field of hiss and whir and buzz, eventually exploding into some seriously filthy and damaged black doom, harsh vokills, lo-fi drum damage, thick black chugs, a strange bit of Khanate-meets-Abruptum-meets-Burzum-meets-Wolf Eyes, a spaced out bit of grimness, eventually fading into a soft swirl of music box like melody and distant rumble, before exploding into the follow up, another chunk of lumbering hateful black stumble, which over the course of the next 8 minutes drifts from abject industrial pound, to tripped out Gnaw Their Tongues style almost orchestral minimal doom, to clattery creepy soundtracky ambience, to Swans like Teutonic pound, to almost dreamy otherworldly drift.
The final track, begins like another slab of industrial flecked doomic plod and crush, wreathed in a corrosive halo of crumbling distortion and malfunctioning effects, before the riffing drops out completely, leaving a roiling expanse of fractured feedback, strange samples, grinding scrape and howl, all wrapped in wildly explosive layers of blown out buzz.
More necessary Nekrasov, and something serious to whet your appetite for more fucked up filth from the mysterious Humiliation...
So, apparently Australia is more than just adorable animals and funny accents. No, many bands from Australia are simply scary as shit! And what better way to throw yourself headfirst into the maelstrom than with this KILLER 3 way split, featuring some of the island continent's most depressive and unsettling blackened exports?
The Haunting Resonance is, as the liner notes briefly explain, a conceptual album "regarding the matter of ghosts, spirits, and phantoms" and what role, if any, they would play if the earth was wiped clean of all humanity. Pretty upbeat stuff, huh? And while it is impossible to discern just what is being sung, the music more than ably conveys this dark subject matter.
Nekrasov, whose awesome Tramp And Void ep is reviewed elsewhere on this list, inaugurates the affair with "That Which Hunts...", a burly juggernaut of a song combining Wolf Eyes-styled electronic terrorism with esoteric black metal. This song is like a continuously swirling black hole, constantly turning on and devouring itself. The song shifts, without a moments notice, from creepy, slow moving ambience to full on black metal fury, with gothy keyboards smeared across the landscape. The end result is like the soundtrack to dying alone in the wilderness, where instead of finding some source of divine strength, you simply realize that this is it. The last half of this psychedelically informed piece is a haunting, droney loop with all kinds of high end to make you nice and uncomfortable. Its repetition is its unsuspecting source of power, and before long, you are lulled into a trance where you are powerless to do anything but adjust your body to the ominous rhythms of your dying breaths.
The middle part of the trilogy is represented by Moon, who follow a similar approach to merging black metal atmospheres with more contemplative noise elements. "Forgotten Spirits" drones about as labored pulses carry the piece to a more metal (but still really weird and avant-garde) second half. While not quite as furious as Nekrasov, Moon's contribution is equally creepy and unsettling, with what may or may not be a human voice howling incessantly until the song just stops.
Bringing The Haunting Resonance to its grim conclusion is Nekros Manteia with the song "The Final Ghost". Slow, focused drums hold the foundation while delayed guitars float amongst rumbling drones. Stylistically, it makes sense when you realize the song features guitar work from Bonnie Mercer of Grey Daturas. Both bands follow a psychedelic approach that manages to sound both expansive and concentrated within its own realm of noise. Eventually, the band locks into a crusty, doom laden groove before switching to a sparse, post-rock dirge with weird, croaking vocals.
While not exactly the feel good hit of the summer, The Haunting Resonance is a worthwhile listen in its own right, and sure to appeal to those willing to explore the darker realms of noise and the more insular, lonely aspects of outsider black metal. Recommended. And apparently quite limited as well. We got a bunch of these, not sure we can get more when we run out...
Very much like the recently reviewed Sucks Cocks In Hell album from Shitfucker, you pretty much know just what to expect from a band called Nekrofilth. After all, the record's called Devil's Breath, and includes songs like "Scum Freak", "Wormskull", "Junkie Cunt", "Smear The Sleaze", "Blood Bug", "Volcanic Zit", you get the picture. So yeah, everyone who freaked out over Shitfucker (and it was a whole lot of you), prepare for another blast of filthy, noisy, distorted, punked out thrash metal heaviness, from these Ohio thrashers, featuring members of another sonically similar outfit, Nunslaughter.
Nektrofilth play simple, stripped down, raw, crossover punk/thrash metal with some blackened overtones, the guitars buzzy, the bass, thick and super distorted, there's even some wild shredding here and there, the vokills a demonic bellow delivering offensive misanthropic lyrics, the sound more punk than metal, but it suits Nekrofilth's necro sonic filth for sure. Crusty, headbangable, and crazy catchy to boot, but ultimately, just a sick and sleazy slab of filthy, raw mayhemic metal recommended for fans of depraved metallic sickness and grim, raw howl and buzz. Recommended to all filthy fuckers.
We had been hearing about this book for a while. While we were intrigued, we definitely had mixed feelings about it. What is it? Simply a list of metal band names. No logos, no information, other than names, lots and lots of names. More than 50,000. So the question is then, WHY? That's a tough one to answer. It's a pretty book, and the list is of course impressive. Page after page, silver metallic ink on matte black paper (of course), all housed in a gorgeous blue, black and metallic gold hardcover, it's not really readable, unless you're some sort of metal rain man, and it serves no real purpose, you could maybe look up some metal band you like and see if they're in there, but then what? Nothing really. The first strike is calling it All Known Metal Bands. Metalheads by their very nature are obsessive, so that's just begging for an onslaught from 'readers' of all the bands NOT included, and believe us, there are plenty. If Rolling Stone can't do a feature on the best song ever, or the 50 guitar gods, without getting THOUSANDS of people writing in telling them who they forgot and chastising them for leaving out so and so, well just imagine essentially telling metalheads, this is a list of all known metal bands. It might have worked better as a website, some sort of evolving online art project. But wait, there already is something like that. The Metal Archives, the ULTIMATE resource for metal, band bios, albums, album covers, logos, reviews, it's a lot like Wikipedia for metal. And we can't help but think, that -anyone- could have 'written' this book, after spending a few hours on Metal Archives. Which has us thinking that it's hard to believe the 'author' didn't do just that. And we're not alone. Have a look at Cosmo Lee's Invisible Oranges (one of the best heavy music blogs out there!):
http://invisibleoranges.com/2008/07/all-known-metal-bands.html
Yep, we're not alone. In fact when we first heard about the book, we all immediately thought "Oh, like Metal Archives." Except minus everything but the names of the bands. There is some sort of cool stuff, for instance bands with the same name just get listed as many times as there are bands, no way to tell them apart, no countries listed, just the name. Over and over and over. Normally that would be annoying, but in the context of this project, it's actually kind of cool. Bands called Hellbound? The list reads:
Hellbound
Hellbound
Hellbound
Hellbound
Hellbound
Hellbound
Hellbound
Hellbound
Yep, there are eight. And so it goes. Ten Leviathans, etc. Interesting to see what the popular names are.
So take away the pointlessness, remove the hyperbolic title, and assume that these names weren't all just yanked from Metal Archives, and you've got a pretty cool, sorta dumb, little object, that as metalheads, we almost feel obliged to own. So yeah, we bought one. You probably will too. But then, we love metal, and we love books, we love lists, and even though we really shouldn't, and if called on it will claim not to, we sort of love this here book. But only sort of.
As much as we warmly welcome the commentary by Mystery Science Theatre 3000's Mike Nelson, we have to say our reception to a colorized Carnival Of Souls is nothing short of lukewarm. Who asked for it? Who thought it was a good idea? At least they were wise enough to include the original black and white version too!!
Two new releases on this week's list from Medical Records, both of which have us once again wondering, where in the heck do they find this stuff?? Paul Nelson was a Portland native, who was obsessed with analog synthesis, he was well versed in music and music theory, but was also into ELP and Brian Eno, and as the years went on gathered more and more synthesizers until he had the opportunity to record an album, which was Vortex, recorded in 1981. Limited to just 1000 copies and self distributed, over the years Vortex became quite the collector's item, and it's easy to see why. The opening track, the only non-instrumental track, is a primo slice of futuristic synth wave electro pop, complete with robotic vocodered vox, crazy catchy, and ultra poppy, it's not hard to imagine "Automated Man" as a could/should have been eighties hit.
But the rest of the record is way more spacey, the bulk of the album made up of the five part title track, which finds Nelson channeling Tangerine Dream and John Carpenter, swirling synths, pulsing arpeggiations, spaced out and sci-fi and cinematic, especially on the second part, where things get downright Carpenter/Goblin-esque, fans of Zombi and Majeure and Umberto will flip for sure. The rest of the "Vortex" movements drift from planetarium show style cosmic drift, to smoldering galactic Euro-synth shimmer, to ominous, brooding soundtracky synthscapery. The suite is interrupted by "Labyrinth", which is all eighties electro pop, pulsing rhythms, programmed drums, swirling ethereal shimmer, you can almost imagine the Human League like vox that would fit perfectly, but instead, it remains instrumental, blissed out and softly psychedelic.
As always, fantastic packaging, heavy full color jacket, the vinyl 180 gram white opaque splatter, with a printed insert featuring an in-depth interview with Nelson, and of course, it's also super limited...
A fucking Muppets cover. How awesome is that? The only thing better would have been a Willie / Kermit duet. Willie Nelson is so cool.
In the liner notes for this new anthology of recordings by Willie Nelson, Kurt Wolff makes the apt point that Willie is loved by just about everyone. Not "everyone" as in every living person, but that people from myriad musical backgrounds and tastes tend to appreciate the cosmopolitan yet populist stylings of his singing and songwriting much more than his country contemporaries. As the bean counters and marketing execs might say, "he's got crossover appeal". Miles Davis was a big champion of Willie, and even though the man was alleged to have smoked a joint atop the White House during the Carter administration, he is still enjoyed by both "blue state" and "red state" types alike. His songwriting is simultaneously astutely profound and immediately appealing, as is strikingly evident in the first track on this disc "I Let My Mind Wander", with its quintessential country lyrics:
I let my mind wander,
And what did it do?
It just kept right on going,
Until it got back to you.
I let my mind wander.
Can't trust it one minute,
It's worse than a child.
Disobeys without conscience,
It's drivin' me wild,
When I let my mind wander.
But Nelson is also a master of melody and harmony and his songs are rife with jazz harmonies, blues progressions and even some South of the border swing (as on "Following Me Around"). An important caveat here is that his use of such esoteric, non-country, musical idioms is never forced, obvious, or self-conscious. Perhaps that's why such a broad swath of music lovers appreciate Willie. The 16 tracks -- mostly laid-back, leaning-over-the-bar tearjerkers -- here include both well known tracks and rarities taken from Nelson's career between the mid-sixties and mid-seventies. Highly recommended!
Been wanting to list this reissue for a while, finally got enough of a handful in stock to do so. If you're into doom metal at all, real old school doom metal, then you're familiar with Swedish legends Candlemass. The premier epic doom band of the '80s, responsible for classic albums like Epicus Doomicus Metallicus, Nightfall, and Ancient Dreams, who are still at it today, most recently bringing the hammer down with Death Magic Doom reviewed here a few months ago.
Well, way way back in their misty past there lurks Nemesis. This is where Candlemass's career of doom began. Featuring future Candlemass bassist/bandleader Leif Edling, and axewielder Christian Weberyd, Nemesis recorded a 12" ep in 1984 entitled The Day Of Retribution. Here it is reissued, complete with original PINK cover art (yay! we love anything, especially anything metal, with a pink cover!). The five songs of the ep, some of them later reused in Candlemass compositions, are examples of raw, wrenching doom dirge at its most basic best. Like Black Sabbath from beyond the grave, gone even more gothic and grim. Maybe I'm just a Candlemass fanboy, but this stuff still gives me the chills. Part of Nemesis' charm belongs to the unpolished vocals, from Leif Edling himself. He's not a soaring, operatic vocalist like Candlemass's best known singer Messiah Marcolin, not at all, but he sounds like he means it, wailing like a damned soul, in a lower register. The chugging riffs and Leif's anguished vox convey a lot of emotive power, enhanced too by the rough production, making the perfect mystic music for blasphemous rites and psychological breakdowns, conjuring Satanic black shapes within one's mind...
This new reissue, with liner notes from Leif, is filled out with six bonus tracks. A prior reissue had paired the Nemesis ep with early Candlemass demos, but this includes even earlier, more cult Nemesis demos instead! Tinny and distorted, but definitely of historical, doomological interest, after you've enjoyed the main course.
Nemeth is the first solo outing from Stefan Nemeth who we know best for his work with Radian, one of the more compelling and stimulating electronic post rock outfits of the last several years. It makes perfect sense that he has also been hard at work scoring various films projects since he has such obvious skills for creating brooding sounds that sizzle with subtlety and mounting tension. Over the last several years Nemeth found himself creating soundscapes for experimental filmmakers and installation artists. He used those works as his source material in creating this debut solo work. This is by no means a laptop project, as Nemeth used lots of organic instrumentation like guitars, percussion and synthesizers along with his electronics and programming skills to create these chilling sounds. It's pretty impossible to tell which sounds are real and which are electronically generated in this work and that's what makes Nemeth's music so spectacular. He treats all of the elements he uses with a fluidity that makes all the disparate sounds wash into each other. Film reminds us a bit of the more subdued and ominous elements of Pan Sonic, the hypnotic qualities of Circle, the ghostly decay of Thomas Brinkmann. All great company to be in, Nemeth has created a record that uses all its layers and textures with mindful perfection!
This Japanese guitarist would have been much better off calling this record anything other than Improvisations #1. To be fair, these five extended pieces of drone smolder are technically improvised, but they sure as hell do not sound like the improvisations of Keiji Haino, Tetuzi Akiyama, Masayuki Takayanagi or any other giants of Japanese improv guitar bruitism. Shinobu's work recalls much more of the post-shoegazing excursions that you would get from Explosions In The Sky, Tarentel (circa From Bone To Satellite), and even some of Machinefabriek's constructions. As we mentioned, Shinobu does technically improvise each of these tracks, although it might be better stated that be records these pieces in single takes, collecting loops through his arsenal of pedals and layering them into these architecturally dense mounds of compacted fuzz, drone, and noise all blurred into a beautifully shoegazing atmosphere. The first track builds a warm enveloping haze on top of which Shinobu plops a rich piece of slide guitar work, that gives this track train-chugging-through-desert-valley-at-sunset type of cinematic scope. The second piece takes a slightly darker arc that billows with bioluminescence and distantly mechanoid pulsations. Again, Shinobu continues darker still throughout the album with the ensuing tracks, as the guitars become more spectral, more laced with shadow, and heavier on the low end frequencies. Here, you'll find more references to Troum or Aidan Baker, in terms of a darker take on the ambience. With the fourth track, Shinobu brightens everything with a guitar driven variation on the Gas / Pop Ambient sound that's very, very nice. Afterwards, the darkened murk and shadow returns on the finale, a majestically black piece of ambience. So so cold.
Experimedia has been turning up some pretty amazing artists from around the world that previously we had never heard of, and this album is certainly one of the gems in their increasingly prolific catalogue of releases. Limited to 150 copies!!!
Finally, a complete discography of this proto-Riot Grrl outfit from Portland, Oregon, who only released a couple of eps and singles in their 5 year life-span from 1978-1982, but who inspired generations of Northwest and West Coast bands with sharp-witted songs and disaffectedly casual delivery. Evolving from up-tempo punk to a more nuanced and politically moody new wave, Neo Boys operated heavy on the rhythmic tendencies similar to that of other bands of the day like Pylon, Delta 5 and The Raincoats, but with their own unique voice. Neo Boys were fronted by sisters Kim and K.T. Kincaid on vocals and bass respectively and their two friends Jennifer LoBianca and Pat Baum on guitars and drums. They often played at parties, basements and art galleries, but also opened for such acts as The Wipers, Nico and Television, and were the first all girl group of their kind in the heavily male-dominated Portland music scene. Sooner Or Later details both sides of their trajectory with 44 tracks from rough and dirty punk to the politically charged and complex rhythms of their later output. An amazing revelation and real treat for fans of Grass Widow, Slant 6, Casual Dots and Sleater-Kinney!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
There's a lot of '80s inspired indie pop coming out these days, and sometimes it's really run of the mill pop, doused in distortion and lo-fi weirdness simply to sound like the other hip-at-the-moment popsmiths (Ariel Pink, Ty Segall, Kurt Vile, etc.). And that can be ok. But, when a new band's delivery sounds natural and not so contrived, when the music is rife with subtle unique elements, creating a sound that is not easily removable from the song, then we are ALL ears.
Such is the case with Neon Indian, who have a sonic vibe similar to current blog phenomenon and Mexican Summer buzz maker Washed Out, among others, with their ability to take the colorful and catchy side of '80s electro-tinged pop and bring in a slightly warped yet totally contagious and psychedelic sound palette that taps into a parallel universe where Ariel Pink stole Daft Punk beats and stripped them down a bit to make the kind of swirling effortless sounding pop that's just pretty damn impossible to resist. The lush, skillful production gives these songs such a nice timeless feel, while it definitely is a record that speaks to this moment in time in its reflection and reassembling of pop's past, their sample of Todd Rudgren's "Izzat Love" in one of their songs is proof that Neon Indian mastermind Alan Palamo has a good understanding of the kind of pop production that pulls from varied sources to create such a satisfying, and unique sound. This one is proving to be one of our favorite fall jams of '09! Lots of other folks favorite too, and with good reason!
One of the more eccentric acts to emerge from the Belgian EMB scene in the late '80s, The Neon Judgement developed a stylized sound of electronics melded to an Americana swagger with patinas of country-fried twang working into leather-clad industrialisms. At times, Neon Judgement were brilliant in this approach, other times it was a contrived dud. Yet, this sound was one that was developed over time, as their earliest recordings took on the more of synth punk idioms that were held by contemporaries in Cabaret Voltaire, Absolute Body Control, Siglo XX, Suicide, and even bits of Gary Numan. This LP contains all the tracks from the two cassettes that Neon Judgement released in 1981-1982 (TV Treated and Suffering), and it makes perfect sense that the exceptional ears at Dark Entries would seek out the finest moments from Neon Judgement's beginnings. At this time, the band was considerably more raw, with jagged guitar riffs coupled to the overdriven synth chords and jabbing arppegiations. It sounds like Neon Judgement had been listening to that first Suicide record, and wanted to try to figure out how to reinterpret the zombified rockabilly through electronics as well, without resorting to a pure homage. The minimalist spiralling of Neon Judgement's electronics holds some of Suicide's simplicity, although Neon Judgement's rock sensibility is purely showcased through the guitar and not the songwriting, which is much more tuned (at least here) to the European approaches of coldwave detachment. A couple of the tracks (e.g. "Factory Walk" and "TV Treated") had made appearances on later albums with more polish on the production, but there's something better suited to the stilted gait and agitated guitar pluckings on "Factory Walk" that make these recordings more expressive. As with all Dark Entries titles, limited to 500 copies.
Finally able to get more of this classic psych pop gem back in stock!
It sometimes seems like, that if everyone stopped making music right now, we could coast along for years with all of the lost and undiscovered classics from the sixties and seventies that keep surfacing. It's definitely not a bad thing at all. Makes us wonder though about folks in the year 2040 and which of our current favorite bands will be re-discovered and reissued then. Neon Pearl was a precursor to legendary psych / prog outfit T2. You won't find much prog here, instead, Neon Pearl were a psychedelic soft pop combo falling sonically somewhere alongside groups like the Zombies, Sam Gopal, Kaleidoscope, the Association and other practitioners of sundazed sixties pop. Dreamy and sonorous, with liliting melodies, swirling organs, acoustic guitars and harmonium, and fuzzed out electric guitars, all supporting the rich almost-falsetto of lead vocalist/drummer Peter Dunton, with lots of 'lalala's and 'doodoodoo's. So so nice.
Neotantrik is the duo of Finders Keepers / B-Music head honcho Andy Votel, and Sean Canty of Demdike Stare (the two also run the Pre-Cert label), accompanied by legendary electronic pioneer and Buchla synth master Suzanne Ciani, Swiss jazz legend Bruno Spoerri and folk chanteuse Jane Weaver! We weren't entirely sure what to expect, in fact we somehow missed the first NeoTantrik lp entirely, but Blue Amiga is pretty stunning, a series of pieces captured live over the last year, a gorgeous collection of cinematic ambience, and blissed out synthiness. Beholden to classic cinema for sure, the sleeve was designed by Asia Argento (daughter of legendary director Dario Argento), and features giallo actress Daria Nicolodi floating in shimmering blue water, the sounds drift from the blurry, bleary, blissful hushed thrum of the title track, to the strangely soundtracky "Mimologue", which adds all sorts of percussion and mysterious electronics, to an otherwise dreamy shimmer, the results tense and intense, but still strangely lovely. From there on out, there's creepy Carpenter like synth swells, tripped out kosmische ambience, glistening crystalline drone music, blissed out planetarium ragas, avant musique concrete, and a sprawling final track that sounds like the score to some mysterious art house thriller, woozy, swoonsome swells, and keening high end melodies, deep resonant bass throbs all infused with a minor key melancholia.
Second transmission from this strange super group, headed up by Finders Keepers mastermind Andy Votel, who on the last NeoTantrik record, was accompanied by Sean Canty from Demdike Stare, electronic music pioneer Suzanne Ciani, Swiss jazz legend Bruno Spoerri, and folk songstress Jane Weaver. We're getting the impression that the rest of the crew might not have made it along on this second voyage, it's a much more minimal affair, and way murkier, and moodier, unfurling as a kaleidoscopic cosmic drift, a sprawling psychedelic slow burn ambience, that sound like mysterious transmissions from beyond the outer reaches of the galaxy, sun dappled, but likely by some other, alien sun. Background of smoldering shimmer, gauzy, and hazy, overlaid with strange chittering electronics, that sound more like weird interference than proper rhythms, textures ebb and flow, pulses surface and recede, soft squalls of smeared noisiness wash over but soon drift away, ghostly long tones stretch out into lush, undulating layers, the sound manages to be equal parts hushed and intimate, sinister and psychedelic, cinematic and surreal. Buried percussion bobs on dreamlike expanses of softly distorted shimmer, before settling into a darkly rhythmic groove, woozy and dreamily druggy, a sort of soundtrack electronica, that at times sounds like it was plucked from some obscure seventies soundtrack, and at others, like some collaged landscape of ominous ambience, wreathed in reverb, peppered with little flurries of what sounds like xylophone, tolling bells, a combination of archival sounds, old tapes, and improvised performances, deftly woven into some a truly trippy slab of kosmische cinematic psych.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!!
It's always been hard being a woman in a male dominated scene, but it must be doubly hard when you're driven to explore and expand and alienate the dance floor the way Riz Maslen is. But the scene's loss is our gain. This double cd (disc two is a cd-rom movie
Riz Maslen's first outings as Neotropic and Small Fish With Spine were not all that impressive, but her new album for Ninja Tune certainly is. Mr. Brubaker's Strawberry Alarm Clock is a very good brew of searing beats, arrhythmic time signatures (ever heard 'dance music' in 9/8?), and amazing sampledelia that is reminiscent of all of the great sampling tricks pulled out by Amon Tobin. One of the only women in the electronica scene that [1] creates all her own music [2] in her own studio and [3] it's really good.
Continuing to explore and broaden her scope, the usually kinetic Neotropic (aka Ms Riz Maslen) eases us into her new album with a pair of uncharacteristically gentle near-pastoral piano driven numbers. Very soothing and pretty. About halfway through the third track, things darken considerably into unsettling washes of hiss. From there it's much more familiar Neotropic yet still quite sedate. The piano remains but it's surrounded by slinking and ominous deeep basslines, insectile textures and effected vocals. The sixth track "Feeling Remote" is a definite highlight - a haunting harmonica leads the richly atmospheric yet uncluttered procession that also includes a relatively straightforward shuffling beat and sleepy low chimes. Ghostly and mesmerizing.
Subcutaneous Memory is the debut recording for Nephila, the solo project of Shannon Kennedy - better known as the cellist / electronics sorceress from Pedestrian Deposit. Just as she brought a spooky sense of calm to balance the infernal noise manifest of Jon Borges' side of the Pedestrian Deposit equation, this is a super creepy tape made of and for the dark arts. The first side was all crafted on a zither, which she's plucked into haunting, slow-motion cycles of creepy melodies interspersed with atonal slashes and contact mic noises that look back to those apocalyptic collages from Current 93's early days. The second features haunting incantations looped from a "branch fiddle", wood, and voice, creating a hypnotic miasma of arboreal wooziness. Another fantastic tape from Monorail Trespassing, and we certainly hope to hear more from Nephila!
We love Fenriz. Not just cuz he's the drummer from legendary black metal duo Darkthrone, but cuz he's a funny, super opinionated, black metal mouthpiece, whose musical knowledge, especially when it comes to metal, but well beyond, are above reproach, and his related rants are hilarious. There's a reason they've been reissuing all the Darkthrone records with a second disc featuring Fenriz's 'director's commentary'. There's a reason he was the focus of the recent black metal documentary Until The Light Takes Us. And if you have the DVD, and there's a reason one of the bonus features is Fenriz in a classroom, with a bunch of blackboards, schooling the rest of us on the history/roots/development of black metal. But as we've discovered over the years, and as the above would attest to, Fenriz is not your normal black metaller. For one, he has a thing for techno, and electronic music as a whole, not to mention a bunch of other seriously non-metallic musics, one of which is spaced out kosmische synth music, a la Tangerine Dream, Klaus Schulze, Jean Michel Jarre.
Which resulted in a band mysteriously named Neptune Towers (aka Fenriz and only Fenriz), and a pair of records (with a third that was unreleased) woven together by some overarching sci-fi concept. Sure, by now, synth projects, well, everybody's got one, but in 1994, to have some underground black metal icon release a synth record, well, it was a bit shocking. But what was even more shocking, was how goddamn good they were. Listening to this stuff again now, if the circumstances were a bit different, Fenriz could have essentially been Expo 70 or Zombi neary two decades ago! Sure lots of metalheads probably have this or want it, but all the kids today into the whole retro Goblin / Carpenter kosmische synth axis, will be blown away to discover this slab of brooding, epic, droned out, synthscapery.
Caravans To Empire Algol is part one of Fenriz's Algol mythology, and is self described as "Deep Space Alien Astral Synth", which is pretty much right on the money. The cover featuring a red hued cloud of stars, some mysterious corner of the galaxy, the liner notes simply read: "Escape The Earth. Unlike many synthesizer/space releases, this album has no vocals or drums. This is purposefully in order to enable the listeners to keep 'both feet off the ground.' Vocals and drums are particularly earthbound instruments that would eclipse the mission of this disc. Escape the earth." The original liner notes further suggest that the record "will only reach their optimal goal when heard alone. NOT FOR COLLECTIVE LISTENING." And finally, "Only effectively listenable on large black stereos. Deep space awaits. Neptune Towers supports extinction of all organic life forms. NO TAKEOFF. NO LIFE." And while that may have been a bit tongue in cheek, the sounds here seem to back up those boisterous claims, unfurling a seriously chilling sprawl of isolationist drift, like the soundtrack for some planetarium light show, but an old crumbling planetarium, tucked away in the woods, seemingly abandoned, except for these strange sounds emanating, and instead of stars projected on the ceiling, the building has crumbled, leaving the listener to stare directly into the blackness of deep space.
Two epic tracks, the title track clocking in at 24:35, and its sonic sequel, the 12:39 "The Arrival At Empire Algol" closing out this first installment of our sonic journey. Thick sitar like buzz, droned out, and drifting above a hissing swirl of shimmer that seems to float from speaker to speaker, the sound occasionally building into something more distorted and crumbling, almost like SUNNO))) or some sort of black noise combo, but blurred and billowing, haunting and ominous, the sounds rough and raw, heavily textured, primitive and lo-fi, but somehow transcending their genesis and blossoming into something truly cosmic, a pulsing krautrock style synth throb just beneath the surface.
The vibe is murky and minimal, but also trancey and psychedelic, a serious slab of home brewed kosmische, akin to some kid building a time machine in his bedroom, it's like Fenriz tinkered with his crappy old synth, until it opened a portal to some other dimension, to the far reaches of the universe, and these are the transmissions that came pouring out. And while lots of synth music borders on the new agey, there's nothing wimpy about this, this is synth music that rattles your skull and loosens your bowels, it really does evoke some sort of otherworld, some journey into the unknowable, conjuring up not just the mysterious of the unknown, but the harrowing journey to get there.
About nine minutes in, the clouds part a bit, letting shards of prismatic melody shine through, giving the proceedings a celestial vibe, but soon it settles back into something much more haunting and ominous, long tones, unravelling over a softly swirling sea of tangled melodic murk, yet it remains still weirdly majestic, until the almost bombastic final minutes, dirgey, and distorted, but a groovy bassline that seems to lurk just below the surface throughout, which is what gives this a subtly krautrock feel, and that near the end is panned hard and swings from speaker to speaker, while the synths grind away, slipping back into the sitar like buzz of the opening few minutes.
The second track is much more minimal, the buzz pushed into the background, a low level insectoid hum draped over the glimmering sonic starfield, the feel here even more raw and primitive, a mad scientist concoction, the buried melodies, and delicate textures doused in lots of noise and hiss, and strange sonic artifacts, intentional or otherwise, most likely the limitations of the original synth/4-track set up, but those limitations become as much a part of the sound as anything else, all smeared into a washed out haze, rife with strange barely there melodies, keening feedback, buried percussive thumps, and layers of thick undulating low end whir, all of which eventually devolves into a blurry sprawl of flanged rumbles and melodic moans, all sprawled into an endless series of blackened swells, laced with strange little bits of electronic filigree, sent into the ether like some doomed sonic transmission.
So incredible. ANYONE who digs all the dark synth kosmische cinematic soundscaping that is going on today, will flip for this. Especially if you have a large black stereo to play it on. Comes with updated artwork, swank slipcover, and new liner notes from Fenriz, explaining the genesis of Neptune Towers, and exactly what happened to the lost third part of the Algol trilogy.
Back in October, we wanted to make the reissue of Caravans To Empire Algol, the first album of blackened kosmische drone-synth drift from Neptune Towers our Record Of The Week, in fact we wanted to make both that AND this, a sort of dual ROTW. Both were records many of us here have loved for YEARS, so we were super excited for the chance to share them with all of you. Sadly, we were never able to get enough copies of that first one at the time to make it a proper ROTW, but we did manage to get a enough of the THIS one, so finally, Neptune Towers achieves aQ Record Of The Week status!! (And making it even more ROTW-worthy, this one, unlike the reissue of Caravans, includes previously unreleased bonus tracks from the never released third installment in the trilogy!)
Neptune Towers was in fact the alter ego of hilariously and hyper opinionated black metal mouthpiece Fenriz, one half of black metal legends Darkthrone, which is initially how we discovered Neptune Towers, Caravans To Empire Algol being the first in a planned high concept trilogy. But the music of Neptune Towers was about as far removed from the black buzz of Darkthrone as can be, instead, Fenriz in his NT guise trafficked in blissed out, kosmische, psychedelic synthscapery a la Tangerine Dream, Jean Michel Jarre, Klaus Schulze, which considering the current onslaught of retro-synth outifts, proves Fenriz quite prescient back in the day. And thus, for ANYONE into all the modern day practitioners of sci-fi synthwave psychedelia. Zombi, Umberto, Majeure, Cloudland Canyon, M. Geddes Gengras, Gatekeeper, Xander Harris, Roll The Dice, Bitchin Bajas, etc., Neptune Towers is definitely worth checking out. But be warned, it's of a much darker strain than a lot of that stuff, gritty and low fidelity, but still impossibly spacious and epic. Black billows of spectral synth swirl around grinding cascades of low end buzz, everything swaddled in clouds of sci-fi squiggle and driven by dense echo drenched pulsations.
Like Caravans, the record is divided into two epic halves, the two lengthy tracks that make up Transmissions seeming to ooze from the darkest reaches of the galaxy, spectral sonic artifacts captured by arcane machinery in some abandoned bunker, the music pouring forth from the old dusty speakers, captured on those giant spinning tape reels, played back to a room full of baffled scientists, given this fleeting glimpse into some other world, in some far away galaxy, darkly cinematic, gritty and grimy, very rough around the edges, lush layers of grislty squelch, that suddenly explode into dizzying swirls of prismatic shimmer, all glistening and glimmering and downright new agey, before being sucked back down into the roiling blackened space-synth morass, only to emerge seconds later, transformed into a weirdly motorik pulsing groove, which again, soon dissipates leaving just shadows and ghostly melodic traces.
The sound throughout is in constant, glorious flux, hazy cosmic percolations, fractured, fragmented rhythms, swirling shimmering melodies, long droned out sprawls pocked with lazer beam blorp and space-sonar pings, the sound most definitely drifting into Goblin / John Carpenter terriroty here and there, with haunting little melodic refrains, that resurface, like the theme from some imaginary seventies sci-fi art film, or the perfect music for some blackened planetarium show.
This reissue tacks on four bonus tracks, excerpts from the aborted third part of the trilogy, 1994's Space Lab, four short sonic fragments that continue on right from where Transmissions fades out, continuing further into the reaches of the cosmos, lush, chordal swirs, arpeggiated melodies, all drifting through wide open expanses of deep black thrum, drifting somnambulently from swoonsome softly shimmering blackened cosmic-drone, to blissfully brooding synth-psych mesmer.
Comes in a swank slipcase too!
Now also reissued on vinyl!!!! The second and final album of blackened kosmische drone-synth drift from this mysterious one man band...
Well maybe not THAT mysterious, since Neptune Towers was in fact the alter ego of hilariously and hyper opinionated black metal mouthpiece Fenriz, one half of black metal legends Darkthrone, which is initially how we discovered Neptune Towers, Caravans To Empire Algol, the first album being the first in a planned high concept trilogy. But the music of Neptune Towers was about as far removed from the black buzz of Darkthrone as can be, instead, Fenriz in his NT guise trafficked in blissed out, kosmische, psychedelic synthscapery a la Tangerine Dream, Jean Michel Jarre, Klaus Schulze, which considering the current onslaught of retro-synth outfits, proves Fenriz quite prescient back in the day. And thus, for ANYONE into all the modern day practitioners of sci-fi synthwave psychedelia. Zombi, Umberto, Majeure, Cloudland Canyon, M. Geddes Gengras, Gatekeeper, Xander Harris, Roll The Dice, Bitchin Bajas, etc., Neptune Towers is definitely worth checking out. But be warned, it's of a much darker strain than a lot of that stuff, gritty and low fidelity, but still impossibly spacious and epic. Black billows of spectral synth swirl around grinding cascades of low end buzz, everything swaddled in clouds of sci-fi squiggle and driven by dense echo drenched pulsations.
Like his Caravans debut, Transmissions is divided into two epic halves, the two lengthy tracks that make up Transmissions seeming to ooze from the darkest reaches of the galaxy, spectral sonic artifacts captured by arcane machinery in some abandoned bunker, the music pouring forth from the old dusty speakers, captured on those giant spinning tape reels, played back to a room full of baffled scientists, given this fleeting glimpse into some other world, in some far away galaxy, darkly cinematic, gritty and grimy, very rough around the edges, lush layers of gristly squelch, that suddenly explode into dizzying swirls of prismatic shimmer, all glistening and glimmering and downright new agey, before being sucked back down into the roiling blackened space-synth morass, only to emerge seconds later, transformed into a weirdly motorik pulsing groove, which again, soon dissipates leaving just shadows and ghostly melodic traces.
The sound throughout is in constant, glorious flux, hazy cosmic percolations, fractured, fragmented rhythms, swirling shimmering melodies, long droned out sprawls pocked with lazer beam blorp and space-sonar pings, the sound most definitely drifting into Goblin / John Carpenter territory here and there, with haunting little melodic refrains, that resurface, like the theme from some imaginary seventies sci-fi art film, or the perfect music for some blackened planetarium show.
This reissue tacks on four bonus tracks, excerpts from the aborted third part of the trilogy, 1994's Space Lab, four short sonic fragments that continue on right from where Transmissions fades out, continuing further into the reaches of the cosmos, lush, chordal swirls, arpeggiated melodies, all drifting through wide open expanses of deep black thrum, drifting somnambulently from swoonsome softly shimmering blackened cosmic-drone, to blissfully brooding synth-psych mesmer.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Armed with a DAT and sights on a Masters in Ethnomusicology Loren Nerell had every intention of documenting temple ceremonial music, but found himself captivated by the daily ambient / environmental sounds of bamboo forests, bus depots, and muslim calls to worship. All are collected here as well as sounds of a Gamelan maker's showroom, frogs, excerpts of wayang kulit (Javanese shadow puppet plays), plus everyone's favorite, the lovable Kecak monkey chant of Bali and much more. Excellent.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Loren Nerell is the ethnomusicologist who compiled the exceptional field recording album "Indonesian Soundscapes" for Soleilmoon. "Lilin Dewa" is his outstanding studio production based on archaic Javanese and Balinese gamelan styles infused with dronologist electronics to add a dark mystery to the delicate percussive processions. It makes perfect sense that Brian Lustmord released this on his Side Effects label.
Latest from these noisy Oakland oddballs, who at the outset, sound a bit like a way more fucked up, way more musical Negativland or Tape Beatles, at least over the first few songs (and the last few), the same sort of cut-up recontextualism, but way less linear, and way more warped, the samples less the focus, and more just another element, and while it is noisy, it's also lush and textural, glitched out and electronic, droney and industrial, the various voices and found sounds eventually disappearing almost entirely for the bulk of the record, beneath heaving swells of crumbling distortion and sheets of hissing shortwave interference, warm whirling melodies drifting over dense rumbling reverberations, occasionally things lock into subtle rhythms, throbbing like some buried subterranean pulse, other times the songs seem to expand, sprawling into blackened noisescapes, abstract and amorphous, each one a mysterious hazy stretch of garbled muted haze, an undulating surfacesound, barely obscuring all the action right underneath, chittering percussive skitter, roiling bass heavy thrum, squalls of blown out synth buzz, bursts of superdistorted in-the-red crunch, weird abstract drones wrapped around conflagrations of blurred bleary noise that begin to sound almost like beats, flecked with all manner of hum and whir, the whole thing growing gradually prettier and more melodic as it goes, the noise elements definitely restrained, more textural than caustic and the end result for the most part is less of a noise record, and more of a super varied, abstract avant drone record. That said, the band do occasionally fuck shit up, with super intense bursts of howled blacknoise, or shards of grinding metallic buzz, but for every one of those moments, there's another of dark brooding dronescapery, or haunting cinematic drift to balance it out. Cool stuff.
Packaged in an oversized full color sleeve, partially covered by a grey fabric hood, and wrapped up tight with copper wire.
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"This CD contains one of the strangest ideas I've run across lately... an insane, angular, aggressive soundtrack for David Lynch's failed sci-fi beast of a movie, Dune. Trust me, though - as goofy as this sounds - this is a fantastic album. It takes more than human guts to dish out the beating that Louisville, KY's Nero gives the senses with the nearly 18-minute long improvisational album-closer, Kwizzach Haderach. Within this track, dialogue samples from Dune are alternately buried and brought to the surface, while Nero relentlessly tweaks and hacks away at building a colossal, disturbing drone. It's absolutely maniacal - which is the best way to describe Nero. With guitars, bass, drums and vocals all armed with razors and needles, and a really scary stab at an oddball 'concept album,' Nero has designed an inspired piece of unforgettable mayhem." -pillowfight.com
Long in the works debut full length from these SF heavies, four songs, 54 minutes, a sprawling collection of lurching lumbering, trudging post metal apocalyptic, swampy emo dirgery. And we don't mean emo in the mall punk sense, no we're talking, earnest and intense, epic and EMOTIONAL, the vocals specifically, a wild, nearly unhinged caterwaul, dramatic and occasionally over the top, sounding a bit like a harsher Daniel Higgs (and when it does, the band almost sounds like a metal Lungfish!), or a more metal David Yow, a little like the guy from NoMeansNo oddly enough, or even a more manic Michael Gira, with an intense, snarling delivery, actually sung too, not of that gurgle and shriek, and those real vocals add pathos and intensity to the already swaggery, slithery doomy crush underneath.
Equal parts math metal, post metal and doom metal, these guys unfurl epic sun baked expanses of totally epic doom blues brutality, churning heaviness that slips from gnarled Birthday Party like scumrock to soaring slow building Neurosis style pummel, the guitars drifting from jangle to roar, from shimmer do droned out and blackened, often in the same song. Long stretches of hypnotic cyclical riffing give way to bursts of chaotic metal psych jams, give way to swampy noise rock strut, eventually returning to the lumbering downtuned heaviness that seems to be the band's core, but those vocals soar above it all, tortured and patently UNmetal, helping transform this post metal avant doom into something truly unique.
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