The improvisational, instrumental noise/rock trio known as Grey Daturas, hailing from Melbourne, Australia, have been kicking around making as much noise as is humanly possible since 2001, starting out by improvising live soundtracks to 16mm film projections and then over the years notching up many live shows, supporting such acts as Sunn O))), d. Yellow Swans, Dismember, and Isis. Dead in the Woods is actually a re-release of their second album, originally appearing on the Crashing Jets label in 2004. |
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The improvisational, instrumental noise/rock trio known as Grey Daturas, hailing from Melbourne, Australia, have been kicking around making as much noise as is humanly possible since 2001, starting out by improvising live soundtracks to 16mm film projections and then over the years notching up many live shows, supporting such acts as Sunn O))), d. Yellow Swans, Dismember, and Isis. Dead in the Woods is actually a re-release of their second album, originally appearing on the Crashing Jets label in 2004.
7244 Hits
The sparse credits that accompany this disc do not make clear if this is an actual collaboration or a split release, though it is obvious that Swedish electronics wizard Nilsen leads the way on the first piece, while everyone's favorite industrial percussionist is the focus of the second. Regardless, the cryptic liner notes and black-on-black artwork are completely appropriate visual representations of the dark expanse that constitutes this album.
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Titled after a Greek ritual that forms a conceptual background for the disc, this duo leads an ethnographic journey that is every bit as disturbing and frightening as expected, given that the title translates to "exchange of eyes." Marchetti's compulsive attention to detail couples with Murayama's creepy vocalisms to make for a compelling, dramatic work.
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This new semi-regular feature of notable new dance singles is inaugurated with reviews of Holy Ghost!, Syclops, Professor Genius, Kavinsky, Surgeon and Blast Head.
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B.Baphomet's rough hand-cranked dark ambient is nowhere near the detached (I think they call it 'glacial') end of that market, its measured input of black/doom influences giving it a living cruder feel. The solid elements like bass notes on Einslpundahgn's "Dronedisciple" and "Rites Ov Catharsis" aid in preventing it from becoming a straight mood exercise or too dredging or sludgy. As enjoyable as this inward disdain is, it is only when B.Baphomet steps away from the darker moods that the music connects for me.
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Canadian electronic musician Hugo Girard has taken an interest in the subject of hypnosis and created an album based around the idea of simulating or accompanying a session through the employment of analogue electronic drones, sequences, and rhythms.
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While this review may seem a bit out of context to most Brainwashed readers, a closer listen to the seemingly pop elements of this demo reveal a greater depth, indicating the potential for great things.
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Alessandro Tedeschi's got a serious fixation with ice. A self described "glacial ambient" musician, he established the Glacial Movements label to release works evocative of the Arctic. Netherworld is Tedeschi's recording project intended to explore that aesthetic.
8676 Hits
Recorded live in the studio over two nights, this is a double CD of jams by the ever wonderful Bardo Pond and Japan's equally loveable LSD March. The music tilts from sounding like outtakes from Bardo Pond's Selections CD-Rs to LSD March's heady live sound. All the descriptions and superlatives that have been attributed to either band apply just as well to this monster of an album that they have spawned.
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This single track, 18+ minute improvisation by a veritable super-group of six string abuse and experimentation (including members of Wilco and Sonic Youth), aided and abetted by the No Fun Fest curator and analog electronics wizard, actually has a misleading title. While these guitarists could be expected to create a squall of guitar noise like a bag of wet cats rolling down a hill, it instead shows an admirable level of free jazz type restraint and balance.
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As a way of celebrating a decade of his label Intransitive, as well as the anniversary of his first album, Stone Blind, Boston based tape fetishist Howard Stelzer returns to his roots and dissects that early work to construct something entirely new but remaining true to his love of all things cassette.
8900 Hits
For their fourth release, these black metallers from Israel have produced an album of no worth whatsoever. The music is unimaginative and some of the lyrics are downright ridiculous; two huge problems that are not redeemed by even a shred of any sort of passion. This sounds like music made by people who understand how the genre should sound but do not actually like it.
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Kevin Doherty of Sleep Research Facility originally released this album in 2001, based on the first eight minutes of the film Alien and named after the freight ship of which Ripley was a crew member. At the end of 2007, it was reissued with new artwork and a bonus track on the original label.
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Arrayed in dystopian garb and armed with righteous indignation, Black Mountain's newest record explodes and pounds in unison with the bombs and wars that populate Stephen McBean's lyrics.
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The story is that these four songs are all that's left of Scatter's scrapped final album. As that free folk assembly went on their separate ways, thankfully vocalist Stephanie Hladowski has collated the tracks into this 10" EP. It feels like these songs have been pulled through the liquid mirror of a now-closed world, with this world being better off for having them. These brief glimpses of the past reveal themselves as further puzzle pieces in the reconfiguration of British traditional songs as part of a living present.
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The MV half of MV&EE creates tense, cosmic music with very little. His meandering voice and sparkling guitar sound lonely, weird, and oddly comforting. A good match, actually, for some of Philip K. Dick's obsessions: identity, authenticity and transformation.
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The music of Zeni Geva has variously been described as heavy metal, noise rock, math rock (apparently because of their use of atypical time signatures), death metal, thrash metal, sludge metal, doom metal and industrial metal; in truth it is all of these categories while at the same time travelling far beyond the trite parameters and restrictions usually associated with them. Maximum Money Monster originally debuted in 1990 and here includes three extra live tracks as bonus material.
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Expecting a compilation of various Iranian electronic artists from the past 40 years, I was a little disappointed to discover that this two-disc set only covers two artists, the older Alireza Mashayekhi and the more recent Ata Ebtekar, aka Sote. Even so, the music found within is as wild and vivid as anything I could have hoped for and a decent enough introduction to some of the ideas at work in avant-garde Iranian music.
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Rolan Vega's ambiguous debut on Community Library suffers from its unfocused genesis. In part a tribute to movie and television soundtracks, Documentary is an intriguing compilation of Vega's synthesizer compositions but not an entirely successful album.
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This is the second release from Eamon Sprod's field recordings project and a wonderful collection of sound collages. In spite of a fairly hackneyed premise (the beauty in decay), he has created a number of fragile compositions that wander somewhere between Chris Watson's clear recording style and Francisco Lopez's disorientating approach to presenting sound.
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