- John Kealy
- Albums and Singles
Initially I was disappointed that this third release from Stephen O'Malley and Peter Rehberg was only a one-sided vinyl. The two previous albums were both proper heavy headfucks and I wanted more and more. However, the two pieces on KTL3 manage to invoke an even more unsettling atmosphere than I was expecting. "Loud Game" features some classic O'Malley riffing before breaking down into a hacking mess of noise. "Sunday" is a quieter and more menacing affair: a treacly bass rhythm throbs in the background while squeals, scrapes and clangs ring out like an infernal blacksmith creating a torture machine.
Visually, this is the most impressive KTL release. The sleeve features a creepy photograph of a life size doll (which I believe is connected to the theatre piece that O'Malley and Rehberg teamed up to soundtrack) which sets the mood immediately. Once you take out the inner sleeve and cut through the seal, an etching of a horned beast on the flipside of the vinyl greets you. All of this combines with the music to create a nightmarish cocktail. The sounds here are a bit of break away from the wintry blasts of tinny noise on the first two albums which indicates that KTL have more in them than a single soundtrack work. There is no word from O'Malley and Rehberg if this project is to continue but based on the darker pastures of KTL3, pushing any deeper into the night might prove too much for mortal ears.
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Volume III in a series of UK / European / US and Japanese artists’ tributes to the pioneering UK Noise group The New Blockaders
release date: July 27, 2010
catalog#: IMPREC262
format:DOUBLE CD
Including exclusive tracks by: Z’EV, The Haters, Controlled Bleeding, Thurston Moore, Jim O’Rourke, Wolf Eyes, Macronympha, Emil Beaulieau, AMK, Idea Fire Company, John Wiese, Daniel Menche, Damion Romero, Aaron Dilloway, Lockweld, Prurient, Richard Ramirez, Keith Fullerton Whitman, Jason Kahn, mnortham, Carlos Giffoni, Blue Sabbath Black Cheer, etc.
Disc One:
Z'EV "Chips Off The New Block"
Keith Fullerton Whitman "September 27th, 1960"
Alan Courtis "Happy Blockaders Time"
Controlled Bleeding "The Latest Hole In My Head"
Plethora "Last Night I Dremt Of Anti-Fest... This Morning I Woke Up Deaf"
Macronympha "Riding Down Lost Highway"
The Haters "Mantra To Rot"
Emil Beaulieau "Anti-Vartan"
Lockweld "Catharsis Bomb"
Daniel Menche "Smoldered Blockaders"
John Wiese "Annul"
Broken Penis Orchestra "The Kill Lump"
Jason Kahn "Rille"
Disc Two:
Idea Fire Company "Les Heros De La Barricade Finale"
mnortham "Plotting Course On The Field Of Nothingness"
Thurston Moore "Corion Sound for TNB"
Jim O'Rourke "407 Seconds Over"
Damion Romero "Broken Block"
Prurient "Majdanek Slaughterhouse"
Richard Ramirez "Cultural Blockade"
Blue Sabbath Black Cheer "Untitled"
Carlos Giffoni "Richard Walks Into The Sea"
AMK "Phlegm Angst"
Aaron Dilloway "Machine Rape (Blitzkrieg)"
Wolf Eyes "Fisted Gadgets"
Artwork by Richard Rupenus (TNB)
More info on Important Records website
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On the third album from A Hawk and a Hacksaw, Jeremy Barnes has held to his word and touring member Heather Trost now joins him in the studio to make a superb collection of new tunes. It is not a break away from the previous releases but it is a continuation of a high quality back catalogue. The Way the Wind Blows hangs together better and feels more complete, especially with the addition of more odd instruments and even stronger arrangements.
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- Albums and Singles
With an impressive cast of characters including 2Mex, Saul Williams, and Mia Doi Todd, Thavius Beck's newest record charts a few different paths but manages to carve out a unique path for the LA-based producer. I was a fan of Thavius Beck's last record for Mush, but Thru is even stronger and stranger.
Beck's choice of collaborators is telling about his approach to music. Nocando's rhyme on "98" is hard to listen to, deeply personal and honest, but it's the kind of track that I wish more people would try to make within the context of a hip hop record. Mia Doi Todd's voice loops and blends with samples over a beautiful but broken downtempo number while Saul Williams adds more gravitas to an album that's already aiming to be a seriously considered journey rather than a collection of pop songs.
Even the instrumental tracks here sing with a resonantly personal touch. Beck swings back and forth between sample hungry hip hop tracks and songs that exist outside of any tightly constrained vision of a genre. Music like this almost always tends to be a reflection of someone creating out of a need to express rather than a need to move units at the local shop. Of course that means that records like Thru often have a difficult time connecting with the people whose jobs are to market, sell, promote, and distribute music, but paradoxically these same records are usually the ones that connect the deepest with individual listeners who feel what an artist is trying to say.
Thru is a pretty dark journey, but not one that dwells on or ever feels weighted down by its own themes. This could easily be the kind of record that gets people who typically dismiss hip hop and electronic music as glossy, vacant, or superficial to rethink that position.
samples:
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On the third album from A Hawk and a Hacksaw, Jeremy Barnes has held to his word and touring member Heather Trost now joins him in the studio to make a superb collection of new tunes. It is not a break away from the previous releases but it is a continuation of a high quality back catalogue. The Way the Wind Blows hangs together better and feels more complete, especially with the addition of more odd instruments and even stronger arrangements.
Leaf
“In the River” opens the proceedings in style; it is reminiscent of last year’s Darkness at Noon album with its equal helpings of Ennio Morricone infused spaghetti western pomp and eastern European melancholy. Barnes’ vocals are pushed into the background which both obscures them and makes them sound like they are being beamed in from some far off place that is only read about in dusty books of travellers’ memoirs. One of those far off places turns out to be a remote village in Romania called Zece Prajini where Barnes and Trost relocated to in order to record The Way the Wind Blows (despite the distance from a proper recording studio the music has been captured with crystal clarity). The other far off place where they ventured isn’t even on the map. The same can be said of A Hawk and a Hacksaw’s music. You can narrow it down to a rough region of musical space but in the end it is an idiosyncrasy that cannot be pinned down. It’s not folk music in the traditional sense but like an amalgamation of feelings expressed through a handful of different musical dialects. The important point is that not only is it unique but it’s beautiful, especially on this album.
The Way the Wind Blows doesn’t see A Hawk and a Hacksaw changing their now cemented style but it does see them refining and expanding it. It is little details and additions that really add so much to their music. On “God Bless the Ottoman Empire” there is a Turkish wind instrument (unfortunately I’m unable to identify it) used with heaps of skill and to great effect. Trost’s violin is used far more sparingly than expected but when it is present it is invariable beautiful such as on the brief “Oporto.” Another notable thing about this album is less use of vocals. There are vocals but most of the time they are short phrases used to augment the music. I wouldn’t have minded more songs as the pieces I like most by A Hawk and a Hacksaw tend to be the songs. Barnes has a great voice and his lyrics are generally splendid as evidenced by the line (delivered in the most pacifistic tone possible): "You cannot govern the world, fuck off."
I hope they follow up this release promptly as with each album they are becoming more and more solid. The music sounds even more intuitive than before, nothing sounds like it was written but snatched from the air, the results depending on “The Way the Wind Blows.” Judging from the CD I’m listening to now, the wind blew in the right direction.
samples:
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Cassette Cabal : 001-004 : 04.07.2010
All cassettes are professionally duplicated and imprinted on high-bias chrome tapes and are delivered individually shrink-wrapped. Colored tapes are shipped first come first serve only.
PPD $7-USA | $8-CAN | $10-WORLD
PayPal bravemysteries[at]gmail.com
CQBL001 | Burial Hex | Fantasma Di Perarolo | c55
[img]http://i236.photobucket.com/albums/ff187/thanielritter/cqbl001front.jpg[/img]
[Limited edition 20 Gold on Gold | 80 Gold on Black]
Pipe organ sonata by Clay Ruby featuring liturgical medleys and elaborate funerary improvisations with accompanying electronic atmospheres by Giovanni Donadini, Nico Vascellari and Riccardo Mazza. This performance was given on the mid-eighteenth century pipe organ at Chiesa di San Nicolò di Perarolo di Cadore and recorded December 23rd, 2009 at the inauguration performance of Nico Vascellari's exhibition at Perarolo, as currated by Daniela Zangrando. A crowd from all over Italy traveled north to join the curious villagers, all huddled together in their warmest winter clothes to witness this performance, which involved a 3 hour funeral procession and memorial within the massive, candlelit, unheated church that is the center of tiny village lost high in the frozen Dolomites of northern Italy. Two elderly natives furiously pulling ropes to pump the bellows of the ancient organ while Clay Ruby conjures decayed hymns, modal improvisations, spiraling tone clusters and utterly supernatural voices out of its sputtering pipes. This tape captures a 18+ minute excerpt of the lengthy proceedings, documenting the howling organ, the cryptic electronics and the frozen spirits singing in the pulsing and surreal environment of the centuries-old church.
CQBL002 | Kinit Her | Divine Names | c30
[Limited edition 20 Silver on Blue | 80 Silver on Black]
New full length album from our beloved Janus-headed ur-folk brethren of thee Midwest, Kinit Her have been releasing dense and gorgeous music for the last three years and these new compositions have the most developed, deep and intimate sounds of any Kinit Her releases. Founded as a trio in 2007, one of their founding members has recently retired from music to enjoy family life out in the country, sadly leaving only two close brothers still huddled around the cauldron. In the absence of their musical kin, Kinit Her journeys on, gathering what they find along the path, filling their hearts and sounds with an ever-deepening sorrow gaine d from their search for real meaning through the tainted veils of the modern world, a sorrow diluted only by the dim glimmering of hope offered by occult insights into what lies behind those veils. The music presented here includes an epic working that covers all of side A, progressing from a ritual howling at the edge of Ain Soph to a pensive woodland march, winding it's way to devastation and madness. Side B follows with some their most unique yet accessible songcraft to date, a stunning set of new songs, showing the careful influence of Neoclassical and Early musics. Sounding organic tone-mantras from shofar horns, bending sweetened notes on beaten twelve-string guitars, intoning a harmonized enumeration of spells and dreams, backed by weeping string and brass arrangements with lush acoustic ephemera twinkling on the peripherals of everything, twisting arcane runes into the cyber sigils of tomorrow, with their smoldering mysticism filling the spaces in between each sound, this soft duo have become hard, turning the world upside down and following the lessons of modernity to find their birthrights in the spirit of the god-fearing troubadours of old.
CQBL003 | Body Collector | New Eden | c30
Limited edition 20 Red on Grey | 80 Red on Black]
From beyond the other side of great lake Michigan transmits Khristopher Reinshagen; aka Scorpio & Glass aka Khurst aka Nurse Etiquette aka Nuhrst. It has been rumored that this may be the final BC release ever, and if so, this project ends with just as much unsettling fury and disgust as when it began. Using bleak themes and imagery to drive the manipulation of industrial elements into the accumulation of brooding noise walls and filthy tape grime, Body Collector has released twenty or more focused and intense installments of sonic nausea over the last three years of his short life. This cassette sets you off into another strange aryan-voodoo nightmare dimension, haunted by an always tense, menacing presence, calling out through the hiss and hum of the threshold between our dimension and the New Eden. Broken tape systems consume every sound, encrusting them with analog waste. Metal vomit gushes between each gasp of sickly feedback. Every motion of sound seems like it is trying to force it's way past the other sounds and flop out of the speakers, onto the floor, to hemorrhage and die right there before you. Despite the generous mutations of all the machinery, you can always hear Khurst himself underneath it all, conducting the steel, slowly churning and mashing his ritual tools of scrap metal and material decay. A formidable requiem to such a morbid project, if ever there was one.
CQBL004 | The Second Family Band | Veiled Gallery | c42
[Limited edition 20 Green on Lime | 80 Green on Black]
Humming and wheezing through 40+ minutes of electro-acoustic tension and release, with the usual mood swings from good vibes to hysteria, the Second Family Band is the still-raging avatar of our lonely local folkspirit. Second Family Band folks are everyone from the recent University of Wisconsin dropouts to aging remnants of the anarcho/folkish/mage/squatter tradition of Madison, featuring members of Davenport Family, Pan to Scratch, Zodiac Mountain, Drunjus, Hintergedanken, Burial Hex, Jex Thoth, Zola Jesus, Kinit Her, Crystal Dragon, and many other local units. This cassette contains six choice excerpts from two sessions given near the end of summer, 2009. The first session was a huge family gathering at the newly installed Harvest Abbey in Madison. The second session was a beautiful performance by a trio of elders within St Mary's of the Oaks, a 154 year-old Marian altar built on a hilltop in the forest around Indian Lake. If you have heard Second Family before, than you know a little bit of what to expect: loads of percussion, singing, plucking, pounding, tapping, dropping, alien choirs, bass grooves, naked ladies, strange fidelities, chanting, praying, drinking, strumming, smoking, ringing, clapping, bowing, pulsing, losing, forgetting, and finding everything in every type of mood from the sinister to the blissful. Yet, one local cynic described the music on this tape as sounding "too good for Second Family Band". Whatever the case may be, Brave Mysteries is proud to release this document of a momentary glance into the native spirit and biodynamic soundscape of central Wisconsin, in hopes to keep these gentle old family flames burning for yet another season.
Cassettes are PPD $7-USA | $8-CAN | $10-WORLD
PayPal bravemysteries[at]gmail.com
Future cabal transmissions from: MV&EE, Bong, Lens, Corpoparassita, The Mumber Toes, Ignatz, Magic Kingdom, Zodiac Mountain, Wedding, Pan To Scratch, Domo, Circulation of Light, Urna, Grupo de Musica Sin Nombre, Wormsblood, Sylvester Anfang II, and many more.
BRAVEMYSTERIES.COM
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This is the product of a collaboration between Italian Gianluigi Di Costanzoand American Brian Salter that wants to come off as a timeless work ofelectronic pop music, but only makes it half-way there. What BochumWelt learns the hard way is that the middle of the road is a dangerousplace to be.
Fuzzy Box
Elan does have some lovely sounds and crystalclear production, and it avoids dating itself by staying away fromparticularly trendy aesthetic choices. In fact, in that respect, thealbum works very well, but it’s not enough for a record to bedislocated from time. It also needs to be moving in some direction, andthat isn’t happening here.
Although it’s well produced,the album ultimately lacks the soul or energy of some of Bochum Welt’scontemporaries who are working from a similar mold. The tracks on Elansound almost entirely synthesized and that’s not a bad thing until theybegin to sound like perfunctory studio exercises rather thancompositions motivated by any feeling or experience. The melodies arealways pleasant, but not sweeping; the songs are mildly evocative butnot breathtaking or immersive; the rhythms are polite accompaniment,but rarely provide a spark. At every step it feels like Bochum Welt isplaying it safe and taking the path most traveled.
Vocals provided bythe Italian crooner Garbo on “Blue” come off awkwardly and they addlittle to the otherwise pretty but unremarkable track. The Italianastrophysicist and my high school aged-self’s nerd-music crush Dr.Fiorella Terenzi contributes something along the way, but whatever itis it fails to elevate the record to being memorable. There’s nodiscernable style here and at points it sounds as though the albumcould be the temp soundtrack to a car commercial or cheesy Europeanfilm—it hits the right cues but it seems to miss the point.
After a fewspins, everything on the record begins to sound like a keyboard preset,and the lack of any original sound design leaves the compositions tofend for themselves. When there is nothing left in the songs upon whichBochum Welt can prop up an idea or an emotional state, the whole thing collapses like a beautiful straw house.
samples:
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The debut full-length album from Delia and Gavin is like an extended single, comprised of four songs extended to their full potential, each stretching between 11 and 13 minutes, which is the perfect amount of time to pull anybody into 'the zone' and then drop them out before anything bad happens. The jagged, staccato sounds generated by the meticulous sequencing create nothing short of an aural strobe light, in the way that staring at it for extended periods of time can easily tamper with -all- senses of the body.
Underneath the rigid repetition, elongated notes from live synth and piano playing rounds out the sound. Reference points have been made to Eno and Philip Glass, but there's something much deeper happening. It's almost as if Giorgio Moroder decided to do a take on Coil's Time Machines—there's something more going on underneath the surface, but any ritual magick in the recipe is being well-concealed by the duo at this stage.
Those like me who fell in love with the duo via the DFA 12" of "El Monte"/"Rise" won't be disappointed as each of the four tracks take a similar route in their length and development. The album opens with the original version of "Rise," and for the first time we're able to hear the song free from the techno dance beat that the DFA imposed on the 12" release. For "13 Moons" the duo swaps the lead from the background, keeping the piano sounds and synths in the foreground while the sequencer fades in and out of the background. Once again, perceptions of time easily become distorted. "Relevée" opens with a similar subtlety, but as minutes pass, the legato becomes staccato: the live playing gets chopped into a sequenced soup and layers dance slowly with each other. Halfway through, organ sounds begin to mimic voices in an effect reminiscent of some of the Pink Floyd material from Meddle and Atom Heart Mother. "Black Spring" closes with another mesmerizing interplay of man and machine. It's so hard to tell at some of these points what is actually being played intentionally and what sounds are being created incidentally through effects, distortion or eq, or if it's the aural version of an optical illusion and my ears are having fun playing tricks on me.
This music isn't "glitch," it's not accidental at all, and as Delia and Gavin claim, it's created by layering live takes from keyboards and other instruments, some created specifically for this music. We're spoiled by the digital age of CDs, where we can plop in a disc and know how much time the whole journey is going to take. Delia and Gavin in a way sound like they're trying to distort and bend it, as the passage of time becomes fuzzy while completely bathed in the aural movement within. Days of Mars could easily be one of those albums people come to associate with some of the most memorable and enjoyable trips they've ever done.
samples:
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This 1995 album is one of those extraordinarily rare instances in which a remix album was actually a great idea. For one, it focuses almost entirely on material from Evanescence, an album that many (myself included) consider to be Scorn's peak, capturing Mick Harris during that all-too-brief nexus in which his more visceral impulses and his love of disquieting ambiance were in perfect balance. Then, of course, he managed to assemble several of the most compelling and uncompromising denizens of electronic music's shadowy fringes (Coil, Autechre, etc.) to warp it all to their liking.
Ellipsis opens, appropriately enough, with the monster lead track ("Silver Rain Fell") from Evanescence, now remixed by Meat Beat Manifesto.I find it to be a somewhat amusing remix attempt, as the primary difference is that Jack Dangers just removed all of Nick Bullen's pointless vocals.He also made some subtly funky and unobtrusive additions and dispelled a little bit of Harris's harshness, but it is basically the same song, only edited to remove anything that Dangers didn’t think was quite working ("Here you go, mate- I fixed your song.You're welcome.").The awesome shuffling beat from the original, thankfully, stayed intact.
Most of the other contributors make much more conspicuous changes, however.Robin Rimbaud, for example, essentially obliterates every recognizable feature from "Night Tide" and transforms it into an ominously ambient Scanner piece (enhanced byalternately amusing and tense snatches of ill-gotten cell phone conversations, predictably).Autechre, quite similarly, absolutely gut "Falling," leaving only a very minimal lurching early-Autechre-style beat and some spectral, echoing snatches of Mick Harris’s original ethnic percussion.
Coil, for their part, rather unexpectedly contribute the most sympathetic and well thought-out work on the album with their re-envisioning of "Dreamspace."I suppose I am a pretty big Coil fan, but they were never a group that I considered particularly restrained or reverent.Like Dangers before them, they wisely discarded Bullen’s vocals and kept just about everything else.They then went one step further though, and slathered the track with some inspired and well-placed mindfuckery.Aside from a very conspicuous, submerged, and psychotropic repeating note motif, it is extremely difficult to pinpoint exactly what Sleazy and Balance did, but quite clear that the song has been vastly improved somehow- it’s just more squelchy, more shivery, and more weird.Notably, Coil also did a (lesser) second version of the same song that was only included on the original vinyl version, but it has since resurfaced on Anamnesis.
The rest of the album takes a bit of a downturn, but is still generally enjoyable:P.C.M. enlivens "The End" with some frantic (but now dated) drum-and-bass rhythms, Mick Harris perplexingly reworks "Exodus" and "Light Trap" to make them slightly less cool than the original versions, and Germ takes one of the least impressive tracks from Evanescence ("Automata") and turns it into a different unimpressive track.Then, regrettably, there is Bill Laswell, whom I just don’t understand at all.Unlike everyone else, he picked a song from an earlier album ("Night Ash Black" from Colossus).Also unlike everyone else, he made his song dramatically worse than the original by doubling the length, playing up the guitars and the vocals, adding some didgeridoo, and tossing in some wildly overdramatic movie samples.I'd like to believe that he was just being hilariously contrarian, but I have some very serious doubts.  
Aside from Coil, no one on Ellipsis quite manages to eclipse the source material, but it is certainly fascinating to hear everyone take a crack at it anyway.Part of the reason is that Nick Bullen's heavy, muscular bass lines were one of the best things about Evanescence (and Scorn in general) and many of the remixers neutered the songs a bit by removing or downplaying them.The other problem is that, with few exceptions, most of the remixes fall victim to Scorn’s own Achilles' Heel of stretching great ideas too thin and going on a bit too long.  Ellipsis is not quite a classic in its own right, but it has some great moments and serves as an excellent companion piece to the more essential Evanescence (with which it has now been conveniently reissued).
Samples:
- Dreamspace (Coil "Shadow vs. Executioner" Mix)
- Silver Rain Fell (Meat Beat Manifesto Mix)
- Night Tide (Scanner "Flaneur Electronique" Mix)
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Unavailable for over 10 years, this new edition of “Lebenserinnerungen Eines Lepidopterologen” (“Memoirs of a Lepidopterist”) collects the collaborative and early solo works of Andreas Martin and Christoph Heemann as an extensive 2CD retrospective.
Moving between minimalist guitar compositions, tape-music narratives, and an array of cascading electronics, each of Martin and Heemann’s solo recordings blend seamlessly within the milieu of their collaborative work.
While one can hear how this forged the groundwork for much of the late-period H.N.A.S. material, the work here took the vision further, and helped shape a path toward their respective solo endeavors. Included are compositions from their first solo releases: Martin’s “Doppelpunkt Vor Ort” (1993) and Heemann’s-“Uber den Umgang mit Umgebung and Andere Versuche” (1991), each originally released as small edition 10” vinyl. Also featured is a prime selection of previously unreleased material, obscure 7” tracks, and their collaborative opus from the (H.N.A.S.) “Ach, Dieser Bart!” LP (1988).
This deluxe set includes two additional tracks (not appearing on the previous edition), remastered audio, and fully restored visuals. All packaged in a beautiful mini-LP gatefold jacket with an updated 4-page booklet. Over 100 minutes of music covering the years 1987-2000
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"In the early eighties Robert Haigh released several highly acclaimed albums under the name of SEMA on his own label Le Rey Records.
The most notable being 'Three Seasons Only'. He also contributed piano and recordings to various Nurse with Wound projects including: Homotopy to Marie, Sylvie and Babs Hi Fi Companion, Spiral Insana.
The final release on Le Rey Records was his solo piano album 'A Waltz in Plain C' (CD) in 1989 and after that release Robert left London and settled in Hertfordshire.
20 years have passed since then. "Notes and Crossings" is the album that Robert has jokingly referred to as the follow up to 'A Waltz in Plain C'. "Notes and Crossings" is an album of pure piano music (with some treatments) - there is no use of percussion and electronic sequencing etc. The album is comprised of 14 pieces of written and improvised piano music, including an unreleased (but re-recorded) track from 1989 : 'Tomorrow Never Came'.
Robert says : "Piano is my real love and I am excited to have the challenge to work within the (limitless) limitations and expressions of this medium"
This is what long-time SEMA listeners expect from Robert Haigh, and will appeal to those who love works by Erik Satie, Claude Debussy and Harold Budd. In an edition 500 copies with hand-made miniature jacket sleeve designed by Faraway Press.
Siren Records is very proud to release this long awaited beautiful new album by Robert Haigh."
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