A note for note cover of any Atari Teenage Riot song is a silly idea but that is what D-Trash Records have offered up with The Virus has been Spread. Nearly every track here is a straight-up cover lacking in any imagination, vision, or sense of danger. As such, The Virus has been Spread is a limp and impotent attempt at a tribute. It is most likely a way for this label to get its acts some spotlight; it has bitten them in the tail because after listening to this CD I do not want to hear any of these artists again.
Hotter than July. This week's episode has plenty of fresh new music by Marie Davidson, Kim Gordon, Mabe Fratti, Guided By Voices, Holy Tongue meets Shackleton, Softcult, Terence Fixmer, Alan Licht, pigbaby, and Eiko Ishibashi, plus some vault goodies from Bombay S Jayashri and Pete Namlook & Richie Hawtin. Solstice moon in West Midlands, UK photo by James. Get involved: subscribe, review, rate, share with your friends, send images!
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This project takes a unique approach to music: rather than instrumentation, it is based around the sound of writing and drawing. It makes for some original textures but it lacks a coherent feeling and compositional structure that would have made it more compelling.
The latest entry in Southern Records' Latitudes series is from Finland's mighty Circle. Even though the combination of the band's name and the title of the album seems like a nod to one of Celtic Frost's classic songs, this release focuses on the band's more spacey sounds than on their classic metal-worshipping moments. Like most of their previous albums, there are some amazing moments on Tyrant but also a few stumbles along the way.
This extremely long-in-the-making (five years!) collaboration between these two titans of the avant garde finally arrives with high expectations that are summarily met. Rather than something academic and difficult, it is instead a captivating and visceral work.
Throbbing Gristle activates a certain part of my brain that immediately responds with the idea of noise. Then, after more careful reflection, harsh noise, death, industry, sex, pain, exploitation, and a host of other generally negative and exciting responses come to the fore and resolve the picture I have of the band, however incomplete and misinformed it is. Part Two - The Endless Not surprises me because it doesn't evoke that picture of Throbbing Gristle and in fact calls the presence of that name on this recording into question.
Anla Courtis and Ralf Wehowsky combine their talents to create an album of distorted, erratic textures that scrape the eardrums to inspired, ecstatic effect. The spirits they conjure don’t seem very happy to be awakened, unleashing their exquisite vengeance with a wrath like the Furies.
Rjyan Kidwell is going on ten years of musical output and his music is growing accordingly. Of his most recent endeavors, Sketchi is his most immediately mature work, abandoning what might be called his more adolescent tendencies in all places except the artwork that accompanies the record. Don't be fooled by the "Twin Towers" cover, Cex's newest is one of his most sober releases to date.
"Dungtitled (in A major)" seems an irreverent title, but announces sonically Brian McBride's and Adam Wiltzie's most doggedly serious recording to date. Compared to The Tired Sounds of... the music on And Their Refinement of the Decline is more direct, relying less on minutiae and emphasizing the power of their music as cleansing and consumptive.
