This week's series of episodes features images from Asheville, NC, which was devastated by Hurricane Helene this past week.
Please consider donating to the various organizations in and around the area.
Episode 714 features music by Pan•American, Maria Somerville, Patrick Cowley, The Gaslamp Killer and Jason Wool, Der Stil, Astrid Sonne, Reymour, Carlos Haayen Y Su Piano Candeloso, Harry Beckett, Tarwater, Mermaid Chunky, and Three Quarter Skies.
Episode 715 has Liquid Liquid, Kim Deal, Severed Heads, Los Agentes Secretos, mHz, Troller, Mark Templeton, Onkonomiyaki Labs, Deadly Headley, Windy and Carl, Sunroof, and claire rousay.
Episode 716 includes Actors, MJ Guider, The Advisory Circle, The Bug, Alessandro Cortini, The Legendary Pink Dots, Chihei Hatakeyama and Shun Ishiwaka, Arborra, Ceremony, Ueno Takashi, Organi, and Saagara.
Heitor Alvelos is no stranger to the Touch label, having collaborated as a visual artist with the big names of the label such as Fennesz, BJ Nilsen, and Philip Jeck, as well as issuing sound work under a variety of pseudonyms on the associated labels. Faith is a collection of processed sound recordings and "audio irregularities", and due to their more personal and autobiographical source, it is the first record released under his own name. Essentially a single composition split into 12 segments, it is a sparse and murky record, steeped heavily in an analog sound.
Culled from a variety of unspecified recordings collected by the artist since 1972, most of Faith has Alvelos sticking to an open mix, working in bass heavy sounds at often very low volumes, conjuring a sense of space and ambiguity that often becomes unsettling."Exodus" and "Edict" both have a ghostly rumble to them, distant and unspecific but always there.During the latter he begins to increase the volume and simultaneously the intensity.
On "Allvion" into "Pseudoself" the sound becomes deeper:a wavering expanse of noise that evolves into something with significant depth and variety, but never stops being discomforting.The latter especially sees Alvelos working with monotone electronics and a heavy low-frequency passage that slowly evolves and changes to become all encompassing, climaxing and leading into the silent passage of "Vicarious Solace".
He builds the minimalist, rumbling hum back up on the lengthy "The Way of Malamat." Superficially, the droning bass may seem static, but perceptible variations become prominent, at times looping into an almost rhythmic passage that again reaches a heavier, denser saturation point but never too oppressive.This continues through "Peirasmos" and "The Other," the latter resembling the muffled vibration of machinery.
In its concluding minutes, "The Hopeful Night" has him stripping the piece back to its barest essentials, largely consisting of a low volume buzz that would not be out of place on Bernhard Günter's work, albeit his sound being more digital than the analog warmth that is more prominent on Alvelos' work.The single piece that is Faith never becomes overly boisterous or forceful, but its concluding passages are especially understated.
The intentionally ambiguous source of the recordings Heitor Alvelos used to construct Faith does add an extra layer of interest to the album.Rarely does anything ever resemble what we usually consider to be a field recording, so either his processing or his selection of unconventional sources are what makes this album, probably a connection of both.It is sparse and minimalist, but done with an exceptional sense of grace and poise.
Ba Da Bing Records has a history of releasing Natural Snow Buildings records of epic length. The Snowbringer Cult is a two-and-a-half hour album we reissued. Night Coercion Into The Company Of Witches is a three-hour album we reissued. Daughter of Darkness is an eight-hour album we reissued. And now, we present the most epic of all Natural Snow Buildings releases, the new album Terror’s Hornswhich almost reaches an astounding 45 minutes in length! Yes, in the world of NSB, the length of Terror’s Horns makes it arguably a single, but here is an album which encompasses all that makes this band great in doses that won’t cause you to fear you’re being hypnotized or in need of hydration.
It would be a stretch to call this MehdiAmeziane and SolangeGularte's pop record, for Terror's Horns continues in the duo's tradition of combining many layers into sometimes blissful, sometimes contemplative, often menacing conditions. Stringed instruments trill, percussion gongs, feedback hisses and vocals maintain near monotone as if in a cultish trance. The songs still pride themselves on a slow development, and the album's progression lends the impression of descending down through the depths, past hidden cavities and chambers that you will never unsee once experienced.
You can pre-order the album now, along with a special bonus, courtesy of the band. For those who mailorder and choose the Special Edition, you will additionally get a completely different record entitled The Ladder which, in classic Natural Snow Buildings form, is limited to fifty handmade/drawn/constructed CDs. These are gorgeous editions with stunning artwork. Also, the first 32 of you that order will get a limited print by SolangeGularte made especially for this edition.
I am not particularly familiar with any of the four artists involved in this unexpectedly audacious and unique album, but Celadon is definitely a kindred spirit to Important's previous iconoclastic, raga-influenced drone epics by Catherine Christer Hennix.  Charlemagne Palestine is yet another artist that unavoidably springs to mind, but favorably so: while this album is anything but derivative, Maja Ratkje and her collaborators share his willingness to take drone music into some very dissonant, uncategorizable, and cathartic territory.  Put more bluntly: Celadon is probably not for the average drone fan, as Ratkje's vocals gradually build to an almost demonic, window-rattling intensity, but it is nevertheless a bold, striking, and deceptively ferocious artistic statement that is like absolutely nothing else that I have heard.
There are a number of curious elements to Celadon and not all of them have ready explanations.  For one, I have no idea how these four musicians are interconnected or how they all wound up together recording an album in this vein this amidst the fabled acoustics of Norway's Emanuel Vigeland Mausoleum.  Yet another idiosyncrasy is the unusual choice of instrumentation, particularly Camille Norment's glass armonica, which I do not think I have ever heard so prominently on an album before (if ever).  Consisting of a series of glass bowls or goblets played with finger friction, Norment's armonica provides a haunting, hazy, and eerie backdrop throughout Celadon.  In fact, the opening "Beneath the Bough" largely feels like a stark duet between just the bleary shimmer of rubbed glass and Ratkje's chant-like, quasi-ritualistic vocals.  Wesseltoft and Galåen admittedly contribute some gently buzzing textures via harmonium and zither, but their presence does not truly come to the fore until the following "The Green Flood."
Initially, the lengthier "The Green Flood" just feels like more of the same, but as it progresses, it becomes clear that the album is slowly building into something considerably more daring and ambitious than its opening suggested.  The transformation is far from forced though: Celadon is primarily a languorously swaying reverie for much of its duration, keeping the music extremely minimal and spacious and allowing its darker underbelly to only surface slowly and organically through subtly massing islands of dissonance. By its halfway point, however, it is clear that "Flood" has sneakily become quite heavy, cohering into a dense miasma of uneasily harmonizing harmonium drones while Ratkje’s previously sedate vocals occasionally break into clear, banshee-like wails.  Initially, her trips into the upper registers maintain an operatic level of control and force, adding a welcome power and unpredictability to the piece.  On the final piece, however, the remaining thin veneer of mannered artifice is gutsily torn down, transforming those same soaring and angelic vocal crescendos into something positively feral-sounding.
"Afterglow" is initially quite similar to its predecessors, however, despite being a bit darker and more ominous right out of the gate.  That said, no amount of uneasily harmonizing drone thrum could have possibly prepared me for Maja’s blood-chilling howl that occurs around the six-minute mark.  From that point on, Celadon has far transcended its somewhat subdued and humble origins for good and we are in uncharted territory to stay.  Wisely, the vocals pyrotechnics do not continue unbroken, but any sense of calm is decisively shattered: while the quartet intermittently fade back into a smoldering equilibrium, there is always the threat that Ratkje will again erupt into something resembling a shrieking exorcism or menacingly low-register Tuvan throat-singing.  Such a performance would probably give me an instant headache in most other hands, but it does not here: the visceral explosiveness of Ratkje's vocals is certainly startling, extreme, and intense, but it feels more like a tour de force performance by an insanely gifted performer rather than a more modest talent pushing herself beyond her capabilities with reckless abandon.  Also, it not only fits the surrounding music, it elevates it into something rather amazing and otherworldly.
If Celadon has any flaws, they are definitely minor ones–mainly that it gets off to a fairly slow start and takes a long time to distinguish itself as a radical departure from more traditional drone.  Those somewhat meandering, improvisatory traits ultimately work in its favor though, making the explosive crescendo that much more stunning and satisfying.  Obviously, Maja Ratkj'’s almost-supernatural performance deserves a huge amount of credit for making this such a wonderful album, but the entire ensemble worked beautifully together.  While I was personally most enamored of Norment's glass armonica, all four musicians seamlessly cohered to form an egoless and dynamically simmering backdrop without a single misstep or false-move.   This is a genuinely prodigious achievement. I have absolutely no idea what I would even call this genre (Outsider drone? Pandit Pran Nath-damaged minimalism?), but I am certain that Celadon has decisively earned a place within its pantheon of classics.
Sunn O)))’s Stephen O'Malley delivers an incredible solo work for Demdike Stare’s DDS imprint, recorded together with French 35-piece improv orchestra ONCEIM.
The dark interpreter, Stephen O'Malley ov Sunn 0))), presents his towering debut orchestral composition Gruidés; commissioned by French 35-piece improv orchestra ONCEIM - l'Orchestre de Nouvelles Créations, Expérimentations et Improvisation Musicales - and released thru Demdike Stare's DDS label.
In early 2014 O'Malley was approached by pianist and composer Frédéric Blondy to write a work for the orchestra, comprised of exceptional musicians from the fields of contemporary, jazz, experimental, improvisation and classical. Understandably intimidated by the prospect, but encouraged to "just be punk rock about it," the preternaturally gifted composer has conceived a technically demanding - for the players at least - and richly rewarding longform drone piece intently focused on harmonic experimentation and overtone study. During its 35-minute lifespan, Gruidés requires the musicians to sustain pitches for several minutes (which is difficult enough for strings, and a real feat of endurance for woodwind), yielding a gloaming spectra of eliding dissonance rent in sliding tone clusters and lucent geometries punctuated by a similar whipcrack percussion as used in his Scott 0))) collaboration. It makes great use of the acoustic qualities of Saint Merry church, central Paris, as captured in the recording of IRCAM's Augustin Muller and mastered by Matt Colton with a detached spaciousness evocatively distilled in the cover art by Jean-Luc Verna. It’s an incredibly immersive piece that comes highly recommended if you’re into the work of Phill Niblock, Alvin Lucier, Ellen Fullman, Harley Gaber and, indeed, Sunn 0))).
Turn off the mechanical, logic-soaked part of your brain and sympathetic resonance sounds like a magic trick, and looks like one too. It’s the phenomenon that explains why opera singers can shatter glass from across the room with nothing but their voice. Whether bright or ominous, the spontaneous ring (or explosion) of an untouched body or an unplayed string is provocative. It is a sign of sound’s invisible inner life, the one that has nothing to do with intentions or compositions, the one that John Cage implied when he suggested that writing music was a means of "waking up to the very life we’re living, which is so excellent once one gets one’s mind and one’s desires out of its way and lets it act of its own accord." That is the sort of life Mike Majkowski is after on Neighbouring Objects, his latest cassette on Astral Spirits. The title suggests sympathetic resonance abstractly, but it also describes Majkowski’s instrumentation, which for the first time includes bass guitar, accordion, piano, and percussion alongside the core of his double bass. Magical though it may seem, Majkowski uses these tools to emphasize both the affective and the measurable, more physical properties of sound.
Even before it begins, "Chandelier/Gondola/Echoing Stars" makes the curious suggestion that a decorative light fixture, a Venetian mode of transportation, and several distant balls of plasma might have something in common, or might be, in some way, neighbors. Finding precise musical analogues for these objects is beside the point, but the piece is arranged into three parts, and those parts echo one another. The first one is populated by a tremulous drone that hums like an industrial saw in an empty warehouse. The sound is acoustic and fricative, filled with fluctuations and disturbances that highlight the space the sound is resonating in almost more than the sound itself. Taken together the source and the space produce a rough harmony that flashes and wanes like a candle.
The second section contains a higher pitched noise generated by a bow and strings, the grind and scrape of horsehair replacing the whir of the buzzsaw. The bowing is quick and sharp and, again, distinct from the accompanying tones that float around it. Here the relationship between the two components is more clearly established. As Majkowski moves up and down the neck of his concert bass, the ringing tones follow suit. This resolves suddenly into the final section, which combines elements from the first two with a melody played on electric bass and chimes. Those chimes twinkle like stars against the darker pulse of the drones and signal the completion of the song’s upward trajectory. Whatever the status of the objects in the title, all of Majkowski’s instruments finally line up, from the lowest register to the highest, in a kind of harmonic syzygy.
On the second side, "Carnival of Decay" utilizes similar techniques to render a more dramatic effect. Majkowski begins by interlacing his double bass and bass guitar. They swell and recede alternately, then merge into a single throbbing tone as a piano, an accordion, and a set of rattles enter the mix. After the accordion wheezes its last wheeze, the sound of Majkowski’s bow also disappears, leaving only a hollow murmur. A single note, which matches that murmur perfectly, is played on the piano over and over while a small host of squeaky toys chirp away like laughter. Sympathetic resonance anchors this piece too, but this time, instead of holding the different instruments together, the anchor drags the music down into the depths, where something sinister is apparently waiting. If the inner life of the instruments is the subject of side A, then side B showcases the inner life of the attentive mind, which resonates sympathetically with both the dreariest and most luminous of musical phenomena.
The New Crimes is a dense, imposing boxed set in the way that legendary noise collections such as Ramleh's Awake and Sutcliffe Jugend's We Spit on Their Graves are. Previously released in 1995 in an edition of 10, this material obviously did not receive significant exposure. Murder Corporation might not be amongst the most well known of Italian noise artists, which is a shame given the diversity contained on these eight discs. However, the brown and murky, analog heavy lo-fi sound is one that can at times be impenetrable and oppressive. Though daunting, the varying approaches Moreno Daldosso uses in composition result in a diverse, yet still bleak and violent piece of art.
MC's Moreno Daldosso has produced a body of work that fits in the dour, brown and grey morass that Atrax Morgue and Mauthausen Orchestra are known for, as is the scene's still active innovator Maurizio Bianchi.Murder Corporation stands out though, because while his work has the same bleak depressive sounds and fascination with death, there is more of a sense of anger in his work.This aggression and the related imagery give off a distinct parallel with gory slasher films, in the sense that there is enough self-awareness to not completely come across as the work of someone who is truly mentally disturbed.This violent sound does not feature throughout all eight hours of this set, but the detailed explosions of "Cannibal House" are less depressive and more aggressive.At the same time, "Abrasive Collective" has him emphasizing piercing, ringing type noises that resemble the most violent moments of a giallo soundtrack looped for four unrelenting minutes.
That is not to say that Daldosso creates purely violent sounds, however."Mutilated Corpse" immediately leads off with nauseous, pitch wobbling electronics and a rushing water like passage of noise that resembles some of Atrax Morgue's sickest work."Bleeding Face" has him employing more synthesizer like sounds, and with the punctuated moments of silence it is a bit less intense.His work, however, also strays into fields that would be more fitting for an experimental avant garde electronic album."Strangulated" focuses on distorted, yet wet sounding electronics are harsh yet more complex and distinct in nature, rather than a monochromatic blast."Rotary Pt. 1" is similar:it is clearly overdriven electronics but again drenched in its own unnatural sounding reverb to give an overall more idiosyncratic sound.
Vocals and rhythms also make a few, though successful appearances throughout this box set.On "Deathtime" they take the form of a human voice loop, pitch shifted and layered throughout the piece’s duration.By the end it is a crushing, intense wall of noise that sounds nothing like it began.On "Sucker" Daldosso employs more traditionally shouted vocals, but like his Italian contemporaries, they are so extremely distorted and processed to be anything but intelligible."Detention" and "Electrosex" both have him utilizing what sounds like a drum machine or sampler to generate crunchy, noise-laden rhythms that bounce between standard drum sounds and massive passages of distortion.
It is not at all surprising that an artist named Murder Corporation would have created such a desolate and depressing work, but the variation and depth belies the seemingly monochromatic subject matter.The New Crimes is a surprisingly diverse, yet harsh electronic collection that may be predictable in its approach, but the actual music covers the gamut of styles to keep it engaging.All eight discs in a row may be a bit too much, but Daldosso keeps the sound fresh and dynamic even over long stretches of the material.
A new LP by the duo of Aaron Moore and Alan Courtis has been released.
'Bring Us Some Honest Food' on the Dancing Wayang label has received some super reviews and is available to buy direct from us for $20 plus shipping. Please email us for details.
It is also available to buy direct from the label. Click this link to find out more info and to stream a track from the LP.
We are delighted to announce that the Miasmah label will be releasing a 5 LP box set of VTB material to coincide with our 20th anniversary.
'Commencing' has been in the works for the last 2 years and is nearing completion. The music contained spans our career from 1995 to the 2015 and includes 64 tracks running to over 4 hours of music. Many of the tracks are previously unreleased as well as tracks from our early cassette releases never before released on vinyl. There's also a number of live recordings and tracks from long forgotten compilation albums. This essential release will also include a book of writings, photos and flyers from our long history. There will also be a bonus download only album of tracks that just missed the cut for purchasers of this release.
Miasmah do a beautiful job with their releases and we're very excited to be working with them on this career defining retrospective. The release date is planned for October 2015.
If you're not familiar with Miasmah do check them out here http://www.miasmah.com/. They put out some beautiful records.
Also, ex-VTB member Nick Mott has a great new CD released on Lumberton Trading Company. The album is called 'Here Begins The Great Destroyer'.
After a string of Natural Snow Buildings reissues, each more elaborate (um, longer) then the last, Ba Da Bing presents our first ever release of NEW material from the band. For a group known for its use of horror imagery and lyricism, perhaps the most shocking thing of all is that this album clocks in at just under 45 minutes. If there ever was an album that served as the proper entry point for Natural Snow Buildings, Terror's Horns is it.
It would be a stretch to call this Mehdi Ameziane and Solange Gularte's pop record, for Terror's Horns continues in the duo's tradition of combining many layers into sometimes blissful, sometimes contemplative, often menacing conditions. Stringed instruments trill, percussion gongs, feedback hisses and vocals maintain near monotone as if in a cultish trance. The songs still pride themselves on a slow development, and the album's progression lends the impression of descending down through the depths, past hidden cavities and chambers that you will never unsee once experienced. Featuring new artwork by Gularte which pays tribute to the backwoods horror of massacres involving chainsaws.
The end of 2013 saw the reformation of one of the most revered and respected late '80s UK alternative bands, LOOP. The group, founded by Robert Hampson, hadn't played together since the early '90s, but got together to curate a night at the legendary All Tomorrow's Parties at Camber Sands. US dates followed in 2014 and they then got back in the studio to start recording. The result is three brand new releases coming over the next year which see the band return to their hugely unique and era-defining sound whilst sounding fresh and exciting.
The first release is Array 1, four tracks and 32 mins of haunting, aggressive, beautiful noise. "Precession," "Aphelion," "Coma" and "Radial" are the first songs to be heard from their recording session done in Sub Station Studios in Rosyth in Scotland with the current line-up of Robert Hampson (vocals/guitar), Hugo Morgan (bass), Wayne Maskell (drums) and Dan Boyd (guitar). With only an early version of "Precession" having had any previous outing (at a show at the Garage in London at the end of 2014), this is the very first new music from the band since their third album, 1990’s lost classic A Gilded Eternity.
The next tracks will be released in the autumn in keeping with Loop's previous habit of putting out music in batches: Hampson describes it as "one project, with the same concept, delivered in bulletins."
England's Hidden Reverse: A Secret History of the Esoteric Underground
by David Keenan
Revised & expanded edition
336 pages, hardback/paperback, 210mm x 148mm
Fully illustrated in colour.
* Full colour throughout
* Two new chapters and a significant number of new images
* Cover by Mark Titchner
Hardcover edition also includes:
FURFUR:
120-page A5 zine with all new, exclusive interviews and imagery from more provocateurs of the EHR universe: including Alex Binnie, Antal Nemeth, Chris Carter, Colin Potter, Cosey Fanni Tutti, Drew McDowall, Ivan Pavlov, Jill Westwood, Jordi Valls, Matthew Levi Stevens, Paul Hurst and Christine Glover of Produktion, Robin Rimbaud and more TBC.