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Monday, 13 May
RUSSELL HASWELL & YASUNAO TONE
Editions Mego
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FLAC Download // £6.99
Cat. Number: EMEGO142
Two giants of extreme computer music go head to head, and if you’re brave enough to put your skull in the firing line, there’s considerable pleasure to be gleaned from the pain. Never content to accept music technology at face value, both Haswell and his Japanese sparring partner have spent years developing their own generative tools, and finding ways to deconstruct, pervert and reinvent existing software, hardware and media. Haswell has explored the limits of DAT, Xenakis’s UPIC system and analogue synthesis, while Tone is probably best known for his Wounded CD … Read more
Monday, 06 May
Material originally made for Masami Akita's recent Merzbow extravaganza in Tokyo, inspired by the novels of juran hisao, especially his dark detective story called 'kinro' (golden wolf). Opening with dark ambient drones "offering" moves through massively dense frequencies mixed with obliterated beats to a wall of pure noise. A hypnotic journey to the dark core of the subconsious.
Monday, 29 April
Whoa, even by EVOL’s usual standards this is a weird and wired experiment in sonic slime-slinging, mastered by Russell Haswell and cut by Rashad Becker at D&M. For the best part of three years Stephen Sharp and Roc Jiménez de Cisneros have been desconstructing rave music in novel and unorthodox ways, homing in on bizarre tropes in the music that we’ve glibly come to accept as generic, disrupting its regular patterns, drawing attention to its kinks and fissures, and generally f**king with our heads: a process they formally describe as Rave Synthesis. The music of Proper Headshrinker was o… Read more
Monday, 15 April
**Compelling solo guitar pieces recorded and "played as heard, no overdubs". RIYL Oren Ambarchi or Russell Haswell** "A new set by the coolest chap in New York City documenting the before-and-after development of a solo electric guitar piece that Alan Licht has been playing out for last four years. Revered for his work in the Blue Humans and Text of Light, and a key figure in his generation's pantheon of experimental solo guitar players (such as Jim O’Rourke and Oren Ambarchi), ‘Four Years Older’ is his debut Editions Mego release, representing another peak in a career of mining the r… Read more
Monday, 01 April
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Monday, 11 March
ÂMES SANGLANTES / ALBERICH
HOSPITAL PRODUCTIONS
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Cat. Number: HOS378
Canadian noise provocateur, Pierre-Marc Tremblay shares a split with the dangerously underrated Kris Lapke aka Alberich. The Âmes Sanglantes half strafes from darkwave synth motifs to obliterated rhythmic noise; Alberich batters his drum machine into submission on the dark epic 'Fence Before Dawn' and the discordant might of 'Ideologically Weak' beside the spirit crushing intensity of 'Work Preparation Unit'.
Review to follow shortly…
Monday, 04 March
MERZBOW & OREN AMBARCHI
BLACK TRUFFLE
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Cat. Number: BLACKTRUFFLE08
A veritable clash of the titans: Merzbow and Oren Ambarchi kick up a blistering freeform noise storm for the latter's Black Truffle imprint. Recorded live May 13, 2012 at the Aurora Festival, Campbelltown Arts Centre, Australia, it features the pair duelling it out in bleakest, unrepentant, yet somehow controlled form. Across two sides they wash up waves of coruscating white noise over roiling, looming black bass shapes with attuned logic, culminating brobdingnagian banks of outright filth and noise with a cathartic and sometimes transcendent impact. Not for the faint of heart...
Monday, 25 February
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Monday, 18 February
PHIL MINTON + AUDREY CHEN
Sub Rosa
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Cat. Number: 5411867113102
Two highly noted vocal improvisors present a deeply unsettling and riveting collaboration. 'By The Stream' features Phil Minton and Audrey Chen testing the limits of extended vocal techniques - unorthodox or non-traditional methods of singing resulting a bewildering spectrum of larynx-serrating timbres, ululations, whimpers, burps, gurgles, scat, and, well, gibberish, to be frank! The skill, intuition and stamina required for these pieces is evidently extraordinary, practically realising a whole new vocabulary of borderline-sane sonics which simply wouldn't exist otherwise, … Read more
Monday, 04 February
Following up on that excellent Three Legged Race album for Spectrum Spools, Robert Beatty regroups with his Hair Police posse for their first album of new material in 5 years - and it's a terrifying affair. 'Mercurial Rites' pits the hard-working trio of Beatty alongside Mike Connolly and Trevor Tremaine, breaking form with their individual projects to reprise the sort of petrifying atmospheres and energy not heard since their defining early moments such as 'Obedience Cuts' or the awfully disturbing scapes of later records 'Drawn Dread' and 'Prescribed Burning'. Refusing to join the n… Read more
Monday, 21 January
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FLAC Download // £7.99Six extended pieces spanning 100 minutes of instinctive power noise electronics recorded in summer of 2012, Los Angeles and first issued in micro-run tape edition. Dense, animalistic, atonal drone and noise outbursts for the fearless...
Psychosexual dominatrix noise and sensurreal ambient sorcery from another intriguing Dominick Fernow alias. Following in the tradition of previous track titles such as 'Penis Torture Chamber', 'With Total Passion And Starvation Cum Had To Be Consumed From Her Asshole And Clit Regardless Of Where It Came From' we can take 'Weltmeister' as a modern meditation on the unterwelt of transgressive and extreme pornography and sex following in a lineage running right thru the work of Throbbing Gristle and Whitehouse. Pieces range from distorted GHB nightmare scenes to 'Mistress Isn't Sure Sh… Read more
Dominick Fernow conducts brutal power noise operations as Prurient. Nothing nice here; two tracts of skin-peeling sonic napalm rarely dipping out of the red. Pure, cathartic distortion for those who need it - brilliant stuff as ever from Fernow.
Four extended power noise improvisations by the always intriguing, hugely prolific Dominick Fernow aka Prurient aka Vatican Shadow. Incendiary, fierce sounds. Use with caution!
Monday, 14 January
ALBERICH
Guard Tower: Cassette Works, Vol. 1
HOSPITAL PRODUCTIONS
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FLAC Download // £5.99
Cat. Number: HOS354
Hospital Productions' infamous in-house engineer, Kris Lapke runs the gamut of distorto-techno and depraved power-noise on a brobdingnagian return as Alberich following his Bronze Age operations for Bed Of Nails. If you were left panting for more beats after the tease of his 'NATO-Uniformen' set or wanted more noise on your beats after the Bronze Age 12", this is exactly what we were all looking for. The two untitled bits cleanse the palette like a hydrochloric earwash before 'Rumbala' takes hold with the sort of napalmed noise rhythms that makes the current noise techno… Read more
ALBERICH
Fortification: Cassette Works, Vol. 2
HOSPITAL PRODUCTIONS
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Cat. Number: HOS355
Brutal noise malevolence from Hospital Productions' in-house engineer. Kris Lapke wields a meaty axe in a maelstrom of redlining distortion punctuated by the odd moment of ambient solace and including one cut of pounding drum machine experiments. The corporeal concerns of 'Body' manifest as howling, visceral, impenetrable noise onslaughts with a shocking ambient descent buried in the third part whereas the numerous sections of 'Heat Death' display some of his gnarliest guitar work since the Northern Cross releases with Geoff Mullen, apart from the closing oddity, a fur… Read more
Another grim offering from the demented minds over at Hospital Productions, this is a reissue of 2010’s ‘Cruel Science’ from sci-fi fixated death metallers Time Crypt. While science fiction and death metal aren’t the most obvious bedfellows, Time Crypt manage to give their Hellhammer-influenced grind just the kind of futuristic leaning it needs to stand out from the crowd. This is ear-pummeling, fingernail-pulling metal of the highest order, and just because it sounds like it was recorded on an Argos boombox from 1992 shouldn’t put you off. In fact that should probably be the main sellin… Read more
RICHARD PINHAS, MERZBOW & WOLF EYES
Les Disques VICTO
MP3 Download // £1.70FLAC Download // £2.10
Cat. Number: VICTOCD124
Review to follow shortly…
Monday, 07 January
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Monday, 17 December
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Monday, 22 October
Controversy-stoking noise badman Boyd Rice is back with his first NON album in 10 years, put together with a little help from Cold Cave's Wes Eisold. Combining new material with a clutch of archival live recordings, it is, we're pleased to report, one of the most absorbing and entertaining NON records we've ever heard: opener 'Turn Me On, Dead Man' expresses the Boyd paradox with impossible neatness, as a galloping country/doo-wop groove is slowly corroded and distorted beyond recognition by jagged, side-swiping sheets of industrial noise. The album has been billed as Rice reclaiming his crown a… Read more
Monday, 15 October
Russell Haswell is enjoying a purple patch at the moment: Factual is effectively his third album this year, following the recent 5" Vinyl Series LP on Downwards and the Scandinavian Parts live document for iDEAL, and is if that weren't enough he's soon to unveil Concrete Fence, a new collaborative project with one of modern techno's most revered figures. Haswell's stubbornly abrasive recordings, not to mention his live sets, are invariably hard-going for even the toughest and most adventurous ears, and so it may surprise some of you to learn that Factual is a diverse, dynamic and - by Haz… Read more
Monday, 17 September
Following the pensive, experimental epic ‘Seven of Wands’ that appeared last year on the hallowed PAN label, John Wiese returns to his roots on ‘Mirror’, a nihilistic explosion of extreme noise and air vent exhaust fumes. Wiese leaves little to the imagination as the record kicks into fifth gear within seconds, sounding like a car crash, a vase being shattered around yer head and an in-use 28.8 modem being shat out of the bowels of hell all at once. As you’ve probably gathered this is dense, loud stuff but handled by the expert ears of a veteran like Wiese it manages to avoid parody and tip into the realms of detail and pure abandon.
Review to follow shortly…
Monday, 03 September
OREN AMBARCHI
BO' WEAVIL RECORDINGS
MP3 Download // £3.99FLAC Download // £4.50
Cat. Number: WEAVIL48DD
Even by his own inordinately prolific standards, Oren Ambarchi has had a busy year, with not one but two solo album releases on Touch and Mego, as well as myriad live and group appearances. Raga Ooty finds him back on London's redoubtable Bo'Weavil imprint, to which he's previously contributed the live sides Dream Request (with Robbie Avenaim) and Lost Like A Star; it features the titular piece in two parts, recorded in Melbourne on December 11, 2009, and at Terrains Festival in Basel on November 12, 2011, and 'The Nilgiri Plateau', recorded in Sydney on March 28, 2006. 'Raga Ooty' is sub… Read more
Monday, 27 August
SUN CITY GIRLS
330,003 Crossdressers from Beyond the Rig Veda
Abduction
MP3 Download // £6.99FLAC Download // £8.99
Cat. Number: ABD008DI
When 330,003 Crossdressers From Beyond The Rig Veda emerged in 1996, there was, to be sure, a wee bit of head scratching, besmirched grinning and, at the end of the day, a little bit of aural indigestion for all those who worshipped at the altar of the SCG. Indeed, 330,003 is partly an ethno-surrealist take on places and forms known (Indonesian gamelan, Hollywood soundtracks, Polynesian folk, surf stylistics, sci-fi thematics) and partly a stupefying surreal ethnography of places yet to be discovered as the collective Bishop Brothers, Mssrs. Gocher an… Read more
