PLAYLIST with COMMENTS/REVIEWS

Started by GEWALTMONOPOL, December 15, 2009, 09:30:59 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

FallOfNature

Serration  - Machine Survival via bandcamp

Authoritarian and ominous heavy electronics. Particularly impressed by this release over the others present on the bandcamp page. Reminds of Torturecide's first EP on Slaughter prod, and a little of Control in other parts. Physical tape out on Unsound but I'm yet to grip one.

Nordvargr - Metempsychosis
Listened once via bandcamp and purchased right away. Has guest appearances from Trepaneringsritualen but you may be forgiven for thinking he was present throughout, as it gravitates towards that sound a bit. Really good on first impressions. I own enough Nordvargr ambient albums I rarely listen to anymore but didn't sleep on purchasing this.


Bloated Slutbag

Quote from: Theodore on May 13, 2018, 04:03:27 AMJust if you can please after 4-6 lines leave an empty line and change paragraph.

Will do!
Someone weaker than you should beat you and brag
And take you for a drag

Bloated Slutbag

#6857
Looks like this made at least a few best of 2017 lists. And mine.

Zeitkratzer, Svetlana Spajić / Dragana Tomić / Obrad Milić ‎– Serbian War Songs
When Zeitkratzer are greater than the sum of their parts they are capable of some racket. We're talking Biota/Mnemonist grade cacophony, augmented here by traditional Serbian songcraft. Some serious racket. But serious music, too. Even without the subject matter, which one mocks at grave peril, descriptors like "monumental" and "tour de force" squeeze out the edge of hyperbole, noise sphincter fairly trembling in baited trepidation.

Traditional Serbian songcraft, if I am any judge, delivered in principle by twin female vocal, strident, dominant, domineering, harmonizing in deep, throaty, dissonance over veritable gaggle of Zeitkratz operandi: bassclarinet, french horn, piano, percussion, violoncello, doublebass, etc. Lots of straight up classical instrumentation, smothered by someone's mother, or two of 'em, and hot diddly can these women dish. What the voices lend is what voices tend to lend: drama, excitement, palpitations, intimacy, touchy-feely sensual lubricity, and some good ol' down home flesh, and blood. Lots of blood. Sound the war drums.

The first twelve seconds are deceptive, sounding very much like intensely ripping free-jazz assault, high velocity jumble of bass-string-percussion-horn filling out out the field. And the voices commence. To sing. Or chant. Or declaim. Or whatever the hell they call it. Thirty seconds and the instruments drop out completely, cowering under the soaring vocal range, then to blast back, at the one minute mark, with notably heightened intensity, voices surging, tremelo-ing, the cacophony threatening first encounter with Biota-ic critical mass. Dialog of a cappella songchant against piles of Zeitkrazed cappella, flipping for a couple turns before the voices breathe their last at 2:43, end track 1.

The second track clocks in at just over a minute, slowly percussed ding hammered over faintly squealing winds and still more distant growls, fleshed out with the authoritative vocal insistence of "Haven't I told you my darling"? The tone is somber, if muscular, voices lapping and lolling over one another, persuasive, little doubt darling was told. At somber insistence, steady death knell is meted out for darling, setting up the thirteen minute center-piece "Assassination in Sarajevo". Here, all hell (aka World War I) breaks loose. A lone male vocal warbles and moans in storyteller mode over traditional Serbian instrumentation, stringed drone meeting winded squeal, slowly built into rich, deep-throated cluster of labored flatulence, darkly glottal gut-churn, edges acquiring industrial flavors, metal percussions, hammerings, metallic screech-scrape, the vocal all but subsumed under dense cacophonous mass.

Maybe I'm a sucker for artistic intent but the more dramatic pieces do seem those titled accordingly. "The battle at Mackov kamen" thunders in a rain of hefty tribal percussion, rhythmical chants fighting short-winded drone elements, bells and whistles screeching in time. "King Peter Song" is a dark orchestral processional, dredging up reverberant darkened bottoms, cumbersome clusters of acoustic racket, drawn out incantations coming in waves of buzzing, dirge-like, tootle-throb, heads bowed under sound pressures little given to relent. "Salute to Zivojin Misic" reprises the dialog of soaring-voice / instrumental-cacophony, but brings to bear a whole honking kitchen sink, massed and pummeling densities filling the field to capacity, the wake of each outburst of raging clamor a shambolic dis-connection of flap, flop, and shuffle.

If the remaining titles seem less drama prone, there's still plenty to get the blood pumping. "When I go to war"- full-throated dual-harmonized lament laced with lush strings and winds, warm-bloodied droning fleshbed surging in thrall to slowly ascendant ritual flavors. In "Shvabo came" skittering sticks chase weirdly dis-balanced folkish vocals, low-pitched bass gruntings lending an almost sickened texture to faintly plucked plinkety-scrap. "There is no spring without water" is pure oddity of percussive bloop-scuttle, dinky machine-like bink-bonk kerfuffle smothered by colossal voices hovering closely overhead. And as "The boat is sailing" the voices are intoning, with impassioned, plaintive, chanting declamation, strings slow in their scraping swirl of bellow and down-pitched grind, miniature mounds of steel drums coming in rolling waves, heaving stomach-churning rhythm readying the crew for imminent heave-ho.

And all throughout, throughout the unsettled heaving shebang, not infrequent bouts of chaotic skronk n scrabble rip apart the rare moments for sedate repose, wild multi-pronged wig-out scat-scuffle ever tempting free fall into massed cluster-fuck free-for all. Through it all, stern faced voices keep the multitudinous minstrels in line, unforgiving, commanding, demanding, whipping able bodies into ecstatic paroxysms of arduous frenzy, stroking the poor abused souls with sweet sultry deep-voiced caress. Love me tender, hurt me true, never let me go, to war. Not without a song.
Someone weaker than you should beat you and brag
And take you for a drag

Scat-O-Logy

Pissoir Rouge debut tape (Obsessive Fundamental Realism 2018)
Piss drenched scum noise from a German toilet slave. Pure filth. Fanatics only!

PedestrianOrgans

Quote from: Scat-O-Logy on May 17, 2018, 05:38:07 AM
Pissoir Rouge debut tape (Obsessive Fundamental Realism 2018)
Piss drenched scum noise from a German toilet slave. Pure filth. Fanatics only!

ty scat-man-do

NaturalOrthodoxy

Quote from: PedestrianOrgans on May 17, 2018, 07:23:21 AM
Quote from: Scat-O-Logy on May 17, 2018, 05:38:07 AM
Pissoir Rouge debut tape (Obsessive Fundamental Realism 2018)
Piss drenched scum noise from a German toilet slave. Pure filth. Fanatics only!

ty scat-man-do


Kayandah

Aube - Tapes 1992-1994
Collection of old GROSS tapes from the aforementioned era and a frankly excellent reminder of how good Aube was before succumbing to the usual problem of quantity over quality output. Some of this is quite noisy, I never heard the originals so enjoying this re-discovery.

Not entirely convinced by the packaging - each disc housed in white cardboard sleeve and wraparound paper copy with original artwork, just a bit too flimsy, but minor complaints aside this really is worth getting hold of

Bloated Slutbag

Quote from: Kayandah on May 17, 2018, 04:21:00 PM
the usual problem of quantity over quality output

Never bought this, but carry on.
Someone weaker than you should beat you and brag
And take you for a drag

PedestrianOrgans

Quote from: Bloated Slutbag on May 17, 2018, 04:49:34 PM
Quote from: Kayandah on May 17, 2018, 04:21:00 PM
the usual problem of quantity over quality output

Never bought this, but carry on.

Eeeehhhhhhhhh......Aube might be one of the few. I actually took all of the Aube albums out of my Discogs wantlist because they just clogged everything.

Bloated Slutbag

Quote from: PedestrianOrgans on May 17, 2018, 05:46:09 PM
Quote from: Bloated Slutbag on May 17, 2018, 04:49:34 PM
Quote from: Kayandah on May 17, 2018, 04:21:00 PM
the usual problem of quantity over quality output

Never bought this, but carry on.

Eeeehhhhhhhhh......Aube might be one of the few.

Now that I'm a little more sober, a possible qualifier. The project's strength could also be its apparent weakness. Singular concept, linear, elegant, subject to minimal variation over the widest possible range, of sources. Perhaps there is a formula but I would never say formulaic. A clear and po-faced method surgically severed from the possibility of madness. Plug into this black box and output a certain quantity. For me the qualities are best admired from afar and I'm good with that, don't always need to poke my head in there and try to "get" it. Plenty of other noise out there to meet that obsession.
Someone weaker than you should beat you and brag
And take you for a drag

Bloated Slutbag

#6865
Kjostad / Ligatur – Overgrown
Remember that Phocomelus tape, Bit Of Rough? This sounds nothing like it but the title would definitely work. There's a bit more rough to this one. Actually, A Shitload Of Rough. That's the title I would've given. (The one they went with is pretty good, too.)

Kjostad kicks off with the side-long "Kabetogama". Mmm, looks like a nice place. From the wiki, "The Kabetogama State Forest is a state forest located in Koochiching and Saint Louis counties, Minnesota. Popular outdoor recreational activities are largely centered on the abundant lakes and rivers in the forest, such as boating, canoeing, kayaking, and making fuckloads of harsh noise." Just quoting here. But I dunno if I completely buy that last bit. There is noise, and it is harsh, but there are a number of elements in play. Trees, for starters. Rocks. Dirt. Gravel. Used condoms. The sound has a certain virile elasticity, stretching tight around throbbing layers of roughly abused gristle, buried deep in the overgrown thatch. Not quite the sort of thing to feature in the brochure. Grubby field recordings, char-burnt electronics, freakishly deformed tumescence worming, lustfully, through thickening, festering, growth.

Kabetomaga. Out in the wide open calm, toes dip into chilly depths, faint melodic strains, fainter staticky prickles. A big sharp metallic slap to the face, fargh, okay I'm awake, arsehole. One more slap for good measure. Some annoying zealot starts molesting churchbells with far too much haphazard abandon, hard enough to distort perspective. Slow tribal throb booms in the distance, hammering on the hull of some unseen beached vessel, like where in bleeding hells am I? Return of melodic strains and a gradual whitening slide into rougher decrepitudes. The percussion now suddenly staccato, slap-dash, bopping onto tin buckets, the hull heaved into the lake, and then the noise.

Took ten minutes to get there, but it is everything a noise should be. Dense, coarse, raw, ripped, mangled. Straight-laced, heavy-handed, texture study, broken down for a sec or two, shit-flecked chunks gnawed off, sawing away at frazzle-mouthed butt-scrunch before high-pitched acoustic squeaking fleshes out the palate. Squeaking turns to screeching, of the piercing, metal-on-metal, grinding sort, until a surprising twitter of birdsong bursts from the overgrowth, hefty distortions ground down, batted away, or possibly buried, unceremoniously, at sea.

Ligature's got three tracks to his side. "Observance" a densely wooded convergence of knobbed and knobbly wrinkle and choked, throat-fisted, crinkle. Sudden fade before the first minute and a deep, woozy, bass throbs in sluggish time to the tune of fleshy, gristly, meat-strangling textures, crumbling structures drawn into the sludge-worn depths. Can't see no forest, can't see no trees. If there is a lake it is one of them creepy bottomless buggers, with severed torsos occasionally bobbing to the surface. The wooze of sludge conveys a distinctly sickening atmosphere, and if we are anywhere specific it is in the corner on some unsightly factory floor, ghostly flickers of light feeding dull drudgery enough to wear down the sturdiest soul. And suddenly, bobbing out of the murk, what the fuck, poetry? This guy think he's some kinda artist? The words are spare, the female voice intoning with grave formality, once a true repulsion / now a lost transmission / an empty vessel / open your eyes and rest.

"Floodlight" reprises the dark and woozy sick-mosphere, slow percussive clunks over downpitched choral chords, forlorn, forsaken, darkening still deeper to flatlined blackdrone. This time we're ready for the poetry- nice try mofo!- the voice, male, seemingly grinning, the nocturnal animal forever unknowing / the easy target / the only answer / three hours before dawn / the sudden flash / the last procrastination. The flatline acquires edgier disturbances, drifting backmasked cycles, heftier percussive clunks, clanks, whining tones, bells, distortions, the grinning voice, in offering, let you do this to me. Don't mind if I do! answers two solid minutes of solid-state earhole-flooding whiteout. Upper register whines seer the edges, heftier thudgery bashing brains beneath the bludgeoning assault, thick, rich, chocolate-coated, shitstorm, good to the last gulp.

What makes it all, for me, is the ever unsettled tension burbling beneath the undergrowth, as though ripe for rage at any moment. On edge, throughout, the edginess never really dissolves. This goes for both Kjostad and Ligature, though in the latter case I would add "unsettling" to unsettled. One foot in darkness, the other trapped in baleful, unblinking glare, make it stop make it stop make it-

"Cessation" is just that. Mournful funerary keys drawn over crackling records, droning call-answer pocked with crunched out percussive wallops. The darkened bottom echoes in bass-heavy sympathy, acquiring mass, threatening the possibility of full-on harshness that never comes. Fading out, funeral tones, not a poet in earshot, guess whatever he let her do to him worked. Hope someone got it on camera.

edit
fixed.
Someone weaker than you should beat you and brag
And take you for a drag

PedestrianOrgans

Rotat - Grease District

Dang, this is a FA release that's been out for almost two months and completely flew by me somehow, the project itself too. Pretty dynamic HN/PE, lots of the low-end damage if you like DBL or MSBR, but some aura of hyper-delayed metal and glass smash, so maybe also RIYL Incapacitants stuff. Some interesting voice samples and vocals that are so obscured the words are more like formless bubbles in the sound.

Yrjö-Koskinen

S. PAKHOMOV - Cherries in the Snow (Wall Noise Action)
Back on the digital download Russian HNW again. This one is one of the more interesting releases on Wall Noise Action lately. The style should probably be described as "ANW" (wouldn't want to offend any of the fourteen people in the world who care about HNW sub-genres, what with myself almost being one of them and all). Cherries in the Snow sort of pushes the boundaries of what stuff of this can or cannot sound like. The core is a very hands-on, field recorded sound structure which may or may not be water/rain falling on a dilapidated roof, somewhat modified with an EQ to create strange movements in the lower-end of the sonic spectrum. Behind it, an unchanging melodic note serves to create an increasingly unreal atmosphere and move the mind somewhere else. I've been listening to this all week, and it simply doesn't get old. Not sure why.

Энергостатика - Стеношумоснабжение (Wall Noise Action)
Bass dominated HNW. Not much to say here - I suspect this is yet another project by the WNA label manager. Massive bass, very intense, not really "static" due to the fluctuating nature of the rumblings. Think Sleep Column, Oasis of the Zombies, Revelation of the Dead Girl and any number of other projects by the same person. Sometimes I have to think "but... why", but then at other times I feel like I understand exactly, precisely why. Great stuff if you're into mass produced HNW. Which everyone is.

MAURIZIO BIANCHI - Anthology 1981-1984 (Steinklang Industries)
It pains me to say so, but despite my enthusiastic purchasing and support of latter day M.B. stuff, the average quality seems to have been somewhat higher back in the day. I maintain that there are plenty of more recent M.B. releases that have plenty to give, but the early stuff simply seems unable to fail. This somewhat anonymous collection of early 80's stuff proves that point. Playful, ominous, brutal and lo-fi. There's never an attempt to annoy or even express a very clear sonic concept. Rhythms and improvised synth melodies merge in an unproblematic manner with distorted noise, butchered samples and disjointed feedback. Rough when it needs to be, somehow recalling the 80's even if you never listened to industrial back then.  I usually don't post links with these reviews, but due to Steinklang's current re-structuring to label-only rather than distributor, the very nice Platin edition of this double CD is available for a mere 7 Euros. You may want to partake. http://steinklang.at/MB-Maurizio-Bianchi-Anthology-1981-1984-2CD-deluxe-platin_1
"Alkoholi ei ratkaise ongelmia, mutta eipä kyllä vittu maitokaan"

Ahvenanmaalla Puhutaan Suomea

Frataxin

Bizarre Uroar-Rape Africa [2018 reissue] (Filth & Violence)

Really great. The first track was probably my favorite. It's very dark and tense. Murky atmosphere with heavy low-end rumbles and fantastic vocals. The entire album progresses at a proper pace. The entire thing is pretty menacing.

totalblack

#6869
Quote from: Frataxin on May 19, 2018, 09:50:20 PM
Bizarre Uroar-Rape Africa [2018 reissue] (Filth & Violence)

Really great. The first track was probably my favorite. It's very dark and tense. Murky atmosphere with heavy low-end rumbles and fantastic vocals. The entire album progresses at a proper pace. The entire thing is pretty menacing.

For me this is the best record for this project- obviously BU has tons of great material but this one really drives it home. It's very well composed, separated, mixed properly, and works great as an album, where as some of the other more recent records feel like two jams extended for half a side of an LP each. Top it off with the No Remorse "cover" and the artwork, basically perfect. This reminded me to go and take another listen to it and I'm entirely satisfied. How is the new track addition on the reissue? Needed? Or just another small live piece?