Cut Hands

god yes

2007-04-29T12:21:00.000+02:00

Shit's off the HOOK after the most awesome Wolf Eyes gig I've been to, last tuesday in Antwerp. POPCORN

idjut

2007-04-20T11:31:00.000+02:00

best thing on youtube right now. seriously, brilliantly played, prank or not. you decide. sounds silly but watching him is addictive.

lstn

2007-04-07T17:29:00.000+02:00

There is new Cut Hands material available on the site! check it out!

Listening to (amongst others):

Prodigy - Return of the Mac
Cold and bleak New York hiphop, exactly how i like it. Kind of generic NYC=depression lyricwise but at the same time living up to those themes in terms of beats.

The Field - From Here We Go to Sublime
The first techno album this year I enjoy and it's because of all the obvious spring-related reasons. Simple as that.

Pantha Du Prince - This Bliss
The bells, the track where the bells collide into some dionysian symphony maybe the most similar techno has come to an orgasm to these ears.

Throbbing Gristle - Part Two: The Endless Not
Very Coil-like, don't feel the semi-jazzy bits as much though. They feel weird, out of place, maybe that's the point. I don't like them. But on the whole, this album exceeds my expectations which were, like, zero to begin with.

Sword Heaven/Lambsbread - split LP
Shred Heaven more like, these two bands had to be on one LP ever since the Man decided guitars were meant to be raped. Lambsbread are the ceasars of dirrrrty swagger. Blues licks stretched out to infinity. Stonerjamz played in slowmo, if you play these backwards I bet you hear the meaning of life explained, fer real. Sword Heaven riffs are like glass splinters, they don't bruise, they cut.

Last Exit - Köln
Bosses tearing shit up. You can't argue with a record like this, it's done how it must be done. With intensity, with fiery lust. Makes me feel like a flame thrower, hot and violent.

Ah

2007-03-26T21:10:00.000+02:00

am still hype sensitive

what a fucking great album this is. First techno album that lives up to the shoegaze comparisons these nu-trance albums and tracks get spoiled with.

playlist 00.00.00

2007-03-26T15:41:00.000+02:00

recent and awesome listening material stuff things and such

* Blonde Redhead - 23

* Religious Knives - Remains

* Aaron Dilloway - Beggar Master

* Taliban - Gutted

* Baikal - Baikal

* Emeralds - Bullshit Boring Drone Band

* Kiss The Anus of a Black Cat - An Interlude to the Outer-Most

semi-retirement, sort of

2007-03-21T22:31:00.000+01:00

I've found out I'm way too obsessed with other things these days to keep this blog at a decent level. I'll be posting 'this is what i'm listening to' lists from now and that's it. Maybe short blurbs to go with them. I'll return to the old format one day, I guess. And i'll be posting whatever news I have regarding Cut Hands here as well, of course.

And yeah, check out this awesome new logo. With thanks to Robert Inhuman. Thanks dude, I love it.

new CUT HANDS releases

2007-03-09T18:22:00.000+01:00

New drool available! 3 brand new Cut Hands releases ready to get sniffed and swallowed.

Psalm Alarm | Blk Paintings Vol. 1 CH004
Psalm Alarm is a new sideproject by gruesome threesome Graveyards (Hans Buetow, Ben Hall and John Olson) and it’s one sinister fuckin’ retard puppy. Joined by Zach Wallace on bass they embark into ultra crude minimalism and bass heavy sniperjazz terrain. Listening to this feels like you’re crawling across floors littered with rusty needles, while your kneecaps are twisted. And your eyelids have been torn off. In the most annoying bright light ever. With sand in your pants! If you dig whatever land there is between Graveyards and Melée, sawing cello’s from hell, Om like bass heaviness and hardhitting percussion than Psalm Alarm is your thing. There haven’t been Graveyards releases this malignant….yet, and Psalm Alarm have only just begun. Edition of 50, in classy black envelopes with sprayed on texts and heavy paper insert.
€ 8 ppd – Europe
€ 9 ppd – rest of the world

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LoveLetters | Doke Smope CH005
Twisted transmissions from harsher space that leave skidmarks all over your damaged brain. You just can’t deny the dirty passion that went into this lovesick noise document. Out of control noiseloops, chainsaw drones, off kilter beats that channel some crazy fucked up pop vibes and slabs of bright green stardust to top the cake off. Editition of snooze you lose, in chalk paper sleeves with hemptastic heavy paper insert.
€ 8 ppd – Europe
€ 9 ppd – rest of the world

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Filthy Turd – Schoolgirls In Chains CH006
Another stinkin’ Turd is loose! And believe me, whatever you’ve heard by the Turd before, it’s NOTHING like this one. Schoolgirls in Chains was recorded at a girls school (!) and you can hear the dude got inspired by fantasies of uniforms, ponytails and, well, chains and stuff. What you get are minimal horrorvibes highlighted by crushed musicbox melodies, tension, lots of tension and release, some sicko unexpected release moments. I don’t know what his filthy ass been thinking of while roaming those corridors but I’m sure he had the time of his life there. Turd himself sez: “The 'big band' samples on the track is a bunch of girls in music class getting ready for exams!” Yeah right perv. Only 43 made. Fuck.
€ 8 ppd – Europe
€ 9 ppd – rest of the world

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www.cuthands.net

Stuff you should be listening to pt. II

2007-02-22T20:11:00.000+01:00

Suishou No Fune - I Throw a Stone into the Endless Depths [Sloow Tapes]
I love Japanese psychedelic guitar bliss and this squadron of black clad warriors know how to take the Les Rallizes legacy and respectfully make it their own. If rip-offs are made this sweet, who am I to complain? Suishou No Fune are of course no match to the Les Rallizes force but they did manage to seduce me to use that comparison and it's for a reason.

Kiss The Anus Of A Black Cat - An Interlude To The Outermost [K-raa-K3]
How about that name eh? Dude's Belgian, maybe that explains. Remember Urbanus? You probably don't. Never mind, this is Kiss The Anus Of A Black Cat's second album and just like the first, it's quite impressive. An apocalyptic mixture of Current 93 drama and raging guitars. The passion his vocals expose is extremely fascinating. Every word is spit with force into the dark depths of it's doomed folk surroundings.

Badgerlore - We Are All Hopeful Farmers, We Are All Scared Rabbits [Table of the Elements]
Brother, check this line up: Rob Fisk (Deerhoof, 7-Year Rabbit Cycle), Ben Chasny (Six Organs of Admittance, Comets on Fire), Tom Carter (Charalambides), Pete Swanson (Yellow Swans), Glenn Donaldson (Blithe Sons, Skygreen Leopards) en Liz Harris (Grouper). Done?
I'm not sure you need to be convinced or anything but if that line up doesn't tickle your balls to almost unbearable extend I don't know what will. You wonder if one album is enough for all this creativity to fully blossom but somehow they manage to put aside any ego's they might have and make this album work. Perhaps they just jammed and edited this album out of that. Makes sense because it really feels that way. Lunatic mantra's, psych guitars that just tinker away like time doesn't exist, electronic drones leaking sinister vibes, gongs.... just....a lot to lose yourself in.

Bloodyminded - Magnetism [Bloodlust!]
Aaron Dilloway recommended this album and yeah I'm a sucker for that so I didn't hear this 2006 album until now. It's crazy though. It's noise, yeah, but it's somewhat romantic. It has a story even. Check the songtitles
-'Visiting An Ex-Girlfriend In The Hospital - Aids Ward'
-'Girlfriend Announces That She Is Beginning Professional Treatment For Severe Depression'
-'Girlfriend Attempts To Explain Schizophrenic Episode By Revealing Childhood Sexual Abuse'
-'Shotgun Held To Face By A Severely Crosseyed Addict While Attempting To Physically Remove Girlfriend From Known Drug House'
.......and so on. I wonder if the guy is talking about real life experience cos that's heavy shit right there. The sounds are equally FUCKED UP. There's the screams, the piercing effects, sawing your limbs off drones. It's nowhere near what you might expect if you never heard noise, or just once listened to Merzbow and decided it was crap. It might even be moving.

Carlos Giffoni & Prurient - Heavy Rain Returns [Ideal]
Heavy, it is. Believe me. I didn't expect much from this and boy was I wrong. The minute Prurient starts his distorted serenades to the undeground masses I'm sold. And Giffoni keeps up, gushing out dirty, dirty digital mudstreams, spiked with hateful intensity. I didn't know but this has turned out to be a dream pairing of two souls that understand eachother completely. Intense stuff.

Cloaks - A Crystal Skull In Peru [Atheists Are Gods]

2007-02-15T12:59:00.000+01:00

It's been a while but I really love surprises (hint). When I opened the envelope in which Starving Weirdos' Father Guru came there was this cd in it as well and ta-da! It surprised me. So that was nice, started to put it on early sunday mornings and it's perfect for a hazy sunday come down from whatever gloomy stuff you did the night before. It doesn't pull you out of the haze but rather maintains it and slowly massages your sobering senses.
Cloaks is Starving Weirdos affiliated I think, this one came out on their own Atheists Are Gods imprint but there's no website, or obscure blog/distro that has anymore info on them than is on the cool little insert that comes with the cd. All cool, no sweat. Apparently the Cloaks guy is Spencer D. who could or could not be in the Starving Weirdos gang, no idea but it doesn't matter much anyway. A Crystal Skull In Peru is comprised of two tracks, the title track being the longest and at more than 32 minutes also the most impressive or should I say enchanting or should I say hypnotic or should I just stick to pretty damn great? When the piece gets going after some initial, stuttering effects it reminds me of Charlemagne Palestine's Strumming Music. The pianoloops get accompanied by endless parades of chiming bells and it's like watching dew drops fall down from spiderwebs on one of those foggy sunday mornings out in the fields. Gorgeous stuff and it lasts for more than half an hour!
Second tracks clocks in at just over 16 minutes and sees Spencer D. pulling out an extremely clear sounding electric guitar next to the holier than thou grande piano. Guests Charlotte Olsen handles electronics and Gregg Devaney does the harmonium but I really can't make out who does what and when exactly. That blurring sensation is also what makes this track work. It's a constantly shifting, dense piece with deeper, melancholic chords as well as the floatier ones we got on the title track. It seems that everything Starving Weirdos are involved in, direct or indirect is made for me. If you dig Steve Reich, Charlemagne Palestine as well as Double Leopards and Machinefabriek I bet you'd like Cloaks.

Tell you what, email the guy and tell him I told you to tell him..........you'd like a copy.......spencerd@63@hotmail.com

Machinefabriek/Aaron Martin - Cello Recycling

2007-02-10T17:57:00.000+01:00

Machinefabriek. Man. This guy doesn't know how to stop being overproductive and high quality at the same time. All these lovely 3" cd-r's are worth every single penny and this little ditty is no exception. If you ever wondered what grey autumns in Holland feel like, just listen to Machinefabriek. Drones with a lot of thought and personality, aural fingerprints, stuff that makes time float.

Cello Recycling contains 3 pieces. All recordings made by cellist Aaron Martin, the first track being remixed by Machinefabriek. Eleven minutes of ghostly cello sounds, building up slowly and with huge respect for doomed silence. Like listening to an earthquake rumbling 200 hundred miles away with your ear to the soil. Towards the middle, the floaty flat drone gets punctured by exilirating low end fuzzquakes before drifting into the dense fog of haunted cello sounds again. There's always great dynamics going on in Machinefabriek's music so once you think you've had the best part there's always new developments around the corner. It really feels like a morning stroll through a foggy unknown.

Tracks 2 to 4 are short examples of Aaron Martin's original works. This way you get a slight idea about Machinefabriek's jolted mind. It's these tracks that make you realise how immaculate this dude works his craft and really, just a peek inside a gloomy mindstate. One with a love for melancholy and maybe even the haunted pasts of whatever interesting people he's met over the years.

I know all this praise might seem suspect coming from me as I just released a Machinefabriek chapter on my own label but if there's ever gonna be a bad Machinefabriek, I'd be seriously thrilled to slag it off. No joke. Up until now, pfft, you just can't knock dude's hustle.

Buy Cello Recycling here

Cut Hands releases: Machinefabriek/Cahier/Oubliette

2007-02-04T19:48:00.000+01:00

Holy crap it's done! First slab of 3 releases is ready to go. Check the site to order.

Stuff you should be listening to

2007-02-03T22:59:00.000+01:00

* Panda Bear - Person Pitch
It's so righteous, I didn't expect too much from this album but man, hearing this for the first time felt like an epiphany all over again. I loved Panda's first album and this collection of euphoric deep sea anthems is even better, in whole different ways.

* Soft Circle - Full Bloom
The late night/dance/whatever trip you like being on compagnon to Person Pitch. It's luscious, triumphant and it's the new band from former Black Dice drummer dude Hisham Baroocha.

* Charlemagne Palestine - A Sweet Quasimodo Between Black Vampire
Hearing Charlemagne talk about a long one childhood in California during the first track feels like looking through a photo album of someone you don't but wish you'd know. The second (main) piece is played on two grandpiano's and the action is incredibly dynamic, all the overtones create a dreamlike tension. It's almost hallucinatory.

* Ghost - In Stormy Nights
Ghost sound so out of time and yet so right on this album. It's kind of creepy how they mess with such different moods while maintaining that ultimate mysterious vibe throughout the whole album.

* Lambsbread - Rodney King Was On Pcp That Night
These Ohio dudes can't stop releasing good shit and every single shit sounds like a rusty Chevy truck crashing into dirty pools of feedback. Just awesome, no other word comes close to this kind of sludgy post-Harry Pussy deconstruction.

* Les Rallizes Denudes - Heavier than a Death in the Family
Les Rallizes bootleg titles are totally invincible. So is the music, always extremely invigorating, over the top feedback attacks topped off with the yearning vocal style guitarist/singer Takashi Mizutani is blessed with. It's a force you just can't deny, it's ultra addictive and once you've tasted it's raging honey you're sold for life.

Starving Weirdos - Father Guru [Azul Discográfica]

2007-01-28T13:36:00.000+01:00

Yeah I know, it's been too long. But I've got a good excuse, first batch of 3 releases is almost ready! When I got the new and first official Starving Weirdos in the mail though I knew I had to cook up a brand new blogpost/review because every Starving Weirdos so far has been in the great to supergreat area. You just have to know.

Father Guru comes out on the newly found Azul Discográfica label, check out label owner Loy Fankbonner's release from last year for some really good post-musique concrête stuff. I was kind of surprised no other label, perhaps more situated in the drone/noise scene had undertaken this task but to be honest I don't really care. And I bet these weirdos were starving (ahaha) for a proper cd release so they didn't either.

The first thing I noticed when I spun this album for the first time was the clean sound of it. Nothing muffled about this in the way their Sceance at Luffenhultz album was and as much as I like my drones buried underneath filthy dust, opener 'Cypress Groves' instils something equally magickal with it's seemingly endless loops of chiming drones, sounding like a music box turned psycho machine. It's like nothing I've heard before by these guys. 'Trancin'' trumps similar pools of ecstatic bliss this time conjured by heavily treated acoustic guitar. In the distance there are voices wailing like lost children in an underground mall, contemporary fieldrecording hidden behind the veils of drone.

It's nowhere as mystifying as Sceance at Luffenhultz though and that's a bit of a shame. Only the last of three tracks offered on this album reflects that addictive mystery. If you're still clueless, the title says it all: 'Mist-Shrouded World pt. 2'.
There's no telling where exactly these sounds come from, no technical analysis possible, it's all ghosts and fucked up fairy dust from here on. As blissful and even peaceful as the two previous tracks were, this one makes it's point in opposite directions, and succeeds triumphantly I might add.

geez..

2007-01-17T22:24:00.000+01:00

I love the dollar oh yes I do. Check out this latest installment of Not Not Fun Bored Fortress 7" Club. Only 45 bucks postpaid worldwide. Needless to say, I ordered mine. Now order yours before they're gone!

THE GOSLINGS/YELLOW SWANS
GHQ/EX-COCAINE
BIRDS OF DELAY/DREAMCATCHER
HOTOTOGISU/HIVE MIND
DEEP JEW/LAMBSBREAD
MINDFLAYER/HEAVY WINGED

plus artwork by: Jelle Crama, Devon Varmega,
Shawn Reed, Jeremy Earl, George Myers, and
Mat Brinkman

Lambsbread - Black Starliner / The First Four Days [self released]

2007-01-10T20:18:00.000+01:00

Sometimes I think Lambsbread are my new favourite band. Such a thing mostly happens when I'm in need of beer, getting it and drinking it to no end. Good feeling, every once in a while.

I scooped up these two cd-r's while I was at the ATP fest, together with a cheapo looking tape I haven't even played yet. The only tapedeck I have sits next to my bed and that's not to place where I'd be mostly likely found listening to Lambsbread to be honest. Yeah, it's heavy shit, and fuzzy. Or huzzy, if you like (sic). Both are especially crafted tour cd-r's in editions of 25 so I don't think there's a chance you'll get them at your favourite distro. Try ebay, get ripped off! Oh, I think ebay banned me by the way, for refusing to pay $25 shipping costs for Wolf Eyes' River Slaughter LP out of Canada. $25! Shipping costs! Insane!

The Black Starliner cd-r starts with some cruel heavy metal shredding not suited for people who think technique is where it's at. First track starts as an avalanche of distorted fuzz and splashing cymbals moving with the speed of a Philippine mudslide. Inside this unholy mess are some really shifty dynamics, micro solo's buried underneath, a sudden rush of cymbal crashes. The energy never ceases and the mud thickens with every minute. The second track, they're all without a title of course, sounds like a grindcore track stretched out endlessly and buried underneath ten feet of that thick mud I talked about earlier. There's no clear sound detectable, except for some spurts of cymbal splashes it's all party at the fuzzy side of the moon.

If you dig clarity, or at least audible guitar fuckery than The First Four Days should be right up your Lambsbread alley. There's some similarity with the Magik Markers sound except for the fact that Lambsbread never ever stop shredding. The first track of this cd-r is way more patchy than anything on Black Starliner but it also comprises some really intensive fuzz solo's gone really, really bad. It's like the worst recorded heavy psych track ever. In Lambsbread's case you have to know this is actually a good thing. Very good, even. The 24 minutes take some dips in more at ease waters but the piercing guitar wails never leave completely, if in lesser volume or making room for the let-loose approach of the drummer, they always stick to the back of the track.

Second track starts fucking creepy, sounding like a doomed black metal intro bit stretched into several minutes while slowly evolving into a minimal incantation of Nels Cline's impro guitar tactics mashing with sludgecore's foggy vibrations. The real winner on this album though is the fourth and last track, reminding me of their killer ATP set. Heavy, heavy shit for fed up guitar freaks in dire need of something that gushes the blood to all the wrong places.

NASA noise

2007-01-06T20:13:00.000+01:00

Awesome outerspace footage of some true NASA noise action

Cut Hands: the label

2007-01-01T23:04:00.000+01:00

Cut Hands

yeah, so it's gonna happen. Cut Hands [cemetary psychedelics], a cd-r label. what the fuck? no, no it's totally cool. i know about it and i'm gonna put in much work to make sure it's gonna be succesful.

i have a few releases coming up soon, machinefabriek will have the much deserved honour to get the CH001 cat. #. i hope to release the first batch of 2-3 recordings somewhere in february.

check the site and keep checking. exciting times!

Year end lisssssst: Bonanza time

2006-12-31T18:51:00.000+01:00

Bonanza. I don't even know if that's an English word but what the heck. My dutch blogrades convinced me in participating in the annual year end roundup, again. I didn't even know I had any spare time left. From today on, every day a new record, 10 to 1, Christmas not included. A fuckin' freakfest if you go by my picks but check out my peers' blogs as well, even if you can't read a word Dutch cos they're people with good taste, mostly ;) Scroll down a bit for my entries..

- Gerard
- Bas
- Jenneke
- Ludo
- Roy
- Marieke
- Willem
- Vincent (in english)

1. Wolf Eyes - Human Animal [Subpop]

2006-12-31T13:21:00.000+01:00

I didn't expect this to happen. I knew they could but I didn't think they'd do it with a Subpop release. After all they already released River Slaughter, a killer double lp, on Hospital which kind of foreboded a new, minimal direction and a multitude of limited, often even more minimal releases. Human Animal though, slayed everything and anything. An epic album stuffed with creepy tension, the throb 'n clang of industrial pioneers, twisted freejazz, insane build ups and climaxing thunder. It shouldn't be any other way.

To think about it, no band has withheld a backlash so persistent as this Michigan crew of outcasts. They've been a relative hype for about four straight years now and they're still winning over curious souls every new day. Why is that? Because they actually believe in what they do. Hence the enormous output, it's not only cashing in on a hype, cos after all that's been going on far too long to really be labelled as hype, it's a way of life. Human Animal might as well be the every member's nickname. Also, they shred live. They don't only live up to the horror on their albums, live they outdo it by a relative large number and while they do it they aren't afraid to launch awesome new acts, like Lambsbread for instance. They might even be the new Sonic Youth, without the sucking part.

Download |'The Driller'

2. Magik Markers - A Panegyric to the Things I Do Not Understand [Gulcher]

2006-12-30T13:35:00.000+01:00

"Hello?

"Yes."

"Somebody hit me in the face?"

"The face?

"THE FACE."

3. OM - Conference of the Birds [Holy Mountain]

2006-12-29T23:02:00.000+01:00

This album is a goddamn altar. It towers above every Myspace infection, blog brutality and reach of mainstream music press. It's massive, bold, uncompromising and yet so amazingly enjoyable.

The moment the cymbals kick in and Al Cisneros lets his bass roll like 5 ton bricks into black oceans you feel a transcendent calm upon you. It can't be any other way, call this boring and your life sucks. 'At Giza' is the name of the first track and it doesn't only feel at Giza, it feels like the word of centuries of Egyptians locked into one doped up stoner groove, and more. Cisneros' meditative prose, while almost incomprehensible especially for non mythology scholars, soothes like yo momma reading you a bedtime story. The words are in the booklet but what do they matter anyway? The delivery makes the experience here and with the tremendously flexible bassplaying and the enervating washes of percussion the whole truly feels like something done by people way beyond any form of songwriting. 'At Giza' makes such an entrance, it's no suprise that 'Flight of the Eagle' kind of suffers from it's intensity. Nevertheless it sustains the same powerful drift and when you.........ach....Same thing as yesterday, feel a little drained but do believe it brothers and sisters. This record is more powerful than a case full of bibles. Amen.

4. Paul Flaherty - Whirl of Nothingness [Family Vineyard]

2006-12-28T19:46:00.000+01:00

Hands down the most striking album cover of 2006. Picturing a meditative Flaherty with his mythical weapon in hand. Marvel at the sight of his great white beard, once I saw that meter long bush of white hair I was an instant Flaherty fan. Don't care about objectivity, this dude ruled non stop and without exception.

And 2006 couldn't start any better than with The Beloved Music, Flaherty's power duet with drummer almighty Chris Corsano. A couple of months later there was the impressive A Rock in the Snow cd and the Snow Blind Avalance lp, both on the steadily greater Important. Overload it sure wasn't, every batch of Flaherty/Corsano/C. Spencer Yeh recordings makes for a different kind of awesome. At least, up till now and definately with the inclusion of this ferocious solo saxophone album, and his super group collaboration with noise dad Thurston Moore, Heather Leigh, Matt Heyner, Chris Corsano and C. Spencer Yeh.

Whirl of Nothingness is Flaherty's second solo album although he's been cutting improv freejazz slices since the mid '70s. Let's just say people didn't really understand him back in the day. Too loose for those post-every jazz genre times but when the noise/punk scenes exploded he frequently got asked to do warm up gigs and according to the Man himself, he and drummer Randy Colbourne at least matched the intensity of those gigs. Harsh emotion man, it's a way of life. Once you get inside Whirl of Nothingness there's a chance you'll feel overwhelmed by the enormous power inside Flaherty's lungs. There is plenty room for contemplation though, it's just engulfed by much intenser moments of spiritual fire, a kind of ur-skronk that you have to acknowledge and let in to get to you.

I wish I could write more about this record now but I can't, something's bothering me and I don't feel like writing anything else today. Please listen to this album cos this guy is very worthy of your time.

5. Sachiko - You Never Atone for [There]

2006-12-26T18:15:00.000+01:00

Gorgeous cover, right? One of the few covers this year that really made me look twice, thrice, etc etc. I don't have a lot with female singers besides the odd Nico like one, and while Sachiko doesn't really qualify as a singer singer, she left me mesmerized when I first heard her vocals, sighing like torch songs for a world of ghosts.

Sachiko hails from Japan and when you hail from Japan and play music, you obviously play in a psych monster unit of some sort. Sachiko's psych union is called The Overhang Party, who by the way just released a magnificent double album if overblown psych/stoner jams iz yr thang. Besides that she stretches her vocal chords in the all female group Vava Kitora. You Never Atone for is her solo debut, a record of contrasts, again. A record by a woman who understands the depth of music. Where to take it and how to do it in a way that instantly mesmerizes. Like an avant-everything edition of Nico she's haunting you while being totally beautiful at the same time, resisting is useless but giving in might be fatal.

The album lures you in with it's first two pieces of sheer magic, 'Raijin Song I' and Raijin Song II'. Beautiful, wordless mantra's that float by at exact the right speed to get numbed by them. Effective is an understatement. Easy to fall in love with too. As far as I can tell she only uses vocals on this heavenly couple, looped to magical extent, treated with stardust and alladat evocative shit. It's two of the most beautiful moments in music in 2006, no joke.

After that, another story. Or a different chapter, equally evocative but in lots of different ways. 'Fire Yith' boasts a heavy electric vibe, more aching to Keiji Haino than Taj Mahal Travellers. Again Sachiko's vocals play a big part but the sheer terror that they transcribe here is the exact opposite of the 'Raijin' chants. Imagine planet Tangerine Dream being attacked by little Keiji Haino comets. Ok lame metaphor but whatever man, it's shockingly mystifying anyway. A little bit easier on the nervous system is 'Never Go Down Yarai-Zaka', eleven minutes of twisted vocal loops gliding through thick layers of electrocuted ambience that feels like a collaboration between ambient night crusader Deathprod and the aforementioned Nico. 'Saika' and 'Yama-Keburi' creep through even swampier fields of vocal drones, eerie sheets of minimal cries out of darkblue depths, it doesn't take much to feel a kinship between this track and the murkier than thou Double Leopards drones.

Look at the cover again, if you feel attracted by it in any kind of way, hunt this album down and you will find the link between gorgeous solitude and the fire that rages in everyone of us.

6. Pedestrian Deposit - Fatale [Hospital/Hanson]

2006-12-24T12:26:00.000+01:00

Alone in a room with the brightest of white lights. It's never, ever dark here. The edges of the room are razorblade sharp, the floor seems transparent, drenched in sulphuric acid. Small glass tubes filled with a hallucinatory substance litter the floors. Step on one of them and for a moment you might think you've found pandora's box of sweet melodies. It's no coincidence this record is called Fatale. It might scar you for life.

Fatale is the magical work of Jon Borges also known as Pedestrian Deposit and dude behind the beautiful Monorail Trespassing label. A guy who's made harsh noise with extreme contrasts his business and no one succeeds so gloriously in this than Borges. Fatale is a sinister game between torture and romance, harsh mindfucks and sweet lullabys. It's raging brutality decorated with brief moments of reflection. Check the chamber piano during 'You Can't Help Me', surrounded by sputtering electronics it plays the contrast game like no other. Ambient electronics introduce 'Mascara' as something Dutch drone wizard Machinefabriek could have made but gets quickly interrupted by a looming noise drone that transforms into a metallic creepers symphony.

Much harsher on the behind is opener 'Svelte', slowly starting like a messed up Fennesz track. Grainy noisescapes stuffed with high end screech 'n scuzz, it's got some Whitehouse body without being too conscious about it. No lyrics or whatsoever either so there's just the fucked up ambience that gets to you. Throughout the year I kept coming back to this album, as if I would find some secret passages that I heard tiny bits by on previous listens. A mirage of melody, Fatale is one of those noise records that make a whole genre worth existing. This is the breath of noise.

7. Prurient - Pleasure Ground [Load]

2006-12-23T16:43:00.000+01:00

Last may, Hasselt, again. Prurient's sole emperor Dominick Fernow raped my ears for twenty minutes with an intense set of high end power electronics and a terribly piercing shriek. When music gets this physical it gets me in a blissful state and while my eardrums were starting to really feel the pain I only wanted more, more, more. That's when Prurient hit me. I'd been feeling his seminal 2005 release Black Vase before but it's unrelenting attitude scared as well. Maybe I wasn't ready, maybe it really was too much. Or maybe, I was just being lazy.

Enjoying Prurient isn't easy when you're just getting into harsh noise but all the lazy boys and girls who are into music and slag off noise as unlistenable and stupid really annoy the fuck out of me. Invest some time and try to get through it's harsh skin before making a complete universe irrelevant by laziness. It's a good thing Pleasure Ground is here to accomodate these jerks (ah!). It might be Prurient's most varied and melodic (!) effort to date, without losing any of his true harsh noise cred. But it's not as if he is trying to please the naysayers, Fernow keeps things on edge the whole time but if you make it through the first track called 'Military Road' you're almost in the candy shop. 'Military Road' has Fernow in line as a terrifying drill sergeant. When the first high end noise waves hit you, it's bleeding eyeballs, pulled out tongues and the spirit of S&M/black metal kvlt right in your face. It's a shrill and piercing sound that gets under your skin to fondle the nerves underneath.

After 'Military Road''s eins-zwei-drei torment things start to get a little more spacious. A little. It's still Prurient after all. Fernow's a huge black metal freak (with a huge boner for black/noise metal act Bone Awl) and that's starting to trickle down in his noise terror. 'Earthworks/Buried In Secret' has some heavy synth vibes going on, electro doom as opposed to electro pop. Not suited for hipster dance parties unless they're in need for some tragic deaths. Halfway during the track the doomy parts get traded in for blistering synth winds and Fernow's ever awesome rants from the gut. Goth has such a polluted personality now but this might qualify in the sickest of minds. Fernow himself has claimed Pleasure Ground as an electronic record with black metal and club trance influences and he isn't far off either. Better yet, he's completely on point. In his own sick kind of way then. 'Outdoorsman/Indestructible' feels like something floating around those two benchmarks, taking wing from minimalism more than anything else. A slow grinding horror mofo with nothing really attractive besides a few gong hits. Ugly ass track, I like it though.

With album closer 'Apple Tree Victim', Prurient has made his first coherent kind of noise song. It's sawing synths feel like something Xasthur would come up with were he more interested in avant-electronica than guitars. A few lines sum up a world of cruelty, vocals soaked in blackened disgust. Pleasure Ground feels like a noise rave party, sometimes euphoric and painfully extrovert and overall a crazy sorta new direction in Prurient's discography, illustrating his remarkable strength in so many ways. This one's a keeper.

Download | 'Earthworks/Buried In a Secret'

8. Mouthus - The Long Salt [Important]

2006-12-22T17:05:00.000+01:00

disclaimer: not sure if I will be able to do no's 7 and 6 this weekend. Things are keeping me busy and I need to finish a Paul Flaherty article. Sorry fellow Bonanza cats

Coasting through the Oh Six there were some records that kept me company during pretty much the whole ride. They kept on fascinating me, thrilling me. Causing my goosebumps to headbang everytime I put them on. One of those was this album by NYC testicle shredders Mouthus. Opening with one of the best openers of the year, 'Trains Again', is a Butthole Surfers' fantasy buried beneath a mudslide. A churning lo-fi groove filled with decaying guitars and filthy vocal overdubs that sound like someone buried alive. Lots of spooky energy. The first time I heard this I thought something was trying to tell me to come pick It up from a place deep down. How deep? I still don't know, I didn't have the guts to look for It. But since that moment It won't leave me alone. Sighing and screaming endlessly behind a curtain of ashy fog.

Mouthus are No Wave gone wrong but they twist it so hard it becomes soothing in a way. They ornate the spiky mess No Wave largely was with sheets of curved guitar sounds, pummeling drums that feel like a Fela Kuti track spun backwards, often in slowmotion. 'What Knife Say' thumps like a mean Einstürzende Neubauten remix, dense sludge guitars rocking out at a snail's tempo, splashing cymbal crashes and vocals that approach strange forms of chanting, the chants of dead people perhaps. Maybe that's why The Long Salt feels so invigorating, it's built up from the energy of countless deceased lives strung into one bad mamma jamma, a deluded Loveless for dead people. That's what it is.

9. Hototogisu - Chimärendämmerung [De Stijl]

2006-12-21T17:45:00.000+01:00

Representing the psychedelic infinite, Hototogisu kept on stunning me with subsequential releases this past year. Prayer Rug Exorcism, Some Blood Will Stick, Sculpture Built Upon The Graves and two split releases; Snail On A Razor with Prurient and Volume One with Burning Star Core. And they all were the bone rattling, tunnel vision psych fantasies you've come to expect from a dude like Matthew 'Skullflower' Bower. Together with Double Leopard Marcia Bassett he's made Hototogisu into a venomous psych through noise beast and Chimärendämmerung is the flame that scorched my brain most intensely.

Bower's a mean machine, a man without any commercial underpinnings. He strictly lives for his inner noise and this album is as deep as Bower's belief in that inner noise. In a nutshell, Chimärendämmerung consists out of a top layer of heavily treated guitar sounds twitching and twirling like thousands of insects on wet rain forest floors. Underneath, a psychedelic maze with tons of hidden chambers. You can reach them by closing your eyes while relaxing every muscle in your body, dim the lights and make sure you turn the volume up. Warn neighbours if necessary but Hototogisu isn't Sunn O))), Hototogisu's sound might seep through the crackles in walls, like armies of ants coming up from nowhere but it won't get your windows a shaking like a random Sunn O))) track. If Sunn's the tank, Hototogisu is the sniper on the roof, hitting your dome with an arrow drenched in some exotic poison, causing you to hallucinate before you DIE. Awesome.

10. Espers - II [Wichita]

2006-12-20T19:07:00.000+01:00

A few moments of doubt when I see Joanna Newsom gazing at me from her cover of Ys. There's only room for ten in this Bonanza and with all the fantastic noise/drone/scuzz/what not releases I've heard this year it's hard to squeek in other stuff I liked. Ten seconds of pondering later and it only seems fair to give Espers the benefit of doubt. Without sounding too confident about it, I might add, because Ys and II are two totally different albums. What they do have in common is the way they mold folk into something of the Here and Now. You might as well forget about freakfolk already. II is the real deal and they're not even trying to sound like whatever and what if.

The way they do it remains mystifying. There's always the smell of ancient tribes hanging round. Folks like Fairport Convention, Pentangle and Steeleye Span did leave their footprints in the soil II walks on but Espers strangle every bittersweet folk arrangement with electrifying guitar chords to make sure their sound doesn't get stuck inside an embroidered paradise. At times II hits harder than your average metal album with Greg Weeks wielding his axe like he just joined Blue Cheer.

Center of attention though are Meg Baird's pastoral vocals. Simply incredible, a solid rock of elegance inside a roaring ocean of tweaking pedals and swooning violins. Check out the climaxing maelstrom of fuzz guitars and violins during the last minute of 'Widow's Weed', the pondering melody of the soothing 'Cruel Storm' that feels like a hundred years old. The slow build up to the enormous folk meets Led Zep sculpture 'Mansfield & Cyclops'. By now you know you can trust a guy like Greg Weeks. Especially with this Espers crew on his side I'm convinced every one of their albums will be remembered as remarkable chapters in today's music and in the end, II will be just another highlight.

ATP The Aftermath: Day II

2006-12-15T20:52:00.000+01:00

I know...I've been slacking but here's day 2 which might have been the best day of my weekend, going by the bits I can actually remember. Ugh. I got this cold that's killing me.

---

England's noise godfathers The New Blockaders and their American brethren The Haters climbed the stage fully clad in black, faces covered behind balaclava's, hands set on nihilistic torture. They stunned me with the most surprisingly hardcore set of the weekend. I was expecting bits and pieces, a musique concrête like work out of ideas but they hit it so hard it pierced the ears of unborn babies. Also very cool; scrouching inbetween the quartet's feet were the two Jazzfinger guys crawling like worms through stacks of effectery, so fucking awesome I almost forgot to breathe. Hair Police were up next and although I was hoping they could top their Hasselt gig earlier this year, I knew they probably wouldn't. And they couldn't. It was fierce though, starting off like a slowmo metal machine and eventually unleashing the fucking fire with their second track. A moment of hellish hallelujah came upon me when the spiked up feedback flew through the venue like a comet gone berzerk. Somebody should give Connelly a decent mic stand though, one that's cemented into the floor for instance. Thing fell down all the time, also: if you like Burzum-ish vocals, Connelly is your guy/slaughter.

Catched a tiny bit of Wooden Wand's rather dull solo performance to race over to Crazy Horse for Double Leopards, who delivered the best set of the fest, hands down, eyes turned back and smiles set on infinity. With the group splattered all over the stage floor, mics in mouths and guitars minimally strummed to blissful results. The whole room was soaked in a purple psychedelic haze, like floating on acid clouds, more pink than floyd though. In the meantime, the earthshredding trio of Chris Corsano, Paul Flaherty and C. Spencer Yeh were in full motion when I arrived. Flaherty's balding, red head and that immense white beard like the motherfuckin' messiah on sax, Corsano like a thousand limbed Animal on drums and Yeh terrorizing his violin and vocal cords like he just ate a dinosaur. Monstrous, especially loved the pure and uncut dynamics this threesome kept throughout, truly a revelation to see this kind of power live in action. Stuck around to end up really digging Han Bennink again, his energy at least matched all the young 'uns on the bill and together with Brötzmann it proved to be as magnificent as you'd imagine when listening to all their albums in a row and then ejaculating over a piece of.....pork.

I'm glad I went back to the Crazy Horse stage to check out Ohio's Lambsbread after the B/B gig cause those cats ruled the planet for some 20 minutes. Serious pit action going on, with the trio mashing all life out of their guitars and drums, standing with their backs towards the audience but that didn't matter shit, it was blazing from start to end. No, I wasn't there when trhe fire alarm went off, I was probably digesting a Chicken Royale. Word. Afterwards I was too fucked up to walk to the centre stage to check out the mighty Comets On Fire and decided to stick around for personal faves Magik Markers. Now a duo, they failed to impress like they've done so many a times. The room energy was wild and it was only when hairy pussy Elisa stuck her guitar into the audience the duo started to really feel that. Bummer.......Somehow I ended up at an extra Gang Of Four show later that night and I was pleasantly surprised how sharp and on point their music still is. Especially on this bill because it didn't seem to fit at all. NICE ONE.

ATP The Aftermath: Day $@$^@

2006-12-13T19:23:00.000+01:00

My body hurts. Lambsbread bruised it.

ATP The Aftermath: Day I

2006-12-12T13:44:00.000+01:00

Killer times. ATP ruled like I know it would. Heavy on the vodka, Belgian beer and Burger King. Oh..and the music was good man, it was goooood so let me do a quick round up for day one.

Seeing Nurse With Wound in the bingo hall like Centre Stage was ludicrously surrealistic. Started off with 'Dead Side of the Moon', David Tibet joining in complete serenity and three other guys (among them Colin Potter) doing awesome things with awesome things. There's no other way to describe it, actually, plastic bottle wizardry and subtle throat flanging might fit as well. Really good. The second bit was a bit flakey though, I know Stapleton likes to ride the absurdist train but the bass parts were downright funky, nothing really surrealistic about the whole thing and a tiny bit of a letdown.
Hive Mind next and expecting a thousand ton bees invading my ears. Got just a tiny swarm of normal sized ones. I loved the sound, it was almost warm and cuddly but I don't think Greh was aiming for warm and cuddly. He should've upped the volume man, oh the regrets. While people were running to see Melvins hit the centre stage I was forced by the gods to catch noise's love duet: Dead Machines. They don't hit the European shores that often while Melvins will be here in the year two million. Fucking brats. Dead Machines' Tovah Olson got the cute thing going as well, so that helps. And every noise fetishist gotsta love John Olson, if you don't like his songs, you might dig his comedy. Announcing every song as a fuckin' cover, man. Dedicating shit to Aaron Dilloway and the All Tomorrow's Players. Also props for having a Prick Decay cover, 'Urine Popsicle', made extra saucy with his lengthy explanation on how to make such a wonderful thing (includes urinating on hand and freezing it). And they made sure it covered you alright. Very thick and meaty slabs of underground scuzzdrones, noise for romantic assholes if you like. Just loud enough to make it bounce back and forth against your domes while Olson's upping of fist made him look like a damn shaman. Righteous.
Didn't plan on seeing Islaja but Deerhoof were playing the Red's stage and Iggy was causing queues as long as the Chinese wall across the whole fucking arcade tent centre of pleasure. And she did surprise me with a raucous set of pretty hard edged material for her doing. Nice enough. Bardo Pond did it for me on this first day though, my first hallelujah moment. I needed them to be awesome but being one of my favourite alltime bands I was somehow preparing myself for a letdown. Not necessary. At all. I was floating during the whole fucking thing, they did 'Every Man' and it hit me harder than when I first heard it. Isobel Sollenberger's completely gorgeous too, the finest mermaid ever to grace the filthy shores of underground porn. She and her flute made my legs melt while the twin guitar attack pulverized every clueless soul in the building. So beautifully exhausting that I just about managed to see the Dead C setting up and destroying expectations with one hour of psychedelic feedback. Too much for some, I kinda liked it though. It got under my skin and I stood glued to the bingo hall carpet while thinking I should really check out Prurient while at the same time thinking it couldn't be better than his show in Hasselt, last may. kept that thought. Later that night, more beer, vodka and frankfurters...

Too much man, day 2 tomorrow..

Countdown to ATP: 3 days

2006-12-06T20:54:00.000+01:00

It's going down this friday and I'm psyched to go and absorb the whole experience with every sick fibre in my body. This is the last round up in my little countdown, I hope you enjoyed and see you after the best weekend of the year.

Bark Haze
Never heard anything by this trio before. Looking at the members, (Gown, Pete Nolan, Thurston Moore) it's bound to dissapoint, or isn't it? Oh man..
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Taurpis Tula
Listen to: 'Steel Rods Bruise Butterflies' on Steel Rods Bruise Butterflies
Taurpis Tula trade in the Scottish hellhole symphonies you expect when you try to define head honcho David Keenan going by his Volcanic Tongue newsletters. This year's Steel Rods Bruise Butterflies was my first introduction to this fine ensemble consisting of Keenan, Heather Leigh Murray and Alex Neilson and it still is one of the highlights of this year.
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Islaja
Islaja trades in seemingly innocent, Finnish folk sorcery of the highest order. When Finland broke headlines last year it was ready to overwhelm with an incredible amount of great albums. From Paavoharju to Avarus and Lau Nau to Islaja, they all delivered the goods and kept us busy for at least 1/4 of the year. Personally I'm more of a Paavoharju fan but that's just one more Dutch opinion you can ignore.
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The New Blockaders with The Haters
A transatlantic pairing of avant/noise pioneers that might just be the foundation this whole ATP line up is built on. Ask John Olson about it.
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Comets On Fire
Listen to: 'The Unicorn' on Fieldrecordings from the Sun
If you dig The Riff as much as I do then you got to have a special place in your hearts for Comets On Fire's psychedelic anthems. I've never seen them live but I can imagine it's a loud, skullwrecking affair. Utrillo Kushner is one of the greatest drummers in the biz right now, combined with the tandem of Ben Chasny and Ethan Miller on guitars you know it's gonna be just like you first heard cats having a blast in Riff Town, or like that old Def Leppard cassette you once had.
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Sun City Girls
Listen to: 'Nites of Malta' on Djinn Funnel
Going strong since the early eighties and it's still a chore to pin them down. You shouldn't even make the effort of trying because they will definately prove you wrong with their next record. They even covered Golden Earring's 'Radar Love' on their third album, Midnight Cowboys from Ipanemá, which is definately not their best I might add. Torch of the Mystics, with it's astral surf personality, still is my favourite although this year's Djinn Funnel proved to be a strong, strong grower of a record as well.
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Ashtray Navigations
Listen to: 'Strawberries on Ice' on Strawberries on Ice
With Pete Nolan, Thurston Dad and John Olson, drone magician Phil Todd might be the hardest working man on the ATP bill this year. Delivering cd-r after cd-r after cassette after LP on his own Memoirs of an Aesthete imprint or on one or two of the multiple other underground labels around. Four More Raga Moods is one of the finest drone records of this year and packs a hefty psychedelic punch as well. Todd's love for psych rock reigns supreme in his smeary brain and it shows in his music. I love to dive in his stuff just to get down to that psychedelic layer of mud to stay there for as long as I like to.
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Mats Gustaffson + Eye (Boredoms)
It's a damn shame Eye doesn't bring his fellow Boredoms but Mats Gustaffson isn't the worst choice for a partner he could make. Never heard anything by Gustaffson but I love everything Boredoms have done to pieces, seeing their Youtube stuff makes me want to destroy stuff with a happy face. Watch Eye freak out here. I'll do it there.

Countdown to ATP: 5 (!) days

2006-12-04T21:01:00.000+01:00

Flipper
Listen to: 'Sex Bomb' on Generic Flipper
If I need a record to get stupid to I put on Generic Flipper, still one of the most awesome Dumb Fun records ever recorded without sounding fucking corny. 'Sex Bomb' is made for pits full of huge grins and blunt elbows. Unfortunately they lost vocalist Will Shatter to an overdose but the new line up still looks pretty damn decent to me. I hope they bring some goodies with them.
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MV / EE + The Bummer Road
Listen to: 'The Joyous Within' on Mother of Thousands
I remember first listening to Tower Recordings and feeling completely out of this world. In a positive way, can't remember the exact record but everything they've done is worth seeking out. Matt Valentine is the Godbeard of the freaky folky universe, strumming his soul to the sounds of ancient folk pioneers like Incredible String Band, John Fahey and Fairport Convention. This year's Mother of Thousands truly feels like a seminal artifact in the ongoing folk revival, hypnotic in places, ghostly, authentic (yikes) and highly addictive.
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Hair Police
Listen to: 'Forged by Wreck' on Obedience Cuts
These guys delivered one of the best, if not the best, live shows of this year and that's on a bill with Prurient and Han Bennink. Felt like the last ever rockshow before the apocalyps, Olson skronking like he was the grim reaper calling out to follow him into the cracks of the earth. We stood strong though, Connelly rocked like a rejuvenated Judas Priest incarnated in short beardy dude. The way they mix rock 'n roll's filthy foundation with the greasiest gravy in noise's kitchen is like having sex with the largest hamburger ever made, on your last day on earth. When Olson said 'it's noise but it's rock', he was talking about Hair Police instead of Wolf Eyes, for real.
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16 Bitch Pile Up
I know nawt about 16 Bitch Pile Up but that name is like, er, funny. Recommend!
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Charalambides

2006-12-03T21:43:00.000+01:00

Got some catching up to do on the countdown to atp but before that here's a nice Charalambides show + interview

Enjoy and see you tomorrow for the continuation of the countdown.

peace.

Countdown to ATP: 8 days

2006-11-30T21:43:00.000+01:00

Family Underground
Listen to: 'Axial' on Axial
Druids of the Danish drone forests, Family Underground put their spell on me ever since I heard their Heavy Tapes release, Risen under Altar Souls, for the first time. Dense drone carpets not suited for the faint hearted, or the short attention spanned, for that matter. I'm very curious to see them live but they'll be clashing with whatever extremely badass other band.
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Fursaxa
Listen to: 'Purple Fantasy' on Lepidoptera
Oh yeah, Lepidoptera is great. I totally dig that mantra shit as much as the new Clipse record but Fursaxa has more tricks up her medieval sleeves than just the mantra shtick. The droning for instance is beyond trance-like, mesmerizing to the last drop. I need to check out more of her music though, Lepidoptera is the only album I've heard by her so recommend away!
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White Out w/ Nels Cline
Fuck Wilco. Nels Cline has been rolling solo for a long while now and his guitar excercitions make a bigger impression on me than his messing with Tweedy and boys. I don't know abouyt White Out though and when I need to make tough, tough choices I'm not gonna spend my time wondering if they're any good.
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Peter Brötzmann and Han Bennink
I first saw Bennink play some three years ago, with The Ex, jamming like he just turned sixteen. The man is 64 now and still ruling the drums on the avant terrain. Here's what Chris Corsano said about him when I interviewed him: "Bennink's great. The first thing I heard him on was Porto Novo with Marion Brown. The drums sounded so fucked up on that record. Maybe it was just the recording, but there's this distorted quality to them that I love [...]". What I remember about seeing him is his no holds barred attitude, he still plays like he just got his first set of sticks. As for Brötzmann, I've never heard him play but I know I want to. Recommend one album I have to listen to before seeing him live.
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Countdown to ATP: 9 days

2006-11-29T18:52:00.000+01:00

Hive Mind
Eat noise, sleep noise, walk noise. It's so addictive when it's done right. Fag Tapes boss Greh Holger aka Hive Mind knows it, and shows it. Analogue synth bombs that scrape the flesh off your ears. And it's fun, at that! I haven't heard what he cooked uo this year, if he did something at all (help?). But what I've heard is like a new wave of Düsseldorfer scumbeat, and if you're aware of the first wave, you know what that means.
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Leslie Keffer
On one hand it's a shame the programme is packed with only good stuff. You don't want to miss Stooges, Melvins, Wolf Eyes, Magik Markers, Sunburned, Double Leopards, Charalambides, but you're gonna. And still you're running around like an hysterical camel to catch as much as possible. A shame because the boys and girls you never heard of, like Ms. Keffer here, won't get a chance to be heard. Ah well..
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Notekillers
Who? Apparently they've been cruising the avantgarde/jazz/scuzzrock waves since the late 70s. Never crossed my path, never heard about. As with Ms. Keffer, no chance of seeing them.
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Dead Machines
Listen to: 'Side A' on Dead End at Olson St.
Dead Machines are the Bonnie and Clyde of the electronic slaughterhouse. There's chemistry here, no doubt, there's an awful lot of joy and there's also a lot of fucked up creativity going on inside their systems. I've listened to a lot of their albums released this year. Two stand out, Dead End at Olson Street and the split with John Wiese with Live at Tzompantli as an outstanding runner up. From what I've heard and read their live shows tend to vary in quality quite a lot but I'm hoping on an Olson in top shape, complete with comedy skits and whatnot. Tape the damn thing and release it so I can say I was there. Oh yeah.
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Countdown to ATP: 10 days

2006-11-28T16:42:00.000+01:00

Blood Stereo
Everyone reading this either already knows about Scottish noise perv Dylan Nyoukis or has to know about him asap. With Prick Decay (or Decaer Pinga, both rip), Nyoukis and his sister ruled the British underpants during the 90s, while his Blood Stereo and Ceylon Mange (with Bill Nace and Karin Constance) aliases keep the blood flowing these days. I have Ceylon Mange's The Maiming Path ('06) on my harddrive and yeah, I like the bitch. Muted graveyard transmissions mixed with some bastardized sinewaves. Nice. Have yet to hear some Blood Stereo so recommendations are welcome again. Also, Chocolate Monk rules. ALSO: their Mongoloid Men release is their best yet.
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Double Leopards
Listen to: '...' on Crippled Rosebud Binding
My first introduction to Double Leopards came with the arrival of the seminal, über-classic Halve Maen. A double album that matches the experience of taking shrooms or some other hallucinatory medicin, and I don't throw around those allegations lightly. This was the album that made my realise Double Leopards could become my alltime favourite band and last year they kind of conquered with two albums that didn't match up to Halve Maen but instead showing their range as surreal noisescapists. Out of One Through One and to One embodied a thousand marching saints on ecstasy with luscious but mega condensed droning while Savage Summer Sun was like feeding a supernova to your ears, for about 70 minutes. This year they contributed a track to the epic double LP, Crippled Rosebud Binding, with Mouthus and Sunroof! but nothing else and while that track sunblinded almost everything else on that LP I'm a bit dissapointed that they didn't do anything else this year. Maybe it's because Marcia Bassett keeps things Hototogisu and Zaïmph a lot off late. Oh you.
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Lambsbread
Listen to: 'track 6' on Trash Diet
Not to be confused with the bionic, or the ROAKAL (Reggae Band Also Known As Lambsbread). Lambsbread hail from Delaware Ohio and rock like a seven foot mud monster covered mud would rock. It's as if they play their broken riffs just below earth's surface. Outrageous really but just like eating the fattest hamburger ever made is. They did an album, live recorded, with Olson the maniac on sax and it fucking slays, it's called Trash Diet. But they keep releasing shit spangled awesomeness on their own Maim & Disfigure label which should really get a website asap, fuckin' slackers. Own everything.
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Countdown to ATP: 11 days

2006-11-27T14:01:00.000+01:00

Nurse With Wound
I'm guessing the venue will be packed with the geek brains of a zillion NWW list conaisseurs cos the dude is kind of a recluse type of fella, especially when it comes to playing live he makes sure everyone who knows about NWW jumps a hole into the stratosphere when word gets out. Or just scream "yeah" when dudes is mellow. Needless to say: must SEE.
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Aaron Dilloway
Listen to: 'Side A' on Since He's Been Gone
Have you heard Dilloway's latest cassette on Fag Tapes, Since He's Been Gone? Goddamn this fucker has his brain twisted in a bizarre knot. And I mean that in the most complimentary way possible. Two sides containing samples of old songs mixed in the harsh Dillo style, a frontal mindfuck and so totally different from what we got on Rotting Nepal or Sounds of the Indian Snake Charmer. I'm psyched to see him at work in a solo setting, ejaculating his talent over a table full of selfmade junk.
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Major Stars
Listen to: 'The Ravager' on Syntoptikon
I didn't know anything about Major Stars until I came across Syntoptikon, their latest album, a slowgrinding post-Velvet Underground beast. At first I was put off by the unattached lyrics but with those visceral out rock moves they got going on it does fit like a rotten cock in a stainless steel condom.
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Mouthus
Listen to: 'The Final Tribes' on For the Great Slave Lakes
Slow Globes Mouthus or The Long Salt Mouthus, Cut Hands loves them equally. The cushioned noise abstractus of Slow Globes feels ultra good on a drooly Sunday evening. The Long Salt gets things kickstarted when they need to get kickstarted (ie. Sunday morning), heavy buzzfucks, mega fuzzy grind 'n rock bombs. ROCK....don't stop and don't miss.
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Countdown to ATP: 12 days

2006-11-26T14:00:00.000+01:00

DKT/MC5
Listen to: 'Rocket Reducer No. 62' on Kick Out the Jams
One of the greatest live albums of all time: Kick Out the Jams. I love that album to pieces, from the opening speech by Brother J.C. Crawford of The White Panther movement to the final minute of the cosmic mindfuck that is 'Starship'. You just wish you were there, catching a White Panther button while screaming "Rama Lama Fa Fa Fa" as 'Rocket Reducer No. 62' kicks off. I don't know what to expect without Rob Tyner and with guest vocalists Mark Arm (Mudhoney), Lisa Kekaula (BellRays, Basement Jaxx) and guitarist Adam Pearson (Sisters of Mercy) but let's be positive and hope for a slight retro-revolution for just a few moments.
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Dinosaur Jr
As they got lumped in with the Pixies I shied away from Dinosaur Jr but reading something like this on wikipedia: "Their songs, while typically melodic, were performed at extremely high volumes, were saturated with guitar noise and distortion [...]", I might have to reconsider this impulsive rejection. Recommend away please!
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Gang Of Four
Listen to: 'Damaged Goods' on Entertainment!
While I wasn't impressed by their comeback they're still one of the most gifted postpunk bands to take a stand. I bet they would cut a split with The Rita if they was still teenagers. Entertainment still gets me going everytime I hear it.
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Be Your Own Pet
Should I give their album a listen?
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Countdown to ATP: 13 days

2006-11-25T11:29:00.000+01:00

The Dead C
Listen to: 'Sky' on Harsh '70s Reality
All hail the moguls of the Down Under graveyards! The Dead C have inspired a lot of noise infected bands throughout the world. Mainly releasing material on the ever awesome Siltbreeze, with a couple of landmark albums in hand (Harsh '70's Reality and The White House) they've conquered the ugly hearts of tons of underground dwellers, myself included. This year saw the release of their highly anticipated best of, Vain, Erudite and Stupid and it seems they're up for another round of stage bashing.
+++

Monotract
They're an Ecstatic Peace act, that's all I know about Monotract. Recommendations are welcome. Should I?
+

Prurient
Listen to: 'Bolt' on Troubled Sleep
After Sunn O))) seeing Prurient live is the most intense, physical experience I've ever been a part of. My ears kept ringing for two straight days, but it was worth it. Oh boy was it worth it. Dominick Fernow is fastly becoming noise's most brutal emperor, not counting the many Japanese acts I've still to discover (recommend!). Black Vase is monumental and this year's Pleasure Ground (just released on Load) is it's suicidal cousin. Prurient sets usually don't cross the 30-minute mark but every minute will be engraved in your brain for the rest of your life.
+++

Awesome Color
Listen to: 'Grown' on Awesome Color
Of course they're Thurston's kids and if he curates a festival you can bet on him inviting everyone of his homies, especially when they're signed to Ecstatic Peace. But Awesome Color deserve to be here. With a good debut that's quite similar to Funhouse in it's fucked up gutter blues core, you've done a good job and these kids are hungry, hungry, hungry. Let's just trust Thurston on this one then.
++

Countdown to ATP: 14 days

2006-11-24T14:59:00.000+01:00

Sunburned Hand Of The Man
Listen to: 'A Soft Bed for Jagel' on When the Shit Hits the Jazz
They often call them forest magicians, woody experimentalists, tree huggers, wood bangers. Aligning SHOTM with the forest seems to be the easiest way of putting them in a context, all of this while they keep it ghetto pretty much all the time in their Loft in Massachusets, nothing woody there except the floors maybe. But whatever, fact is that they're the most ambigious freefolk unit today. My first realisation of their utter greatness came with the voodoo grooves of No Magic Man while they were enticing me with The Trickle Down Theory of God Knows What and Rare Wood before that but those albums were a little jagged, too unstructured for my tastes back then. I'm PUMPED to finally see them live.
+++

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Richard Youngs
Listen to: 'Part I' on Advent
One of the earlier cats to rise from the ashes of postpunk's experimental side was Richard Youngs. His debut album, Advent, remains one of his best and one of the best neo-minimalist works out there. Sapphie is great as well, that's the thing with Youngs, he has multiple persona's he simultaneously developed. Don't know exactly what he released this year, a split with Alex Neilson and Alastair Galbraith I believe. Anything else worthwhile?
++

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Wolf Eyes
Listen to: 'Untitled 4' on Post Civilization Muzak tour only cd-r
Human Animal is not only a highlight of the year, it's the definite Wolf Eyes album. It packs it's punches in short but extremely powerful hits, listening to Human Animal makes me proud I'm a noise fanatic. And that's just one album, they released another slayer this year, River Slaughter. A more abstract, freeform type of album but equal in it's quality. If Human Animal is the aural equivalent of The Rumble In The Jungle, River Slaughter is The Thrilla In Manilla. I saw them live once, before the release of Burned Mind and I was completely blown away by the sheer loudness of it all. Dudes was leaving while I was trying to keep a straight face, it left an impression, yeah.
+++

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Negative Approach
Hardcore kingpins? Ok.
+

Countdown to ATP: 15 days

2006-11-23T13:57:00.000+01:00

Magik Markers
Listen to: 'Blind White Alligators on For Sada Jane
Saw them at K-raa-K (how surprising eh?) and they blew my mind. I was sold, the greatest thing in fucked up rock since Confusion Is Sex and Royal Trux' Twin Infinitives. Frontlady Elisa Ambrogio has so much fire in her throat she could set every oldschool barbecue in a US park on fire with one single breath. I dug I Trust my Guitar, etc but the one that floored me righteously was this year's A Panegyric to the Things I Do Not Understand. Two tracks, two deconstructions of rock 'n roll's stinking legacy sprinkled with some madman speech chants by Ambrogio and the most awesome minimalistic bridges since VU's 'Sister Ray'. And like that wasn't enough they spoiled us with another landmark LP, For Sada Jane, which I might have played even more actually. Love the psychedelic nursery tales mixed with the fullblown decomposed guitar orgasms. Liked Inverted Belgium as well, the last couple of cd-r's not so much. Needless to say, a must see.
+++

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Alexander Tucker
Another guy whose work I should investigate. Again, heard and read good things so recommend away please!
+

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Deerhoof
Probably the most pop band of this line up. They're the Magik Markers of (indie) pop actually, well sort of. I was into Reveille and Apple O' when those albums came out but their recent steering towards melodically richer and less chaotic ground, as displayed on The Runner's Four shows much more of their lurking pop sensibility. They just don't go the easy way and that's something that will always appeal to me. I'd actually like to know how pop they can go without losing their awkward fruitcakeian edge.
++

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Wooden Wand
Listen to: 'Babylon the Great, Pt. 3' on Harem of the Sundrum & The Witness Figg
Didn't they invite his Vanishing High or Sky Voice Band? Or are they already there in various other incarnations. Could be, could be. All I know is that Wooden Wand & The All By Myself Band aka James Toth can do it all by himself just as well. Point in case: Harem of the Sundrum & The Witness Figg, his solo joint, also known as The Joint James Toth Recorded Solo. A batch of creaking frontporch singsongs in an awkward Dylan vein that I happened to like a lot, and I'm no Dylan fan at all. Curious to see what's gonna happen, maybe he'll just align with the rest of the programme to cook up an extended megablues jam. Pretty awesome too.
+++

Weekly Monday Chart

2006-11-22T17:15:00.000+01:00

I was supposed to do this on monday but the flu had me floored all weekend and I'm still recuperating. So here's the monday chart, this week on wednesday.

1. Prurient - Pleasure Ground
Sick rerelease on a proper cd of a double cassette previously released on Prurient's own Hospital Productions. And it shreds, but you already know that when it comes to Prurient don't ya? I believe the first track is a live recording of a No Fun festival gig, play this really really loud and you still don't have a clue about the intensity of a Prurient live show. But it's the next best thing and it sounds like the best nightmare you never had. The other tracks mix some real icy gothy synth action with the usual vocal insanity and it works really well. Review soon on Foxy Digitalis, when the new (!) site gets launched.

2. Ricardo Villalobos - Fizheuer Zieheuer
I always had a feeling Villalobos was my kind of techno dude. Drugged up, freaked out, tripped in, all those things appeal to me, especially when it comes to so-called dance music. When I heard and read everybody rave about this 35 minute supergroove it instantly sparked my interest but I didn't come around to listening to it before last week. It's not at all what I expected and that's part of the excitement. What I expect has been done by Richie Hawtin probably anyway so that's no biggie and who doesn't love these Balkan HORNS (toot toot-toot-toot-toot x a lot = me smiling and I don't even like Gogol Bordello). First time I played it kind of grated on me by the start of the second side but I've discovered you have to be in a psycho mood to appreciate the perverse fun of it. Something else, a new path for dance music. And Terry Riley knew it all along.

3. Astral Social Club - s/t
Collection of tracks previously released on cd-r's. Neil Campbell recently quit Vibracathedral Orchestra to focus on this solo project. Came as a big surprise for me but when I hear this album I don't have to worry. Great dynamics between polyrhythmic effectscapes, abstract harmonies and moist dronerock skullcrushers.

4. The Game - Doctor's Advocate
Hiphop is becoming a strictly sentimental affair I'm afraid, I continue to be dissapointed by much of the heralded Lil' Wayne/Southern albums but this second Game album sounds like a winner. Except for the fact that his ego is too goddamn big, even for a rapper, imagine that. He sounds a lot like Dr. Dre on this one though, that's not a bad thing but he has to stop putting himself on the same level as Dre, Pac and Biggie. It's way too early for that and he shouldn't be the one coining those silly ideas anyway.

5. The Idealist - I Am the Fire
Doesn't really live up to it's title but nice enough drone/nightmare album from Alvars Orkestar's Joachim Nordwall. Review sooon on Foxy Digitalis.

Countdown to ATP: 16 days

2006-11-22T11:44:00.000+01:00

Jackie-O Motherfucker
Don't know a lot about Jackie-O, somehow they've slipped below my radar completely. I tried some of their stuff about two or three years ago but it didn't really tickle my balls the way Sunburned Hand Of The Man once did for instance. I think of Jackie-O as a mix between Sunburned and Tower Recordings, please tell me if I'm wrong, so potentially they could be instant winners. Last year's Flags of the Sacred Harp was kinda nice, a fluent mixture between pretty songs and improv jams if I remember right. Recommendations are very welcome.
+

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Charalambides
Listen to: 'Power Carry Me' on Emerald Message
I discovered Charalambides rather late in comparison to other freefolk pioneers. At first put off by the spacious folk skeletons of Our Bed Is Green and Unknown Spin but once I got a hold of Joy Shapes I was sold, mesmerized, transfixed, blown away, intoxicated etcetera etcetera. Joy Shapes still is my favourite Charalambides album but I've come to appreciate the desert heart of Unknown Spin and earlier recordings as well as the recent, rough edged reissues of Emerald Message and Glowing Raw on Wholly Other. Christina Carter (or Madonia, still not sure what she prefers nowadays) has one of the most swoon inducing voices in music, it's seducing but on a untouchable level. When she sings I want to hug my speakers, a mermaid in a strange musical paradise.
+++

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My Cat Is An Alien
Another band I haven't heard much from. Saw them at the K-raa-K festival last year and that didn't impress me to be honest. I do dig their From Earth to Spheres album with Christina Carter and Andrew MacGregor though. Recommendations welcome.
+

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The Skaters
Listen to: 'Untitled 1' on Raising Spheres of Crossing Angel Minds
Yah, Skaters score bigtime on my drones-of-filth-o-meter. Their cd-r releases are typically smudged with lo-fi mud and graveyard eeriness. They keep things on an extreme downlow as well, often performing very short sets and keeping it cd-r(eal) consistently. I haven't heard it all but I've enjoyed this year's Raising Spheres of Crossing Angel Minds a lot and still I discover new, hidden passages and obscene harmonies covered in greasy dust.
+++

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Melvins
Another band that hasn't really crossed my path, the Melvins. I pretty much adore all their grandchildren so recommend away if you like.
+

Countdown to ATP: 17 days

2006-11-21T14:28:00.000+01:00

Take a look at this line up. That's the line up of the ATP festival, Night Before Christmas. It's curated by Thurston 'noise loves me' Moore and it's ranging from good to grrreat to fan-fucking-tastic.

I had a todays post ready 30 minutes ago before it dissapeared, true story. So I cooked up a new one, the first round up in the Countdown to ATP.

+++ = must see
++ = definately checking out
+ = don't bother

The Stooges
Listen to: 'La Blues' on Funhouse
Every superhero eventually gets replaced by another, more modern, higher tech version of itself. Every superhero, but Iggy Pop. He's rock's ultimate mascotte, his serpentine, muscular appearance, his stamina not withheld by the forces of nature. He defies elderdom and keeps all of his contemporary brethren at a safe distance. In fact, every new rockstar should get schooled by Iggy Pop, as a rule. I play Funhouse regularly since the day I first heard it and it never ceases to hit me upside the head. One of the most urgent records in the history of music. Last summer he played the Lowlands festival here in Holland, I wasn't there but they aired it on tv and boy oh boy how it intensely rocked. He owns the stage, the crowd, the vibe. I could smell the dirt, grease and sweat through my television.
+++

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Sonic Youth
Listen to: 'She's in a Bad Mood' on Confusion is Sex
While everyone drools at their legacy, I remain silently clueless. I definately appreciate the way they came onto the scene. Debuting with the awesome, feedback drenched Confusion Is Sex they made a promise they could'nt keep. Kill your idols ashamedly remains a hollow statement, they're indie gods now, how nice for them. Daydream Nation fails to impress me, I don't like the impassionate vocals and if the lyrics are, uhm, noteworthy, the vocals keep me away from them. The same goes for Rather Ripped, released this year, hallelujah all around but why? I hear a band that wants to go pop but remains stuck in a late '80s collegerock mode. Totally uninteresting.
+

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Bardo Pond
Listen to: 'RM' on Amanita
One of my first psychedelic revelations came when listening to On the Ellipse while smoking the green stuff. Intrigued by the mysterious floating flutes, Sollenberger's gracious chants and the immense bulldozer riffing I entered some kind of super ego where only the group and me found ways to escape the labyrinth that's life to enter a transcendent musical paradise. Not impressed by Ticket Crystals though, I don't like the shorter songs (songs for chrissakes!) much, Sollenbergers voice loses a lot of it's otherworldy mystery when she sings audible and that's a shame to me and my weed induced fantasies. Still, from what I've heard and read, they are amazing live, so I'm not gonna miss them. Oh no.
+++

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Six Organs Of Admittance
Listen to: 'Spirits Abandoned' on Dark Noontide
Seeing Ben Chasny live is like seeing a magician at work. I saw him at the K-raa-K festival in Hasselt last year and he seized the audience completely. Here's a guy who doesn't blink while throwing up a psychedelic mega raga folk monster, he even cracked a smile while he was at it. At it, for real.
School of the Flower pushed all the right buttons, The Sun Awakens fails to do so. It's too perfect, too immaculate. I like my psychish folk to be stained and oxidated, I want to find those hooks, that pretty bridge like I'd find a piece of quartz in a pool of mud. Curious though, if he brings a band, or plays by himself. My suspicion is he'll get some Comets On Fire dudes along, or Corsano perhaps?
++

Countdown to ATP

2006-11-20T15:50:00.000+01:00

Actually, I'm gonna do things like this: a countdown to ATP.

Until december 6th, I'll highlight couple of the bands playing at the festival. What they've done this year, or so far. I'm hoping to do this regularly (read: daily) but I'm afraid that won't work. So one day I might discuss 3 acts, the other day 7. 54 bands are playing, it's not going to be easy you know.

Oh, I will also present an mp3 of each band discussed, if I have one that is. Starting tomorrow, oh yeah. I'm just excited, no really.

Flipperrrrrrrr

2006-11-20T14:22:00.000+01:00

I'm going to ATP's Night Before Xmas this year

I'm gonna see these dudes:

I'm fuckin' psyched

Graveyards - Esprit de Corpse |Editions Brokenresearch|

2006-11-18T23:08:00.000+01:00

I dig the Editions Brokenresearch packaging a lot, plain, white and simple. The cd goes nicely in a centred patch, fitting xeroxed image on the outside. It doesn't need to be more exuberant than this, although I'd like a nice collection of EBR vinyl ooh god yes. Sorry.
Esprit de Corpse is the umpteenth Graveyards release this year and I really wanted this to be their penultimate release, I'm so impatient I know, but it isn't. This can be frustrating, especially when you're, like me, flooded by underground noise making and only 95% makes it to the highest ranks of admiration. With Graveyards releases it's useless to go by firsthand conclusions anyway. This is music for the long term, a muddy swamp full with miniscule treasures. Keep digging and you'll find them.

Esprit de Corpse gets off on the minimalistic approach we've come to expect with the Graveyards trio. Buetow makes the boldest moves on it's first track, rubbing his cello's snares with slow and deep gestures while Olson instills some creepy electronics with a minimalist mindset reminiscent of the sensual but moody Kaffe Matthews sinewaves. As time progresses the atmosphere starts to get darker and, maybe by accident, or prejudice on my part, moving into abstract Wolf Eyes territory. The horror flick scenario's start popping up without much effort around 4:20", by all means do report back if you've checked. Of course, this doesn't last for long and when you think they're gonna go all postrock on your ass, you're terribly wrong. Instead the threesome retreats in relative silence, surfacing again with the deep, craving sound of a clarinet and Hall's rumbling-in-slowmotion percussive style. Olson's bizarre electro-torture keeps injecting a dose of sinister like he's been doing with his Spykes project and while the other two go all in once more he seduces his bastard sinewaves to strangle eachother. With succes.

Olson's sax first makes it's presence during the second track, with usual hesitation. The restraint that goes into his playing is remarkable for a dude known as the Wolf Eyes Fistpump Kickstarter. As for Buetow, the sounds he makes with a cello are seemingly without limitation. He makes his instrument yearn, charm, seduce, vomit, bark and screech, often during the same track. With this track being over the 27-minute mark, you get a lot of frustrating space, too little release and a lot of seemingly desultory structure. The album's most satisfying release comes during it's final, fourth track. Commencing with an impressive duel between roaring percussion, some electronics, Buetow's scratch 'n screeching cello sounds and Olson who slowly moves in with persuasive saxophone gestures. It entices, it lures you in even further than you're expecting when listening to Graveyards. Not that it drags you in and runs you over like a monster truck with a flat tire, bouncing it's steel rim on your forehead. No, it's seducing in a morbid way. After a long and grueling silence halfway during the track, Buetow's cello rises like a phoenix from the etcetera and Hall pounds his toms like he's practicing for some noisenik death march ritual. Meanwhile, Olson pushes his sax to his mouth one final time to release some of the most epic sounds I've ever heard him play with Graveyards. At last! My brain's most impatient cells scream, at long last.

Satisfying end to a mixed bag of avant-improv minimalistic jazz, maybe not as satisfying as I hoped for but far from a dissapointment. This is Graveyards' most romantic offer so far, and that's no far fetched compliment either.

Mêlée - with Aaron Siegel |Editions Brokenresearch|

2006-11-15T12:30:00.000+01:00

Not sure if the title is with Aaron Siegel or if this latest Mêlée disc goes untitled. Again, doesn't matter, especially if there's a monkey on the cover, an angry one at that.

Mêlée is manned by Graveyards' Hans Buetow, Ben Hall and trumpetplayer/improviser Aaron Siegel, who's one sixth of Anthony Braxton's Sextet. I feel I have to apologise for all these Graveyards-related blogposts but there's too much good stuff flowing from these guys' hands to simply pass on (next up is the latest Graveyards release on Edition Brokenresearch so boo ya).

Also, if there's a direct link from the earlier AMMprovisers and the contemporary wave of noise/improv dudes it can just as much be traced through the hearts of Buetow and Hall as the Erstwhile catalogue. And that's something worth highlighting don''t you agree? As for Aaron Siegel, if Braxton knows it....for real.

What Mêlée do is what every improviser aims at: to create subtle tension whilst searching for the perfect outlet. Main ingredient: chemistry. Of course it often leads to halfbaked efforts due to too little chemistry, or talent. Mêlée often succeed in finding the right spots or postponing tension release. It's an extreme balancing act, meated up by Siegel's lurking trumpetplaying. Everytime he rips through the surface it's extremely rewarding and he doesn't just go for cowardice blows, he makes a gesture everytime he surfaces. It's niiiice, as Borat would say. Word.

I find it hard to talk about individual tracks here cos every track flows into the other and the large amounts of space stretch every second to the point of no point in time. At these moments, the music on this cd-r just is. When they decide to get outspoken, the contrast is almost epic. Take the album's second track, around the 19-minute mark, when the trumpet unleashes a long and mourning drone, everything else goes silent. It's like your first morning stretch on a summer sunday morning and you realise everyone has vanished. Hall and Buetow crawl around the often euphoric core of trumpetsounds like insects trying to get a bite. Brittle percussion, thin cello brushes, sometimes playful, withdrawn at others.
There's a hidden charm in these kind of improv albums, something that lures you back in everytime you think of it. Like there's something in it that you've yet to discover. No doubt you'll find it.

Weekly Monday Chart

2006-11-13T16:16:00.000+01:00

There's nothing you want more than lists, I know. So I'll be giving you a weekly list from now on, a weekly chart to be exact. Preferably posted on mondays. If possible with mp3's, even. Oh god! Yeah I know...

1. Gruppo Di Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza - Azioni
Finally got a hold of this 2cd/dvd set from a way too soon forgotten Italian improv ensemble featuring Ennio Morricone among others. Unbelievable live registration on the dvd, amazingly quality. I need to listen some more to the 2 cd's but when I tell you that this is on par with every more known improv outfit you just have to believe me and hear/see for yourself.

2. Mêlée - with Aaron Siegel
review coming soon

3. Prurient - Pleasure Ground
A cd release from two cassettes I think, on Load records. Way more melodic than anything I've ever heard from Dominick Fernow. If harsh noise could sink into the realms of black metal Prurient will have something to do with it.

4. The Drones - Gala Mill
This record caught me by surprise the other day. After hearing it for the fourth or fifth time in two weeks without feeling anything special about it I was on the verge of giving up on it when it sparked a small fire last friday. Small but pleasantly burning. It's the dark heart of it that appeals to me I guess, songs about more than typical Australian references, languid, druggy garagevibes. The Saints in a slowmotion desertstorm or something.
Listen: 'I Don't Ever Want to Change'

5. Starving Weirdos - Sceance at Luffenhultz
review

Oldskool pick
Von LMO - Future Language
How can you not love the intro to this album. Spaceage heavy metal punk, Sun Ra fronted by David Thomas. Haha, but not really, the first minute is the roughest you'll hear from Von LMO but that doesn't mean the rest is less satisfying. Cosmic riffing collides with the concrete saxophone blurts. The sci-fi twist is not really an extra here, just an excuse to use some silly new bought effects, can't blame them either.

Dead Machines - Live at Tzompantli | Eclipse|

2006-11-07T20:43:00.000+01:00

One of the funniest dudes in noise, John Olson. I don't think I need to praise Olson's noise antics and if you ever saw Olson live, either with Wolf Eyes, Hair Police, Graveyards or any solo project he got going on knows the guy is funny as fuck. Noise doesn't neccesarily need a stand up comedian type cat but it's truthfully refreshing when you hear Olson introduce side A of this Eclipse LP with a speech that's equally absurd as convincing. You choose which side you're on. Dead Machines is made up of husband and wife Olson. His partner, Tovah Olson (née O'Rourke) is hardly unknown herself, keeping herself busy as part of Wooden Wand's Vanishing Voice and putting out inzane junkyard magic under her own name on the regular.

Just like in married life, har har, The Dead Machines have their ups and downs. Being erratic seems to be part of their nature. I've heard quite a few of their releases and this one certainly isn't their best. For me, the collaboration with John Wiese and Dead End at Olson Street are the DM highlights so far. The first side of Live at Tzompantli was recorded during their No Fun fest gig and it does have all the intensity you'd expect from a Dead Machines live jam. After Olson's speech shtick (crowd cheers: "make a prediction" and so it goes) the Machines fire up their junkyard gear with a touch of what sounds like a suffocating viola getting raped in the mouth. Thd digital assault is almost constantly evolving from lugubrous killerbee symphonies to steadily buzzing motoric effects. When Olson grabs for his saxophone it all gets a lot more body and depth, sounding like something inbetween floating Borbetomagus dust and Kaoru Abe's interstellar vomit....in slowmotion. Mixed with Ms. Olson's noise puntcuring it gets an unholy Sun Ra-like twist before marching into more predictable noise territory. Highly effective first half of this LP and it's not surprising the B side, as the studio side, doesn't match up to it.

The roughness of the noise is what I like most in Dead Machines, it's not streamlined, polished or plain piercing like Merzbow for instance, it's got dirt all over it. There's a core of filthy mud inside the handmade toys the couple creates and it oozes through in the music. It's very alive. Side B offers a less structured approach, it's varied but it's nowhere as magnetic as the first side. Sinuous metallic effects end up in high-wired screeches and cold, effectladen winds of sonic terror infiltrate the ear steadily. It's a shame they don't reach a climax somewhere, this way it just sounds like a lost Wolf Eyes American Tape with considerably less avidity. No shame but a missed oportunity to make this a definitive Dead Machines release. I guess they just aren't there yet, which makes me all the more curious to what's left in the bottle to be honest. For now, live seems to be the way to fully appreciate the ways of the Machines.

Sick Llama & Ben Hellhall - KillDevilHills |Editions Brokenresearch|

2006-11-05T19:53:00.000+01:00

Man, days don't get much better than this. Got home from work and opened my mailbox to see a brown envelope staring at me, in it a few of the latest releases on the Editions Brokenresearch label. The label ran by Graveyards' Hans Buetow and Ben Hall. Amongst the treasures this 3" cd-r, a duet between Fag Tapes' Heath Moerland (Sick Llama) and Ben 'Hell' Hall himself. I promise I'll talk about the others pretty soon but this 3" fits perfectly for a late night review.

Two tracks on this pocketsize monster, untitled as far as Winamp can see, no tracktitles on the neat package either so what we have are two anonymous noisejams shot through with shards of graveyard percussion. Who the fuck needs a title then anyway, right? Track one is the longest, containing ten minutes of noise boogie and with the immaculate touch of four experienced claws it turns into a entrancing noisemare. Hall positions his fierce clattering immediately upfront while Moerland adds restrained bubbles of highwired screeches. There's serious tension inbetween sounds, the rattling of chains foreboding some kind of morbid torture ritual and whilst a sampled voice speaks in tongues the pace threatens to pick up again but never really does. It's the sound of playing in a field full of terrifying boobytraps, bumping into rusty nails every once in a while, cutting foreheads while a trail of dripping blood marks your footsteps.

The second track builds up as slowly as the first. The bruised heartbeat of dying effects in the background, sawing drones on the surface circling around a core of decaying avant-noise structures. To top it all off, there's a way too small portion of fucked up reed action. Creaking, grinding and gnashing bacteria littered breath until it ends and boy does it end too soon. I'd be psyched to hear a more fully realised effort from these sick bastards, this just leaves me hungry for much, much more.

Q&A: Musicyourmindwillloveyou

2006-11-03T21:53:00.000+01:00

A while ago I sent some questions to the Don of the Australian underground, Michael Donnelly of the Musicyourmindwillloveyou label. It took some time for the answers to make it back to the other side of the world and I did plan the article for somewhere else originally. However, this place seems like the most appropriate to put at least an unedited, rough transcript of it. No glitter, just facts. And so it goes..

Could you explain your background a bit, music wise. What did you grew up listening to, what was available during your youth, what did you like about the bands you loved.

"I grew up listening to bad 70s and 80s am radio , and my parent’s 50s rock n roll and country albums. By my teens i had moved onto my older sister’s record collections , which consisted mainly of 70s schlock prog and 80s new wave. In my mid teens i was exposed to 60s psych and 80s underground , experimental stuffs...birthday party, butthole surfers , etc ....from then on it was all smoke and tunnels of light."

How did that evolve into moving on to a more experimental way of making music?

"Making music was a way of making sense of things around me keeping in mind that nothing really makes sense."

What lead you to starting musicyourmindwillloveyou? When did that happen?

"We started mymwly in late 2004 , mainly as a way to get our experiments out amongst receptive peoples."

Can you give a quick rundown of all the artists that you have on your roster and which ones you’re involved in personally?

collective
6majik9 , Brothers Of The Occult Sisterhood
\/
internal collaborations
Soarwhole, Xelaeon, Ffehro, Little Head Big Body, Blonde Cobra, Mansion, Flesh Flute
\/
solo projects
Snowfoxx, Dinmuck#f, Terracid, Nada Baba, Charles Curse, Kageplan, Zoo
\/
external collaborations
Alligator Crystal Moth, Catrider, Weird Acid Prank Club, Godzero, Bloom, Akhet
\/
non collective artists that appear as full releases on mymwly
Juniper Meadows, Corsican Paintbrush, Sunshine Has Blown, Sunmilk, Golden Oaks,
Hush Arbors, Autumn Galaxy, Rura Pente, Seht, Bjerga/Iversen, Ajilvsga, Vluba, Robert Horton, Heavy Winged, Taiga Remains, Paeces.

And also a rundown of worthwhile artists that might not be on mymwly?

"I will keep it local. Break Dance The Dawn and Inverted Crux are two amazing Australian labels well worth checking out."

Correct me if I’m wrong, but is it right to say that somethings buzzing around Australia and New Zealand?

"The New Zealand scene has been one of the most vibrant in the southern hemisphere , long before we ever got our shit together. Within australia things seem to be getting a lot more interesting."

Does the Australian government support artists like yourselves through funding? Could you elaborate a bit on that maybe?

"I have had nothing to do with the funding bodies that operate via the federal goverenment, so i really have no idea."

Does it mean something to be in Australia (the other side of the world, for many) and making the music you make? Does it add something?

"I’m sure it does . there are a lot of empty spaces in australia , few people . the lanscape is ancient . all of this influences those who chose to embrace it."

Do you sometimes feel isolated from the rest of the experimental world perhaps?

"Geogrphicaly we are isolated , and this can be annoying...mostly due to the minimal numbers of interesting bands that make the trip down to play. But from a creative point of view i see this as positive. our art is less contaminated by petty outside influences."

Could you speak of a ‘scene’ down under?

"There is a strong underground scene in Australia , but from my experience , not a large audience . nevertheless , shit is happening and ideas are blooming."

Do you feel you’re getting more attention lately and if so, what do you attribute that to?

"As we only started not that long ago its hard to judge what level of attention we have been getting. As a group of friends we have been making music and art for almost 20 years , the creation of the label has certainly increased our international presence."

How are ties with New Zealand artists like Birchville Cat Motel, is there a bond between those 2 countries’ experimental scenes?

"Again , we are more removed from any scenes that exist , though we have played shows with many New Zealand bands , and we interact at the label level as well...but on the whole i wouldnt consider our relationship with the new zealand scene to be any stronger than it is with scenes in other parts of the world."

It’s pretty obvious that the strenght of the music makes it travel all around the world but do you feel you have to push it a lot harder than when you’d be in the UK or the US? Ever considered moving there?

"We don’t really care about pushing the music . i doubt i could ever leave the australian landscape."

What are some of your favourite albums of alltime, current and oldschool?

"Ok , favorite albums

Nuggets – acid rock
Butthole surfers – hairway to steven
Love – forever changes
Chrome – half machine lips move
Sun ra – the magic city
Boredoms – soul discharge
Beefheart – lick my decals off
Amon dull II – yeti
Faust – tapes
Spoils of war – spoils of war
No neck blues band – intonomancy
Sunburned hand of the man – head dress
Ghost – lamma rabbi rabbi
Zappa – we’re only in it for the money
Josephine foster – all the leaves are gone
Avarus – rivers of finland
Holderlin - traum

Thats some anyways."

Zaïmph - Mirage of the Other |Gipsy Sphinx|

2006-11-01T21:48:00.000+01:00

While I'm complaining about the lack of a Double Leopards release this year, group member Marcia Bassett keeps herself extremely busy as one half of Hototogisu, a third of GHQ or solo under her Zaïmph moniker. If you allow me to filter her most satisfying 2006 releases for you, be sure to check out Hototogisu's recent De Stijl release, Chimärendämmerung and her Zaïmph album on Hospital, Sexual Infinity, for a bunch of abbrassive slabs of harsh Bassett drone.

I snatched this LP at the Pauze festival last weekend, lured in by it's magnificently luxurious sleeve and the lush font in which Zaïmph and the albumtitle is printed. Silly, maybe, and I do love all these spraypainted, xeroxed, handmade whatevers, but it's refreshing to see a label pay this much attention to packaging. Speaking of said label, Gipsy Sphinx is a new player in the rich Belgian underground scene, already making an impact with a superb set of debut releases, Axolotl's Chemical Theatre and Nordic Visions by The Vanishing Voice.

Mirage of the Other is pressed on thick black vinyl accompanied by two lovely designed inserts presenting the tracks. No sides printed on the vinyl itself though so I'm just going by my gut feeling when I speak of side A or B, ok? Ok. Side A (oh the doubt!) starts off with subtle layers of low end humming, sounding like vocals but these could just as well be synthesized, doesn't really matter in the end. It's a much more subtle affair than Sexual Infinity is, a shadow of that record, crawling nose first through swamps infested with dark green algae. Halfway through traces of guitar start to pop up, weaving shimmering patterns of foggy, acoustic ambience. The backdrop of luscious droneage keeps going all the way through, layer upon layer like Sahara dust covering Algerian desert roads.

Side B maintains those steady waves, still deepened by hints of guitar and vague mantra's buried beneath oxygen-poor mud. Unlike those earlier mentioned releases, Mirage of the Other remains a bit shy. Never culminating into something remotely as interesting as the live shows she pulls off, which are really unlike anything she's put on record and I'm still waiting for something to top that.

Starving Weirdos - Seance at Luffenhultz |Sound&Fury|

2006-10-31T17:41:00.000+01:00

I miss a proper '06 Double Leopards release. For real. Not much comes close to the Leopard drone, filhty and intoxicating, able to transport the soul to acid-like levels. They're the ultimate experience. Some outfits come close, Family Underground does, Birchville Cat Motel does but rules on other pitchblack planets. The Double Leopard planet is a purple one, when it rotates the colours change. Like magic. Boo.

This ridiculously named band, Starving Weirdos, come really, awfully close. They're almost equals. The only thing that separates them is Double Leopards' larger, intimidating discography. I understand they're a foursome, names are seemingly irrelevant as they're shortened to acronyms. Seance at Luffenhultz is a mega transmission of a cosmic junkyard symphony. Concrete blocks of infuriating drones collapsing into black voids. The magnificent opener 'Red Crescent Moon' pops the lid off the album like a star exploding inside a tin can. Boasting cavernous drones, chiming endlessly while slowly being covered with a thick blanket of stardust. It never gets smothered though, rays of spellbinding effects shining through the cracks, blinding everything in it's path before slowly retreating into the shadows again. Unholy glory.

Rippling viola sounds moving throug a thick and foggy mud on the album's titletrack. Building up endlessly while never reaching it's climax. Traces of ghostly gong banging in the background, remaining mysteriously subdued. It's like LaMonte Young's perfect drone covered in mud, or Tony Conrad's Four Violins without the...you got it. It's the little details that matter here, coming in all shapes and forms. Vague traces of flute, cymbals and whatnot, all contributing to reach for the insides of Now, ripping out it's intestants and throwing them off the edge of the earth.

Pauze festival: Keiji Haino, Kan Mikami

2006-10-29T22:50:00.000+01:00

The feeling of seeing two of my all-time Japanese heroes on the same night can't be caught with words, I need mimicry, magic, acrobatics and someone who I can trust to calm me down when I'm on the verge of exploding. Inexplicable but I'll try, you know I'll try, oh I'll try. Ok.

As part of the Pauze festival organised in De Vooruit in Belgian town Ghent, K-raa-K3 hosted three evenings packed with fringe explorers. Thursday saw Jonathan Kane and Ekkehard Ehlers, Joseph Suchy and Jos Steen while friday had one of the main attractions and I'm sad I missed them; freefolk spacemotherfuckers MV/EE & The Bummer Road. Also on friday: Spires That In The Sunset Rise, Charlie Nothing and Fish & Sheep. I know nothing about those last two by the way but I didn't make them up either. A friend even told me Charlie Nothing was one of the better acts of the festival. I do trust his opinion so maybe I need to check his Allmusic entry which doesn't give any info but then there's always a bio on his website.

Saturday it was time for my lazy butt to get up and drive to Ghent as Kazuki Tomokawa, The Overhang Party, Kan Mikami and Keiji Haino ALL took the stage during, as Pauze called it, the Far East Freak Out. I really think this is a rare event, especially in regions like the Benelux but K-raa-K3 is always on edge and they never fail to surprise even the crustiest fanatics. As usual I got there late cos even with navigation it's hard to get past the Kennedytunnel traffic jams in Antwerp, especially when there's a footballmatch and they close down half the city. That pissed me off.

Tomokawa was halfway his set when I arrived, his voice piercing through my skull immediately. No wonder they call him the screaming philosopher, extremely heartfelt though and even if you don't speak his language you feel it in your gut (I've no doubt the effect is less when this kind of thing is done in English though). As with Mikami, Tomokawa's guitarstyle is extremely explosive, every chord he plays feels like it could be his last one. It's overdriven and apocalyptic, but never in a cartoonish, maybe even Current 93 kind of way.

I'm always fascinated by drummers who hit their skins with brutal force. The Overhang Party's elderly drummer boasted a intensely cool white goatee whilst pounding his drums Hulk-style. Musically it's all engines in overload, sonic mayhem, guitars as sound-avalanches hi-jacking every ear they can reach and sending it into rehabilitation afterwards. There were parts when they locked into a groove for some minutes, some vocal parts that didn't really make much of an impression but the sheer volume and bulk of sound they created totally knocked more than a few of their feet.

Kan Mikami then and just looking at the guy puts a smile on my face. Setting up he already starts flexing his facial muscles, tongue in and out, stretching his lips in a weirdlooking way. Fascinating stuff. As is his singing/performing style cos he does perform, playing the part of a wandering folksinger, amazing mimicry. His singing sends shivers down my whole body, on cd already, needless to say I was shaking the entire time. He puts in a couple of different voices as well, creating an amazing array of vocal intensities.

Different intensity with Keiji Haino, clad fully in black he took the stage, the room and everyone inside with a lengthy, kaleidoscopic sonic adventure. Starting off with looping his harrowing vocals, layering tons of blizzard like effects on top of them. Sometimes it came across as a collage, a couple of exercises in a certain order. It all made sense though and seeing him rape his guitar gave a hint of what Fushitsusha must've sounded like live. Brutal.

For some visual understanding I urge you to hop to youtube, or check 'em out here:

Kazuki Tomokawa
Kan Mikami
Keiji Haino

Sick beard: Paul Flaherty

2006-10-28T13:55:00.000+02:00

I'm not the first to say it out loud but if somebody made an impression on me this past year it has to be Paul Flaherty, the sickest beard in the biz today blowing his guts out of his reeds on a variation of albums, all completely essential. With Chris Corsano on drums, solo (Whirl of Nothingness, on Family Vineyard), with allstars Thurston Moore, Heather Leigh Murray, Corsano and Matt Heyner in Dream/Aktion Unit or in a threesome with Corsano and violin/throat tyrant Spencer C. Yeh (aka Burning Star Core).

Besides the fact the guy makes an impression based on his beard alone, his hard-edged manipulative style of playing fits perfectly well in todays musical outer edges. A bit bolder: he rules every album he plays on. Even bolder yet: he rules your life, if you'd want to.

Flaherty's earliest moves as a pro saxophoneplayer seemed to get smothered totally because of his anti stance towards any formal training and extremely punk attitude towards jazz. So he kept things on a downlow in the underground and when fellow New England crusader Chris Corsano met him some eight years ago that meeting resulted in a fabulous fire music collaboration named The Hated Music. This year saw it's follow up The Beloved Music and it's good to hear the two haven't lost their chemistry, nor their fire, on record.

Flaherty's solo album, Whirl of Nothingness is even more impressive while being extremely exhausting if you're not in the right mood for it. You can always just stare at that intriguing cover though. Beardy lament. Whirl of Nothingness is Flaherty at his most introspective, melancholic even although not often and only in contrast with reflective anger, he seems to be mad, dissapointed at something and doesn't know if it will ever change, he might be talking about life y'know.

There's two other Flaherty included albums I'm dying to talk about but don't have time for right now. Maybe I'll cough up reviews of those, A Rock in the Snow and Snow Blind Avalanche (both on the amazing Important label) in the near future.

Tonight I'll be seeing Kan Mikami, Keiji Haino and Overhang Party live. If life wasn't great already, it's gonna be this evening. Oh!

End of an era

2006-10-26T17:44:00.000+02:00

For some of you who read this I'm the guy who 'runs' the MARS section at musicwebzine KindaMuzik. All things experimental are mine, or were mine as I should say. Per november 1st I hand my duties over to Vincent, a guy who I can trust will put as much effort and energy into it as I have done this past year and a half.

Here's my pressrelease, made by KindaMuzik's editor in chief, Atze. Much love playboy, needless to say I never had a more appropriate parting gift!

Joris, Boris & Sunn O)))
A unique and strictly limited edition recording of Joris Heemskerk’s farewell concert

KindaMuzik: “A timeless masterpiece. He will be missed!”
OOR: “What is this rubbish!?”

After three years of faithful service, mars editor Joris Heemskerk decided to
leave de safe mothership of the KindaMuzik redactie, to answer the call that was
carved in his arm. The ultimate goal: a further descend into darkness,
uncompromised noise, madness and obscurity. He, a treasure seeker, a man
without barriers, for whom no record is too dusty, for whom cassette tapes are
the most valuable, he could no longer be held back by useless tasks, annoying
7EVEN’s and meetings on early Sundays.

Joris started his musical career just like any other boy from Venlo, listening to
the likes of Queen. But as the years went by, he sharpened his senses,
eventually being able to bear sounds most people can only bear in their moment
of death. He went after his destiny, to a place where inexplicable noises are free
like ashes in the blackened sky.

Behold, the recording of his farewell concert, the night before he started his
quest into freedom. Featuring live performances by kindred spirits avant-garde
masters Boris and Sunn O))).

Release: 1 november 2006
Joris, Boris & Sunn O))) are available for interviews

Showers - Live In Rats Eyes |Maim & Disfigure|

2006-10-24T18:03:00.000+02:00

If you listen to your Led Zep or The Who albums and the parts where they freak the fuck out thrill you the most than there's a PARADISE waiting for you downhere. In the land where Showers roam, a land of fuzz and scuzz, dirty sewers and sticky balls rubbing broken fretboards.
Not much of a surprise since they're from Providence, best known for it's fertile noiserock soil spawning freak units like Lightning Bolt, Mindflayer, Forcefield. All sharing creative space at the semi-legendary Fort Thunder. No idea if Showers hang/hung out there as well, although something tells me they'd actually prefer a filty urinoir over the safe luxury of a fort.

Live In Rats Eyes contains exactly the right amount of dirty, sweatsoaked avantgarage noise you're mom can deal with. Six tracks, averaging about 2,5 bloodsoaked minutes. There's definately something charming (and I know that might not be the right word) about some guys not being able to play their instruments in the proper Vai and deliberately creating mayhem with whatever sounds they can sqeeuze out of them. Exploring the fringes of ultimate freedom without knowing there might be such a thing. Unhinged to the bone and that's why you should love it.

Live In Rats Eyes is released on Maim & Disfigure which is the website to the daddies of modern scuzzrock, Lambsbread. Get it all. Eat it all.

When will it end: Graveyards

2006-10-23T19:37:00.000+02:00

Confession: everytime Wolf Eye John Olson reaches for his saxophone to blow his sick breaths of fire out of the thing I can't help but to feel a slight sensation rippling down my backspine, circling around my thighs while shaking my balls. Too much information? Maybe so, but if you're in the slightest interested in improv, jazz, minimalism and a tiny bit of noise you will like his threesome with cellist Hans 'Bunny' Buetow and Ben 'Hell' Hall on percussion.

I managed to get my hands on one Graveyards LP recently and I'm damn proud of it too. Transparent vinyl housed in a yellow cardboard sleeve with in the right bottom corner a black and white photo of some oversized teeth on fucking piece of sandpaper! Pretty much everything is released on Buetow’s Editions Brokenresearch label which doesn’t have a website yet, although he promised me that should be fixed soon. For now, I've only listened to that LP, Bare Those Excellent Teeth, once because my lousy recordplayer decided to put a layer of annoying static on top of the music. Before you start to panic and go all; 'oh but I thought' on me; I do have a batch of other Graveyards recordings I listened to a lot this past year. Not all of them, the bastards choose to put out almost every live performance and 2006 has seen around 16 Graveyards releases on a variety of formats but some of them are definately worth your while. So here's a small selection.

Graveyards
John Brown, On His Way to the Gallows
This is one of the rowdiest and fiercest Graveyards recordings around. Where others tend to lean heavily on space and minimalist structures John Brown offers some full-on avantjazz explorations. Two tracks here, the first starts with some electro-acoustic bell tinkering while Olson let's his sax hover above, airing out subtle but threatening tones. That threatening vibe is a constant factor in Graveyards' music, there's a lot of silence, slow, smothered movements, haunted sounds but there's always that looming fierceness that makes Olson's saxplaying. Hall’s percussion makes up a lot of the noise here with Olson injecting the atmosphere with mostly slowmo Ayler-ish patterns. The second tracks begins even more mystifying, sparse percussion and shadows of saxophone and the occasional blurt of energy that tells you to keep focused. Buetow makes his cello heard with some mournful but heavy stringscraping, toning it down again and finally getting the band into full action although not for long. The spacious gaps between every outburst of clattering percussion make it sound like Han Bennink while asleep, and that’s not neccesarily a bad thing considering Bennink can hand out major blows with his eyes closed.

Graveyards
The Breath Stop
Seven breath stops on this cd-r released on Editions Brokenresearch. No information whatsoever about this awesome disc, I found the mp3's somewhere in a slsk dungeon. Nevertheless, these are among Graveyards' best and least minimal. Their haunted jazzfuckery seems to work well on more than one level but to the guts it feels better when they play it loud. Could depend on the setting as these probably were live recorded as well.

Graveyards
Vulure's Banquet
This could well be jazz as imagined by an orgasmic Einstürzende Neubauten circa 1981. From the start the trio plays a ramschackle, screeching set. Hitting everything with everything while Olson makes love to his saxophone's dark side.

Graveyards
Endings 3
Starting off as a microtonal adventure into the thick melée of Hall's percussion weaponry while Buetow makes hesitating moves to cut the circle in half with sawing cello movements. Olson kicks in at four minutes with small pockets of austere skronking, moving in and out randomly and by doing so creating a vibe of uninhibited freedom by way of uncertainty. These recordings were made during gig practice, goes to show how much focus and effort these guys put into 'just' a sideproject.

Sunn O))) | La Mort Noir Dans Esch/Alzette

2006-10-19T22:26:00.000+02:00

Not much talk about this album, possibly due to being put out as a limited edition, already moving ridiculous amounts of cash at eBay. But it's about time Sunn O))) put out a live album and this is it. It's a glorious effort and about the blackest, most grim Sunn recording I've ever heard, especially when Malefic starts belching out his ultra-sinsiter moans and groans. The first couple of tracks are vintage Sunn riff meandering, but so much more rugged and raw than an album like Black One. Malefic appears on the last two tracks which might be the best Sunn tracks ever. Beautiful cover art as well.

For once, as an extremely limited (sic) extra, here's the full album available for download.

MP3| Sunn O))) - La Mort Noir Dans Esch/Alzette

Nath Family - Sounds of the Indian Snake Charmer Vol. II |Hanson|

2006-10-18T09:41:00.000+02:00

Of course the guy wrote about it himself so why should I even bother to concur and try different words on the same matter? Possibly because it's that intriguing and spellbinding, also because I don't have anything better to do and I really think you should know of this asap.

Here's the deal. Aaron Dilloway once was a member of Wolf Eyes, he claims he still is and even mixed Wolf Eyes' latest Sub Pop beast Human Animal but maybe he just got kicked out and snuck inside their studio to tweak a few knobs and shit. Actually no, he didn't get kicked out. He just made use of one of the great Wolf Eyes company advantages and took a sabbatical to travel to the Far East. Thing is, Dillo (as he's called in the 'scene') basically was the noisy guts of Wolf Eyes, the guy responsible for that sinister crawling through stanking gutter vibe, he's like that charming but delightfully raunchy Sugababe that left last year. Without him, not so much dirty dirrty, get it? So that's a shame but the guy needed a break. And what country better to take a break in than Nepal? No uhm, Kate Moss isn't a country, yet.

While in Nepal, Dilloway's wife went to study at the Kathmandu Association For The Deaf and Dillo had a lot of time to roam the Nepalese backstreets. So, of course, he came across a couple of so-called snake charmers, people who play music to make snakes wiggle, y'dig?. When they asked him to hang out with them he joined the troop for some lovely intercultural interaction, even attracting spectators himself as that white kid with his fancy recorder in the midst of a couple of Indian snake&reeds hustlers. Dilloway taped these sessions endlessly and when he got back home he knew that the right thing to do was to release them on his evercharming Hanson label.

As I mentioned earlier, the results are spellbinding and overtly raw. Dilloway captured the essence of life in the Nepalese backstreets for real, for a large part because of the joy and immense endurance the Nath Fam has. They gotta have gigantic lungs or something. The droning that goes on when those guys play their bamboo reeds is extremely hypnotical and every pinch of sound actually drones, whether it's a short note or a looooong one, it drones accordingly.

Volume II opens with ferocious bamboo reed spurts, called pungi's, causing an immediate psychedelic rush as the droning figures move through the dense Nepalese air right right into your cerebral cortex. When the premtals, a stringed percussion instrument, join in it gains a surreal quality. The droning of the pungi's fighting with the left-right wobbliness of the premtals. The pace is constant and adds to the hypnosis, ultimately seducing but never openly welcoming. There's rhythm and slight hints of melody although they never go nowhere and are mostly overwhelmed by the pungidrones. The second side offers a more varied and detailed affair, starting with some Luc Ferarri-style background noise while quickly buttoning up for some serious pungi/premtal action.

I've yet to delve into Volume I but knowing that Volume II is culled from leftovers and second tier material that really ups expectations. What Dilloway really shows with these Nath Family recordings is the sheer audacity and endless creativity some of the key-players in the United States of Noise have and keep on exploring. It's definately a sign of longtime endurance and with all these influences in Dilloway's pocket, you know his journey has just begun.

Sp@m

2006-10-17T09:11:00.000+02:00

It's a wonderful thing to write for a webzine like Foxy Digitalis. Not only because they allow writers to stroll through the murk of the most obscure music out here nowadays, also because Brad Rose en his wife Eden are busier than an army of bees rolling around in pure honey. Their labels Digitalis and cd-r centred Foxglove release a gem more than once a year, they also fool around in a variety of musical ensembles. This year resulting in at least one more than good album as Eastern Fox Squirrels. It might not be the most focussed freefolkjammy jam around but it's a very rich and exciting listen because it allows you, the listener, to dream their own structure around it.

Foxy Digitalis, the zine, updates weekly on monday. I have three new reviews up, from which Janek Schaeffer stands out as a modern minimalist semi-masterpiece, and I'm not even grinning when I say that.

Cut Hands & Solutions

2006-10-13T20:34:00.000+02:00

Released from the shackles of commercial blogging I finally found my freedom again! Not that I really think you care but fuck, it's sweet to back here and I'm ready to hit you fiends with some of the most obscure shit I can find.

Cut Hands will mostly talk about music only 20 % of musicloving cybergeeks will wanna read about but whatever, it's the documentation of a revolution because I do believe that what's going on in all the undercurrents of music, the experimental dungeons, is truly groundbreaking stuff.

Of course, Cut Hands is derived from the Whitehouse track 'Cut Hands Has the Solution' and I will mark this post with an mp3 of that lovely horror fairytale. Enjoy and watch this space.
MP3|Whitehouse 'Cut Hands Has the Solution'