Relay For Death - Anxiety Of The Eye

 

And this is their other recording of 2016, made up of manipulated field recordings of the Death Valley. Sounds of insects blend with ominous drones in a way that wouldn't be out of place with the best of Tribes Of Neurot (remember Adaptation and Survival) and even Robert Rich minus the new age elements. 2016 tape on No Rent Records.

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Relay For Death - Natural Incapacity

 

The Spikula sisters are responsible for two of the most gruesome and bleak death industrial recordings of the previous decade, Birth of an Older Much Uglier Christ and They're Heating Up The Ovens, Get the Fuck Out Now. After about six or seven years and out of the blue they made two new recordings, which I only caught wind of in 2020. This is a double cd made of processed field recordings of sound pollution in California, and is definitely worthy of some of Maurizio Bianchi's more industrial wall-ish recordings. More than two hours of industrial deafening nothingness. 2016 2 X cd on Helen Scarsdale Agency.

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Eric Lunde - Suites For Solo Analog Cassette Recorder

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Every night I have trouble sleeping due to stress and lots of obligations and this is the only thing that helps me drift into sleep. It's the sound of mechanical nothingness, as the guy just put recorded the sound of deck players recording themselves in their built-in mics. 2002 self-released 2 x cdr.

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Nzetwork Down ‎– 1/1996/1997

 

Exploratory noise, field recordings and musique concrete by the Japanese Miki Naohiko. 1998 cd on Hasikamke.

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The Gerogerigegege - >(decrescendo)

New great LP by Juntaro, continuing his wild experimentations. This one has been influenced by a 1930s children's novel called Gauche The Cellist written by - overlooked during his lifetime - author Kenji Miyazawa. It has been adapted into an anime film by the unsurpassable Isao Takahata, and I haven't seen but now I must. The overall concept is that there is a mediocre cellist struggling to be accepted into his town's orchestra and he gets to improve with the aid of animals that speak to him and instruct him how to play. Juntaro recorded it using as his only instrument the hapi drum (a melodic percussive instrument which I was collecting money to buy years ago but I never did) and other outside sounds like cicadas, frogs, birds. The sounds are actually very soothing, with the hapi being barely heard at times, and the nature sounds being calming and entrancing. Certainly nothing we would expect from Juntaro, but highly recommended.

2019 tape release on Cav Empt, this is the 2020 LP rerelease by The Trilogy Tapes.

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Jürgen Eckloff - Angeflantschte Fugenstücke

Great album of field recordings and musique concrete by a member of Column One. 2016 lp on 90% Wasser.

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Xqui - Elemental

Xqui always manages to end the year with a superb release. In this third full-length, which is dedicated to the chemical elements, he seems to have foregone of most "musical" features (beats, guitars, voices) present in his previous - and stellar - Capitulate, and focusing instead on the most elemental aspects of his work. In other words, this cd is dominated by creepy subdued ambient sounds with a very lo-fi quality (be reminded that Xqui works mainly with mobile phone apps), which accentuate what I have called his urban Lovecraftian atmospheres. Everything sounds as if it has been extracted from basements, underground tunnels, manholes, and there are also several howling voices, offering a ritualistic and menacing feeling. Only the last track, "Vanadium," has a more musical approach, sounding like a noise string orchestra. Xqui never disappoints, so go now to his bandcamp, and get the last remaining copy of this excellent year finisher. 2019 cdr on Wormhole World.

Xqui's bandcamp
Wormhole World's bandcamp

Chris 'Pause' Richardson ‎– Gasoline Fever

One of the most idiosyncratic of field recordings artists, Chris "Pause" Richardson's output consists of TV/radio recordings of car races. Once I was listening to a tape of his and my mom was wondering where the raging engine sounds came from and looked out the window. After listening to this, which is kind of low-key and could be considered his "drone" album, you have to buy his two tapes on Matching Head. 2009 cdr on Cidershed (label of Martin Gregory of Fuckin' Amateurs label, so you know this is great).

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Stuart Chalmers - Fata Morgana

Stuart Chalmers's recordings that feature the swarmandal instrument are his best, even with the songs that don't have it! This one is not an exception and it's one of his darkest releases yet. 2017 self-released CD.

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PS. Stuart has made a new recording called The Heart Of Instinct (his two previous The Heart... installations were peak releases) and he's looking for a label to put it out. If you have any info or offers, contact him through his bandcamp or whatever. It sounds like a great recording and yes it has swarmandal! You can hear it here.

Stuart Chalmers - Sound Environments 2: Woodlands

Following his Sound Environments 1, which Stuart Chalmers recorded in caves in the UK, for this releases wandered around forests in Cumbria and Yorkshire and made a series of recordings out in the open with sounds of birds, insects, and flowing water interfering. He used his beloved swarmandal, a destroyed piano, bones, pieces of wood, and other things and created a hauntingly beautiful collection of material that shifts between pagan ritual music and magnificent physical ambient created mainly by the swarmandal. I love Stuart's noisy and loop-centered stuff, but when he plays on this Indian instrument, the results are always outstanding. This is a digital-only release accompanied by a number of pics of the forests where he recorded, but don't be content with downloading for free. He gives half of the proceeds from this release to the Woodland Trust that is in charge of preserving these forests, so I highly recommend you give something back through bandcamp, mmmmkay?

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Christophe Charles - Verena (and a comment on how Coil can potentially destroy your life)

"Verena" is a minimalist ambient composition created by Christophe Charles in 2000 composed of field recordings, glitsch electronics close to Coil's Worship The Glitsch, and a floating sense of drone ready to break out. Highly recommended listening.

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Speaking of Coil's Worship The Glitsch (released as ELpH vs Coil) the time when I first listened to it coincided with a period of acute depression and anxiety disorder with psychosomatic symptoms that plagued my everyday life for many months and nearly destroyed my relationship with my then-girlfriend (and now wife) as well as my stomach. So, the three-part track "Halliwell Hammers" from that album, which refers to the murder of controversial British playwright Joe Orton - who wrote the influential play Loot - at the hands of his boyfriend Kenneth Halliwell with a hammer. I don't know if I subconsciously related the sounds of that particular song, and especially its second and third part, with the actual murder - there is a percussive sound throughout, not a violent hammering bang - but from the first time I heard it I got instantly scared and anxious, and I don't remember ever having managed to listen to it through, though it lasts only 2.30 and 3.30 minutes respectively. Its cold crystalline sound always evoked to me an image of frozen green blankness, of expressionless faces, and to this day, the hair on the back of my skull and neck stand up. Combined with my then tortuous depression and stress-induced stomachache, I felt that if I was put to listen to that track continuously I would slice my wrists. I don't know why I'm going through the test to listen to all three parts of this track right now and write all this nonsense; maybe the fact that I'm in a extremely better situation right now in my life - being a father, having a regular job - enables me to confront that period. However, the suicidal sounds of "Halliwell Hammers" are still capable of raising my hair.

 The first, relatively harmless part:

The unspeakable part:

Xqui - November EP

The very creative Xqui, whose first releases I've talked about here, returns with a series of sinister lo-fi ambient drone. Don't know if the samples he captured on his mobile phone were taken from the place on the cover that warns of a "deep excavation," but there's truly a really subterranean feel to the recordings. Xqui here touches on some of the best masters of dark ambient like raison d'être, and Yen Pox, as well as the narrative approach to drone as perfected by Troum, but with a much more industrial perspective. This is Lovecraftian horror for urban landscapes, where Nyarlathotep preaches the message of the Great Old Ones in the metro or through text apps.

As always, Xqui is offering this great recording for on a voluntary-payment-basis, so enjoy it for free, but I'd urge everyone to give something to this very talented artist.

And I just noticed he's putting his second full-length cd called Capitulate (after the sublime Dragon) out early next year and is offering a pre-order period for it. From the three tracks posted, it seems he's already moving to other directions, especially on "Valley," which has a new agey-hypnagogic-industrial approach. Will be eagerly waiting for this one, too!

Various - Greek Ethno Music Location Recordings compiled by Stratos Bichakis

This is a compilation of recordings covering the period between 1930 and 1988, put together by Greek electronic music composer Stratos Bichakis, showcasing an ethnomusicological research on traditional Greek music. The music ranges from bagpipes from Greek Macedonia to droning Eastern-influenced music from Asian Minor, and from festival ecstatic music to beautiful polyphonic choirs from Epirus. A really great compilation. 2017 tape on V I S.

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Xqui - Dragon/Brittannia/Nocturne

Xqui is a new enigmatic project that only has a Twitter account and Bandcamp without any additional information, apart from an association with Ash Cooke of Pulco/Chow Mwng. The music he/she/they generate is mainly field recordings and created sounds processed through mobile phone apps. So far the project has released 4 pieces, with more coming soon, and is endorsed by TQZine, which has offered a bunch of upcoming Xqui tracks for winners of a TQ art box auction.

The Britannia EP has a hymnal approach (I suspect the basis for the sound is "God Save The Queen" deconstructed), with a dream-like atmosphere of someone flying and observing the land. The sound is dense but pleasant and warm and reminds me a lot of William Basinski's Disintegration Loops as well as Stars of the Lid's Per Aspera Ad Astra, which should be reason enough to listen to it.

The project's latest release Nocturne EP has more of the same levitational/floating feel, a feeling of liberation when you're dying after a long, debilitating disease that has eaten away all your will to live. Knowing that Arvo Pärt's music is played to terminally-ill people for its soothing effect, I think that an alternative playlist may as well include this EP and the previous one. The only exception is the third track "Guitar," which features a cacophonous guitar solo sample passing through underground tunnels; it wouldn't be out of place in Skullflower's recent slew of guitar/synth bandcamp tracks.

Dragon is the first full-length of Xqui and has quite a different approach. The atmosphere is less soothing and decidedly darker, with a draconian feel to it, matching its title. The first track is a Coil Worship The Glitsch-styled dark sound over which people are trying to pronounce the project's name (as a learner of Spanish I'll venture a guess and suggest that it's pronounced Porqui). Tracks here are slower, like snippets into different parts of the urban landscape and they would fit in greatly in a short experimental film of Situanionist city dérive. The longer tracks, "Bun," "eDial," and "Spark" are nightmarish soundscapes which DOA or Heathen Earth-era Throbbing Gristle would have envied, while the shortie "Convicta" features the sample of military march that evokes menacing images of fascist worms crawling the streets. This is a very accomplished release indicative of high-level skill in editing, sampling and reconstructing sounds while evoking various atmospheres.

Xqui is kind enough to offer most of his releases for free, apart from Dragon, which is paid but includes an additional release within its price. So head over to their Bandcamp and knock that shit around.

Andrey Dergatchev ‎– The Return (Music for the Film by Andrey Zvyagintsev)

One great soundtrack about one of the greatest movies of this century, The Return. The film's heartbreaking, mournful story of reuniting and loss of the estranged father of a family with his boys is pervading the music's atmosphere which is a combination of minimal, simmering tonal electronics, ambient, enveloping field recordings as well as Russian music influences. A work of utter sorrowful beauty. 2005 cd on ECM.

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