Montréal Ambient Post-Hardcore Troupe MILANKU Unveil New Music Video
It’s the weekend! Time for deep breaths and a slower pace and reflection. At least time enough to check out the new music video from MILANKU. The five-member Montréal band conjures an ethereal sound that takes advantage of ambient soundscapes to drop a robust blend of post-everything.
Milanku’s new record is entitled ‘À l'aube’ (2023), which translates to “At dawn.” Each track on the album takes a que from there, starting with misty atmosphere, perhaps representing various stages of the rising sun. This is followed by a radiant post-rock instrumental push with post-hardcore vocal inflections.
The band sings in French, as well, with lyrics inspired by the poetry of French-Czech writer Milan Kundera (b. 1929), who wrote The Unbearable Lightness of Being – a book that muses about philosophical themes like time, happiness, and eternal return (the idea that everything in the universe repeats itself).
In fact, the song titles themselves are each piece of a poem, which like the music delves into poignant feelings of loneliness, despair, and consolation. Milanku gave us this window into their creative process:
Most of the skeleton of the album was built before the pandemic. After a few months of downtime, we refined and modified the songs and recorded the songs in two studio sessions. The pandemic had an impact on the sound of all the songs on the album. Without the pandemic, the result of the album would not be the same at all. The album sounds like a whole, a maturity of the band and a story that is told from the first note to the last.
Having revealed the opening track already, today Milanku reveals the album closer: “À l'aube; nous sommes disparus” (“At dawn; we will be gone”). It features Erika Angell from Thus Owls.
The most musically emotional track of the album, this song starts off as a sweet guitar melody and slowly turns into a storm featuring Erika’s voice as the grand priestess of this storm that everyone is trying to escape. The lyrics in Swedish and French make it even more mystical.
Milaku’s À l'aube doesn’t just rage against the gloom; it observes it, experiences it deeply, and reaches tirelessly towards hope. The sound absolutely envelops you in ecstatic glory by album’s end. Look for it March 31st on Folivora Records (pre-order here). For fans of Cult of Luna, Godspeed You Black Emperor, and Neurosis
Give ear…
SOME BUZZ
If Milanku draws its origins from the work of Milan Kundera, the soundtrack is definitely more on the side of the thundering density of the being than of its “unbearable lightness”, galvanized by the Czech author.
From the start, Milanku hammers out its brutal character, infused with melancholy, even dystopia, and standing straight upright on the wire: defiant, shouting, and inspired.
Mesmerized by the warrior’s rage, flayed by its own doldrums, the quartet relies on pared-down arrangements and an oft-staged vocal presence, harmonizing like an instrument, and howling at the big time, but plastered with a disquieting sense of dilettante.
At the heart of the enterprise, tearing off the peels of flapping skins, we explore the state of affairs of the contemporary genre, tragic, desolate, where any notion of common sense seems diffuse in the amalgam of trompe-l'oeil. The texts are meditative, inquisitive and the observations that emanate from them, weep and persist in trying to make sense of it, through its ever-growing losses of illusion.
With four full-length releases behind them, Milanku presents today 'À l'aube’ (2023), a five-track burn that breathes new life into a caste of disenfranchised people, imbued with a disarming lucidity, and gives itself a framework and a voice to pull its head out of the swamp.
Nakedyan Presents a Surreal Kaleidoscope of Meditative Sound in New Music Video
Nakedyan is a brand new project by Stefano Ferrian, an Italian musician, composer, producer, and former member of .psychofagist. and SYK (on Philip H Anselmo’s Housecore Records). It’s an acoustic kaleidoscope where traditional folk, neofolk, world music, and ambient collide with influences such as Opeth, Katatonia, and Lisa Gerrard to form one new creature. The music delivered by this project is “a direct emanation of the Spirit.”
“My Spectre Around Me Night and Day,” Stefano tells us, “took shape on a late night session with my fellow Claudio Fabbrini. We were quite stoned and exhausted. He started to knock out that opening riff, tapping some natural harmonics on acoustic guitar. I loved that sound in a second and asked him to fix it in his mind. Then I rapidly grabbed my Blake book that was laying on the window and it opened up on what finally became the song’s lyric. I don’t really think we composed the song. I believe that the song reached us because we were so exhausted at that point that all of our barriers were simply ineffective.”
Nakedyan will release a brand new EP in early 2021. In the meanwhile, you’re bound to get lost in the meditative sounds of its third track, “My Spectre Around Me Night And Day.”
Give ear…
Portland Ambient Sludge-Pop Project
Folian Debuts Pensive Music Video
couched mutterings like the mind
trying to make sense of it.”
Doomed & Stoned proud to present the official music video for “Ghost In The Flesh” by experimental ambient sludge project FOLIAN. The brainchild of David S. Fylstra, now surpassing a decade of life in the Pacific Northwest, Folian finds itself exploring all things strange in the surreal EP, ‘Ache Pillars’ (2019).
Recorded live at Candlewolfe Sound in Portland, Oregon and mastered by Zach Weeks of Salem, Massachusetts, the hazy, disorienting quality of these four tracks play like a blissful, if vaguely disturbing, dream. David’s vocals are oddly comforting as we drift away into realms unknown. Things go from disarming to alarming as the EP journeys from “Clearing In The Shadows” to “Ghost In The Flesh.”
Folian had this to say about the music video before us:
“The visuals portray hiding and escaping from the frustration and confusion of certain recurring dreams I was experiencing. The mind can overwhelm itself to the feeling of drowning, and when you try to push and pull your way out it just slips through your hands like running water.
There had to be a better way to approach dealing with this, and ultimately there was much negative thought to sift through before arriving at a more hopeful outcome, but through self-analyzing and creative practice, things become a little clearer and more manageable.
The video footage was captured both locally in Oregon, and out of the states during a particular trip to an island in the Caribbean in 2017. It was shot and edited by myself.”
Folian’s 'Ache Pillars’ (2019) is now available in a very limited quantity of cassette tapes c/o Apneic Void Sounds, with addition quantities available during Folian’s forthcoming West Coast tour (which starts on Monday, April 8th). With the company of Troubled By Insects, you can catch Folian during the following dates:
4/05 Portland, OR - Boathouse Experimental Studio Space
4/06 Seattle, WA - Hollow Earth Radio
4/07 Olympia, WA - La Voyeur
4/08 Eugene, OR - Old Nick’s Pub
4/12 Astoria, OR - Charlie’s Chophouse
THE DARK RED SEED STIR ‘AWAKENING’
Lassoing the grey area between folk, psychedelia, and gloom rock, the duo of King Dude’s Tosten Larson and Shawn Flemming seem comfortable swimming in delicious ambiguity.
In my first listen to Becomes Awake by THE DARK RED SEED, I found it hard to describe what I was hearing without giving a long trail of hyphenated references to this genre and that. It’s the music critics’s trap, really. Some sounds are designed to be felt, to be experienced, even lived, not so much written about – but I’ll not go to far down that tangent.
Perhaps dark folk has resonated with me strongest as a descriptor of The Dark Red Seed vibe, especially after spinning last fall’s EP, Stands With Death (from which we were gifted an arresting song, “The Antagonist”). Suffice it to say, I was anxious to see the outcome of this “study in death.”
Today, we get another hint of what The Dark Red Seed are up to in their full-length debut, the band having previously shared the album’s finale, “Diana and Ouroboros Dance,” with us. Before us now is “Awakening,” an effective blending of Eastern and Western musical influences couched in the hypnotic medium of shoegaze. The track represents “a movement from darkness into light,” which is the overall vision of the new record.
On May 18th, Prophecy Productions will release Becomes Awake by The Dark Red Seed. You can pre-order it here.
Give ear…
Some Buzz:
The Dark Red Seed is the musical outlet of Tosten Larson, guitarist for Seattle dark folk musician King Dude. A self-coined ‘metaphor for the heart’, The Dark Red Seed represents a direct reference to life – and death – itself. The duo, which also includes King Dude engineer Shawn Flemming, will now release its debut album, 'Becomes Awake’ (2018).
The full-length follow-up to the group’s 2017 debut EP, 'Stands with Death’ (2017), a dark, dusty discourse on the departure and ultimate dissolution of life, 'Becomes Awake’ symbolizes a movement from darkness into light; finding balance through acceptance of one’s own qualities of both the light and the dark; the good and the bad. The struggle of finding balance is never ending.
While King Dude channels dark folk in a manner that fits along with former tour mate Chelsea Wolfe, The Dark Red Seed veer down a much heavier path. Standing equally in the tradition of dark folk and modern heavy psych, Larson notes that the three albums that most inspired 'Becomes Awake’ are Spiritualized 'Ladies and Gentlemen We are Floating in Space,’ The Beatles’ 'Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,’ and 'No Quarter: Jimmy Page & Robert Plant Unledded.’ The resultant powerfully dark, rich sound of The Dark Red Seed carries an emotionally gripping weight that draws you in and refuses to let go. Striking cover art by Paul Romano (Mastodon, Dälek) furthers the album’s potent allure.
The instrumentation and scales on 'Becomes Awake’ are heavily inspired by Indian and Persian music as well as Roma music. Densely arranged with string, horn and percussion sections the album features contributions from musicians Kelly Pratt (LCD Soundsystem, War on Drugs, St Vincent) and Steve Nistor (Sparks, Marissa Nadler, Daniel Lanois). The harmonic, rhythmic and formal structures release a potent richness and depth of sound created by the collision of Eastern and Western music and the merging of tones specific to each.
Are you ready to Become Awake?
Weird Noise Meets Spaced-Out Doom in Devilish New Project HYDE PARK
Every so often, I’ll share a rough demo in these pages because the source material is strong enough to warrant it. That or it’s just so damned fascinating I can’t resist. Case in point: HYDE PARK. This is the new project by one Jaromy Craig Barker, who is joined by his friend, Taylor Joos. His previous project was Wahupta and it spanned two countries, the United States and Australia. That project issued ‘The Great Passover’ (2017) over the summer, which the band described as a “heavily saturated furiosity of slow and depressing doom.”
In contrast, Hyde Park seems destined for the stars, opening with several minutes of freakish noise that sound like an intercepted message from a distant satellite. Then, about three minutes in, we’re introduced to a fuzz-soaked bass that comes crawling in lower and lower to the ground, gradually stirring up a fuss, like a great plume of smoke around a space shuttle, until the frenetic energy is too much and the ship blasts off for the skies – space-bound or bust.
About this track, what on God’s green earth are we listening to?
Jaromy: This track was recorded in Taylor’s basement with equipment he had bought over the years. The drums and bass were mic’d into an interface and recorded live. The bass is running through four different kinds of distortions and/or fuzzes that are balanced out to work well together or alone, it creates a massive sound coming out of two 4x10 peavey towers ran by an acoustic 320b head. In the recording we’re also running a direct signal from the pedals and using an Orange CR120 head and Marshall 1960b cabinet to boost the mid-upper range of the bass, since we’re not using guitars.
How’d the two of you meet?
Taylor: We started jamming mid 2017-ish with the hopes of getting a lineup for Wahupta, and couldn’t find anyone to play bass for us. So Jaromy got a bass setup so we could search for guitarists that there are lots of. We’d been going to the same shows for years, but didn’t meet until we started jamming with mutual friends, James from Conditioned One and Joe from Northlander. Then Jaromy hit me up to jam. In the midst of that, this song was created and the idea to create a bass heavy two piece called Hyde Park.
I’m hearing some definitely doom influences here, but also touches of space rock and ambient noise.
Jaromy: This music is heavily influenced by slower tempo heavy bands with a lot of feeling. Stuff like Sleep, Neurosis, Om, Disembodied, and Starkweather that isn’t so much music that’s made to be as pleasant as it is to be contemplated and understood. For me, when I hear these bands I get the feeling that my own emotions aren’t fought alone, that there are more people out there that feel depressed or have dealt with loss and such things. It’s more of a spiritual way for us to acknowledge that noises can help others out in ways that exceed what we ever expected to achieve in music. I think that’s why it’s kind-of starting to take on more followers. People are starting to open their eyes in the morning and feel that something is missing and for whatever reason this is what helps most.
What kind of subject matter are you exploring in Hyde Park?
Jaromy: Our songs’ lyrical concepts are basically like short mantras, stuff that you want to say but don’t get the opportunities to. It’s kind-of a mystical way of releasing negative vibes. I’m still new to vocals that aren’t just screaming but I feel like I’m starting to adapt as a vocalist. As for Taylor, well, he just wants everyone to know he loves death metal!
And all this leads up to an album. What can you reveal about your debut record at this stage of the game?
With our new album we’re hoping to capture something that hopefully hasn’t been done before, but overall I guess we’re looking to capture a heavy opening into a long line of work. We both love pushing the boundaries and extending the song lengths, so it could boil down to only two more songs to create the full-length, hopefully. I’m really into the whole “follow the riff” ideas when it comes to performing, I would rather not talk between songs and spend as much time as possible in that certain groove.
I think what can be expected to say the least is that it will be one worth picking up, as our intentions are to create something that continues momentum and these songs will be a strong beginning to a long road of memories. Once we get a van we’ll be ready to go on touring and will hopefully be playing abroad by mid-2018.
Nibiru Returns With Hypnotic ‘Padmalotus’
The long awaited NIBIRU record, following on the heels of last year’s ETRAYONI: Ritual I - The Kaula’s Circle (2014), has come from the far-flung reaches of orbital space, bringing us into close range of its sacred mysteries. This ritualistic, psychedelic sludge band from Italy will undoubtedly take you on an orgasmic ride back into the recesses of your reptilian brain. Their Padmalotus full-length album is a dissociative, shamanic experience not for the faint of heart or casual fuzzer.
NIBIRU is an experience interwoven with ancient, Enochian vocals of despair, wild drums of aboriginal flair, heavy bass tones, dual layers of cathartic guitars, synth, and an eclectic collection of indigenous instruments. Prepare to become hypnotized by this mystical voyage into dark ambience. With each track clocking in at 12+ minutes, each song identifies well with a mood, driving the ritual forward and coalescing the album into a 66-minute single entity exorcism.
Enter the nightmare with words of the death dealer heard in the imperceptible darkness, speaking in tongues of an ancient language. Going into trance, it seems as though a thousand spirits whisper. Nibiru’s front-man, Ardath, has a vocal style reminiscent of Tibetan throat singing and low growling tribal incantations. This album is a wild journey through totemic tongue utterings, gong clashings, and dangerous waves of synthesizer-induced uncertainty and fear. Atmospheric growling and screaming blends well into obscurity, dangling us on the threshold of oblivion. High pitched guitar distortion pierces through hyper-dimensional space, subjecting us to bouts of suffering and wails coming through the indistinct fabric of the outer limits.
Padmalotus has great pace and rhythm, at times being a near silent stillness that progresses into steady, hypnotic drone of the didgeridoo, then building up to a full thrust pace ahead, becoming a frenzy across all instruments involved. At times, the drumming even takes on a type of black metal speed, reminiscent of Darkthrone’s Transylvanian Hunger (1994 - Peaceville Records). NIBIRU knows how to slow things down, bringing us over the horizon into brighter progression and giving us a sense of breaking through to the calm eye of the storm, before taking us back under for a strong finish.
This album is highly recommended to go along with incense burning, a few bowls of herb, and some quiet space with lit candles to maximize the trance inducing aspects of this ritual.
Track List:
Get it here.
AND check out Nibiru’s latest single, “Carma Geta,” which appears on the compilation ‘Devouring The Mountains Vol II’ on Argonauta Records.
Earth at Psycho California
What can you say about a band as great as EARTH? The Olympia, Washington trio speak for themselves. Everything and everywhere they play is magic. Here they are on the second day of Psycho California, filmed by fellow YouTuber sexthrash69. BTW, you can hear a mix of the entire line-up of Day II in the Doomed & Stoned tribute to Psycho California on Mixcloud.com/DoomedandStonedOfficial.
D&S Reviews
The Architects by Randal Collier-Ford
By BillyGoat (Editor-in-Chief)
There’s a lot of talent in the sleepy community of Eugene and Springfield, Oregon. For one, this is the home of Yob. It was a favorite point migration for Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead. Ken Keasy, author of “One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest” hid away in the hills here. Every so often, Sam Elliot makes an appearance at the Market of Choice. It’s a very creative and eclectic collection of folks.
Ambient music composer and performer Randal Collier-Ford is a good example of this, producing music of cinematic proportions. ‘The Architects’ (2015) is a full-length album that made me think of NIN’s 'Ghosts’ from some years back. It’s ripe with atmosphere, and indeed has its heavy, industrial moments, but is more interested in exploring a range of moods that is most likely to conjure a tale of H. P. Lovecraft (perhaps even one of his unspeakable creatures!).
Here is how the project is described by its creator: “The Architects consists of 8 evolving tracks with a mechanical touch to each one. This album is the product of deep theory, ageless echos and murmurs of voices not heard in countless millennium. By use of ritual techniques and unconventional sampling, Randal Collier-Ford takes us to his world of a union between the old and the new. This is an original take on Drone vs Sound Design, leaving enough room on the album to explore both concepts fully, from empty rooms of pure sound sampling and bowing techniques to tracks with bass driven drone fused with distortion and drum hits from the abyss.”
Released on the Cryo Chamber label, 'The Architects’ is a fine work of master craftsmanship, deep attention to detail, and striking ambience (at times, creepy as hell). Pour a piping hot cup of tea, grab a good science fiction/horror novel, and pipe this one through your speakers. You’ll find yourself putting down your book just to listen to the strange sounds, as you imagination wanders to otherworldly realms.
D&S Reviews
Sandrider & Kinski Split
By BillyGoat
Looky what I got in my hot little hooves: the new split by Seattle’s Sandrider and Kinski! Don’t be jealous. It’s streaming here for your listening pleasure, even if it’s not spinning in delicious splatter vinyl for your aural, as well as auditory, pleasure. These bands really put their heart and soul into every syllable, every riff, every drumbeat of this release.
Let’s talk Sandrider. The duo vocals of Jon (guitar) and Jesse (bass) get me every time, reminiscent in some ways of the choruses of RED FANG. They can take a relatively straightforward song and turn it into something altogether savage, as in the opening number, “Rain.” The “smash something” punk ‘n’ roll spirit (with that happy ASG vibe) spills over to “Glaive,” after a dreamy, meandering opening.
The highlight for many of you is going to be Sandrider’s cover of “Mountain Song” by Jane’s Addiction. I’ve admitted to preferring this one slightly over the original, when the single was released last month. Nat Damm does a (shall I do it? make a pun here about him doing a….) damned good job (OK, don’t hate me, I feel guilty now) of holding steady, commanding beat that kept the impressive LP Godhead (2013) flowing and on target.
That’s it for Sandrider? Hmmm. I’m left wanting more, after just three songs.
Gratefully, that’s when Kinski steps up to bat. And it’s a swing and a….whoa, they knock this one right out of the ballpark. Sweet. I didn’t know much about Kinski coming to this release on Good to Die Records, but now I’m anxious to hear some of their other recordings. NME Magazine famously described the four-piece Emerald City rockers as “like Sabbath in a washing machine during a power surge.”
There were moments in “Beyond In Touch With My Feminine Side” when I thought I might touch myself….no, just kidding. There were moments when I thought Kinski was going the way of Witch, and they do approach this territory both harmonically and with a raw, fuzzy groove and singing guitar passages. However, there’s not a point where you feel they’re trying to being someone else, because when the vocals enter (almost 6 minutes in) the Kinski sound has been fully established.
I’m intrigued. Again, wanting more.
One more song on the split? Fantastic! “The Narcotic Comforts of the Status Quo” is a lot more ambient, with a kind of plaintive psychedelic guitar lead that soon enough takes off with a beat into something that, as with the previous song, sings. This, I’m sensing, is one of the defining characteristic of a Kinski piece. Just when you think the song is going to settle for the status quo itself, something noisy and disruptive always seems to happen to keep my interest.
My verdict? It’s a fun split and definitely worth adding to the collection.
Experimental post-metal from Krasnoyarsk, Siberia now from another mysterious collection of artists known as BELOW THE SUN. This track from their recently released ‘Envoy’ (2015) was enough to grab my attention. This is not your usual pasty, vanilla flavored post-whatever music, though. “Cries of Dying Stars” gives us exactly that–a song filled with anguished emotion and feverish drama, while retaining a dense, atmospheric veneer the way through.
This first track is leaving me speechless. You’re hearing it as I do: Per Ardu Ad Astra (2014), the new album by DEEP SPACE PILOTS—the hard-driving, doom-stoner-ambient metal band from Chicago. These three are beyond amazing!
-BillyGoat-
This is getting a lot of metal press lately. Give ear to New York’s HUSH, streaming their new album ‘Unexist.’
New music video teaser for the imminent record by IDES OF GEMINI, coming in September via Neurot Recordings!
THOU and THE BODY Collaborate on New Record!
Late Wednesday, I received word of a new project called Released from Love–a 12" EP that has Baton Rouge atmospheric sludgy doomers THOU collaborating with Portland’s eclectic ambient sludge monsters THE BODY. The result? Well, you decide as you listen to the full EP, streaming here courtesy of Brooklyn Vegan.
New Release: The Haunting Green, guitar and drum heavy doom duo from Northern Italy, releases self-titled debut which displays heavy atmosphere and mature musicianship. Interview coming soon! In the meanwhile, check out this fanvid I put together for opening song, “The Mournful Sons”