★Ikuisuus
Music Is The Music Language
In the Spring months of 2005 Ben Reynolds began taking yet more jabs from mankind’s collective unconscious and turning them into sounds that love being in your ears. They have since been collected under the title ‘Music Is The Music Language’ and kindly unleashed by new Finnish label Ikuisuus. This is the first CD release from Ben after a torrent of CDRs bearing his name came flowing from various corners of the globe throughout 2004/2005. The sounds contained within the present release were moul…
The Secret of the Dancing Snow
Another voyage into the inky blackness with the cosmos-loving Italians and another gem. MCIAA have gone from making dronescapes that were merely beautiful to listen to (merely!) to vast vistas of sound that seem to exert an almost gravitational pull into their depths. This opens with Roberto Opalio's parched vocal trances and the calming ching of Oriental bells and builds into a soporific sea of echoing guitar notes with bells rippling through it like a warm wind. For some reason, the line from …
Cosmic Continuum
Elektronavn AKA Magnus Olsen Majmon is a Danish sound sculptor that shapes a claustrophobic, almost physical experience with haunting drones constructed from an arsenal of instruments such as clarinet, distorted voice, guitar, organ, flute, gong, harp, field recordings and percussion. The music is pretty much impossible to lump into any particular genre but there is a significant folk vibe that runs through a lot of the music, even the more experimental and psychedelic parts. This might have som…
Cadillac Sitting Like a Ton of Lead
the trio of prolific free drummer Alex Neilson, former Charalambides/Scorces member Heather Leigh and The Wire contributor David Keenan, create unity only to then destroy it, represents the absolute apex of their twin guitar/drums incarnation, with two side-long improvised psychedelic blues that combine the kind of epic string-muscle of Fushitsusha, Ohkami No Jikan, Kousokuya and Rallizes Denudes with a sublime avant-garage sensibility and massive pockets of time-killing freedom. Further ampl…
s/t
MY3YEAH started last year as a duo formed by Tomas Müller and GMC. Tomas also released one CD-R in Canada with another group and GMC released a 3" solo CD-R on Music Your Mind Will Love You label. Tomas did a tour in Japan in 2003/2004, playing and recording with the late Jutok Kaneko, also gigs with Kei of Hanadensha and Tori Kudo of Maher Shalal Hash Baz, among many others. GMC played in Vlüba some years before they started releasing material worldwide, then he did a tour in Chile doing noise …
Memphis
The recordings were done at 2 seperate gigs at Photospace Gallery in Wellington, NZ. I exhibited at the gallery twice and we began performing there quite often (the owner even played drums for my group The Rick Jensen Trio). Nova Scotia played a number of times there as the environment was particularly suited to us, outside was the main street in Wellington, where everyone would go drinking at night. It was all nightclubs and bars, buskers and drunk people. When we performed we'd open the window…
12 December 2007
12 December 2007 is a live recording of Dorothy Geller (From Quagmire) alias Dora Bleu and Alexandre St-Onge (Shalabi Effect, et Sans) taken in Montreal at Zoobizarre on that date. Several of the songs are inspired by the film The Night Porter (1976). The live event itself was called "Music on Dark Screens." St-Onge's dark, minimal and lush double bass is a perfect compliment to Geller's unconventional and minimal song structures. The songs and sounds refract each element together like an interp…
Inversions
Latest from Albany guitar duo whose six string damaging has often shred the guitar beyond recognition. For this outing, however, Century Plants plug in, and allow their guitars to be guitars. Psych raga, melting icebergs of roaring drone, metallic strum and clang, oceanic melody and even a helping of pastoral song melody separate this from previous smash ups. Hardiman and Hare create these hypnotic states from the ground up, building their sound out of pure improvisation. Oh yeah, the guitars do…
Bowl Ceremony
Gigging with a varying and often an extensive group, Kheta Hotem has visited the studio with a somewhat stripped basic essence. This release is a collection of sense-filling presentations starting with a ritual-like bowl ceremony, which leads into results closely related with free jazz and ethnomusic. In their gig brochure the group claims they continue the more than 1000 years old musical tradition of Komutia, where the musician acts as a mediator between the world of sounds and everyday existe…
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Hassu Pelle (Funny Clown) from Tampere, Finland was active only a couple of years at the first part of 2000s. This hilarious quintet was formed by Pelle Eloton, Pelle Svanslös, Ulkomaan Pelle, Pelle Jätkä, and Apupelle who was involved with the recording session. Hassu Pelle’s self-titled first and only record was originally released by the band members themselves with the edition of approximately only 30 copies. Hassu Pelle played some mind-boggling live shows for the handful of people mostly j…
Hasardi
For their second official CD release (after a handful of cassettes and CD-Rs) this Helsinki quintet of horns, guitars, drums, and vocals forsake any sense of live atmosphere by mashing four years of recordings into a disorienting, rude collage of over the top takes on multiple forms of extreme music. More early 90s, Bad Vugum-damaged rock than 00s Fonal psych-folk, Hasardi is a tangent of the punk/hardcore continuum that veers wildly and often into free jazz, noise and just general weirdness. Ha…
777
The band was formed in 1999 when ST 37 founder Carlton Crutcher and his wife Sharon began seeking a magical, improvisational musical outlet. The band has stayed true to this vision for 9 years of live shows, studio recordings and numerous musicians. All of the recordings on 777 were recorded in 2007 and represent a peak for Book of Shadows as a live band as well as a studio band. For this CD, Sharon on vocals and Carlton on keys, are joined by Eric Archer (Numbers on the Mast) on guitar/electron…
Desolation Beauty Violence
Born in New Zealand, currently residing in London England, Peter Wright has spent the past decade or more producing limited release recordings of drift-guitar space walks of mesmerising beauty. Desolation Beauty Violence is his third CD release proper, after Distant Bombs (Last Visible Dog, 2004), and Yellow Horizon (Pseudoarcana, 2005). Recorded in London, spring 2003 along with Yellow Horizon, Desolation Beauty Violence is a very personal take on environment and landscape. Peter Wright uses a …
Four more raga moods
Follow-up to Phil Todd’s long-revered Four Raga Moods side presents four more slow-glowing trance bombs that combine lucid, transparent guitar gliss with spectral folk, subliminal drones and guest appearances from Alex Neilson, Ben Reynolds, Mel Delaney, Chris Hladowski, Matt Cairns, Andy Jarvis and Pete Nolan of Magik Markers et al. Fold-out full-colour four-panel digipak. Includes “The Pete Nolan Effect”, one that we’re all familiar with, right? Highly recommended, one of the best Ashtrays thi…
Orla
A.M is Antony Milton, once again stripping back to just his initials for a noise/sound based record. The concept for this album is a pretty simple one, Milton received an Orla chord organ (an instrument that pretty much begs to be used for drones) as a present from a friend and decided to use it as the primary source material for this album. You might be tempted to think Antony has gone and sabotaged himself by chaining himself to such an instrument for an entire album but, through some skilful …