Anna Von Hausswolff – “The Miraculous” • City Slang
Ambient
It’s quite interesting to notice how the colossal pipe organ is finding its way back into modern music. Lychgate did an impressive and heavy job with it in “An Antidote For The Glass Pill” and now Anna Von Hausswolff creates a requiem for “The Miraculous”, her newest studio effort. It’s halfway between nightmarish and salvific, hellish and ecclesiastic, medieval but plenty suited for a Guggenheim installation due to its post-rock-post-ambient contemporariness. A whispering representation of solitude. EP
Dragged Into Sunlight & Gnaw Their Tongues – “N.V.” • Prosthetic
Noisy scum
As I write this, I’m sitting in a bar called Kuluma in the Finnish town of Oulu. If you ever come by, step in and ask for a “Rammstein” if you really want to witness the lunacy of Finnish people, I fucking love this country, the alcohol, the women, Finnair and how you can finish your bloody afternoon fistfighting an unknown bloke just for the sake of fun. I’m blatted already listening to “N.V.” on my laptop, Paris is in the news and my head is juxtaposing a shitstorm of sonic terrorism and scummy humanity; was there ever a better occasion to listen to Gnaw Their Tongues adverbial viscous machinery handballing the grindy backdoor of Dragged Into Sunlight while golden showering everyone else’s – spectators – mouth? I’m hopeful when drunk, but not today and I really might end this evening punching a pale dude’s face. GMC
Helta Skelta – “Beyond Black Stump” • Deranged
Garage
Aussies doing it right again, ha. Helta Skelta is a criminally good band, combining garage/proto-punk with some psych tendencies, turning every and each song into a symposium of groove, danceable hooks and dogma-free rock rhythms. Their sound is so warm that even a foggy London November night will resemble a Cali beach short-wearing afternoon. Jam this in a dirty basement to achieve the climax. PS
Kampfar – “Profan” • INDIE Recordings
Black Metal
Early last year, Kampfar presented its fans with “Djevelmakt”, the closest they’ve recently been to a return to form. With “Profan” the tempo is pushed considerably higher, with a proliferation of blast beats. Nevertheless, the key word is consistency as there’s nothing particularly new in “Profan”, understandably given the nature of the genre they move in and thankfully done with high standards, meaning less uninspired melodies and more simple yet effective riffs on top of which Dolk displays his usual vocal excellence – we can’t really think of many who get close to his level. Unfortunately, it’s not enough to mask a certain feeling of predictability and lack of outstanding riffs. Sure to please the most ardent fans of epic/pagan black metal and definitely well crafted within the restrictions of the genre, specially due to the level of the double closer “Pole In The Ground” and “Tornekratt”. LP
Oakeater – “Aquarius” • SIGE
Ambient | Drone
What if all things disappeared abruptly? What if the universe worked as an existential vacuum, swallowing mankind as a whole leaving not a single trace of us behind? Death, i.e. disappearing, is the ultimate leveler, the ultimate equalizer, where all odds drop to zero because the fight is finally over. “Aquarius” is this panegyric treaty about emptiness, finiteness, solitudinem, non-idolatry, emphasizing metaphysics as an answer to accept definitive cessation – at least that is what the record transmits to my brain and what my encephalic bioproduct then assumes as a grand icon of bleakness. A morass of dark ambient music, with drone aesthetics and the talent to unasthetize the apathetic – well done Alex Barnett, Seth Sher and Jeremiah Fisher. PS
Oneohtrix Point Never – “Garden Of Delete” • Mute
Allomorphic Electronics
«Chaos is order yet undeciphered», the ontology of post-language might be the solution to disallow death to happen, in a future os non-congruency where death, precisely, will be an empty word, an uninhibited marquise where the man of the past used to disembowel himself of all tomorrows, Ecce homo who used to perish —– I.N.R.I —–, the future does not have space for death, for martyrs, for sacrificial acts, a human body will not be decomposed by inner-bacteria and environment, it will turn into a NONHUMAN object, speculative realism where the word EXTERMINATION is slowly, orderly replaced by DELETE. And its garden will be a cenotaph, a green–long–field of disposable technologic material, no longer updatable but still throbbing no matter the month or year it exists in;-;-;-;-d-e-a-t-h-w-i-l-l-b-e-c-o-m-e-d-e-l-e-t-e-b-u-t-y-o-u-w-i-l-l-n-e-v-e-r-d-i-e-. GMC
Revenge – “Behold.Total.Rejection” • Season Of Mist
Black-death metal
The world needs more Revenge. The band, that is, not the act giving it name. It’s easy to become furious and frustratedly hopeless when taking a look at the world around us and there’s just something about the relentlessness of the Canadian’s black death that is as good of an outlet for rage, piss and vinegar as anything we can think of. Just when there’s a faint smell of something “pleasing” coming along like in “Mobilization Rites” or that groovy start to the great “Desolation Insignia”, they immediately go back to unleashing furious black death on our faces. No melodies, no soft bits, no experimentation, just fury made sound. We wouldn’t have it any other way and we’re guessing neither would them. LP
Sang – “Món Oblidat” • La Vida Es Un Mus
Hardcore punk
OH FUCK YEAH. As this fucking autocratic fascist who happens to answer by the name of Mariano Rajoy does not recognize Catalonia self-determination, Sang scream their lungs out with absolute hatred. Not that I am particularly inclined to affirm that Sang really happens to care about Catalonia independence, as they are probably way more keen to Proudhon’s sovereignty terms, but “Món Oblidat”‘s gaze of disgust targets authoritarianism and society regimentation in every punk beat. It is raw, empowering, a must if you are still in love with Barcelona. PS
The Body & Krieg – “The Body & Krieg” • At A Loss
Noise | Drone | Doom
A fucked up soundtrack for fucked up times. Weren’t for the actions of some machine gun yielding dipshits, we’d have spent Friday 13 celebrating three collaborations. First, the Portuguese left got their shit temporarily together to democratically overthrow our previous government of austerity lover boys and conservatives, all while the much anticipated “NV” and this “The Body & Krieg” were being streamed to the world and ready to be released. Crafted and recorded during two days somewhere in between “Christ Redeemers” and “I Shall Die Here”, this is absolutely must-listen material for lovers of bleak and abrasive sounds. With collaborations more often than not resulting in material which is hardly more than a linear combination of its authors writing styles, it’s refreshing to listen to what Neil Jameson achieved with the seemingly always inspired duo of Buford and King. While sounding closer to The Body than Krieg mostly by virtue of being slow and weird, the collaboration definitely stands its ground as a singular piece, filled to the brim with plenty of creative urgency and musical discomfort. LP
TV Freaks – “Bad Luck Charms” • Deranged
Punk | Garage
Good, groovy, beer-soaked punk is never enough actually. Canada’s TV Freaks are Friday night mayhem, leaving through Stooges analog spiritual misguidance in this digital dreary century. Bloody amazing riffs, basement-loving rhythms and a somehow uplifting mood similar to their fellow countrymen in Fucked Up or Burning Love – TV Freaks do have people who used to play in BL, while on the subject. PS
Wrekmeister Harmonies – “Night Of Your Ascension” • Thrill Jockey
Ambient
J.R Robinson envision is glittering. Operating as a maestro, a sagacious directeur de théâtre, he substantiates all the beauty of Béla Tarr‘s black-and-white cinematography with pan-genre, wide-ranged, mournful compositions. The formula used in “Night Of Your Ascension” is similar to the one found in previous records – it all begins with a terrene physicalization of heaven, as if Mihály Vig happened to be in the exact same room of Arvö Part to materialize the transfiguration of Jesus on Mount Tabor, a placid contemplation of a miracle embodied in a women’s choir. What happens next could very well portray all the chapters between Gethsemane and Golgotha, the story of an ascension bathed in blood, spit and pain – thunderous riffs, drone-inspired, percolating all of his torn flesh until the very end with howling screams. It is tragic and the tragedian sensation is what Wrekmeister Harmonies better invokes, thanks to a multitude of invitees: The Body, Alex Hacke, Marissa Nadler, Mark Solotroff, Bruce Lamont, Dylan O’Toole, Olivia Block, Chris Brokaw, Jaime Fennelly or Cooper Cain. EP