Zoharum Appearing in a CD edition via the good offices of Zoharum, The Stargazer’s Assistant‘s Mirrors & Tides, Shivers & Voids was originally released on double 10” vinyl in 2013 on Utech Records. The trio here consists of David J Smith, David J Knight and Michael J York, all of whom have been members of Cyclobe and/or UnicaZürn among many other groups (Guapo, Coil, Miasma And The Carousel […]
Linus Tossio
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Zoharum Blending field recordings from places as far afield as Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Brooklyn and Indonesia, Robert L Pepper and Robin Storey (also known as Pas Musique and Rapoon respectively) brought Composited Reality to the world on cassette and USB stick in 2018. Now Zoharum have issued a CD edition, and it shimmers with a haze of imaginary and real landscapes made artificial flesh, its coherence constructed into a miasma of hallucinatory […]
empreintes DIGITALes Commissioned by Deutschlandfunk Kultur in 2017 and broadcast first in July 2018, Oscillations Planétaires evokes the larger geological cycles of planet Earth, from the eruptions of geysers and volcanoes to the motion of the tides and onwards to the formation of mountain ranges and the tectonic movements of the continental plates themselves.
Warp For his original soundtrack to Josh and Benny Safdie’s Uncut Gems, Daniel Lopatin (Oneohtrix Point Never) has pulled out all the faux chorale tricks, conjuring an electronic soundtrack that positively bulges with analogue synths that lay the groundwork for a maze of synthesized and sampled voices which are not averse to interjecting “huhs!” and other Ennio Morricone-esque and sub-Magma vocalisations at suitably dramatic moments.
Zonedog Inaugurating the new Zonedog label with a slice of Disrupt ambience, Jan Gleichmar sets the controls for territories beyond both the heavier basslines of his Jahtari releases and the story-led drama of his Omega Station LP, exploring the concept of mood music for a starcraft’s virtual recreation room on this occasion.
Substantia Innominata “Are All Things Equivalent?” may be the question, but the answers that Matt Waldron offers up for his contribution to Drone Records‘ sequence of 10” vinyl releases are as difficult to pin down as one might imagine from someone who has been a significant contributor to the surrealistic behemoth that Nurse With Wound has become over the last forty-odd
Aesthetical Reflecting on symbolic imagery and how it is connected to physical objects, Franck Vigroux‘s Totem LP bristles with sampladelic energy and visceral bass perturbations. Over the course of ten tracks, he grasps hold of the listener’s attention and shakes their auditory perceptions until they start to buckle under the strain.
Play Loud! Filled with a plethora of recursing rhythmic elements, the mournful voice of a soul in non-specific agony (perhaps), scraping on an atonal violin while the rattle of snares and toms lurches across woodblock clacks, cuckoo-clock chimes
Aurora Borealis Gold Are The Ashes Of The Restorer evokes an eldritch combination of screaming wind-tunnel black metal and epicly bombastic post-post-rock of the Explosions In The Sky variety. Given Mories De Jong‘s penchant for all things bleakly symphonic and immensely mordant-sounding, that seems like a fair starting point for beginning to describe just how much of a rinsing-out Golden Ashes give the listeners’ collective brainpan here.
Zoharum The twenty miniatures on Short Scenes barely push beyond three minutes in length, but each fits neatly into a cohesive whole that makes the album work as both abstract background music and an engaging delight to become lost in. Anne Bakker‘s violin moves deftly from mellow and swooping to staccato and
Jahtari Originally released in 2009, Hissing Theatricals was Jackson Bailey‘s début release as Tapes and now receives this vinyl re-issue treatment commemorating its tenth anniversary. A decade on, and Tapes’ resolutely 8-bit sounds have both never seemed more contemporary nor somehow as timeless as they do now. This is perhaps in large part due to Jahtari, who have doggedly kept to the true spirit of lo-fi DIY releases, […]
Fourth Dimension This is not fun, nor is it meant to be. Compassion And Vision sounds vile, nasty, deliberately difficult to listen to — and all the better for it.
Jahtari Jahtari label founder Disrupt has created a haven for all things dubular and dread-inflected, often bringing his own particular strand of science fictional elements to the fore on releases that reference a host of SF tropes from the interstellar planet-busting nihilism of Dark Star (sampled here, of course) to Blade Runner (memorably recreating Roy Batty’s final monologue using a range of heavily-effected speech synthesizers on “Love On” from 2009’s […]
Adaadat Using a heavily modified record deck as the source of most of the rhythmic elements he sues, Graham Dunning has been constructing his mechanical techno into hypnotically surging loops of base sound that revel in a strangely satisfying recursion.
Jahtari For their self-titled EP, Shigeru Ishihara (AKA DJ Scotch Egg) and Kiki Hitomi have ramped up the musical mania found on their Shinsekai LP, delivering a five-track 12” which veritably throbs with dubbed-up electro, Afro-funk and 8-bit disco (e)motion. Cyberpunk to the max, the duo blitter and batter their infectious grooves
Essence Music Playful and swoonsome as ever, the umpteenth Acid Mothers Temple album in their Melting Paraiso UFO guise arrives with a characteristic fusion of wailing guitar histrionics, a fluidly rolling rhythm section and outer space synthesizer threnodies that never cease in their constantly exploring — and explosive — quest for the perfect psychedelic riff.
Rocket Drawing its title from the concept popularised in Robert Anton Wilson‘s Illuminati-series novel The Cosmic Trigger, Gnod‘s Chapel Perilous embarks on a hepped-up journey through the outer and inner spaces of the mind, here expressed through the medium of guitars and other instruments rammed through amplification turned up to at least 23.
Zoharum (CD) / Sonic Meditations (LP/CS) Originally released as mini CDrs on different labels in 2009, Expo 70‘s Justin Wright was joined for these two lengthy sessions by Matt Hill from Umberto on both bass guitar and at the drum machine controls. And what flights of psychedelic fantasy they are, drifting and floating on ever-flowing waves of looped guitar and recursive effect pedal washes that uncurl, largely in homage to […]