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Tennessee’s Joseph Davenport is back with a new Millipede record, this first since 2011′s Realms (although he did have a new piece on my free comp You’re All The Fucking Best) and it’s a fucking winner. This dude belts out the noisiest harsh bliss I’ve ever heard, sounding like he’s tossed a hundred guitars into a raging bonfire, caked in scorched & burnt feedback, with gauzy melodies climbing out from a pit of red hot embers, some blown out mixture of shoegaze, psych, drone folk, & space rock, taking all of those sounds and leaving them out to crust up in the desert sun, the core still peaking through the shell, and in fact the “lead” guitar is more noticeable than ever in The Lower World, nuzzling up to your ear drums while the caustic distortion bores through your skull, this is a masochistic record of pain & pleasure, the beauty buried deep in grit and wholly worth excavating, one of Millipede’s best, and exciting as hell because this the second part of a trilogy (Realms being the first), so we know there’s more destructive brilliance on the horizon.
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Solo project of K. Arthur Miller, making some somber tunes out of drone, folk, and doom. Exceptional stuff, using all weapons at his disposal, quietly screaming Godspeed guitars, layered, processed, & rewound, delicate picking inside on a rainy day, lush washes of bliss, hushed echoes in haunted halls, a few moments of doomed & distorted crunch, all wrapped up in a dark, melancholic shroud, bright enough not to push you over the edge but gloomy in all the right ways, a melodramatic dance through fog with Death waiting for you on the other side, beautiful & depressing, the best kind of drone. Free if you want it to be so there’s no reason to pass over this, and seeing as this is his first proper full length, you might want to keep an eye on him.
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Two ladies from Washington that bring some serious fucking heaviness. Not sure if there’s a scene over there where this type of insanity is the norm and I just haven’t heard it yet, but All’s Lost is impossible to peg. They’re doing something totally original and it’s the fucking best. Some sort of black sludgy screamo garage that just melts my heart. Sweet hooks & melodies run through a fuzz filter, blistering screams, massive riffs next to atmospheric tremolo, blast beats forgone for everything but, depressing lyrics and a permeating darkness to knock it out of the park. Not really weird on a song by song basis but put together this is a wholly twisted beast. Best of all it’s cheap as shit. Digital is PWYW, tapes or CDs a mere $5, and they have some killer shirts for the same amount. I fuckin love these guys. Now just gimme some vinyl.
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Download Ancient Edge
/purely intimate/
/shining voice obscured by clouds/
/melted harmony/
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Killer new drones coming out of Ukraine from this dude Alex Sakevych (aka Endless Melancholy). Moonshine Blues is Sakevych’s, umm, other drone project with a sad bastard name. Not too sure of this distinctions between the two, but Through is some truly outstanding shit. Strings & reeds style lushness with dense dark sweeps of sound, some crackly Basinski rumble, cinematic mini-blowouts, all of this with a massive cloud of sadness that never leaves. Sakevych is playing like he knows true grief, his drones are choked up with a blissful despair that take gloom to the next level. This is the best kind of stuff, unbelievably gorgeous and overwhelmingly somber. Floating in the grey and rapt in heartache, while sheets & swells of euphoria shimmer in the dark, dragged to the edge of oblivion and left alone, regretting everything, hopeless. This is the real deal, top notch bottom dollar stuff, waiting for you to call it your favorite.
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This is some truly incredible shit. Crowhurst is primarily Jay Gambit, with some pals lending hands when needed, and There Is No Hope Here is the final piece in his Hopeless trilogy, an hour long no-filler slab of doomed & droning noise. A hulking beast of a record, next level power electronics taking the fury down a notch, upping the subtlety, and incorporating a hefty dose of gloom. Huge ear shattering walls of static, melancholic chords, Millipedian guitar sprawls, massive solid drone run through a hundred years of grit. So much awesomeness. Sadly, you missed out on pre-ordering the vinyl (there were only 6 made by Corporate Records), a 12″ of concentric circles that break into three parts (12″, 10″, 7″) that can be played individually or as a whole. Too cool. But fear not, a tape is on the way courtesy of Feral Fang, and if that doesn’t suit your fancy, Gambit has released There Is No Hope Here as a PWYW download. No excuses.
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Total fucking annihilation. Just one dude bringing the whole world down. This is short (about 10 minutes) but free, and is probably the biggest bang for your buck you’ll get all week. This is some of the best black metal noise on the market, flecked with grind & doom and caked in filth. This is so blown out, the sound actually drops out, moments when its burning in the red and it’s just static crackle. The vocals are almost indistinguishable from anything else, the instruments non-existent, everything is a crumbling mess of noise exploding from your speakers, a raw necro wasteland from the depths of a desert hell, burnt, charred, and scarred, nothing as brutal as this. Unbelievably awesome. He’s posted a bunch of his albums for free on Bandcamp, ranging from black ambient to… this nightmare inducing acid bath. So get the fuck over there and support this madman.
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This is some weeeeird shit. You might remember Tedesco from his free album Future Strains a couple years back. Well, Pretty Lies doesn’t have much in common with that sonically, but it’s still free! Yeah, you definitely want to go download this. It’s some bizarre experimental pop, with Tedesco goin off the deep end, delivering a dark kitchen sink record with noise punk, anti-folk, electronics, every instrument he can get his hands on, and vocals that defy categorization, insanely deep & rich, like Morrissey singing opera, or maybe like some folk metal bards, very story like, and frequently depressing as hell with lyrics like “I’ll probably die alone but that’s not what I’m worried about. I’m worried about my soul.” This is weird on every level, but still rooted in pop, so there’s recognizable song structures and melodies and shit, even if there isn’t always a chorus to chime in with. It’s not an easy listen by any means, but 1) you like it that way and 2) this beast is free. Ain’t no reason for you to skip over this unless you’re feeling unadventurous, in which case, download it any way and save it for a rainy day.
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So it has come to this, the final nail in the Jakob Battick & Friends coffin. Originally a limited physical release in 2010, Battick decided to re-release Painful Places for free on Bandcamp as a farewell. Well, this couldn’t be a more fitting finale as this is as fucking sad as it gets. Melancholic and bittersweet, stripped down to its bones, just a couple slow guitars with Battick and and his friends filling in the spaces with their voices, Battick’s rich & resonating, super intimate, like you’re right there with him in a cold, empty church attic. This is the bleakest, most minimal folk you’ve ever heard, Battick can take a few chords and turn them upside down, into something previously unknown, and his voice makes everything incredibly tragic but still uplifting, like he’s fucking Atlas with the weight of the world on his shoulders for infinity, singing to the world that there’s nothing to worry about ’cause he’s fucking got it, death, death, more death, and it’s all ok because nothing matters. So yeah, this is really fucking good, and there’s no reason you shouldn’t grab a gratis copy. Here’s hoping that Battick isn’t done making music and he’s just retiring the “Friends.” The world would certainly be worse off if he was done for good, so lets make this a public plea for more Battick creations. We (I) need it.
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This record is insane. Some guy from Roxbury (aka Boston) making twisted bedroom jams of a hundred different genres. Every song is another sound, tropical drone, gritty technoise, dubby witch house, skittery ambience, spastic jungle DnB, chilled catchy AnCo pop, lo-fi chiptuney party starters, everything under the DIY sun. And it’s super sample heavy, almost every track has some clips from films and interviews and stuff. Definitely demo style, but not demo quality. This is fucking killer, it’s just all over the place. It makes for one chaotic mindfuck of a record and clearly that’s something to be proud of. Plus, IT’S FREE. Go download this shit before he changes his mind.
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A caustic debut by this new French dude, and he’s giving it away for free. Grab it first, read later. This is some awesome fucked noise, like Yellow Swans on a murdering spree or Gnaw Their Tongues doing power electronics. Scary brutal static, nauseous paranoia, fucking intense blow outs of grit & grime, clear and distorted vocals, dappled with moments of respite, beauty, chirping birds, none lasting too long before being jerked back into the terror. Film samples get thrown around, sometimes recognizable & enjoyable, like a clip from My Neighbor Totoro, others are a bit more horrifying, like the one of a girl screaming for her life while a maniac laughs. Some uniquely killer shit, no reason to pass over this. Digitally free, or pay some cash and get a tape.
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I’ve sort of stopped paying attention to straight up 8 bit music lately. No fault of its own, I just have gotten a little disinterested. It needs an extra hook or something for me to give it a chance. Not a gimmick, just a theme or a variation on the sound. MicroD’s got that shit taken care of. His chiptunes are 100% Game Boy goodness but to spice things up he gave himself some constraints, working with prime numbers. Math + chiptunes = fuck yes I’m listening. He’s got “Prime” parts I-IV and he composed each one in a different prime time signature, starting with 3/4 and working up to 11/4 time. The artwork is based around primes (location of orange) and some of the tracks have prime beats per minute. Dude knows his primes. Plus there’s a song called “Fist.bmp.” Brilliant! Add all that fun up with the catchy as fuck super solid 8 bit housewarmers and you’ve struck gold. The real kicker is you can grab Prime in all it’s digital sexiness for free (if you want) or you can cop the limited analog for a mere $5. The power is yours!
Everyone should remember Christina Vantzou’s gorgeous Nº. 1 on Kranky last year. And if for some reason you passed over it, let me be the last to tell you that it’s fantastic. She’s one half of The Dead Texan, the other half of whom is Adam Wiltzie, one of the dudes from Stars Of The Lid. Nº. 1 is the Kranky release that got overshadowed by A Winged Victory For The Sullen, another Wiltzie duo, this time with Dustin O’Halloran. But all of this is just precursor, and only for those of you who are unaware, which I hope is few and far between.
So in addition to but separate from the Nº. 1 release on Kranky, Vantzou put out on her own a film accompaniment to the album and a slew of remixes of tracks from Nº. 1. The contributors to the remix project are an insanely awesome bunch: Koen Holtkamp, Loscil, Ben Vida, Dustin O’Halloran, White Rainbow, Robert Lippok, Ernest Gibson III, Montgomery Knott, Isan, and there’s even a new Dead Texan track at the end. All of their takes on Vantzou’s subtleties are just as grand and wonderful as Nº. 1.
And the movie is stunning (trailer is below). It’s 47 minutes, running parallel to the record, although it’s broken up into chapters that don’t necessarily coincide with songs. There’s a golden beauty to it, with lots of found footage manipulated to meet Vantzou’s high standards of quality, taking everything from large crowds to intimate portraits, expansive mountain ranges to solitary swaying trees, and adding a layer of flickering patina to make it all shine. There’s an especially peaceful segment of planes flying through the clouds, as shot from another nearby plane. Truly stunning.
The movie is only available physically through Vantzou’s site and it comes with the remixes. Or you could just knab the remixes digitally and forgo the exceptional video experience. Your choice. But I will judge you if you ignore the movie.
