Kwaidan – Three Empty Rooms Of Light And Space: Ostension (Bathetic)
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Kwaidan is quite the trio, with Land Of Decay bro Neil Jendon, Locrian dude André Foisy, and Mike Weis from Zelienople, brought together to make a glorious racket. After kicking things off with a killer self titled tape on Accidental Guest last year, these dudes are back with a proper full length on Bathetic conjuring a magnificent dark drone that blends noise, doom, and Americana to make an unbelievably fucking awesome sound, mystical & transformative, synths & guitars sweeping through a pre-cathartic explosion with slowly plodding drums, a sprawling loose atmosphere that’s tight as fuck, dudes working together so seamlessly, breathing occult jams that praise the permanent solar eclipse, clear black haze settled in a field, fireflies mingling with ash in the dusk, a doom that sheds its metal crust and is perfectly at home in the company of dusty acoustics & buzzing static, a homeless midnight wanderer that couldn’t sound any fucking better, and with the most perfect album title, these guys hit it out of the fucking park.
Èlg – Notringo Indigo (SDZ)
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This dude Ghedalia Thazartès Laurent Gérard (thanks Ian!) (of Opéra Mort, Reines d’Angleterre, etc) is all over the place with his Èlg releases, jumbling genres like nothing, and La Chimie adds to the cacophony, bringing a sort of fucked up darkwave mixed with the occasional field recording, the album opens with a vomit inducing first track that’s got creepy found sounds including some dude sobbing while the electronics sound like boiling guts, so fucking wretched I can smell it. The rest of the record twists together a woozy mangled avant pop that ranges from burnt musique concrète to a more structured techno groove, spilling beats all over a bleak futuristic synth sprawl, nightmare ambient b/w Carpenter disco, and Thazartès freaking the fuck out in every track, singing with a mesmerizing atonal processed to hell & back slop of a rollercoaster, like Paul Reubens voicing the spaceship in Flight Of The Navigator, his vocals driving the record, definitely the most prominent and unsettling part, totally incomprehensible & fucked up, a mess on top of a mess but bound by the bizarre, hands down one of the weirdest records of the year, a winner for sure.
Svarte Greiner – Black Tie (Miasmah)
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Erik K. Skodvin’s Svarte Greiner project gets creepier & creepier, this new LP on his own Miasmah label is some harrowing shit, two side long pieces of dark string drone perfect for tuxedoed occult rituals, comatose bass string plucks on top of haunted smears, hushed unintelligible clatter behind the scenes adding to the mystery, black bliss, slowmo static fog rolling through valleys of bleak & bittersweet depression, murky & crystal clear, floating in the deep sea ink, a minimal motionless nightmare that you never wake from, perfectly exquisite in every way, only 500 each of LPs & CDs, so don’t snooze.
Millipede – Dungeon Dweller (self released)
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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.
Fabio Orsi & Pimmon – I Wish You Were In Yallingup (Home Normal)
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Unbelievably amazing debut collaboration between these two drone gurus, the lushest heavy-hearted bliss I’ve heard all year, an ocean of sound growing larger every moment, lazer peepers floating in the glowing dusk like some extended post contact scene in The X-Files, wondering if what just happened really happened and relishing in the bewildering peace, subtle crackle from half memories, unmistakably gorgeous dreams of the Netherworld where emotions burrowed deep in your psyche are coaxed out by the bittersweet beauty, swirling & overwhelming, euphoric & cathartic, like being bathed in golden black rivers of transcendence, this is a perfect goddamn record that somehow tops both of the artists’ prior work, and painfully limited to 250 vinyl and 500 CDs, so do what you do best and add this masterpiece to your collection.
Lawrence English – Lonely Women’s Club (Important)
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This is Lawrence English at his fucking finest, just him and his Elka 30 organ billowing out the most beautiful minimal drone, with a touch of post processing to blur the edges a bit, this becomes a fucking masterpiece of warmth, the very core of life, the bright glimmer that shines even on the darkest days, reality seen through rose tinted glass, a little woozy from the booze, solemn & content, perfect sounds floating and finding their way home in my heart, infinite bliss, the best sounds you’ll hear all year. Only 500 copies from the impeccable Important. Won’t last.
Zerfallt – Side A (Field Studies)
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Boston dabbler Lee Tindall, currently recording as Belarisk and with Mutation Of The Gryd, currently running killer tape label YDLMIER, and previously cosmic jamming with Daniel Lopatin & Andy Plovnick as Astronaut, has a new tape of occult noise as mainstay Zerfallt on Field Studies, burning new holes in the fabric of dark matter, this is some 30th century mystic shit, synths clouded with death murk and screeching hot metal melting over the hellmouth, robo-hum droning hard and controls set straight for the collapsing star overhead, hypnotized by harsh winds and grit & grind, the fever of possession bringing lucid nightmares to reality, a page torn from the burnt book of brilliance, this is some excellent weirdness from a dude with an already excellent back catalog. Grab a copy to blast at your next sacrifice.
Betacicadae – Pahoa (Elegua)
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One Kevin Scott Davis making an astounding debut with Betacicadae. A wholly unique record, taking every instrument he’s got, a bunch of guitars, a wood flute, vibraphone, harp, violin, drums, synths, and runs some of it through some effects pedals, does some post-processing, and mixes it all up with field recordings from farms, rainforests, and cities, making the most incredible electro-acoustic ambient record that is its own separate planet of sound, there’s nothing else quite like this, it’s a microcosm of personality but the breadth is endless, breathing warmth into electronics and twisting organics beyond their limits, life is everywhere & at every moment, this covers the entire range of emotion with calm oddities, frightened fauna, chaos & control, washed out & dazzlingly brilliant, the dark night of the unknown & the slow morning peace, and the opening track “Pahoa” is the most beautiful fucking thing I’ve ever heard, it’s a masterpiece of wonder, a place of perfection, and I just want to live inside it forever. This is as good as debuts get, my friends. The best on every level. The whole thing is streaming and there’s only 100 copies each of vinyl and CD, so don’t do anything dumb like not pick one of these up immediately.
Taps – Side Two (Individual Lines)
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Two bad Boston vets making some weird noise that’s all kinds of cool. Brendan Murray does some electronic wandering and Chris Strunk bangs out krauty jazzy foreign beats on his drum kit. Not really sure where the fuck this would get shelved in a record shop, they’ve got some sprawling minimal psych that gets into a killer fuckin groove, hushed ambience where they’re bathed in tape hiss, a semi-IDM that could be played at only the specialest of dance parties, and sonic synth explorations propelled with drum fuel. It’s kinda funky, kinda techno, kinda punk, but totally sparse and just rad as hell, unlike anything else coming outta Boston right now. Dudes know how to keep it fresh. Tapes & digital available from the increasingly awesome local label Individual Lines.
Rorcal – V (Cal Of Ror / SickManGettingSick / Lost Pilgrims / Wolves & Vibrancy)
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This has been playing non-stop ever since I found it a couple months ago. Totally fucking relentless black metal with heavy doses of doom, death metal, post-hardcore, and whatever other heavy as fuck metal you want to throw in there, Rorcal are raining devastation through the whole record. The only times they let up on this are the atmospheric intro and two short & dramatic operatic interludes, other than that, this is a total fucking onslaught similar to Portal’s black/death brutality. And motherfuck this is as heavy as it gets, black as hell, yeah, but every time they change time signatures they rupture another organ, every blast beat followed by a sludgy lurch gives you another concussion, and the vocals are like a black metal Scott Kelly, screaming like his vocal chords are getting torn out of his throat, the dense guitars almost going post black metal but lacking the beauty, instead just giving you a grisly impenetrable wall of apocalyptic loud as fuck that honestly feels like the best fucking thing I’ve ever heard. As awesome as it gets. Hands down one of my favorite metal records. Super super limited, only 333 copies pressed (and some tapes too but I don’t know how many) with a jacket that has the title die cut out. So sexy.
Owlfood – Drift Towards Her (Behind The Door)
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An excellent Boston trio that’s been hiding in the shadows for too long, hopefully this killer new LP will get them the attention they deserve. Destroyers Of The Moon is some dark moody shit, twisting doom drone and neo-folk gloom into sprawling blackened pagan jams, shamanistic chants à la Charalambides spoken over haunted strings and buzzing guitars, a pitch black night spent in the desert, opening the gates to the underworld and conjuring spirits to rain death, acoustic whispers in the smoke with the thrum of fear lurking beneath, dreams interchanged with reality in the throws of hypnosis, a delicate melancholic record of harrowing black folk, beautiful & exceptionally original, only 250 pressed up on the band’s newly minted label, you definitely don’t want to miss out on this.
Andrew Weathers Ensemble – O/OU (Ensemble) (Full Spectrum)
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Another incredible album from my favoritest fucking guy. What Happens When We Stop is a cross country album, started in North Carolina with Weathers’ buds, elaborated on the road headed out west, and finished up with his pals in California. This one’s just as wonderful as the last, Guilford County Songs, but still not quite as masterful as the debut, We’re Not Cautious. There’s a notable lack of prominent banjo, and I fucking love the banjo, but a big focus on the guitar, more so than before, which is awesome because the guitar work just gets better with each release. Everything is just as warm and incomparably serene as ever, old American folk perfectly melded with contemporary drone & neo-classical, subtle electronics peaking through the twinkling piano, harmoniums humming beneath hypnotic acoustic strumming, but Weathers’ voice has changed a bit, a lower tone and letting his drawl shine through, a little disorienting at first, but it still works beautifully, and honestly, the guitar, just so fucking sweet with those drones, I could listen to Weathers pick away all day with the strings & brass & reeds & everything else droning in the backseat, it’s the most heavenly sound you can get. This dude is unstoppably awesome and I will devour everything he throws at us. You should probably join me in my devouring and pick this up, it comes with a sexy photo book with the work of Aaron Canipe, so you’re definitely getting your money’s worth.
Crowhurst – Seven Seconds To Live (Static Reason / Placenta)
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Crowhurst is Jay Gambit’s project that has a continually revolving cast and he’s put out a ton of work, like Aidan Baker heights of prolific. Death Van, if you can look past that goofy cover art, is easily his best work to date and has someone guesting on almost every track. He magnificently weaves between blissful noise and noisy bliss, although I’m more inclined to lean towards the blissful noise. This is some supreme harshness, boiling power electronics mixed with monolithic drone, caustic industrial shredding, and lurking beneath it all, bittersweet melodies full of gloom & heartache. So much going on here and it’s all beautifully hellish and fucking relentless, songs that are nonstop from start to end, each burning its own hole in your skull, bulldozing you with crumbling walls of static & deep bone rattling bass, and somehow putting the most euphoric twist on it like the warmth in the final seconds of your life. This record is 100% awesome, and if you’ve listened to Crowhurst before and were like, “yeah, that was cool” but haven’t kept up with his output, this is the one to come back to. And if you’re altogether new to this dude, now’s the fucking time to get in on this. Vinyl & tape versions are available (the tapes come packaged in body bags) but you gotta make it happen over here.
Mary Lattimore – Pluto The Planet (Desire Path)
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An exquisite debut from Mary Lattimore, working a wonderful magic on her harp, doing for the harp what Fahey & Basho did for the guitar, offering one of the most serene & lovely records, for drinking tea and watching the sun rise in your green room, subtly layered & picking so soft it’s barely audible, whispers silenced in the breeze, matched perfectly with exotic electronics conjuring peepers & nightowls, so peaceable that the necessary Bell Jar breakdown in the middle of the A side almost undoes everything that precedes it, but it recovers, restores a beautiful order, and nearly forgotten in sweet bliss by the end of the whole thing, drowned in a minimally lush majesty. Desire Path keeping their flawless batting average up with this one, such a stellar record, and all the more exciting since it’s her solo debut. Available on April 1 and only 300 pressed, so don’t say I didn’t warn you.
Total Life – Bender (Debacle)
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Total fucking perfection right here. Growing’s Kevin Doria has stepped back up to the Total Life plate now that Growing is on a hiatus of sorts, bringing a minimalism too rarely seen these days. This is drone lovers’ drone, a pulsing electronic raga sounding like Dan Friel if he studied under Pandit Pran Nath, like watching a monk meditate in a strobe light, taking a few tones and pushing them until they smear together, indistinguishable from everything else, until you see the light shine through and forms appear, not because it’s fucking with your mind (although it does that, too) but because it’s an organic shapeshifter, solid becomes liquid, a visceral hypnosis, you wake up at the end of the record with no memory of time passing and hoping these sounds will lead you to enlightenment. So glad Doria is back with this project. As far as I know, he’s got at least two more records coming out this year, including a split on Important with Deceh (which is a match made in heaven) so looks like we’re in for some more awesome fucking drone in the near future. Get psyched.
