Black Eagle Child – Eighteen And Six (Under The Spire)

 
Black Eagle Child (aka Michael Jantz, aka Avant Archive champion) is dropping a new LP on Under The Spire, which is certainly reason to celebrate. And after a couple dozen releases, Jantz has purified his tactics to give you the glorious Go Around, Again. Fantastic sounds on here, doing a sort of Citay-like ambient psych with elements of Ponytail’s light loop styles and The Books’ chopped pop, sunny and charming and everything pleasant. Jantz shows his cards on the first track, the A side stunner “Sun Cylinder,” where he touches everything with a gentleness, crafting hundreds of loops & layers that don’t build into any sort of climax but come and go as they please, a constantly evolving current, a vacation in his dreamworld. The three tracks on the B side are equally wonderful, cheery & easy, giving you the benefit of the doubt, hooking you with its playfulness & mass appeal, but then Jantz shows off his mad skills, every cut & fade a perfect segue to the next moment of bliss, and compiling what seems like a full warehouse of instruments, you get to hear everything in his collection, banjos & accordions, bells & xylophones, electronics & violins, drums & hand claps, lots of guitars & pedals, all that shit and then some, a never ending display of sweet kitchen sinkery. It’ll be shipping soon and it’s still in pre-order mode where you can get it for £2 cheaper than usual. No reason to skip out on this one.

Karl Vorndran – Crisis Inverted (Rubber City Noise)

 
One of the dudes who founded Rubber City Noise and half of the Cane Swords duo, Vorndran’s making his debut outing with Thawing. Awesome harsh drones on this tape (yeah, that’s some high quality square art for the digital/Bandcamp whatever, the j-card is only slightly different), blazin lazers set to liquify, Excitebike motors revving & overheating, thunderous electromagnetic storms surging every socket in the house, bitter, acidic, & smooth like coffee, harsh, brittle, & warbled like some fucking alien roar, a guttural and insane swarm of noises, night terrors and fever dreams, chaos & control, darkness in the form of modular synths. A beautiful fucking mess of a tape and a magnificent display of Vorndran’s skillz. As with all RCN releases, Thawing is limited, so don’t dawdle.

Chord – Stasis (MIE)
Track removed by request.
 
Strictly for the hardcore minimalists. These Chicago dudes play long form pieces off of single chords, and they play hard. This is the kind of power drone that transports. Gmaj7 has two side long pieces, two sides of the same coin, the first being a deep and detailed mind expander that pauses about 3/4 of the way through and turns into a dark & heavy many-layered wall of bliss. The B side is the first time these guys brought in some drums, so it’s perhaps a bit too dynamic for you purists, but it’s an elegant cheap cialis 20 mg transition and it works beautifully, an uplifting and immersive track that builds organically to a lush, euphoric climax, sounding like a fuckin drone rockstar. I’m not sure how Chord haven’t already joined the ranks of modern minimalists like Sun Circle, but hopefully they’re on their way. Maybe Gmaj7 won’t be the one to vault them to the top due to its badass drums, but this is an absolutely killer slab of drone nonetheless. Drops next week on some sexy limited vinyl with handscreened jackets thanks to MIE.

Number None – Vile Gnarl (Land Of Decay)

 
Such a shame, this Chicago duo continues to be one of the most under-appreciated bands around. And you may say, “If they’re so under-appreciated, how come you haven’t written about them before?” Well, I have, but for some inexplicable reason, I can’t find the review I did for Urmerica a few years back. I dunno. Blame Google? It’s a strange world. Anyway, Strategies Against Agriculture (yes, it’s a Neubauten reference) is their latest, a tape courtesy of Land Of Decay. Apparently this one’s been sitting in the vaults for a number of years, which is another goddamn shame because this shit is brilliant. Absolute destruction on here, Skullflowery apocalyptic feedback with brief and deeply buried moments of bliss. This is Satan’s tinnitus, a white hot static drone, caustic and penetrating, boring deep into your brain until your vision turns black & red, a maelstrom of electronics, harsh putrid noise without the powerfully violent bursts, a monotonous skullfuck that will make your eyes roll back and see Truth. No reason to skip out on this, and if it’s your first foray into the Number None fold, you’ve got a helluva back catalog to work through.

Kyle Bobby Dunn – Ending Of All Odds (Low Point)

 
Honestly, I thought Ways Of Meaning would be the last Kyle Bobby Dunn record I wrote about. It was his best yet and he’s gotten big enough that I’m hardly doing anybody any favors by plugging the same dude. But then Bring Me The Head Of Kyle Bobby Dunn comes out and it’s got the album title of the year and it’s a 2 hour long double disc on Low Point and it’s just as good if not better than his last one. So, fuck. I gotta. This is fucking outstanding. A slight progression from Ways Of Meaning, Dunn is further refining the passionate & delicate http://www.mindanews.com/buy-neurontin/ sounds of the ether. The power of this lies in its depth and breadth, it has both quantity & quality, a wide open sky, free of clouds, absolutely pure, and without boundaries. The tracks flow perfectly into each other, an endless supply of next-level bliss. Nothing stands out, everything fits, and the warmth has no limits, wholly encompassing your every fiber, a homogenous universe of total perfection, taking everything you love about Dunn, stretching it out, extracting the positive, and wrapping it in eye-opening brilliance. When this drops next month, make sure you take a couple days off work because listening to this is all you’re going to want to do.

Charlemagne Palestine & Janek Schaefer – Raga De L’apres Midi Pour Aude (excerpt) (Desire Path)

 
This right here is a seriously epic collaboration. Yes. These two dudes work insanely well together, and just look at the list of sounds here: shruti box, harmonica, carillon & desk bells/chimes, prayer bear (um, what?), sine waves, melodica, and, best of all, lots of voices. Two side long tracks that bring the fuckin drone. The A side starts out with an incredibly rich drone, warm & inviting, mostly blissful, that soon has Palestine’s vocals bleeding into it, groaning & howling, turning into some ceremonial Eyes Wide Shut shit, dark and creepy as fuck, layers and layers of voice, some conjuring good spirits, others warding off the evil ones. The other side starts out with some location recordings, people talking at a festival or something, can i buy cialis without prescription then the drone comes in, this time the most unsettling harmonium/sine wave drone imaginable, a dense disharmonic wall of unintelligible fear and dark swells of demonic scum, more voices come in, speaking a foreign language, exorcising the evil, and the drone fades, turning into bells & pleasantries, eventually ending on a bright note with euphoric harmoniums and bright pure bliss. This is the fucking best. Honestly, Desire Path is literally the most potently awesome label right now. This is only their fourth release and the other three have been absolutely untouchable. Slow and steady wins the race, and Desire Path is miles ahead. As if you needed any more incentive to pick this up, it comes on flame red vinyl and is accompanied by a motherfucking demon mask.

Padme – Created In Their Image (SicSic)

 
This dude is a bit mysterious. Sisto Rossi, from Germany, put out a lot of underground stuff maybe? Now he’s moved to the US and this might be his last tape? I don’t know. It’s not that important. Wisdom From The Stars is though. This is some grand shit. Looong stretched out synth jams that are pure. evil. Old school horror score style but planted firmly in the sci-fi genre. Deep dark drones sprawling out into the unknown, haunted spaceships, cockpits gone haywire, red machine eyes giving you the staredown, distant pulsars making tiny waves on your pulsar-meters, minimal slabs of synth, bubbling & chirping synths, all manner of sci-fi terror drone rolled into one brilliant hour-long tape of desolation. Sadly already sold out at the label, so check yer distros and knab the digital if all else fails.

Anduin – I Come From Mockingbird States (SMTG Limited)

 
So there’s a little story behind Stolen Years, but I’m not sure I have it entirely straight. Anduin (aka Jonathan Lee) was robbed and lost all of his Anduin material. Then, here’s where it’s fuzzy, he either salvaged from the ashes the bare bones of Stolen Years or this is entirely new material made in response to the robbery. Either way, this is some dark shit. Like Leyland Kirby going electro-acoustic and scoring Twin Peaks, or a Demdike Stare / Dirty Three hybrid, something along those lines. This is fucking awesome. Subtlety & delicacy reign supreme, slow evil synths paired with creepy saxophones, samples of chains clinking & knives sharpening, the sweeping up of dried bodily remains, shuffled feet beats locked in an indefinite nightmare, the atmosphere here thick as fuck, choking on black rust, rain leaking into an abandoned shack, depression and shame weighing heavy. So much is right about this album. I don’t even really like the saxophone but I think Stolen Years wouldn’t be half as good without it. And the packaging is incredible, on both CD & LP versions, done by the highly qualified Team Eight. Check out some photos of the design and make sure you don’t miss out on this.

Billy Gomberg – Cold Of Course (Avant Archive)

 
Absolutely incredible new tape from Gomberg on Avant Archive. Two tracks each side, the first one: drone, then some wonky dynamics. The opening on the A side is a subtle slab of calm, the stillness just before dawn, with an increasing sense of paranoia that the sun might not actually rise, that turns into a meditation on darkness and the possibilites of a world without sun. The B side opener is much more blissful, though just as dark, melancholic organ-type drones bringing down the house with deep rumbles and bittersweet progressions. Both closing tracks are full of echoey weirdness, drifting dreams, sustained tones plunked out and smothered in hiss, the last track depressing as hell, the epitome of loneliness. So so good. And this is one of AA’s limited releases, so you know what to do.

Nocht The Only Ghouls – Sleeping Bär-geist (Vwyrd Wurd)

 
Nocht The Only Ghouls. Weird stuff! I think it’s their debut release, but at the very least it’s the first from Vwyrd Wurd, and it’s on vinyl and PWYW at Bandcamp. This conjures some dark days, super fine black folk, lonely guitars emanating from empty attics, overgrown graveyards absent of color, slow & meticulous, sparse & haunted, with subtle electronics, nearly non-existent vocals, and hidden percussion. The electronics become more apparent as the album progresses and by the end of it, it’s turned into more of a dark ambient/drone. Awesome as fuck, an original album of dusty midnight rituals to add to the increasingly large but still sadly small pile of neofolk.

Wastelanders – The Beginning (Calls & Correspondence / Basses Frequences / Space Idea / Hewhocorrupts Inc.)

 
Despite the plurality, Wastelanders is actually just one dude, Dean Costello. And he’s got four different labels working on his side, C&C and BF doing the CD release, Space Idea is taking care of the tape, and Hewhocorrupts, Inc. is releasing it digitally. Maybe a little over the top, but whatever. I’m just glad this is getting out there on all fronts because Cosmic Despair is a fuckin BEAST. Mostly organ based, this is a drone record for the masses, calling up all sorts of dark places. The first few tracks are as depressing as it gets, gloom thick enough to asphyxiate on, solid minimal melancholy that turns your heart into lead and brings gods to tears. Then there’s a 15 minute piece that gets noisier, rumbling feedback sounds crisped on the edge of a black sun while stardust and distant beacons twinkle in the faded background. The final 20 minute closer is a fucking burner, shifting gears into something wholly uplifting, stripped of darkness and brought fully into the light, holy & transcendental, busting out all the instruments on hand to make for a hypnotic ritualistic drone to assist in trans-dimensional passage. Impecable stuff. I can’t get enough of this. Then again, I’m always a sucker for organ drones, so, consider me slightly biased.

Max Bondi – Monopoles (Tartaruga)

 
Max Bondi, the dude who also runs Tartaruga, has crafted a totally fucking incredible record here. Masterful in ways that are beyond me. Convolution is a drone/analog synth (maybe? no liner notes so I’m just goin with my gut) record, and if that’s an automatic deterrent for whatever reason, please take half a minute and look beyond that. Each discrete track is a fucking winner but this works much more beautifully as a whole, smoothly shifting gears from minimal drone to bubbly synths (with one exception, track 3, that breaks off the minimalist path for some relatively abrasive sequencing, giving you a taste of things to come). It’s like the sounds of a spelunker’s dreams, the deepest gemstoned caves, the air thick and stagnant, only moving from your breath’s disruption, gorgeous when it subtly shimmers, dank dungeons of hopes & terrors, scared stiff, heavy relief, and the halfway point, “Monopoles,” acts as a bridge to the yin/yang, making way for more dynamics, more standing room, synths locked in arhythmic sequences, the drones still present but more varied & buried, an overwhelming display of underground magic that turns into a frenzied dash for the exit. A record this fucking good only comes around once in a long while, and when it’s packaged as beautifully as this (screenprinted thick gatefold card, hand sewn, with a fold-out double-sided screenprinted insert), you should do everything in your power to make sure you don’t miss it.

Crowhurst – Cold Hospital Floor (Feral Fang Media / Corporate / self released)

 
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.