Medroxy Progesterone Acetate – The Ghost Of Dried Wells (Black Horizons)

 
The one & only Medroxy Progesterone Acetate is back with a fuckin beast of a double tape, 2 hours of insanity that gets the deluxe packaging treatment from Black Horizons (side note: the image up there is only an interpretation, a snippet of the full artwork). This is some downright fucked up shit, wavering between diseased drones, black ambient, filthy industrial, nightmarish noise, and drifting shimmer. All sorts of weirdness on here with Darren Bauler taking on most of the responsibilities and various friends adding such talents as “Possession States,” “Concussion Machines,” and “Recording Anomalies.” The sounds are fucking out of this world, disgusting & horrific, festering & boiling drones, straight from the demon’s stomach, voices abound, dazed whispers rambling paranoia and death, haunting your very soul, shrill tinnitus bleeding out of every pore until it’s no longer part of the tape, it’s taken up residence and infected your ears, subtle rhythms grow into discrete beats that sound like old rusted machinery trying to reclaim their previous lives, and strangest of all, the moments of pleasant dreams and blissful ambience, tiny beacons shining out of the rotted wasteland. The bleak & harrowing doesn’t get much better than this.

Book Of Sand – Fits And Starts (Music Ruins Lives)

 
It’s been at least a couple years since I’ve written about Book Of Sand (How Beautiful To Walk Free), or his previous doom project Light (A Million Dead Beneath The Ice and Life Is Meaningless & Goes On Forever, so I’ll forgive you if you don’t remember him. But only partially because this dude has always been the fucking best. Don’t forget it. His new one, Mourning Star, is packed up all sexy-like courtesy of MRL and might be his best one yet. Black metal doesn’t even begin to describe this beast. This dude is a master genre bender, using black metal as a melting pot to throw in everything from doom to neo-classical. There’s so much going on that it’s hard to get your brain situated, raw discordant riffs starting off mostly in synch until they devolve into a sloppy mess of noise, furiously relentless drums, tortured screams, drunken lurching doom, slow & massive, burnt & charred Americana guitars, caked in ancient dust and disintegrating before your eyes, atonal strings turning a blackened nightmare into a ghostly eulogy, xylophones plinking away in some distant room in the corner of a rotting mansion, at times atmospheric and ephemeral or in your face and undeniable, but always churning your stomach, brutal, tasteful, and wholly fucking original. Book Of Sand is at the top of his game, Mourning Star giving you everything you want from 21st century black metal. He’s fucking doing it and you fucking need it.

Paintings For Animals – Sun Psalms (House Of Alchemy)

 
A new killer tape on House Of Alchemy from Painting For Animals, some dude who calls himself Pær Svn, which may or may not be a legitimate name in another language? I don’t know. What I do know is that this is some deep shit, hardcore doom drones for cracking open the inner self. Two side long pieces, a psalm each for the Sun & Moon, two sides of the same coin, not exactly sonic opposites, conjuring the light & dark (respectively) but both definitely cemented in the underworld. Like Phurpa or Zurvan or any of those tantric minimalists, Thee Body Ov Worship is full of densely immobile darkness, slow drifts of blackened feedback and incessant rumbling, meditative buzz & hum that bores deep in your skull, all penetrating, ever present, and as welcome as an infinite sleep at journey’s end. Totally fucking awesome. Nothing quite like this. The tape is limited as tapes usually are, but is still available as far as I know. If not, head to PFA’s Bandcamp and pay whatever you want for it or anything else in his back catalog.

En – The Sea Saw Swell (Students Of Decay)

 
Brand new one on the forever awesome Students Of Decay (who has now semi-joined forces with Experimedia), Already Gone being only the second release from the two En dudes (Maxwell August Croy & James Devane), making truly wonderful ambient drones. Lush and warm, slow swells in the midnight ocean glowing under the moonlight, golden wheat fields dancing as far as the eye can see, slow ether drift, floating in calm drones while every other sound is a million miles away, and a full side-long piece of exquisite beauty, the definition of a slow burner, relaxed electronics & strings effortlessly intertwined, a woven blanket of heavenly bliss, textured like a fine white sand at the edge of the sea, growing to a subtle, harmless, glorious wall of static. This is the real deal, true blue dreams. You want this on vinyl, obviously, and it’s limited, obviously, so hurry your ass up.

Andrew Weathers Ensemble – Skin Holding Atoms In (Full Spectrum)

 
A new Andrew Weathers Ensemble album! For those that don’t recall, the record they put out last year, We’re Not Cautious, was number 2 on my Top 10 Drone Records, so a new one is obviously quite exciting. Here they’re stripped down to a quartet with just a banjo, and some harmonicas, strings, guitars, the occasional saxophone, and, of course, their wonderful voices. One of the best things about Cautious was how lush everything was, which is a little lost here, but not by necessity, rather by choice. There are some very thick and warm sounds, especially when all four players are going strong, but a lot of the times it’s just one or two of them, maybe just the two cellos, or a solo banjo (the best), or even just the harmonicas (also the best), and then it can get quite sparse, and I imagine the others setting their instruments down just to watch their pals do their thing, getting really into it, and watching with reverence & camaraderie, until they feel moved enough to pick up their musicmakers again and join in. There’s such a feeling of warmth and friendship on here, even when it gets dark and sounds like Constellation-style neo-chamber music, the intimacy still reigns, and you’re right there with them, part of the sound, and you want to sing out and join the chorus supporting Weathers’ richly dominant lead. Guilford County Songs doesn’t quite match the untouchable greatness of We’re Not Cautious, but what this Ensemble does is so captivating and life enriching, that anything they put out is a winner.

Nicholas Szczepanik – I (excerpt) (Isounderscore)

 
The other side of Szczepanik, the perfect foil to We Make Life Sad, both marking his first foray into vinyl territory. Where that one was a bunch of short looped pieces full of half-forgotten memories and lo-fi crackle, this has two side-long pieces that let Szczepanik work his magic on subtlety and the slow burn. The first side has a wonderful long form rhythm, it starts out menacing, all horror movie suspense style, with percussive gong-like warnings and imitation bowed cymbals, turning into a loud and blissfully unnerving swirl that eventually fades to nothing, buy viagra cialis levitra online changing into something quiet, delicate, effortlessly building into a heavenly choir of tones, stunning and overwhelming, but restrained. The B side is all or nothing, beginning with a barely there minimalism, completely ethereal, that imperceptibly grows, a seamless pairing of the bliss & unsettling sounds from before, a glorious wall of beauty & fear, but calm, serene, something you welcome and celebrate, this is the sound of enlightenment that Kubrick should have used in 2001. Transience has all the makings of a perfect record and there’s nothing standing in its way to take the crown in 2012.

Nicholas Szczepanik – Her Last Breath (WEME)

 
We’ve never had any vinyl from Szczepanik and now we’re treated to two at the same time. Too good to be true. We Make Life Sad is the international vinyl release and is the polar opposite of the other, The Truth Of Transience on Isounderscore. This is 10 short tracks, variations on Szczepanik’s view of life’s memories, moments, emotions, etc. There’s an overall sound to this, lots of turntable crackle, lo-fi, white background noise, but each track is its own isolated experience, taking small melodies, or even fragments of melodies, and looping them into an endless dream, similar to Zomes’ records, or like Szczepanik’s highly personalized Buddha Machine. You could look at this as his Ante Algo Azul series boiled down to LP format, although those pieces were fully formed, whereas these are almost like excerpts, rarely having a defining beginning or and end and almost never developing into anything more than it was when it started, these are memories frozen in our mind, not encapsulating the whole original, but only what our less-than-reliable mind can recall, and replayed without control, no matter how sad the memory may be, until it blurs into something only mildly recognizable, a faded and washed out version of the past, tragic in its own right, but unbelievably fucking beautiful when Szczepanik turns it into sound. This is truly outstanding work from literally the best dude on the scene. Everything he makes is 100% unstoppably awesome and We Make Life Sad is no different.

Jakob Battick & Friends – Than Even The Night (self released)

 
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.

Ava Luna – Wrenning Day (Infinite Best)

 
Alright you guys, this is it, the last time I try to persuade you of the ways of Ava Luna. I’ve given you their first two self released CD-R EPs, 3rd Avenue Island & Services (now available together on one slab of vinyl!), and now they’ve dropped their debut full length, also on vinyl (obviously). It’s a fuckin stunner. These guys have really honed in on something spectacularly original, a hopefully trademarked brand of sexy soul punk. Mostly drums n synth, with some guitars & strings thrown in to liven shit up and keep it classy, but Ava Luna’s secret weapon are everyone’s fucking voices. Carlos’ is incredible, powerful, gritty & smooth, hitting falsettos like nobody’s business, and the girls, oh my god those honied female harmonies are elating, they bring this shit to the next level. If you’ve been following Ava Luna since 3rd Ave, then Ice Level may seem a bit less abrasive. They’ve toned it down a bit, but it still gets rowdy as hell and loud enough to annoy the neighbors. The beats still sway between simple & danceable to jerky & even more danceable. They do the quiet-loud thing so well, mostly due to the quiet parts being so fucking captivating, just a lonely slow beating drum, maybe a little synthy melody, and the most beautiful vocals you’ve ever heard. So unbelievably fucking good. Shake it, be serenaded, work it, swoon, sexiness abound. This is the real deal you guys. No more fucking around. Time to join Ava Luna’s soul punk party.

Triode – Konets 000 (excerpt) (False)

 
Crazy crazy crazy. This is some true awesomeness right here. I have no idea who/what Triode is, except this tape came from, appropriately enough as you’ll soon discover, a live WRIU set in 1998. Freshly dubbed by the caretakers at False, One Way Voice Link is a standalone piece of noisy radio brilliance. Deep rumblings laying waste to the landscape with hideous mechanical crunching, haunted caustic drones, faded ethereal voices, heaving electromagnetic swamp acid, clips of radio transmissions steamrolling through the airwaves. The best part of this hour long mess is the 20 minute mid section of the B side. I couldn’t tell you if this was recorded straight from a numbers station or if Triode coated it in a thick brown fuzz afterwards, but it’s a recording of male & female vocalists singing something beautiful and dramatic but blown into oblivion so the lyrics and language are obscured, and they’ve been chopped up into about 10 second long segments, maybe 4 or 5 different “verses” that cut short and start up again without keeping the tempo they’re singing in, subtly but undeniably jarring, and looped without variation for about 20 minutes, so long that you hyper analyze everything, wondering what’s been altered, what’s intentional, what’s unavoidable, and WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON, but it’s so beautiful and hypnotic, a disintegrated loop halted in its deterioration, locked in lo-fi forever. 100% worth the tape for that part alone, but the rest is amazing and the packaging is downright ridiculous. Each False tape comes in a brown jewelry box with cotton padding, a printed velum insert, and obi strip. Way classy and over the top, just the way I like my tape packaging.

Sujo – Six Days (Inam)

 
It seems like I just wrote about Sujo’s last (free!) record, Terran. I kinda did (less than 2 months ago) but that was a late writeup and this one is mostly on time. Plus, I just got this and it fucking rips. Absolutely fucking massive, this dude pushes all the right buttons for me. Diaspora is apocalyptic drone metal of the highest order, taking all genres and mashing them into ultimate destruction. Like Nadja’s metalgaze mixed with Locrian’s blackened noise, some Before The Dawn Heals Us style majesty, and Pyramids’ furious blastbeats. Songs of doom that sound like a leviathan is wreaking havoc, conquering the world, and you’re the only one who can stop it, that slow motion scene where you finally stand up to it, alone, knowing there’s no hope of survival. Deep bone rattling rumble, monolithic static feedback, the hardest hitting drums and the grandest euphoric drones ever, black & blissful as fuck, the most jaw dropping loudness I’ve heard all year. Turn this fucker up and watch the world crumble.