Gostrail is a project from Estonia, by Marcus Pertel and they create experimental, ambient drone music. The single “Obsidian Halls” was released in the beginning of March, and has been joined by the newest single “Winter Stasis” also dropping in March.
“Obsidian Halls” slowly grows in strength, vibrating and distorting, feeding upon itself as in takes form, filling the ancient halls with sonic vibrations, that can be felt in your chest. It is slow and consistent, the electronics working their way into every crevasse and fissure, while you can imagine the glassy surface of the obsidian pulsating and bending the reflected images. Is this going to be for everyone? Well, no is the simple answer, however for those that adore ambient drone, Gostrail will hit the sweet spot.
Here at Onyx, we love weird arse stuff, especially when it is really well put together, and so we present the Expedient Self and their new experimental noise album called At The MRI Scanner. Out on the attenuation circuit label in Germany, Expedient Self is based in the United Kingdom, and I bet you can’t guess what inspired this eight track journey, which is done completely on guitar.
You won’t have to remember pesky song titles, as they are neatly documented in Roman numerals, unless of course you missed that day at school and never quite got a hold of those weird Vs and I’s.
Not going to lie, it really is like being in an MRI scanner, with all those weird rhythms going off, that would actually be very enjoyable in a metronome kind of way, if you didn’t have to worry about moving. There are the intense bursts of magnetic pulses between the regular ticking. Occasionally the guitar increases in voracity, exposing you to the claustrophobic condition in the tube. Apart from the ticking, the other consistency from the beginning of each track, comes in the form of a female voice telling you to stay still for three minutes.
The whole album is a really interesting concept. For those that like experimental noise, especially noise that uses regular instruments, which then the musician wrings the most abnormal sounds, then this is most likely for you. It puts you in someone else’s shoes, or takes you back to a time and place where you were in this situation, just like Expedient Self. Is it strange that for myself it is both hypnotic and yet uncomfortable at the same time? All I can say dancing At The MRI Scanner could be a thing, however, as Self Expedient can attest, this will not be endorsed by medical staff
I think JeremyMoore is a man who cannot sit still and is constantly looking for the next musical high. We last saw him in post-punk project Zabus, on SaccharineUnderground, a label Moore runs himself in Washington DC. He has turned his hand to creating experimental, avant garde dark music, melding it with a myriad of genres, in the guise of BellBarrow, culminating in the album “CoreCorePulp.” Made up of twelve instrumental tracks, Moore plays all instruments as well as being the composer.
You are set about the road with the first track “An Eye On The Future,” with quasar pulsating like waves, repeating on loop, stretching into a pained infinity across time and space. Whirring and high-pitched extrusions pierce your ears until they become a conglomeration of psychedelic noise, married to a now existing drum.
Noise inspired jazz can be the only way to describe “CoffinText” with both the free form of the music and drumming triplets. The main guitar is heavy and cumbersome in comparison, while there is another guitar, with possibly a plectrum being dragged down the strings in similar fashion as heard on Bauhaus‘ “Bela Lugosi’s Dead.”
The guitar is the main voice in “Peace Field Autopsy,” grinding and dark, hanging ominously in the air, daring you to deny its black metal pall. There is free-flowing feedback looped back in creating a cacophony, which is over far too soon, giving way to a more ambient tone.
There is something utterly compelling about the last track “From Hunter To Remains,” with an eeriness that is both unsettling in its discordant drone and impossible to ignore the sweeping void as the instruments join in the decay.
The artwork for the tracks is mind bending, because the more you try to make sense of the picture, the less it makes, and in a way this perfectly encapsulates CoreCorePulp, which could be the name an avant garde noise album, but it becomes apparent there is so much going on below the surface. I have chosen four tracks to showcase how BellBarrow is using different styles of music, not in a cohesive manner, but rather to create abrasion and discord, battering the listener into submission if they fight the jarring flow. The use of extreme experimentation with black metal, jazz, prog rock, etcetera, melds the instrumentals into sonic scapes for your imagination to run rampant. The base interpretation is about life and death, though for myself, it is about this flesh we call home. The fragility, what can be achieved with the spirit, and, perhaps, the futility of it all. Bleak and yet a beauty in that ultimate desecration called death.
We are going to touch the dark musical mire that is the harsh, ambient electronics of German based VERFÜHRERVERGELTER, in the new EP From the Void​:​ Silicon Signals to a Dead Brain.
“Aschewüste” is the ash desert and that wasteland is present in your ears. Abrasive and sand blasted by storms, echoing with the past where something abominable happened. The looping electronics grate and gouge at your psyche. Next is the lurking “Deathpile,” which slowly consumes the will to live and the Reaper could be knocking on that door. The music vibrates and rolls with the death throes, in anticipation of a painful cellular end. Starting to to get saggy skin due to a lack of collagen? No worries for there is a “Siliciumsale,” and in truth I involuntarily shivered a little as it has a sharp cruelty to the tone. Behold the unbridled electric guitar as it brings you into the “Untitled Abstract Void.” Shards of light try to penetrate but this is pure darkness that will break the mind of the strongest if you ponder it too long. A yawning abyss of terror echoing the fear endlessly. Maybe there is nothing more terrifying than the thought of never reaching a weekend, perpetual groundhog day for the whole week, over and over again. “Bonus: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Monday Tuesday…..” drones on without joy or meaning, only with the intense ticking letting you know that there is no rest.
What does it all mean? Hmmm, I might take a guess that this could be about a body on life support. The brain no longer present but the nerves keep trying to contact central control with no response. VERFÜHRERVERGELTER has unleashed another release of infernal doom that can drag its cold fingers and nails across your soul and make you ponder From the Void​:​ Silicon Signals to a Dead Brain.
Out on the British label UtopianMechanics, Stockport based ThroughTheGloom have just released the new ambient electronic EP, DarkPatterns.
Opening track “PerfectDark” gives the atmosphere of an anti sunrise, as if the shadows are creeping forward, encroaching on all. Deep tonal aberrations escape from the virtual abyss, with a tribal electronic twist in “HostileArchitecture.” An ancient drone with a female vocalisation, almost Middle Eastern in sound, creating a mystical allure. There is a reverence in the beginning of “WhispersWithin” and indeed there are the hushed voices within the mix. The piano wanders, as if a lost train of thought, trapped in a slowly decaying cycle.
“Llanto” is gently laid before you, analogue sounding keys greeting you intermittently, which is nothing like the track “Cut Their Tongues.” Finely abrasively with foreboding, building with divine and ancient righteous portent, setting your teeth on edge. The vocals are strained and full of warning as the background is filled with tribal rhythms. Final track, “NostromosReckoning” is like a breath of fresh air after being compressed by the last track. It soars on gossamer wings, expansive and billowing into an infinite horizon
For me, this style of experimental and soundscape electronic music should fuel the imagination, taking you away from the mundane, inspiring joy, wonder and even fear of each new world opened to us. Through The Gloom has this in spades on Dark Patterns.
The label Cioran Records, has released the experimental album Les Couleurs d’une Fièvre, by French group Flagorne. Maquerelle (vocals, lyrics, synthesizers, samplers) and Afga06l (additional voices, computer, digital instruments) make up the group which combines industrial noise with black metal.
And so the decent into Hell begins with “Salutations,” brutally assaulting your ears. Salut aÌ€ vous! or hello to everyone, though this welcome is full of bad tidings for the listener. Drawn taut and extruded, the music and vocals speak of pain before there is a pause, when the voice expresses how all this is a fever dream in the aftermath of a holocaust. Candaule(s), a king of Lydia in the 7th century BC, was mentioned by Herodotus as a ruler of great depravity, and in the track “Adresses,” the line ‘On sera Candaule de tout un empire/We will be Candaule of an entire empire,’ hints at wonton wickedness. The music is spurred on by an explosive rhythmic momentum, swirling in its majestic inferno.
Les Couleurs d’une Fièvre basically translates to The Colours of a Fever, and indeed the album does feel like a delirious nightmare, visceral and haunting, as if you were unfortunate enough to enter the circles of hell and yet you know that this is all earth bound. And maybe that is the crux of it all, that man makes his own hell on earth. Flagorne will not disappoint.
On the day of his birthday, SebastianSünkler released the single “Bohdi” with his main industrial project, STAHLSCHLAG. The German noise master never fails to amaze with how productive he is, and before we know it, the new full-length album will be upon us.
Become one with the drone of “Bohdi” as STAHLSCHLAG take you into another realm, outside of your being, to where celestial souls transverse the stars, god like, as the rhythms continuously make you aware of your own heartbeat. The combination of luminous and mystical vocals with noise is perfection. The second track, “SriStuti,” continues this journey, with more purpose, demanding your attention be completely focused on the fragging beats while a winding synth line wanders though.
The maestro of power noise keeps his sound fresh whilst plumbing the depth of your spiritual psyche, pulling on ancient tendrils within our genetics. With the brilliance of “Bohdi,” we await the album and wish Sünkler another wonderful year making music around the sun.
Just when you thought you might finally be safe from space invasion and laser beam, pew pew extermination, you find more DEATHCOMET in your life, and he’s back with album DEATHCOMET16!! Hmmmm…. the last one we reviewed was DEATHCOMET14. Sooo, it seems we skipped an album, however, that just means more for your experimental electronic listening pleasure, from the New South Wales region of Australia.
I find my teeth are set on edge listening to the disturbing drone of “newhuntforalienlife” which stops and becomes the guitar torturing oddity, “desperateattempt,” as it tumbles over itself, creating a tubular vortex of sound. A looping guitar screaming greets your ears, perpetuating an overload for the ten minute long “neptunebelial,” as you wait for the subtle changes in pitch, but this does nothing to prepare you for the track “satanicdimensions,” where you are almost assuredly hearing the anguished voices from the pit itself, as the harsh noise eviscerates your senses.
“allsystemsgo” continues from where “satanicdimensions” left off, however it has incorporated an eerie demonic electronic choir, which is driving the unholy star drive straight into the inferno that is “cosmicball,” yet another track clocking in at over ten minutes. The psychedelic effect of “masks” really hits you after listening to such constant noise, and it feels as if the aliens really are invading your brain, which leads in nicely to the last track, “alienscalling“. Yes, finally the little grey guys are melting your brain with their sonic vocals as everything burns to the ground.
DEATHCOMET16 is experimental noise that starts by rubbing your brain against sand paper, and then just builds into a new world order, intent on cellular annihilation, so the alien hordes don’t have to worry about cleaning up the carbon mess. Alien industrial metal in the form of DEATHCOMET is a mighty powerful thing.
Should you dare slip into the wooded areas of Marietta, Ohio, after dark, you might happen upon the ambient and industrial musing of PressedFlowers. Blake Pipes is the man bringing forth the electronic magic/madness in the single, “The Ascension.”
‘I composed “The Ascension” using, among other things, the sounds of hammers on large nails, the sounds of vehicles barely able to bear the weight of their load, and a mess of synthesizers. These elements were each stretched to their limits and sculpted carefully into place. In the track, there is a choice to make, a choice to stay or to go. The choice is made to go. The path forward is not necessarily a pleasant one, but neither is the path back. Too often, we can only hope to outrun what we try to leave behind.’ – Blake Pipes
This track is saturated in growing dread, from the scraping metal into the nails being knocked in. There is a near Hitchcock shower scene , which prevails and then collapses into what could be described as the warblings of an estranged classical orchestra, which is oddly satisfying. It is an intriguing use of elements and experimentation. There is a horror filled majesty with “This Ascension” by Pressed Flowers.
Out on the rather impressively named Culture Vomit Production, is the new album from London’s Pillars Of Golden Misery, called Turbo Necropolis. Another experimental noise project of the very busy Howard Gardner, who is also Non-Bio and a member of Decommissioned Forests.
The lethargy of “The Demon Ray” turns your way, low wave pulsing which continues into the stalking “Ultimate Fighting Claw Death“. The ominous “Big-Time Blade Trader” lumbers with reverberation causing rising internal tensions and this is built on with “Temple Of Catastrophe” as Gardner adds his intonations to the track that is forever doomed to haunt that mystical abode, and this is just a few of the pieces.
For the most part, Turbo Necropolis is an instrumental affair, and as I always say, it is never good to pull apart instrumental albums as they are crafted often to create a mood. Gardner has put together eleven tracks, that paint a picture in sonics of an ancient city inhabited by the dead. The oppressive dark spaces, wind swept halls, temples where possible sacrifices were made and the people that never left.
The chanting in the title track makes me think of the Indiana Jones movie, Temple Of Doom, and the imagery fits so well. A place tainted by blood sprays and screams of the unfortunate, now rendered in shadowy electronic creepiness, as you make your way through the establishment. Pillars Of Golden Misery are inviting you to visit their Turbo Necropolis…..it’s a nice place to visit but you wouldn’t want to live there.
Onyx Music Reviews 