Alva Noto & Ryuichi Sakamoto - Vrioon

Sparse piano notes and gentle bleeps and electronic hum combine to create a meditative mood.

Above The Tree

Above The Tree is a solo project of Marco Bernacchia. He plays guitar augmented by odd noises and loops. There's a bluesy, lo-fi folk vibe to this.


More

• Above The Tree bandcamp

Roy Montgomery - Tarkovsky Tone Poem

Along with groups like The Dead C, Roy Montgomery was part of New Zealand's rock deconstructionist scene.

He's played in bands such as The Pin Group and Dadamah as well as releasing records under his own name. This track is taken from a split LP that he made with The Dead C.

Choubi Choubi! Folk and pop sounds from Iraq

Another Sublime Frequencies compilation, this time collecting together pop music from Iraq.

Black Mountain Transmitter - Black Goat Of The Woods

The soundtrack to a nightmare curated by David Lynch.

 

Abul Mogard

Abul Mogard only started making music after he retired from his job working in a factory.

The songs that he created on his homemade instruments were a way of recreating the sounds that he had become used to hearing throughout his working life.

Mogard's pieces are typically gentle, electronic, tonal washes with warm, slowly evolving melodies.



Discover more

• Abul Mogard bandcamp
• Interview with Abul Mogard

A Year Of No Light | Aluk Todolo - The Borderline, London, 13 April 2011

Who runs the Borderline? It’s a question I ask myself as I arrive. I don’t consider myself late but I’ve completely missed Menace Ruine who apparently came onstage at 7:30. What time of night is that to start a gig?

Unfortunately, Aluk Todolo have already started their set. Irritating as I’ve waited a long-time for them to play a UK date. Maybe it’s that same anticipation which interferes with my enjoyment of their set.

My near obsessive listening to their Finsternis LP has moulded my preconceptions. It’s an unfair benchmark as it’s probably impossible to reproduce the balance and dynamics of that studio recording.

The drummer is laying down immense, intense slabs of rhythms while the guitarists open metronomic kraut meets black metal riffage.

A Year Of No Light are fully six people strong. Two drummers, keyboards, the rest on guitars and bass. They play an amalgam of metal styles - an alloy if you will - and meld them to post-rock dynamics. It’s good, but somehow never transcends its influences. It leaves me feeling under whelmed. It’s good but I can’t help feeling it’s a bit anaemic, neutered or restrained. For me they need to convey something more. An atmosphere or feeling. Music should soar, disorientate, entrance, excite, relax, hypnotise, or overwhelm you with it’s beauty. It should do more than just ‘exist’.

When they finish it’s only a few minutes after 10. Bizarre.

Preferred drink: Water

Koreisch - This Decaying Schizophrenic Christ Complex

Apart from eulogies on a few metal blogs you can’t find much information about Koreisch on the internet.

They released their sole LP in 1999 on Screams of Salvation. And subsequently re-released on Calculated Risk Records in 2004. Neither pressing gained much attention.

Which is a criminal shame as This Decaying Schizophrenic Christ Complex is as an inventive and extreme record that the metal world has yet vomited forth.

Grind, doom, samples and sounds capes are thrown together allowed to rot down and then sprayed at the listener like a sonic slurry.

Piercing guitar riffs, ominous rumbling bass, dirge crawl and grind spazz outs are interspersed with jarring, alienating sounds capes. Consistently painful and unpleasant, this is music as torture. And yet it is oddly compelling drawing you back into its dark, smothering, suffocating embrace.

I consider this one of the most extreme records I have ever heard. Bands have played faster and harder, but the continued dislocating shifts in tempo, pitch and tone mess with your expectations. And that is something very rare and precious.

Download

Preferred drink: Water

Death Strike: Fuckin' Death

Death Strike was a short lived project helmed by death metal legend Paul Speckman. Despite being one of the scenes original movers and still active to this day, he has never really enjoyed any particular success.

In 1985 when death metal was still an underground scene, he recorded a 4 song demo called Fuckin’ Death. After getting a deal for his new project Abomination, Nuclear Blast issued the demo in 1991 as an album bulked out with some new tracks.

These new tracks are awful and for the purposes of this review we‘re going to ignore them. Because for pure visceral excitement there is little that can match those original demo recordings.

There’s a heavy thrash influence to the music, understandable given the time of the original recordings. But that thrash edge gives the filthy, dirty, fire snorting, death metal beast a relentless pummelling velocity.

Every time I listen to Fuckin’ Death it reminds me of the adrenaline rush I felt when I first heard death metal. There’s been better played, better produced death metal, however, just try and stop yourself head banging to Mangled Dehumanisation or Pay To Die. Go on, try.

Preferred drink: Water

Download

Master Musicians of Bukkake | Voice of the Seven Thunders | Barn Owl - Corsica Studios, London, 25 October 2010

There was an unknown name to me on the bill. I’d not heard of Barn Owl before. A quick internet search took me to the website of some twee indie twiddlers. Who in the name of Hades, I wondered, booked this lot?

The answer lay in poor search engine skills. Not all my fault as there are six acts called Barn Owl on Myspace. Fortunately, somebody had booked the psychedelic drone two-piece. The two guitarists blast out cathedral sized drones. They explore different textures within their lengthy pieces. Sunn O))))) style heavy drones but also more psychedelic widdling and slow-motion Morricone style guitar picking.

Tonight was my first experience of Voice of the Seven Thunders. I’d been a fan of Voice of the Seven Woods from which this band morphed. But for some reason I’d never bothered to investigate them. It’s easy to hear the similarities. The psych-blues meanderings and the acid-fried tinged-rock are direct descendents. A couple of tracks lean a little too close leaden Clapton-esque blues, but it’s when guitar lines start questing they really engage.

The venue fills with smoke. Bells ring and the Master Musicians of Bukkake file towards the stage through the audience. They are dressed as Bedouins. Black cowls wrapped around their bodies. Their faces shrouded in blue kufiuya, their eyes hidden by sunglasses. I can smell incense.

A low drone starts up. The singer who is wearing an Inca like face mask throat yodels as he weaves intricate patterns in the air with his hands. Lasers cut through the smoke refracting off mirror balls on the ceiling and illuminated the smokes evolving patterns. Drone, electronics, psychedelic and Eastern influences are fused and cauterised. This is rock as occult ritual.

The guitarists switch to sitar and the violin adding Eastern flavours which are enhanced when they are joined by Khyam Allami who adds oud. He starts slowly repeating simple patterns over the low, metallic, rumbling of huge gong. The oud lines become more complex and duels with the violin. Then everyone falls in as the rhythms become heavier and a heady, murky, and epic. They close with a quieter, more meditative number before the Master Musicians then file in procession from the stage.

Preferred drink: Water