Rosen & Spyddet - (2015) Tristan Og Isolde 7''

45 RPM 7" from this Danish synth pop group following the recent "Fortuna" LP on Posh Isolation, and several cassette titles on Janushoved & Posh Isolation.

Croatian Amor & Rose Alliance - (2015) The Gold Of The Good Sister 7''

CA delivers a glorious track of bubblegum industrial.
RA hit hard with some heavy rythmical post industrial.

Lust For Youth & Croatian Amor - (2014) Sister 7''

  Posh Isolation ‎– 132

Two reworked tracks from the Pomegranate collaboration from last year in brand new club versions. Ambivalent synthetic sex music from the masters of romance.

Darkthrone - (1992) A Blaze In The Northern Sky LP

So here I find myself dealing with the album that was hailed as THE masterpiece of the early second wave of Black Metal.
So how to describe this album? A person associated with Black Metal once reminded not to mistake lack of talent with genius in that style of music. And to be quite honest, that walk along this extremely narrow grid seems to be a quite befitting issue with Darkthrone:
The value of musical skill? Naught. The song-writing? A catastrophe to any Primary/Elementary school music teacher. The sound quality? A bit like a faulty electric razor. The music itself? A monotonous cacophony that could not be worse – all in all the album sounds a little like a few kids who figured out how to mess with the gain pedal and the guitar, and the vocals have the reminiscence of a chain smoker after 45 years, awaiting cancer surgery…and having read this, can anyone really wonder why Peaceville heavily reconsidered having ever signed them?
So what is it then that deserves this release the 95% rating that I am donating? Well, besides its status as one of the most influential releases and the untouchability somewhat arise thereof, there are quite a few points that rehabilitate for the first disappointment that anyone used to less raw music will meet.
Notable is the intelligent riffing, i.e. the utter rape of the guitar by both Zephyrous and Nocturno Culto that create a superior atmosphere that only Darkthrone is able to create, and the minimalistic setting described above only happens to highlight this feeling so dark, cold and grim that it has Satan himself hide behind a sofa. At this time, provided you have sufficient imagination, you’re likely off sacrificing sheep in a wood in Norway.
Nocturno Culto’s voice is genius – raspy as it is: Grimmer than any horror movie and frostier than the deepest reach of Siberia, it again contributes to establish an atmosphere beyond description. In fact, many have attempted to mimic his style of singing, but very few have succeeded…hard to describe indeed, except that his vocal contribution to this release is probably some of the best that the entire genre of Black Metal has seen thus far.
The whole sound is rounded off by the raw and trollish battery delivered by Fenriz: Some-times blast-beats that build up the atmosphere, another time more mid-tempo, even slightly punky drumming – whatever it is, he uses it in good strategy even though, again, minimal in style.
Finally, notable mention has to go to the lyrics. OK, so they might be the most outright anti-religion, Satanic, dark-side-of-nature revolved shit that you’ll ever encounter; but then again, Darkthrone were pioneers at doing this, so it is actually highly original. Lyrics are often left out of the equation when reviewing an album, but in this case, more than ever, they are the essence of the message of the album, in fact they fit the music 1000 percent.
"A Blaze in the Northern Sky” is an album that I can certainly recommend acquiring – definitely worth the € you pay for it. The old quote of “Black Metal ist Krieg” could not be more fitting when you talk about this album, and if you’re a fan of the likes of Bathory of Burzum, then you’ve not lived until you’ve heard this album. It is probably amongst the best BM albums ever recorded, and should not be missing from any CD collection, at least not in the collections of those that boast themselves “true Black Metallers”. Congratulations to Darkthrone for creating a masterpiece for all eternity!"

Emperor - (1994) In The Nightside Eclipse LP

A landmark Scandinavian Black Metal album essential to any good Satanist's collection. The forward impetus of this album is incredible, as the majestic keyboards, rasping cries, and pummeling drums all sweep together like a freezing, evil wave carrying pagan Viking longboats across the North seas to attack and pillage Christian lands. Like opera music for howling wolves. A Nordic church-burning classic.

Darkthrone - (1993) Under A Funeral Moon LP

This is where Darkthrone completed their metamorphosis from their Death Metal origins to one of the most quintessential and uncompromising Black Metal bands. Where "A Blaze In The Northern Skies" still showed sparse riffs and structures reminescent of the band's past, "Under A Funeral Moon" sports a totally cold, haunting and unfriendly musical attitude. This is not saying that the work presented here is anti-musical or performed by untalented players, it doesn't get more false than that. Simply put, Darkthrone got hold of the identity they were striving for, and such identity was never meant to please a large number of listeners.
The differences between this album and the previous are quite apparent. First, the departure of Dag Nilsen, bassist extraordinaire whose highly unappreciated skills were a fundamental component of early Darkthrone, who had agreed to perform bass on "A Blaze In The Northern Sky" before quitting the band due to his lack of interest for the new direction. His style would clash with the band's music anyway at this point, and despite that, this album has some inventive bass parts anyway (handled by Nocturno Culto).
Next, the production, or better the lack of. "A Blaze In The Northern Sky" had a very harsh sound, with the drums and echoy vocals often overpowering the trebly, fuzzy guitars and the barely audible bass. Here, it just gets worse. Everything on this album sounds incredibly thin. The guitars are a kind of buzz which seems destined to be drowned by static anytime, the drums are very flat and lifeless, the bass is heavily and unpleasantly distorted (although it stands out pretty well because of its thick low frequencies) and Nocturno Culto's vocals are a very raspy croak, very different from his usual style, and loaded with echo. This barbaric demo-like soundscape would be enough to put anyone off, yet I have to underline how well it actually works. No elements overpower others anymore, and the volumes are very well balanced.
Finally, the song structures themselves, no longer as epic as in the old days but way more minimalistic, although some technical solutions still stand out. This si something you cannot bang your head to, you cannot air guitar to... this is ugliness at its best.

Darkthrone - (1994) Transilvanian Hunger LP

What Fenriz, Zephyrous and Nocturno Culto did on this record is simply amazing. They took all the normal trademarks of black metal—necro production, raspy screams, tremolo-picked riffs, inaudible bass lines, lack of palm muting (unheard of in most other metal genres)—and made black metal that was far from normal. On the surface, it may not seem all that different from Under a Funeral Moon. The songs are minimalist in technique as well as composition, the production is trademark necro and the vocals are still a mix of throaty growls and raspy screams. However, the entire atmosphere of the record is vastly different than its predecessors. While A Blaze In the Northern Sky and Under A Funeral Moon were a mixed bag of evil and grim atmosphere, the third part of the Darkthrone “Black Metal Trilogy” has a haunting, hypnotic and beautiful aura. Yes, that’s right folks, a black metal album that has all of the beauty of a thick pine forest glistening with newly fallen snow. I’d say this album’s beauty is definitely more atmospherically striking than the beauty in Emperor’s In the Nightside Eclipse.

Blue Sabbath Black Cheer & Dried Up Corpse - (2009) Split 10''

The BSBC side is about the prettiest thing they've ever done, which means it's still vile and sick and murky and ominous and fucked up, it's just that it's not so harsh, more muted and blurred and black ambient, than some of their other outings. A sprawling deeeeeeeeep doomscape, creeping black rumbles, demonic gurgles, distant foghorn like melodies, bits of muted percussion, plenty of buzzing grit and distorted feedback, but all smeared and woozy and subterranean sounding, a darkly demonic drift, that infuses what might otherwise be warm shimmering blackened ambience, with some seriously abject miserablism and gloom.
Dried Up Corpse counter BSBC's sensitive side with a caustic chunk of chaotic crunch. Beginning with some deep whirring rumbles, the track soon splinters into full on blunted white noise, skittery and fractured and totally blown out, all the while underpinned by that initial rumbling whir, eventually the noise peels back leaving a long stretch of deep softened buzz to play us out.

Blue Sabbath Black Cheer & SIXES - (2009) Spilt CS

BSBC - A noise group from Seattle, Washington, United States, consisting primarily of wm. rage (enterruption records, Electric Heavyland (r.i.p.)) and stan reed (psychform records, Plethora, BROKEN PENIS ORCHESTRA). The line-up does tend to change from time to time, and has also included jeff stentorian (stentorian tapes), Levi Berner (Visible/ Invisible Wall, Algiers, machete mob), john lukeman (Diseased Visions, Drowner, whatwedoissecret), Geoff Walker (Gravitar), leslie rage, and Crystal.

SIXES - The longest enduring, since the 90s, is Experimental/Industrial/Noise effort SIXES from San Diego/ Oakland, CA - Ryan Jencks (R. Jencks), also of Deathroes, formerly of Crash Worship.

Blue Sabbath Black Cheer & Pig Heart Transplant - (2013) Split CS

A seriously grim blackened doom drone dirge song suite from these two outfits, both of which are perfectly capable of kicking up a serious din on their own, so you might be expecting a skull splitting ear piercing onslaught, but the first track at least is downright beautiful, in a bleak and sinister sort of way, lots of space, and texture, some caustic feedback and rumbling low end, some weird demonic voices, and some glitched out electronics, but all laid over a bed of hiss and hum, and eventually morphing into a strange series of moaning chordal swells, all woven together by a barely audible sinewave tone. And the same sort of ethereal abstract ambience extends into the second track, which unfurls like some sort of super minimal abstract rhythmscape, the rhythm in this case a barely there assemblage of murky pulses and concentrated bursts of soft focus static, but it's only the first half of the track, by part two, the sound have splintered into filthy shards of blunted noise, the low end oozing and bleeding into long black streaks, the vocals a FX drenched bellow, all the elements again held together by a strange tangled bit of high end that sounds a bit like air escaping from a balloon.

Marching Church - (2014) At Night 7''

Elias Bender Rønnenfelt, frontman for Danish punks Iceage and co-leader of industrial-tinged electronic outfit VÅR, continues formulating striking new dark aesthetics with his solo project Marching Church. This home-recorded At Night 7'' primarily explores thick clouds of blistering noise.

Rosen & Spyddet - (2015) Fortuna LP

'Fortuna' is Rosen & Spyddets first full length LP and consists of 8 instrumental pieces of sugar coated adolescent synth music. Following a string of tapes on Posh Isolation and lately also on his own Janus Hoved label.
Fortuna's narrative takes place in memory, with all the uncontrolled passion and clumsiness of losing one’s virginity and with the free feeling of the first time you went skinny-dipping. It is the sound of your first time being drunk, first cigarette, first kiss, first break up, first fight, first pill swallowed at a club bathroom, trying to impress whoever you were with at the time or biking down a big hill with your first lover on the back, no hands on the steering wheel, knowing that you will eventually crash but enjoying every single second before the inevitable end - the end not being death, but maybe just growing up.

FKA Twigs - (2013) FKA Twigs 12''

This release, a second four-track EP following her 2012 debut, triggers a dual feeling of being buried in her suffering and a sense of relief that her music provides an outlet for it all. Comparisons to trip-hop have come quickly in twigs' short career, most of them justified. Twigs is only in her mid 20s, but EP2 is the sound of someone who has lived a lifetime in their own head, and is now letting it spill out publicly in its oddly open-yet-guarded way. There's a sense of watching her grow in public, too.

Olymphia - (2015) Music For A Dance Performance LP

  Posh Isolation ‎– 155

Olymphia is the shared work of Kristian Emdal and Loke Rahbek and their first LP finds them in an electro-acoustic blur between rhythmical work, music concrete and modular and string based drones. 'Music for a Dance Performance' was recorded over two years between Copenhagen’s Mayhem and Stockholm’s EMS studios.
'Music for a Dance Performance' shows Olymphia parting with their former figure of intense physical music and moving towards a more refined yet no less intense expression. A triumphant mutation of audio media, like going from athletics to dance. Dance demands a degree of service higher than any other performing arts or sport. In sport the signs of effort are not concealed. On the contrary, making an effort visible is part of the display - people expect it. Dance is quite different. Actions within the dance performance should seem effortless and enact being both completely in the body, whilst at the same time transcending it.
With Olymphia’s debut album, Emdal and Rahbek are portraying a not yet executed dance performance through five pieces of seemingly effortless dialogue. 'Music For a Dance Performance' is ultimately an ode to the potential of dance.

Croatian Amor - (2014) Mermaids Of Jadransko / Vagina Sword LP

Looking at the LP itself, it overall looks very simple and to the point. The front has two women along with the album title and the back has a picture of 1 EURO along with the track listing and credits (Croatian Amor is 1989). There is nothing inside aside from the record.

Side A starts with multiple field recording sounds on track 1, "Mermaids of Jadransko." Sounds as running water splashing on the bottom of the sink and some crunching metal sounds. At 1:43, synths squeeze its way into the mix that sound very somber. A minute or two has a recording of a woman explaining what happens when "she doesn't get fucked". I remember stopping what I was doing at this point to let everything sink in. The song builds and builds until the 6 minute mark where its nothing but synths.

"Blue Skin" is the shortest but most haunting track on the album. The synths remind me of an old NES dungeon theme. There seems to be rustling sounds as well. I couldn't tell you what this could actually interpret.

"Weapons Of Paradise" starts with some noisy tape loops and warm synths in the background. The synths begin to get louder and there feedback jumps into your earbuds (or mine) to snap you out of your daydream this record can so easily put you in. This continues until the track fades out.

"Song of the Mermaids" is a much more uplifting track with the poppy synths. I want to say there are sounds of waves in this track. Some other recordings of a man's voice too.

Side B starts with a brooding "Comecon Dancer". Low end synths until something smashes and brings more textures to the ears. Around the minute mark there are indiscernible sounds such as drum rolls and what would be a woman whimpering. Synths come in saturating the entire track with some vocals in the background. The track ends with nothing but feedback.

"Liberation (Vagina Sword)" sounds like someone sitting outside with a tape recording in their lap while the sound of a monotonous drum beat comes in. More field recordings key in and so do the synths. The music goes perfectly with the title.

"Truth (The World Grew With Every Hill They Passed)" sounds like something straight out of an old grainy foreign film. One of the catchiest synth progressions on the entire album. Feedback and other effects accentuate this track as well.

The final track "Begin (Twin Sex)" starts with what sounds like an interview with a woman talking about a relationship. A lot of clanging sounds fall into place along with warm keys. A perfect ending that will put you at rest until the song is over.

Rick James - (1981) Street Songs LP

Rick James (born James Ambrose Johnson, Jr; February 1, 1948 - August 6, 2004) was an American funk and soul musician from Buffalo New York, who worked as a singer, keyboardist, bassist, record producer, arranger, and composer during his long career. One of the most popular artists on the Motown label during the late 1970s and early 1980s, James was famous for his wild brand of funk music and his trademark cornrow braids. As time went on, James was given the unofficial title The King of Punk-Funk.