Merzbow & Vanity Productions - (2019) Coastal Erosion LP

 iDEAL Recordings ‎– 184 

Masami Akita and Christian Stadsgaard both hail from places with a lot of coastline vulnerable to sea level rises, ‘Coastal Erosion’ sees them grasp the nettle of impending doom with typically gauntleted grip and an unswerving intensity that speaks to clear and present concerns. While perhaps not the most obvious bedfellows for collaboration, the artists patently share an emphatic empathy for the situation that resonates through their music, where human forces of emotion intersect elemental chaos in a pair of poetically tempestuous, even harrowing works.

Merzbow’s visceral, primal roar sustains a perpetual force of attrition that constantly threatens to overwhelm VP’s widescreen, panoramic pads on both of the LP’s monolithic tracts. But it’s due to their democracy of vision that they speak as one, rather than over each other. On the A-side’s 18 minute ‘Erosion Japan’ they connote the frothing might of the Pacific tide encroaching and destroying towering walls of steel and glass with an arrestingly Ballardian quality to their instrumental description of violence and anguish. The B-side’s 17 minute ‘Erosion of Denmark’ follows with a more pensive arrangement of low-lying, unyielding drone frequencies smeared to stereo extremes and overlapped with spirit-penetrating shards of distortion, limning the prospective submergence of the Danish peninsula and its archipelagoes with a Thunbergian seriousness and intractable logic.

Taken as a profound warning or as an elegy for anthropocene extinction, ‘Coastal Erosion’ is a frighteningly powerful statement that leaves its message like the murky stain of flood waters inside the mind.

Merzbow - (2020) EXD

 

Room40 ‎– RM4131 

 

Across the middle years of the 1990s, Merzbow (Masami Akita) refined a stochastic language for harsh noise that had emerged from his studio experiments at the beginning of that decade.

"This technique, which involved a combination of self made instruments, synthesisers, tabletop effects and, in the case of EXD, drum machines, often recorded at incredible levels to create a uniquely visceral distortion, has essentially become the benchmark for noise music in the 21st century.

A devout archivist, Merzbow’s unreleased works from this period are finally getting the attention they deserve. Editions like Noise Mass, issued by Room40 in 2019, are amongst a growing number of releases that document the gradual unfolding of his signature approach to overabundance of frequency and ceaseless sonic chaos. Recorded at the end of 1997 and early 1998, EXD owes its title to the Bias Rockaku-kun EXD 5ch analogue drum synthesizer. It is an exercise in maximal minimalism. Using repeated phrases, atmospheric, but reductive drum patterns and tightly wound pulses, Merzbow calls up a vision proto-industrial technoscape.

Bathed in white noise, it is a music in which the reassurance of the kick drum is largely torn away, sending the music into an uneasy orbital decay. It’s the sound of warning systems onboard a satellite as it begins to burn up, falling back to earth. An exquisite sonic evisceration. What makes EXD quite unusual is it reveals, in part at least, some of the skeletal structures Merzbow deploys in the creation of his works. It’s especially revealing, as this period is mostly recognised for its unending shower of brutalising harsh noise. On the title track EXD we can a Roland TR-606 drum machine folding into and out of focus. Its grooves ruptured by, and then become gradually consumed in, a field of phasing noise and distortion."

Merzbow - (2020) StereoAkuma

 

Room40 ‎– EDRM428

 In June 2019, Masami Akita, better known as Merzbow travelled to Australia to take part in Room40’s Open Frame festival.

Across a week he delivered a series of performances to sold out audiences in Sydney and Melbourne. The performances were viscerally explosive, a channeling of intensities of frequency and volume - the kind of trademarked bodily affective noise Merzbow has become renowned for.

Between the concerts, Akita spent his days visiting a variety of forests, spending time with legendary Australia fauna icons like the Australian White Ibis, Little Penguins and various other native species. As a vegan, his affinity for the natural world is unconditional. With this in mind he has announced all profits from this edition will be donated to assisting wildlife recovery in the wake of the Australia bushfire crisis of the past few months. Room40 will be matching all money raised.

Thanks Merzbow!

released February 28, 2020

Design by Traianos Pakioufakis
Mixed and Mastered by Lawrence English

Boris With Merzbow - (2020) 2R0I2P0 CD

 

Relapse Records ‎– RR7471

Relapse Records presents 2R0I2P0, the brand new collaborative album from BORIS and MERZBOW. The 10 track album showcases every bit of the excitement and pulse-pounding rock and metal heard throughout the inimitable, expansive BORIS catalog, as it meets the signature harsh noise and soundscapes of the equally prolific MERZBOW.

An album that is at once familiar and unique for its time, melodic and harsh in equal parts, 2R0I2P0 aims to find sonic harmony. After all, 2R0I2P0 translates to "Twenty Twenty R.I.P." "This year was a period of trial for everyone in the world," BORIS comments. "This work becomes a monument to the requiem of the previous era. From here, a new world begins again."

Alberich - (2010) NATO-Uniformen 8xCS

 

Hospital Productions ‎– HOS-284

Clinic Of Torture - (2020) Rohrstockliebe CS

 

 Institute Of Paraphilia Studies ‎– none 

Contagious Orgasm - (2018) Stalked Into The Gap Of Heart CS

 

Tension Collapse ‎– TC005

Contagious Orgasm / Caligula031 - (2018) Non-Consensual CS

 

Elettronica Radicale Edizioni ‎– EREAU013

Controlled Death - (2020) Death Entries 1

 

Holy Terror ‎– HT.DEATH.1 

 

Kinbakushi - (2020) Construction Site Bondage CS

 

 Institute Of Paraphilia Studies ‎– none

HHL - (2015) Shorn / Flail CS

 

 Summer Isle ‎– SI07

Jacob Winans - (2020) Burn One, Bring It Through The Garden, Pin A Rose On It CS

 

Flag Day Recordings ‎– FDR41

Leather Bath - (2019) Nature's Crackling Fire CD

 

Leather Bath, Inc. ‎– LBINC1908

Leather Bath is a performance and art project founded in 2010 by Greh Holger and John Wiese in Los Angeles, California. Their work consists of sound-based performance and video, collage, and installations, creating explicit publications communicating reality to mature adults. Nature's Crackling Fire is their first full length album. Edition of 200 copies in 6-panel digipak. 

Grunt - (2012) Long Lasting Happiness CD

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Industrial Recollections ‎– none

Grunt - (2020) Spiritual Eugenics 2xCD

 

 Freak Animal Records ‎– none

Born in 1993, Grunt remains one of the most active and restless forces in Finnish - or even global industrial noise network. Since first tapes published 25 years ago, project has been active without any breaks. Messy discography makes it hard to judge how many actual ”albums” has been created. List of releases reaches close to hundred, yet most of them represents other approach than creation of ”album”. Spiritual Eugenics continue to path established by Castrate The Illusionist (2018), Myth Of Blood (2015), World Draped In A Camouflage (2012), Petturien Rooli (2009) and Seer of Decay (2006).

It expands the sounds, themes and visuals to unheard levels, but keeps firmly touch of known Grunt sound. 80 minutes long album is monolithic work packaged in double digipak with booklet.

 

Grunt / Outermost - (1995) Stab In The Ears CS

 Cat Move ‎– CM 007

 

Grunt / Pile Of Eggs - (1995) Noise Never Stops : Split! CS

 

Eggscab Radio ‎– none 

Genocide Organ - (2014) Kwazulu Natal LP

 

Tesco Archaic Documents ‎– 005 

Kjostad - (2020) Red Iron Knife CD

 

 White Centipede Noise ‎– WCN054 

Kjostad - (2019) Ice In / Ice Out CS

 

 Cipher Productions ‎– (sic 102)

Mania - (2020) Raw Nerves & Unseen Eyes CD

 

Freak Animal Records ‎– FA-CD-124

The New Sadism - (1984) Breather's Penis Age CS

 

Not On Label ‎– none  

Peter J. Woods - (2018) The Actress And The Gauntlet CDr

 

Breaching Static ‎– BS 98 

 

Zoviet France - (2020) Châsse 15xLP & 2x7''

Vinyl-on-demand ‎– 155 

Part: One / Two / Three

 

 "Members during the exciting early years represented by these 11 LPs (on 15 12''s and 2 7''s) of :zoviet*france: were Ben Ponton, Robin Storey, Peter Jensen, Paolo Di Paolo and Lisa Hale. :zoviet*france: is an idiosyncratic group of anonymous music makers, gatherers of sound, and fabricators of unknown music. For nearly 40 years, they have explored and reported back from the liminal areas of music and composition, walking the margins where little is easily located and consensus reality melds with the hypnagogic and half-heard.
Having wilfully obscured themselves in Newcastle upon Tyne since their inception in 1980, :zoviet*france: has developed a radical relationship with cheap technologies, homemade acoustic instruments, primitive looping and sampling techniques, and basic dub trickery from which the group has crafted a distinctly unique vocabulary of sonic hypnosis.
Just as the group’s sound has alchemically reconfigured inexpensive technologies, the packaging of their releases has avoided standard formats with aluminium, steel, wood and porcelain among the materials that have been bent and cut to shape instead."

Zoviet France - (2020) Châsse 2e 17xLP

 

 Vinyl-on-demand ‎– VOD 165 

Part 1 / 2

 Zoviet*France: is an idiosyncratic group of anonymous music makers, gatherers of sound, and fabricators of unknown music. For nearly 40 years, they have explored and reported back from the liminal areas of music and composition, walking the margins where little is easily located and consensus reality melds with the hypnagogic and half-heard. Having wilfully obscured themselves in Newcastle upon Tyne since their inception in 1980, :zoviet*france: has developed a radical relationship with cheap technologies, homemade acoustic instruments, primitive looping and sampling techniques, and basic dub trickery from which the group has crafted a distinctly unique vocabulary of sonic hypnosis. Just as the group’s sound has alchemically reconfigured inexpensive technologies, the packaging of their releases has avoided standard formats with aluminium, steel, wood and porcelain among the materials that have been bent and cut to shape instead.

William Basinski - (2020) Lamentations

 

Temporary Residence Limited ‎– TRR343 

William Basinski’s reputation as the foremost producer of profound meditations on death and decay has long been established, but on his new album, Lamentations, he transforms operatic tragedy into abyssal beauty. More than any other work since The Disintegration Loops, there is an ominous grief throughout the album, and that sense of loss lingers like an emotional vapor.

Captured and constructed from tape loops and studies from Basinski’s archives – dating back to 1979 – Lamentations is over forty years of mournful sighs meticulously crafted into songs. They are shaped by the inevitable passage of time and the indisputable collapsing of space – and their collective resonance is infinite and eternal.

Alfarmania - (2016) Vid Sömnens Sista Tråd CS

 

 Styggelse ‎– 83 

This is a less limited tape edition of the impossible to find 7”ep released by 8EMINIS in a ridiculous edition of 20 lathe cut copies (…I hear a second edition of 20 copies was issued, but I could not validate the truth of that). At least now the music is more widely available given Kristian of Alfarmania has issued another version on tape (with bonus material), via his own Styggelse imprint.

The first track ‘Vid Sömnens Sista Tråd’ features crumbling atonal modulated synth layers, an underbelly of cavernous junk metal chaos and rough vocals barks from the depths of the asylum.  Fantastic stuff.  ‘Kvick I Jord’ is the next track, and features a broadly metallic creaking resonance and interweaving mid to high range wailing/ droning tones, as stilted bass thumbs bed down the loose structure. ‘Lomsk’ is the last of the tracks featured on the 7”ep, consisting of radio channel scanning noise, sustained burrowing textures and spoken samples again pushing atmospheres of dread and unease to the fore.  The bonus material then consists of ‘En Otrampad Stig’, which was originally featured on compilation tape associated with the United Forces of Industrial II festival from 2015.  This track is more stalking in atmosphere, where it take its time in elevating the tone.  Atonal synth loop provides the backing for controlled yet squalling noise and the barked vocals of the mentally deranged, all wrapped up in deep mineshaft tone.  There is also an unlisted 5th tracks, which is evidently an outtake from an earlier ‘Slutstationen’ compilation tape recording session and brings more Alfarmania induced anxiety.

By now you should appreciate what might be expected from an Alfarmania release and this tape delivers as strong material from the project as you should by now expect, which ultimately amounts to classic Alfarmania ‘post-mortem’ paranoia.  Double sided fold out J card with suitable imagery rounds out the tape nicely, and the slogan of “No To New Support” is a nice attitude and sentiment.

Bernard Parmegiani - (2008) L'Œuvre Musicale En 12xCD

 

 INA-GRM ‎– Ina G 6000/11

Part 1 / 2 / 3

An incredible complete works boxsetwith 33 compositions from 1964 to 2007 with a 92 pages booklet in French and English. The best way to enter into the world of Bernard Parmegiani, French composer of musique concrete, member of the GRM group.
"The Wire magazine recently described this amazing package as "A bargain price treasure chest....containing worlds of inexhaustible spaciousness and strangeness" and, indeed, listening through just some of the 12 cd's included you find yourself drawn into a multi-faceted world of strange sound sources and audio manipulations designed to play tricks on your senses to an extent that has left this reviewer almost paralysed with wonderment. Parmegiani started out working for the French equivalent of the BBC and soon found himself mentored by the founding father of Musique Concrete, Pierre Schaeffer. Making use of technological advances that gave the world magnetic tape and microphones, Schaeffer pioneered a method of taking everyday sounds and transforming them into unrecognisable, detached pieces of music with no identifiable sound source, a style that became known as Acousmatic music.

Parmegiani was hugely influenced by Schaeffer's pioneering work and Groupe de Recherche Musicale (GRM), the French Radio institution that is often described as the French equivalent of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. The work Parmegiani would go on to create would make use of these Acousmatic techniques in creating a body of work which is not only one of the most significant of the 20th century, but also hugely influential on a whole host of musical pioneers that would follow in his wake, with Christian Fennesz, Aphex Twin and Jim O'Rourke being notable disciples. These 12 cd's cover the majority of Parmegiani's musique concrete legacy and include pieces recorded between 1964 and 2007. You can barely believe the immersive and often woozy effect of these recordings, ranging from eerie cut-out tape loops through to popular music plunderphonics and proto-distilled-dub that's impossible to absorb in one sitting. Having so far only made it through half of this gargantuan collection (with the very handy aid of the 92 page book included in the package) - I can safely say that L' Ouvre Musicale is not only one of the most impressive and important collections of music I've heard this year, but also one of the most culturally significant and rewarding.

Bernard Parmegiani - (2020) Violostries LP

 

Recollection GRM ‎– REGRM 023 

 

 Violostries (1963/64), 16'39

Premiered and recorded in April 1965 at the Royan Festival - France, by Devy Erlih (violin) & Bernard Parmegiani (sound projection).

Violostries represents the intersection of several musical research directions, presented as two simultaneous dialogues - composer/performer and instrument/orchestra.

After a short introduction tutti very spatialized:
1. Pulsion/Miroirs: multiplied by itself, the violin is projected into the four corners of the sound space.
2. Jeu de cellules: concertante piece for violin and audio medium, the latter being made up of very tightly woven microsounds.
3. Végétal: slow and invisible development following a continuous time, resulting from an internal and permanent processing of the matter.

Capture éphémère (1967, 1988 version), 11'48

This work was composed in four tracks in 1967 for quadraphonic diffusion.
Remixed in stereo in 1988.
Premiered at the Studio 105 of the Maison de la Radio, Paris, May 1967.
Sounds - noises that circulate as time unfolds - continue to exist despite our recording them.
Breaths, fluttering wings: ephemeral microsonic sounds streaking space, sound scratches, landslides, bounces, vertigo of solid objects falling into an abyssal void, multiple snapshots forever frozen in their fall. As many symbols leave inside us the permanent trace of their ephemeral brushing against our ear.
Some day, a desert, a sound, then never again....
Somewhere, in my head and body something still resonates... resonance, what could be more ephemeral.

La Roue Ferris (1971), 10'45

Premiered at the Festival des chantiers navals, Menton, on August 26, 1971.
Sound projection: Bernard Parmegiani.

La Roue Ferris (Ferris wheel) spins, merging with its own resonance, stubbornly perpetuating its variations. It only sketches a regularly evolving movement around a constant axis. Each of its towers generates thick sonic layers that penetrate each other, producing a very fluid interweaving. The crackling of the origin eventually metamorphoses into sonic threads whose lightness recalls high-altitude clouds, cirrus clouds, haunted by the cries of swifts twirling in the warm air. The wondrous arises and dies off, leaving us with an illusion of duration.

Bernard Parmegiani - (2012) L'Œil Écoute / Dedans-Dehors LP

 

Editions Mego ‎– REGRM 003 

Just after Pierre Schaeffer had founded the Groupe de Recherches Musicales (GRM) in 1959, Bernard Parmegiani became a member of it. It was a collective of composers, who represented the »musique concrète«, far away from traditional instruments and sounds. Additionally, they helped popularizing elctro-acoustic music, probably one of the reasons why Editions Mego have created a whole sub-label for the group last year. Recollection GRM’s third record includes two tracks by the 75-years-old composer Parmegiani, who is said to be one of the most influential representatives of acousmatic music, dealing with sounds without an audible origin. The track »L’Œil écoute« (ie. »the eye is listening«) was created in 1970 and originally served as part of a video with the same name. At the beginning, the sounds are still very familiar and concrete: trains rattle, bees hum, radio-channels skip; this is how far our own experience allows us to recognize the sounds. After about one third of the 19-minutes-track (there was a CD in 1997 with a 25-minutes-version – what happened to those six minutes?), it drifts of into the unknown. From now on, the listener is on his own and has to create individual pictures in his head, has to learn how to listen again. The track »Dedans-Dehors« on the b-side is from 1977. In its 22 minutes playing time, it contrasts natural with artificial sounds. There are more or less audible references to the elements water, fire, earth and air, created as a natural metamorphosis, liquid, solid, gaseous, all in one movement. And in between, you’ll hear birds singing. It is a bit like a phoenix burning in the glow of the morning sun at sunrise, only to rise again straight away from its own ashes. »Dedans-Dehors« is pure mythology and gets its power from that very source – thankfully, this music can now be purchased again, remastered on vinyl.