Drip Water Hollow Out Stone
(Ever/Never - E/N037) 12-inch $16.75
Murk and mystery are the keys to this UK unit’s menace-pulsing wormhole. Small gestures, strangled vocal cries and seemingly random guitar/drum patterns, disturbing logic, rhythms clicking and reverberating, throbbing and whirring anxiety, unpredictable sound-swells, stuttering, a molten eruption.
Thiocarbamide
(Phage - PT91) CD $10.00
The fifty minutes on this release were composed using constructed metal objects and violin. All four tracks are pure, unrelenting harsh noise with plenty of movement, low bass rumbling, high-frequency feedback and the sound of metal being abused. One of Canada's most reliable mad dogs. Edition of 200.
Ein Geisteskranker Als Künstler
(Ronda - RND11) CD $12.00
Fourteen mesmerizing, nerve-wracking tracks from the archives recorded 1994 to 2006 by noise guitarist and founding member of French-Romanian experimental post-punk trio Sun Plexus 2. Guitar, bass, cymbal, analog synth, and misappropriated objects (45s, radio tube, “a person ‘trapped’ as drowsy” during Regreb and Ogrob’s Temple Of Rock installation) deliver ghostly visions from the depths of dark and wet caves. Expect nothing less from this member of Foi Pour Pusillanime, French Doctors, l’Autopsie A Révélé Que La Mort Etait Due A l’Autopsie, Le 9900, and Micro_penis.
Hinge
(Total Life Society - TLS010) CD $14.00
Doug Gillard: guitar, backing vocals; Don Godwin: bass, backing vocals, engineer; Nate Scheible: drums; Matthew Wascovich: vocals; and Michael Yonkers: guitar, electronics. Hinge was engineered by Don Godwin at Tonal Park, Takoma Park, Maryland. Artwork by Chris Yarmock. Liner notes by Jonathan Lethem.
Live from Devil’s Den
(Pauf Recordings - PAUF022) CD $7.50
Fantastic and mysterious dead-of-winter in situ group sound survey — also described as field recordings from a cave / theme park in Florida. Having recorded for Kye and Bánh Mì Verlag, the Fribergs and the DiMaggio collaborate with Jeronimo Jimenez of Ñaka Ñaka on a single 49-minute track so diminutive in nature it has to be a performance. “Arrangement of sound with depth,” according to Nothing / Shut Down, “A story that seems to have no pulsation but firmly exists.”
Worst Utopia Ever
(Butte County Free Music Society - BUFMS76) CDR $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
COMING IN JULY. On their fourth full-length album this year, the Bren’t Lewiis Ensemble charges into a blood-snake melee like public-access heroes the Ill-Advised Mutants Of Wrestling. Psychedelic euphoria and dread-poisoned torpor grapple all over landscapes smeared with swirling scrape bubbles and the post-hypnotic wobble that cleanses residua from an overdose of personality suppressants. “Very smooth,” as one disembodied and uncertain and completely inaccurate voice describes hopefully, “And somewhat spooky.” Punctuated by phlegmy coughs and metallic chirps, phasing in and out of common-area ambiance, this slow-moving travelogue through between-station grinds, animalist crunch vistas, and long-form dissection of beige respiratory gack rises and falls inside an onslaught of sinister machine drones that flay and smother everything with placid steadiness. There are multiple screech havens embedded throughout Worst Utopia Ever, where ghosted rescue attempts suffocate under the hairy mud of cross-eyed tape manipulation, mushy expressway pile-ups, and out-of-control clang orgies.
External Organs
(Butte County Free Music Society - BUFMS74) CDR $8.00
Simian incantations made of over-saturated squelch clangs and reptile-friendly textures that are smooth as a cheese grater to the back of the head. Hiding under asynchronous grinds and competitive echo sharpness, the five long tracks here seem to recede unnaturally, like reverse footage of a smoldering grease fire, or a predatory ballet choreographed for It Had Been An Ordinary Enough Day In Pueblo, Colorado. The ensemble feels cooked alive on External Organs, maintaining a rhythm throughout comparable to extras from Night Of The Living Dead bonking into a wall over and over again as if trying to memorize the bloodstains on the sheetrock.