Funerary Call – Nightside Emenations CD
Malignant Records
Time for some proper dark ambient music with one of the more recent albums (two were released in 2012) from Funerary Call. If you’re not familiar with the project Funerary Call is Harlow Macfarlane also the mane behind the death industrial project Sistrenatus. Under the FC moniker Macfarlane creates ritualistic dark ambient music with a heavily organic feel.
The sounds on Nightside Emenations are quite well spread out and composed only dealing with thick slabs of layers at key moments. This helps to create a …

The Subtraction – The One Who Infests Ships C30
Land of Decay
The Subtraction is a project featuring J.Soliday of Winters in Osaka and Omar Gonzalez of Machismo. What they present with The One Who Infests Ships is roughly 30 minutes of darkened electronics ranging from bleak ambience to seething experimental.
Side A is the calmer, quieter side but immediately noticeable is the focus on layering detailed sounds. On the surface it feels quite minimal but a more focused listen will yield eerie melodies, dark textures, and morphing elements.
Side B is more angst-ridden …

Emeralds – What Happened CD
No Fun Productions
Looks like this is the Emeralds full-length following their last release on Hanson entitled Solar Bridge. They’ve released about 2 splits between these two albums with What Happened having been released in 2009, has it already been 3 years?!
The first two tracks kick off with weird experimental wankery but both are commendable for the emotional rifts they eventually open up with their slow building climaxes. Alive in the Sea of Information using vocal chants and Damaged Kids using strummed guitars while both employ layers …

Cathartec – Lithogenesis C30
Sonic Munitions
Here’s a tape from the Seattle based musician Cathartec presenting roughly 30 minutes of ambient drone. Simply packaged with earth tones and runes the design is a decent implicator of what is contained within.
The tape kicks off with Orthoclase which is a floating and airy drone piece with a ton of great textural layers in the mix to add detail and subtlety. The piece swirls around the listener like a raging blizzard, but peaceful in it’s beauty. A really nice amalgamation of sounds here. Lithogenesis is …

A Wake A Week – Little Black Cloud CD
Spectral Liquid
It’s always interesting to dive head first into a project of which every aspect is completely unknown to you. I’ve never heard of the label, the artist or anything else having to do with this release. All I know is that the disc is contained within a carefully and professionally designed digipak.
Little Black Cloud has an undeniable soundtrack-like quality. If this was a proper soundtrack disc linked to a film I would not at all be surprised. It has several features …

Streetmeat – Nails C20
Anabolic Dimensions
Here’s some more traditional power electronics delivered for the fans of a classic sound out there.
The general sound is of warm, lo-fi electronics. Pulsating oscillators, cheap distortion, flangered vocals all culminate into the typical formula for a brutal power electronic assault. Style like this has been employed before but Streetmeat continues to further define the sound.
One of the better moments here is the closer of this quick tape Nail For Your Coffin which ups the ante for aggressive sounds with a nicely layered core of distortion. …

Nite Shadez – Black Holes For The Face And A Graveyard C47
Out-of-Body Records
Out of Body Records and Rob Buttrum literally never cease to impress me with fantastic aesthetic and a brand that is somehow “so Texas” in the weirdest and most sinister way possible. Black Holes For The Face and A Graveyard is the latest tape from the Nite Shadez project, a duo consisting of Rob Buttrum and Andrew Michael. The mood here is consistent with Out of Body’s regular output, and the influence that Buttrum has on the music …

Tourette – Jardin du Sommeil. Chant d’Amour sur la Nuit Grandissante CD
Antropofago Ateo/Troniks
This could possibly be the first Troniks release I have reviewed on Existence Establishment but I have to say I am happy to see the label back in operation, even if their output has slowed down some. My limited experience with the project Tourette has led me to believe that what I can expect is pure lo-fi harsh noise, although the graphic design here screams of something much more artsy.
Jardin du Sommeil kicks things off with a page …

Friends With Corpses – Don’t Turn on The Lights C30
Phage Tapes
Here is a sick Pusdrainer side project featuring Justin Lakes and Joe Walter. Friends With Corpses delivers saturated power electronics and death industrial experimental sounds with their debut effort Don’t Turn on the Lights.
First off, the packaging on this record is sick – ugly neon colors and a piss yellow tape remind me of something from a Gaspar Noé flick. Also worth mentioning is that the track titles are quite wonderful.

Side A kicks off with Throbbing Pisshole an overdriven synth …

Pacing – Summer Tour 2011 CDr
Human Beard
Here’s another older release yet definitely one that warrants a review. Pacing keeps bringing it with no expectations and no strings attached in this 4 song CDR (also available online for free).
Pacing seems to employ a general song structure with most of their tracks here. Droning mid-range tones are used as a bed with various layers of noise folded over it. Feedback, junk noise, synth madness it’s all here and the tracks unfold quite nicely.
The epic closing track entitled Aftermath Live 5/3/2010 delivers an …