Katchmare – Lotus Village Plan 3xCDR
Scissor Death
Oh god, this was a tough one. 3 fucking discs of ultra-minimal drone I had to sit through, but I did it, the whole goddamn thing. I dunno, I just don’t have the patience for this kind of stuff. So quiet and slow moving that you are actually focused on the volume of the “tape hiss” which I’m sure isn’t actually tape hiss, maybe just a bed of white noise? But yes, it’s treated as a layer here, and fades in and out at …

Locrian – Greyfield Shrines LP
Diophantine Discs
Greyfield Shrines is a record that is successful on at least a few levels. The first is that it’s just a damn solid release, and the second is that it’s actual guitar drone that I like. I really appreciate when artists can break my jaded opinions and Locrian has done just that. It was only about 5 minutes into the one track – that takes up both sides of this LP – that I starting thinking about how Locrian sounds much like a darker Emeralds …

Lid Emba & Bobcrane – We Substitute Radiance CD
Stickfigure
Here are two new-to-me artists delivering a collaboration of experimental guitar driven electronica in a very colorful digipak. The art kind of looks like the fruit section at the supermarket. Definitely an eyebrow raised when I first peeped this shit and I can say right off the bat this isn’t my thing.
The weird sounds and experimental aspect of We Substitute Radiance is pretty neat. “Ear candy” type sounds glistening, squiggling, chirping along in every track. The electronica aspects are a bit weaker, …

Steel Hook Prostheses – Atrocitizer CD
Malignant
Ah yes, the SHP boys are back with this full length now coming in from the Malignant front. If you’ve ever heard SHP before you know you can expect some top-quality industrial noise/power electronics with perhaps a bit of an atmospheric touch. The latter of which is much more apparent over the almost 50 minutes that Atrocitizer spans.
If you took away the scathing vocal attacks – which are often the loudest element in the mix when they appear – and merely focused on the sounds, …

Fossils – Waterboarding CDR
Unverified
I stopped asking why a while ago. Probably after about a year of doing reviews, I figured out it’s better just not to ask why, but to outright state why not. Asking why is just an exercise in futility at best, at worst it’s a colossal waste of time energy and frustration.
Waterboarding is a badly packaged CDR that features an even worse recording of even worse improvised sounds. Experimental music without the experimentation. Fuckery without the “FUCK”. The recording on this is barely as loud as the …

D/A A/D – This is My Hell CDR
Snip Snip
This is my first exposure to D/A A/D and it’s a bit of a surprise. Don’t know why, but I was expecting some harsh noise. This is My Hell is instead 3 longish tracks clocking in around 40 minutes of slow modular synthesizer compositions. It’s pretty minimalist and sounds like it’s half way in between Pulse Emitter and Klinikal Skum.
The first track doesn’t really do it for me. I find the sounds run-of-the-mill with the evolution of the track to be so-so. …

Caustic Castle – Makepiece 3″CDR
SMTG Limited
Ah, good ‘ol Caustic Castle. Caustic Castle is Kenneth Yates, one half of the experimental unit Harm Stryker. For Makepiece he is joined by the meandering saxophone stylings of Clifford Schwing. Makepiece is one longish track clocking in around 18 minutes which features barrages of high pitched squeals, mid ranged squiggles, feedback, organs, and even a little bit of melody here and there.
The piece starts off at it’s most caustic with harsh high-register sounds of the sax bleeting away while joined by feedback and organ …

Hunted Creatures – The Failure of Human Instincts CDR
Dynamo Sound Collective
Human Creatures is one Ryan Emmett of Pittsburgh, PA. I was introduced to the project when I had the pleasure of playing with him while on tour back in March of ’09. The Failure of Human Insincts is an earlier effort of Emmett’s and it is a varied disc of found sounds, ambient atmospheres and slow-moving melodies seemingly culled from guitars, synthesizers and feedback.
Generally you will find a layer of ambience, or found sound to start. Weaved over that are …

RØD STÆR – Tilbake Til Varmland CD
Roggbif
This is a fucking weird one. Probably took me at least 5 listens to get my head around the whole album, and another 2 or 3 after that to form an opinion of it. Well, I was pretty fucking sick of it after that. I kind of suspected something like this after looking at the artwork, which I actually enjoy quite a bit more then I do the sound here. At least you don’t have to sit down and spend an hour experiencing all …

Peter J Woods – Afterthought 3″CDR
FTAM
This little 3″ clocks in around 17 minutes, but oh, what an intense 17 min it is. Afterthought presents a varied array of sounds, ranging from musique concrete, power electronics, spoken (screamed) word, and drone. I was lucky enough to also witness these works live as well and to have this as a document is just the icing on the cake.
The first two tracks are around 7 minutes, with the opener “Inanimate Portraits” bring a bit more ambient fading in with some singing vocal drones …