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The Body Hail To Thee, Everlasting Pain
‘Perhaps extreme music is the ideal method for sublimating an unfulfilled death drive: a fantasy of death’s fascinating potentiality that mediates our access to the truth of its nothingness, accreting in the process all the symbolism that attends our visions of mortality. It’s dark, fearful, rent by screams, discordant guitar, and pounding drums. More importantly, it lasts. Unlike death, which occurs in an instant, music unfolds through time, expanding this phantasmic death into an album-length experience, a succession of death moments, or better yet, a succession of moments that teach us to crave death. The Body’s music, here compounded by The Haxan Cloak’s Bobby Krlic, exemplifies this dual process of the suicide fantasy, evoking both the surrounding “craziness” and the terrifying march toward self-slaughter.’ — Tiny Mix Tapes

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Amen Dunes w/ Elias Bender Ronnenfelt Green Eyes
‘Over the past few years Damon McMahon’s Amen Dunes project has been serving up loose and crackly, almost improvised psych-raga jams, but where McMahon’s pumped out “largely improvisational first-take affairs, recorded in a matter of weeks at most” in the past, he says his new album Love took him close to a year-and-a-half to put together. Everything’s rubber-banded up tight by the background violin. The whole deal softly, softly chugs along partly because of that little drum beat, the one that practically lopes while it loops. It’s all quarter note snare, kick on the “ands” of three and four. One slightly more relevant things you also oughta know is that Iceage’s Elias Bender Rønnenfelt is featured on the track “Green Eyes”, and, woah buddy, he even gets his duet on with McMahon.’ — Tiny Mix Tapes

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Wanda Group Masculinity is a Wonderful Thing
‘Louis Johnstone’s Wanda Group project has been making a growing name for itself across the course of this year. With a quick-fire succession of cryptically titled records, accompanied with greyscale collage artwork built from images of fragmented rock, he’s established a particular aesthetic that’s both unique and tough to pin down. Certain elements coincide with the styles and ideals of musique concrete, or artists like Joseph Hammer, Atrax Morgue and the school of industrial/ experimental/ minimal cassettes that cropped up in the late 80s and early 90s. But throwing names to see what sticks seems a little at odds with the nourishing aspect at the heart of Wanda Group, a certain verisimilitude that sidesteps overt abstraction towards something more beautiful. His tracks are complex, intimate structures: webs of samples stripped of their original setting, closely examined, then messily smeared and reapplied into radically new shapes. The overall approach and final appearance is closer to papier-mache than any traditional style of production.’ — The Quietus

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Max Richter Untitled Figures
‘Max Richter’s debut album Memoryhouse was originally recorded with the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra in 2002 for the BBC’s Late Junction classical music label. A masterpiece in neoclassical composition, the album has languished in out-of-print obscurity since the dissolution of Late Junction as a label. Indeed, inquisitive listeners might now know Richter better for his earlier collaborations with electronic pioneers The Future Sound of London and Roni Size, as well as his elegiac score to Ari Folman’s 2008 animated documentary Waltz with Bashir. But Fat Cat Records has plucked Memoryhouse from the doldrums to introduce a new audience to Richter’s first major solo work, and give old fans an excuse to fall under its spell all over again. And what an intoxicating spell it is. A 65-minute journey through the beauty and tragedy of 20th century Europe, Memoryhouse is like an immaculately observed postcard journal, albeit one informed more by imagination than documentary accuracy.’ — BBC

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Heterotic Rain
‘Throughout his 20-year career, Mike Paradinas has peppered his fruitful career (as μ-Ziq) with a handful of collaborations that have seen the Wimbledon producer work with heady artists like Marco Jerrentrup, Speedy J and Aphex Twin. With Heterotic, Paradinas has found a musical project that seems, sonically and personally, close to his heart. Recording with his wife, Lara Rix-Martin, the music of Heterotic is a tempered blend of spacey synthesizers, analog drum machine beats and mournful vocals, courtesy of French artist Vezelay, giving each track a haunted, uneasy feeling.’ — exclaim

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Energy Gown Freedose
‘It was a bit prophetic that I was reading Ginsberg prior to my interview with local experimental quartet Energy Gown, whose philosophy of embracing the now and delving into the darker echelons of the human psyche recalls the inquisitive creativity of the 1950s and 60s. Energy Gown’s quest though isn’t to bring back the flower children of bygone eras but instead probe the codes and structures that make up the human body and creative impulses of their music and audience. Although only formed less than a year ago, the group has already self-released two tapes, performed at Chicago’s strongly curated Psych Fest and are releasing their first EP I Watch The Sun on March 23. Clearly the now is truly now.’ — IMPOSE

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Nochexxx Aquaverse
‘Marshaling his battered MPC, teasing out warped grooves and punching in staggered beats that sit somewhere between vintage electro and techno – though often spiked through with pleasingly crunchy b-boy signifiers – Nochexxx tunes are idiosyncratic and heat-warped expressions of a sinister twitchy velocity. Indeed, it’s this very tension that gives Nochexxx tracks such personality; raw music that works the floor but exists on a rather different mental plane, with an oil haze cinematic undertone that’s often accentuated in his performances with distinct yellow and black visual accompaniment from Plastic Horse. This month sees the release of the Cambridge-based musician’s debut album Thrusters on Ramp Recordings. Featuring 11 tracks that solidify his vision of skewed homespun electronics, this is music in constant forward motion – a hallucinatory journey to the centre of the cactus, and an instantly recognisable audio world.’ — The Quietus

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Whirling Hall Of Knives Volaré Symptomatic
‘A collaboration between Magnetize and The Last Sound, Whirling Hall Of Knives’ harsh smouldering circuits and eruptions of panicky white noise have a profoundly unsettling quality, a sense of gnawing paranoia but interspersed with moments of almost euphoric epiphany, as if in the grip of an unshakeable 4am psychosis a growing sense that the door will be kicked in at any second and the world outside will come pouring in. Psyche electronics of a particularly greasy and grime-flecked hue. A feast of swirling hypno-psych, blown out and buried in sheets of corrosive feedback with all manner of buzzing and swirling guitars blending into a pulsing, throbbing, hypnotic and mesmerizing noise-scape underpinned by a seriously wild and propulsive groove.’ — collaged

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EMA Satellites
‘Production-wise, EMA has said she wanted her new album The Future’s Void to sound like Nine Inch Nails demos and – fair enough – this is what we hoped How to Destroy Angels would be, or what Zola Jesus might do next. That said, EMA draws on sci-fi visions of dystopia (hence names like ‘Neuromancer’, ‘Cthulhu’) rather than targeting Christianity, for a more astute criticism of the late-capitalist era. The raw, chaotic, noise-collages of her former band, Gowns, seem a long way away – but these elements are suspended to make humanity seem all the more precious. The music operates less as an end in itself and more as a counterpoint to the keening, whispering, screeching, gasping voice-as-expression-of-humanity: within the silicon maze, she suggests, there’s a ghost trying to get out. A crucial part of the EMA formula is the lullaby, nursery rhyme, or folksong updated. Her songs look back to that first moment in childhood when we realize we can be creative – that music can be democratic – and they look forward to a moment in our collective history when all the icons that have so much power over us in 2014 are just material for children’s songs.’ — Drowned in Sound

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Pyrrhon The Architect Confesses
‘Pyrrhon’s oft-suffocating, teetering-towards-self-destruction din works because they are one confident, brash group of dudes. Guitarist Dylan DiLella deftly crosses brutality with riffs that can only be described as “zippery” and “alarm-esque.” Drummer Alex Cohen’s natural prog tendencies feed off of the chances to explode with some relentless blasting. Bassist Erik Malave moves in and out of the main motifs while showing no hesitance in going as bonkers as his bandmates. (Plus, that thick bass tone may be the greatest benefit of a fine Ryan Jones production and Colin Marston mastering.) Moore uses a variety of effects to enhance his many voices – a full range of maniacal growling, screaming, yelling, ranting, and preaching – while delivering an album’s worth of nuanced, intelligent lyrics.’ — Last Rites

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Marching Church We Lose Them Through Our Hands
‘Elias Bender Rønnenfelt is probably best known for being the vocalist and guitarist of the excellent Danish post-punk band, Iceage, and probably second-best known for being the frontman for Vår (née War), the spooky electro Iceage side project. Now Rønnenfelt is releasing new music from his other musical outlet, Marching Church. The band’s new release, “Throughout The Borders,” is spooky minimal goth a la Death In June. For Marching Church, Rønnenfelt exercises a cold, dark, and dry sound, in debt to both early post-punk and dark-folk.’ — collaged

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Gezan 『癲癇する大脳たち』PV
‘Gezan is a crazed Tokyo outfit that reconfigures the stylings of Anglo-American rock subgenres into their own delirious negation. The four-piece have been cultivating a homebound notoriety for a bonkers live set since their inception in 2009, garnering plaudits from some of the acts (Melt-Banana, Ruins, Acid Mothers Temple) whose faithful desecration of rock trademarks they’ve taken it upon themselves to extend into the second decade of the 21st century. More importantly, their accolades are fully justified by the pulverizing, anything-goes caprice of It Was Said to Be A Song, a debut LP that found a domestic release in 2012 and that begins its flight into barely contained insanity with the Babel of “Full Claw Lunar Surface.” Here, scathing guitar fireworks are pockmarked by non-sequiturs into feral tape manipulation and industrial rap, the high-pitched braying and fluid pendulations from 7/8 into 8/8 exuding a volatility that’s mouth-watering precisely to the extent that, like with so many great Japanese bands, it refuses to swear wholesale fealty to externally-imposed conventions and dictates of taste.’ — Tiny Mix Tapes

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Brett Naucke Luau
‘If previous releases for Nihilist, Arbor and his own Catholic Tapes established Chicago’s Brett Naucke as one of the more accomplished practitioners in the American synth underground, Seed, his debut LP for Spectrum Spools, is a veritable career apex, brimming with sonic ingenuity, detail, and mastery over both instrument and musical form. It is hard to fathom due to the sheer diversity of sound and affectations of the eight individual pieces on the album, but Seed was recorded – almost impossibly – with the same synth patch, slightly modified for the unveiling of each track. This testifies to the intensity of Naucke’s macroscopic conceptual vision for Seed. Each track’s complex arc points towards a mind rooted in academic electronic processes, keenly trying to surprise and disarm by prying open new textures, rhythms and structures. But Naucke has struck a perfect balance that unites this avant-garde intuition with a compositional sophistication – bringing each unique molecule of sound into cohesive songs and further still into a supremely listenable and closed album that operates entirely on its own logic.’ — Editions Mego

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Aleksi Perälä Dynamic Light Scattering
‘The music of Finnish electronic composer Aleksi Perälä’s uses Perälä and Grant Wilson-Claridge’s custom musical scale, the Colundi Sequence. Wilson-Claridge says of their invention: “Instead of dividing the keyboard into octaves with semitones, we have chosen specific frequencies to work around… The scale is 128 resonant frequencies chosen via experimentation and philosophy, each relating to a specific human bio-resonance, or psychology, traditional mysticism or belief, physics, astronomy, maths, chemistry.” “I’ve always felt somewhat frustrated or restricted with a standard keyboard,” says Perälä, “I started exploring different TET [equal temperament scales] in 2006.” Perälä’s music is both natural and electrical, with an emphasis on sine waves of different frequencies, amplitudes and phase to demonstrate Colundi Level 1 to the listener, whatever the shape of one’s ear and one’s ability to hear may be.’ — collaged

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Cevdet Erek Room of Rhythms
‘Cevdet Erek’s (1974, Istanbul) work is characterised by a marked use of rhythm and site specificity. Erek combines video, sound and images, often in an attempt to alter the viewer’s perception and experience of a given space. The result functions as a hypothesis, probing the viewer’s instinctive logic and thus appealing to the senses. Interestingly, Erek manages to combine rational components such as references to architecture and linear time with instinctive impulses thereby levelling the gap between two supposedly opposing spheres. Part of an ongoing exploration, “Room of Rhythms 1″ is based on a conversation between Cevdet Erek and Duygu Demir that reflects on themes of sound, architecture, rhythm, measured time, dance music and site-specificity.’ — collaged

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Puce Mary Ultimate Hypocrisy V
‘Puce Mary is the solo project of Copenhagen-based experimental musician Frederikke Hoffmeier. Closely affiliated with the punk scene that grew out of the danish capital and spawned labels like Posh Isolation and bands like Iceage, Vår and Lust for Youth, Hoffmeier has chosen a somewhat different path. As a solo project, Puce Mary is constantly evolving and never stays in the same place for very long. Where the early tapes and vinyls on danish label Posh Isolation have been minimal with a dark edge, Hoffmeier has recently showcased her diversity through live performances and collaborations. From the concrete sound-poetry of the collaboration vinyls with swedish noise champion Sewer Election to her latest livesets of rhythmic industrial and harsh power electronics, Puce Mary never ceases to push the boundaries of contemporary noise music.’ — collaged

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Datashock Tod in der Saarvanne
‘Datashock is a ritualistic “neo-hippie-spook-folk” collective from Saarlouis, Germany. There is no constant lineup, as the group is joined by new members every now and then. Their music is defined almost entirely by psychedelic multidimensional live-improvisations stemming from 70ies krautrock influenced by contemporary electronic music and psychotic dronescapes. As a result we find complex layers of sultry muffled vibrations met by heavy waves of electronic sound experiments and strangely disfigured images. Here and there reality-distorting bits of whispers and cut-up voices are woven into the texture of these alien patterns of sound. Every step here is like nervously stumbling through the swampy ground of a jungle. Here every look is like a secret glimpse at a hidden ghost-train world.’ — nicknicknick

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p.s. Hey. ** Armando, Hey! Yeah, really great to see you, man! A couple of people have told me that that ‘Captain America’ movie is fun. Huh, cool. I’ll probably end up watching it on a plane because I always seem to see blockbusters on planes partly because it’s really hard to find anyone in Paris who’s into seeing them in the theater. Ha ha, wow, I love Godard. Yikes about BlB. Um, the producer of the film I’m making with Zac is the producer of almost all of BlB’s films, so I’ll stay mum on that topic, ha ha again. ‘Gone’ is a book that’s a facsimile of this scrapbook I kept in the early 80s when I was developing the George Miles Cycle. Weird that they don’t ship to Mexico. I wonder why. Maybe if you write a note to them or something? The guy who’s publishing the book reads this blog so maybe he’ll pop in to say why that is. Shit, that was one intense shrink session. I’m sorry, man. I guess it’s good that Xanax was so friendly to you. I mean to see the silver lining and all that. Anyway, yeah, really swell to get to talk with you, my friend. Take care, and come back soon, if it suits you. Love and hugs back to you! ** Jeffrey Coleman, Hi, Jeff. Cool! I mean to see you! I’m good, thanks. That is a weird and most curious coincidence or something about the Ohle book. I have this odd belief or half-belief in fate and destiny and things like that, so I can buy that there’s something bigger than mere luck guiding that seeming happenstance. No, I don’t know about gnOme. A quick initial scroll through their books does indeed reveal how interesting they are. Thanks a lot! I’ll go scour the place in a bit. Everyone, d.l. Jeffrey Coleman tips you guys/me to a press called gnOme whose books look really interesting. I recommend that you follow Jeff’s lead and check them out. Yeah, great, you’re such a fount of interesting tips, man. I’ve found such terrific books and presses and music and stuff thanks exclusively to you. Take care. ** Bill, Hi, Bill. I hope the installation came together perfectly. Did it? What is it? Is Hamburg cool? I drove through there once on the way to Scandinavia but didn’t stop, and I couldn’t tell what the place was like or about. ** David Ehrenstein, I did read that about Ronet and Anna Karina, but it didn’t end up in the post for some reason. ‘Snowpiercer’, what is that? Wait, I’ll go find out when the p.s. is over (for me). Have a lovely weekend, sir. ** Empty Frame, Hi, man. I did a little check on that production of ‘The Notebook’. It looks quite promising, it’s true. Great in any case that that book is getting highlighted publicly ‘cos it’s so incredibly undervalued in a general way relative to its greatness. I’ll ask Gisele if her manager people know about Battersea Arts Centre. Yeah, the UK is really squeamish or something re: Gisele’s work. We get nibbles all the time, but nothing ever ends up happening. Maybe the new ventriloquism piece will get over there since it’s very verbal/text-oriented and the powers that be always say that the UK is all ‘we want lots and lots of talking on our stages’. If I can manage to get over for the Kristof thing, I’ll def. let you know. It’ll mostly depend on whether we’ll be shooting our film around then. Ha ha, actually that HODGKIN/ smashed piece doesn’t sound so bad in theory, but I trust your judgment implicitly. Cool that you’ll see TNP and WB. I haven’t seen either live yet. Cool, cool, cool. Ha ha, whoa: ‘DENNIS COOPER LACKS PERSPECTIVE’. I mean, sure, probably, but still. Of course now my mind is scurrying to figure out what I do that would have made her say that, which is not an unfun pursuit, I guess. Wow, trippy. I do know that there’s no place in the world where me and stuff are more actively and overtly disliked than England. Not sure why, though. But then Will Self’s old-fashioned blowhard literary antics are considered edgy and daring over there, so maybe that’s a clue. I just read this think-piece by WS this morning about how the literary novel has been killed by the internet that was so 20th century out-of-it. Anyway, blah blah, thanks for passing that quote along. Pretty funny. ** Steevee, Blb’s ‘Gerontophila’ has been kind of a success over here in France, or in Paris at least, so I’m guessing that’s why MK2 has come onboard for him? Great luck with the James Gray review. You know, I don’t believe I’ve seen any of his films, come to think of it. Would ‘The Immigrant’ be a good place to start? ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben. Ha ha, maybe I should quickly copyright that sentence. Actually, Cory Arcangel is all over that. I think I read that he’s doing some big installation work about it. No surprise, right? ** Schoolboyerrors, Ooh, getting the LA airport in there is a nice meta-touch. The wilds of England: how wild are they? Sounds sweet. Oh, historical fiction, right, sure, got it. Nicholson Baker is great, yeah. That dude can write a mean sentence, among his other many virtues. In addition to the sex novels, I have a great fondness for his earlier novel ‘Room Temperature’. The prose in that novel is crazy pristine. And I’ve always envied that title for some reason. My day? Almost all film stuff again. It’s gonna be mostly that way for a while. Uh, Zac and I met with the guy we’ve wanted badly to play one of the roles in the scene we’re shooting in a couple of weeks, and he said yes, so we’re very happy! We have to send the producers a photo of us for use on some flyer about our film that the producers plan to circulate at Cannes, so we went through the archive of photos of us together and found a couple of maybes but decided we should get a more formal one done, which we have to do today. More film stuff: emails, phone calls. Some work on the novel. A bit of walking around in the rain. A bit of reading. Nice day, but not a day so interesting to hear about, I think. I’ll expected to hear how you coped with the wilds today when society has you in its grip once again if not before. Have huge fun! ** Sypha, No, not a fan of ‘Black Swan’ at all. You played that ‘E.T.’ game? Cool. Yeah, it looks like a tear-your-hair-out frustrating mess of a thing. I’m sorry to hear about your household full of sickness, but there’s something kind of goth and haunted house-like about it in my imagination. It seems like it would make a cool premise for a stage play. Maybe I’ll suggest it to Gisele. But, all riffing aside, I am sorry for the suffering part of that otherwise aesthetically interesting situation. Cool that you’ve managed to get your short-story collection in order nonetheless. ‘All the way back to 2010’: that’s a funny phrase. ** Magick mike, Hey, Mike! Always a great and serious pleasure to have you here! What were doing in Santa Fe? Did you see Ken Baumann? Very best to you, sir! ** Misanthrope, Yeah, that’s so, so rough about Rewritedept’s friend. Heroin is a beast. Its grip is insanely tight and its lies are horribly convincing. I think I’m kind of kerazy and goofy in my real life, so maybe that’s why I don’t notice it. Never in my life have I heard of Luke Bryan, for very good reasons, it sounds like. I’m not even going to google him. I don’t want that pollution in my memory banks. Thanks for taking his bullet, man. Okay, that week you’re over there/here is the week we’ll be rehearsing and then shooting our film unless something goes terribly awry. But there’ll be days when we’re not shooting, so, as soon as our dates are locked down, and yours too, let’s sort it out. ** Rewritedept, Hi, man. Yeah, I can’t even imagine how hard that must be to process. I don’t even know if it’ll be possible to process. I think it’s probably something you’ll more just incorporate and then move on changed in some way. My day was good. I told Schoolboyerrors about it above. Man, hang in there and do and feel the very best you can this weekend, okay? Lots of love. ** Okay. This weekend I’ve put together a slightly extra-sized edition of the only semi-/cultishly liked gig posts I do on occasion featuring new music I’ve been listening to and liking lately, and you guys who want to hear and, in some cases, also see some awesome current sonic treats can have at it until Monday. Thank you. See you when the weekend is over.

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Shackleton Freezing Opening Thawing
‘Every Sam Shackleton release is an event because only he can make music like this. Anyone who’s seen Shackleton play live recently won’t be surprised by the bright timbres of “Freezing Opening Thawing.” The 11-minute title track takes the chintzy instrumentation of The Drawbar Organ and builds on the idea, daubing his signature basslines with staccato mallet melodies. It’s less ritualistic and more psychedelic than before, charging forward with an aggression that also feels new, not quite the sprawl of his more recent work nor the loopy madness of his oldest material. But most striking of all is his new EP’s artificiality. The release is said to place a newfound emphasis on synthesis rather than sampling, and each track is layered with glowing space-age sounds.’ — Resident Advisor

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Beatriz Ferreyra + Christine Groult live @ Gaite Lyrique
‘Beatriz Ferreyra was born 21 June 1937 in Córdoba, Argentina. She studied piano with Celia Bronstein in Buenos Aires (1950-1956), harmony and musicalanalysis with Nadia Boulanger (1962), electroacoustic music with EdgardoCanton (1963), and composition with EarleBrown and György Ligeti (1967). Between 1963 and 1970, she worked in the research department of the Office de Radiodiffusion Télévision Française (ORTF), participating in the Groupe de Recherches Musicales (GRM), under the leadership of Pierre Schaeffer. Since 1970, she has been working as a freelance composer.’ — Computer Music Journal

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Wild Beasts Sweet Spot
‘Much has been made of Wanderlust, the song that opens Wild Beasts’ fourth album, and its vicious disdain for the musical peers who have become Americanised: “In your mother tongue, what’s the verb ‘to suck’?” spits Hayden Thorpe, coming as close to a snarl as that soft falsetto possibly can. At first the intention seems plain: as on their previous three albums, there is no pretence of fitting in. Wild Beasts revel in their idiosyncrasies; you can hear it in the duelling vocals and choral layers, the words that shouldn’t fit, the tunes that veer off in unexpected directions. What’s new here is that they have tempered and honed those flourishes. It’s modest in its experiments, never forgoing an accessible ear for the sake of being difficult. Sweet Spot is typically ugly-beautiful, its crystalline vocals splattered with a thick 80s synth, while Nature Boy rumbles with delicious spite and menace: “Your only joy, your only bliss, your lady wife around his lips”.’ — The Observer

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Sculpture Plastic Infinite
‘Plastic Infinite is a 7″ animated picture disc by UK-based duo Sculpture made to accompany a new track by the same name. Created like a zoetrope, the disc animates when played under a strobe light or filmed at 25fps. Comprised of duo Reuben Sutherland and Dan Hayhurst, Sculpture’s Plastic Infinite is an extension of their 2011 video for “Elk Cloner” and sees the duo push the limits of the zoetrope form, which has become short hand for particularly lavish limited edition releases.’ — thevinylfactory

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Flower Orgy Stranded
‘Brooklyn’s Flower Orgy consists of three females and one male, and reside in Brooklyn’s peninsular Red Hook neighborhood, which is actually shaped like a hook. Mixing throw back folk songwriting with a modern DIY psych vibe Nate Luce and company craft the kind of tunes that will make that next road trip really make sense. The band’s tunes reside in present day Brooklyn but remind us of our future selves.’ — collaged

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Thou Free Will
‘Within a genre that prides itself on theatricality, Thou’s lack of pretension and their commitment to the DIY world from where they came is refreshing. The band refuses to hide behind elaborate stage shows or tour laminates, releases boatloads of new material every year, and still prefers to pile into their beat-up red van and play all-ages DIY spaces. “Free Will”, is ominous and somber, building in intensity over the course of nearly 15 minutes and neatly exemplifying what’s so compelling about Thou’s trance-inducing chords and tense, ultimately cathartic crescendos. Vocalist Bryan Funck’s near-feral howl commands and chastises, laying out the album’s themes of power, despair, defiance, and free will. His delivery may verge upon black metal in its throat-scraping mania, but the words he speaks are grounded in crushing reality, not fantasy. The demons he confronts are real.’ — Kim Kelly

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Compact Disk Dummies Britney Spears’s Toxic
‘Compact Disk Dummies is a Belgian electropunk-duo, consisting of two very young brothers (Lennert & Janus Coorevits, °1993 & 1995) who are in love with experiment, pounding basslines and shouting guitars. They started in 2010, and in the same year, they already won ‘Music Live’ and ‘Kunstbende’. After having played a lot of gigs, Compact Disk Dummies have become an experienced band with a strong live-reputation, which lets no human being able to stand still. That’s exactly what the jury of Humo’s Rock Rally thought, because in 2012 they won the finals!’ — collaged

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Vår At War For Youth
‘When Vår’s music was first turned loose on the world a year ago it was under the banner War. The name suited the music: “Brodermordet” (“Fractricide”) was horrific, ugly, distorted and twisted to breaking point. At best it sounded like a recording of a punk gig recorded on binaural mics at floor level somewhere in the carpark; a conflict between harmonics and distortion where the distortion played dirty. Not a great surprise that War—later Vår (“Spring”)—was the project of two players in the Danish punk scene, a locus of bands in Copenhagen who blew up in 2011, Loke Rahbek of Sexdrome and Elias Bender Rønnenfelt of Iceage. They broke up amidst a raucous Japanese tour in February 2014.’ — collaged

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Giant Swan Did They Play Dogs?
‘Giant Swan were first up, a duo plying a lush clamour of harsh ear schisms that materialised into gristlised rhythms, a lot of box teased goodness to soak up. These boys certainly knew a thing or two about the art of bending circuitry. Loops and pick-up burrs literally ear danced in textural plugholes of echoed vox, resurrected in scars and sycamore incisions that wavered from slithering invisible points, suggestions of words playing in your inner ear.’ — FREQ

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Gnod The Somnambulist’s Tale, Pt. III
‘There’s a real whiff of rural menace emanating from Gnod. But that isn’t to say the band are rooted, or even earthbound, in any sense of those words. Although operating out of Islington Mill in Salford, everything about the music the band make seems in permanent flux, in search of extreme moments of joy or abasement, whichever comes first. Is it the lost knowledge of the Gnostics, the magic of the ancient world, expelled from the human mind but now seeping back into consciousness through the primal and feral frequencies employed by the band? Or are they simply a devastating calibration of good ale, savage drugs and a brutal sound system? The Somnambulist’s Tale is full of weird and beautiful moments – a terrible beauty, perhaps. The same basic percussive rhythm is at the core of both tracks, occasionally altering in tempo and sporadically dropping out to allow Salford Tom’s chatter to filter through. The synths shimmer and hover in a slightly uneasy equipoise; the two tracks are seemingly sliced and spliced back together, but the whole thing blends into one seamless mélange of chatter and rhythm, a quiet clamor.’ — The Quietus

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Age Coin Untitled
‘Copenhagen’s darkest underground, with the store and label posh isolation as a platform, keeps on producing new crisscrossing constellations within (post) punk and industrial. Age Coin is a duo of members from Lower and Vår, their music describes, according to themselves, what it’s like “when you’re feeling really low in a corner of the club”. With foggy, industrial soundscapes, they create bleak scenarios where the dim techno rhythm is hovering like an abstract threat of annihilation. A massive darkness built from steel and shabby electronics.’ — collaged

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Bee Mask live @ Enemy
‘Nearly a decade ago, Chris Madak was an art world dropout fleeing New York for life as a slacker studio rat in his hometown of Cleveland with the masters of his first full-length release in tow. Madak was also busy refining the recipe of Living, creating Bee Mask, a project within which he would construct a private world of third eye-opening sonics, paranoid faux-ritual, and highbrow hesher in-jokes. This sensibility would find its fullest expression in the zero-gravity tape and electronics constructions of 2008′s dreamlike Hyperborean Trenchtown, an LP which also marked a farewell to Cleveland. Madak would strike out in search of a route off the grid, before blinking at the aesthetic void of communal living and running aground in Philadelphia, where over the next two years he all but disappeared into his home studio, descending ever deeper into his own sonic world and issuing a series of progressively stranger and more self-referential limited releases. Madak’s work reached an international audience when it was reissued in connection with the launch of the Spectrum Spools imprint of Editions Mego in 2011.’ — elastic artists.net

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Yan Jun live @ LUFF 2012
‘Yan was born in Lanzhou in 1973, now based in Beijing. Yan’s live performance engages space feedback, loop and voice/language to make hypnotic noise. He uses concepts of recycling, feedback and reduction to create sound art work, which relates to field recording, installation, image, video, publishing and multiple forms. He uses simple equipment (cd player, I-pod, md player, mixer, effector and low-drone voice, as well as some physical sound source). Yan runs the virtual creation Sub Jam since 1998. It has released some essential underground music and independent films. In 2004 he co-founded Kwanyin Records for experimental music and sound exploration.’ — rockinchina.com

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p.s. Hey. ** Bill, Aw, thanks, Bill. About the post. I do try. Oh, man, those installations look so fantastic and on a roll. Talk about enigmatic and intriguing, and yet exquisitely interlaced. Marvels, maestro. I hope you got something awesome and responsive in return. Oh, yes, you’re there, down there! Please report on what you see. Please. Wow. ** David Ehrenstein, I’ve always found that to be so. To their credit, I might add. ** Paul Curran, Hi, Paul. Things are good novel-wise. I’m shifting things around at the moment, restructuring the totality a bit, adding/subtracting. I’ve been working on this very personal, outrushing, discursive section for a while, trying to get it initially in place and substructured enough to work on the following section, which needs that footing and is a sequence of interdependent fairytales, and I’ve gotten to the point where I can concentrate on them for a while. So, it’s good, thank you for asking. April 14, got it. Definitely want to do a intro/celebration post for the book. Let’s confer as the time nears, or I’ll have a think to think if there are things I can ask of you for it or something. So excited! ** Empty Frame, Hey. Oh, oops, Freddie Mercury in the head sounds kind of tumorous, but, hey, there are those who would consider that an imbedded crown or something. Excellent about the dispersing. May it wane and wane. ** Tosh Berman, Hi, Tosh! What awesomeness to see you! You’re in Tokyo, you lucky, lucky dog! How’s my/our beloved Meguro? What have you been doing and seeing? Tell me. ** Scunnard, Hi, Jared. Yeah, me and ominous playgrounds are *like that*. Big buddies. No, I guess I didn’t get your follow-up message. Or it got avalanched or something. Good, excellent, I’m glad that got resolved in the perfect manner. I miss that piece of yours. The ball still bounces when I drop it? Holy shit, thanks! ** Mikel Motorcycle, That would be really great if you could Soundcloudify some of your music. For me, obviously, and for the great unwashed, obviously. Thanks much for your thoughts on Xanax to Armando. Armando, If you’re seeing this, Mikel Motorcycle spoke to your question in the comments yesterday. Thanks a lot, man. ** Gary gray, I’m on you being on it. Thanks about the Munoz post, yeah. Cool. Oh, I see: LA is fraught and not just the great place to visit that it seemed to be initially and sans respectful targeted reflection. But you’re going in any case. Best of luck on the verbal reuniting with your ex. Maybe the talk will surprise you? In the good way? I read somewhere or rather multiple somewheres that the Amtrack writers residency thing is kind of a self-serving scam, but I forget why, and never trust the reactive typers of the internet, I guess. I’m in Paris, yes. Back here, mostly for next while. I like Aaron Dilloway, of course, but I haven’t heard the new thing, but I have heard poz about it from Stephen, et. al., so, yeah, I’ll get it. Good day, bud. ** Rewritedept, Hi, C. I did? Weird. What kind of shades do you reckon your dad’s office needs now that you’re done the requisite measuring? Ha ha, I actually loved that you wished my day was superfluous, even if it was a typo or whatever. Superfluity has a kind of sublime ring to it. I suppose it was both superlative and superfluous, on reflection. Maybe more the latter, to be existential about it. RIP: Scott Asheton indeed, Such a drummer. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben. Cool. Everyone, if you haven’t had your fill of spooky playground imagistic input, know that kindly _B_A links you/us up to some links to more of the same but different over on William “Whitehouse, Cut Hands” Bennett’s blog, if you’re so inclined. That is good news. About the Art101 progress. Well, obviously, I’d be way into it if you want to promote it via a blog post here or something if that seems worth the time and effort. ** White tiger, Thanks, pal. Title courtesy of Mr. JM Barrie if it wasn’t obvious. ** les mots dans le nom, Hi. Thanks a bunch. It was fun stealing that title away from Peter Pan. Me, Kong? Maybe. Deadlines are weird. I have a love/hate thing with them — ‘hate’ being the Halloween costume and ‘love’ being the scared little kid inside it or something. Same email address, you bet. Great luck with your work. ** Misanthrope, No, I’m the except one, but you can have sloppy seconds. Ouch, shit, well, you’re gonna need to get that looked at by a pro eventually then, so, I don’t know, save up or turn escort or something. I guess there’s no right or wrong when it comes to mom/son ties and how they are enacted, but, yeah, that’s a bit late in the game maybe. Or maybe not. Maybe LPS is just an unconventional son. ** Steevee, Great, congrats, Steve! That’s excellent! Confidence is all you need, man. ** Okay. Today I’m redecorating the blog into a little club, as I occasionally do, and I’m inviting you inside to watch a gig that has my fingers and stamp of approval all over it. Will you? Will I ever know if you do? Probably not. Faith is a big part of making a blog like this one. Anyway, lots of good stuff to see and hear today, if you ask me, which you obviously haven’t. See you tomorrow.