* Halloween countdown post #7
Sunn O)))
Grim
Bliss Signal
Himukalt
Pig Destroyer
Ital Tek
Eartaker
Puce Mary
Jesus Piece
Ipek Gorgun
Straight Panic
Drew McDowall
Innumerable Forms
Pan Daijing
Spiritflesh
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Sunn O))) live @ Psycho Las Vegas, August 19, 2018
‘I only showed up for the evening session on Sunday after taking the day to recover, but I still caught my favorite set of the festival, courtesy of the polarizing Sunn O))). Augmented only during their 75 minutes onstage by haunting lights, heavy fog and a semi-circle of massive amplifeirs, the black-hooded Stephen O’Malley and Greg Anderson layered together the loudest, heaviest drone piece I’ve ever experienced, a darkly hypnotic guitar bath that rattled the ribs in my chest and vibrated the organs beneath them.’ — Spencer Patterson
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Grim Volcano Flower
‘Each track on this tape is an overwhelming nightmare of bleak soundscapes, obscured samples, terrifying screams and howls, abrasive arcs of screeching noise, and pulsing repetition. And, of course, all of this is juxtaposed with uncomfortably serene melodies which are just as (if not arguably more) haunting than the crushing cacophonies which they sit in between. Like all of Grim’s work, the uncomfortable silence following the final track hangs heavy in the air around the listener, and that moment is as beautiful as it is unnerving, which is the very essence of Grim.’ — Fucked by Noise
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Bliss Signal Untitled
‘Bliss Signal just makes that experience more explicit. Reverb and bright synth lines, the kind you’d hear on an Eluvium song, settle alongside crashes of cymbals and pounding bass drums. Not quite metal and not quite dance music, “Bliss Signal” finds common ground in the way each of those genres works on the body. It’s an exciting introduction to an odd couple whose strangeness subsides the more you think about it.’ — Sasha Geffen
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Himukalt Ruined-Raped
‘As admirers of Himukalt’s four previous tape releases, Malignant is pleased to present the first full length LP from this promising, Nevada based, female fronted act. The project of the enigmatic Ester Kärkkäinen, Knife Through the Spine delivers a steady cascade of abstract sounds, festering with grinding pneumatic throb, coarse frequency blasts and sputtering electronic oscillations, with spliced snippets of processed, flanged vocals and a general sense of social anxiety and disaffection. There’s something uniquely old school and primitive at work here, capturing the claustrophobic, unsettled and fragmented sound of early Illusion of Safety or mid-late ‘80s industrial on a whole, contemporizing it, and filling it in with an obsessive, post-mortem feel.’ — Malignant Records
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Pig Destroyer Army of Cops
‘Grindcore dwelt on the fringes of culture during the latter part of the Cold War, but in 2018, with Pig Destroyer’s Head Cage, it has moved to occupy the centre: a ferocious sonic blender of the heaviest ingredients – it takes down the security state (‘Army Of Cops’), skewers those who dodge having the courage of their convictions (‘Circle River’), and decries how quick we are to turn on each other when we do express our beliefs (‘Trap Door Man’). The album points to a personal and social malaise that is endemic in the second decade of the twenty-first century. It is the sound of a mass psychic breakdown enabled by new tech tools of self-harm. Our heads are getting fucked up, and Pig Destroyer are gleefully applying more pressure.’ — Dan Franklin
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Ital Tek Lithic
‘At some point in the last couple of years, the music stopped being just “cinematic” and became the cinema itself. That is to say, it became kinetic, the source of movement through sound. Perhaps a better word to describe such a transforming experience would be “cinesonic” [can we just coin that term? can we? yes?] to move one’s mind through the perceived pressure levels, or, even better, “vitaphonic” [ok, I’m really trying here, folks], for the sound is living on its own. It’s not enough these days to just put on an album, at your desk on your commute. One must prepare themselves for an hour of active listening as if commencing on a journey, on metamorphosis through music, and let it carry you away. There are more than a few albums out there that achieve such level of dynamic alteration, but not as much as the latest offering from Ital Tek.’ — Headphone Commute
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Eartaker Iron Trivet
‘In 2017, dubstep producer Goth-Trad recruited vocalist Diesuck and noise artist Masayuki Imanishi to form the doom metal unit Eartaker. The Japanese trio employ dense atmospheric noise and Diesuck’s low scream for a sound that is even darker and more disconcerting than Goth-Trad’s most vicious productions. A prominent figure in the Japanese dubstep scene, Goth-Trad gained notoriety with grime-influenced tracks and releases on the legendary Deep Medi Musik. Bedouin Records has released music from artists such as Merzbow, Tzusing and Pan Daijing.’ — Henry Bruce-Jones
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Puce Mary Red Desert
‘The Drought is a “first person narrative,” where the “traumatised body serves as a dry landscape of which obscured memories and escape mechanisms fold reality into fiction, making sense of desire, loss and control.” The release is still noisy and industrial-sounding, and Frederikke Hoffmeier is still found speaking in a way that erects our armhairs, but it’s also clearly following a path. The written works of Charles Baudelaire and Jean Genet were supposedly an inspiration.’ — TMT
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Jesus Piece Lucid
‘Jesus Piece rage at the nexus of hardcore, death metal, industrial, and ’90s metalcore. They’re part of a new metalcore movement that proves that experimentation and succinct, clobbering riffs can not only coexist, but make for natural partners. On their first full-length, Only Self, they make the case that such should be the new tradition.’ — Andy O’Connor
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Ipek Gorgun Afterburner
‘In the work of Ipek Gorgun, small moves and grand gestures are equally important. Before she molds her instrumental electronic music into massive shapes, the Turkish sound artist infuses it with precise detail. “I work with milliseconds in the beginning, then I switch to seconds, then to minutes,” she once explained. “At the end, I think about the whole arrangement of the structure… So I zoom in, zoom out, and try to find a way to fit everything in place.” As a result, her compositions connect on the micro level of individual sounds as well as on the macro level of widescreen narrative.’ — Marc Masters
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Straight Panic لواط
‘Straight Panic is the queer nihilist power electronics project of Thomas Boettner, formerly from Minneapolis, MN and now based in New Orleans, LA. Against assimilation, against ease, Straight Panic matches the intensity of queer rage and desire to richly layered sound, drawing on sources such as the writing of Dennis Cooper to the atrocities of the current “gay purge” in Chechneya.’ — Issue Project Room
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Drew McDowall Rhizome
‘Growing up in the gangs of 1970’s Scotland, McDowall traded in the daily violence for the aggressive self-expressionism of punk, forming his own band in 1978 called The Poems with his then-wife Rose McDowall. This project led to friendships with Genesis P-Orridge, David Tibet, and countless others, and soon after, McDowall found himself in the ranks of P-Orridge’s Psychic TV. Later on McDowall established himself as a full-time member of the arcane and esoteric outfit known as Coil. His impact on Coil’s sound became apparent as the releases transformed from their pervious avant pop signature to a more complex and methodic electronic imprint, accompanied by even more abstruse subject matter than previous years.’ — Dais Records
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Innumerable Forms Contaminated
‘It makes sense that members from such first class acts as Power Trip, Genocide Pact, Mammoth Grinder and Magic Circle would make quality music, but no one could anticipate the sheer magnitude of power that Innumerable Forms let loose with Punishment in Flesh, a true death doom cataclysm. Standing as both title track and an accurate reflection of the whole album, “Punishment in Flesh” wallows in glacial heaviness before bursting into a raging tectonic rumble that would intimidate even the most staunchly macho meathead.’ — Brayden Turenne
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Pan Daijing Phenomenon
‘Noise music is listening music. It requires some certain kind of strength. I’m not very much into philosophical noise music, it’s more a noise wall or harsh noise which has very interesting concepts behind it. I like rawness. When you come from more of a dark side and you start from that point and then you go to the light, that’s what I resonate with. This kind of darkness, when something hurts you so much you can’t moan about it every day any more, it’s like when someone you’re so close to passes away and you can’t cry. That’s how I feel.’ — PD
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Spiritflesh Impasse
‘One of Bristol’s worst kept secrets, Spiritflesh – outed as the duo of DJ October and Borai – piles their considerable weight behind four hulking riddims built, Frankenstein’s monster style, from elements of doom metal, EBM and industrial noise fused with dub pressure. “Impasse” is utterly ghoulish, with the bass sucked below a dense shoal of ghostly dub figures, perhaps imagining a spawn of Drexicya, and the black hole of Cobalt Links opens its gargantuan jaws to anyone foolhardy to get close enough.’ — boomkat
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p.s. Hey. ** David Ehrenstein, Hey. Yes, a short term solution, I guess. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben. How is the class, if you’ve started? Maybe I’ll find out as I move through time here, if it’s already going. Cool you made it to the V&A. A show about ocean liners is unexpected and interests the … nerd (?) in me. ** Steve Erickson, Hi. I have no idea about that photo. I just came across it. Ah, very curious about that double review. Everyone, Here are Mr. Erickson’s thoughts on the double whammy of the new Yves Tumor and Low albums. No, we didn’t have mixtapes for the road trip, just full albums, pulled tracks, etc. And no Krautrock for no good reason. A bunch of hot off the presses stuff mostly. Everyone, Also read Steve’s overview of the New York Film Festival to find out what most of you (and me) are missing here. I hope you feel better ASAP. ** Misanthrope, Hi, G. Wait, I’m not remembering your dates, but I think you’re there. Over here. Over here-ish. Are you commentable, if so? Ha ha, LCTG on a porn site. I bet those clips got a whole lot of thumbs and penises down. ** Paul Curran, Thanks, Paul! Gisele and all her dancers are in Japan right now (Kyoto, but I think most of them are visiting Tokyo too) without me, very sadly. Yes, I think S. was indeed there. I didn’t know it was (partly?) to do a special appearance with Boris, but that makes total sense. Sweet. Thanks! The Germany theme park trip was a blast. London too. The film went down really well, and it was interesting to read new prose for the first time in ages, and London was fun in that London-y way. How are you? Are you managing to write? ** JM, Thanks a lot about the post, bud. You good? ** Bill, Hi, Bill. Happy you were happy to see Carpenter back. Yes, ‘Bosun’ is fantastic! I read it in Germany. I want to see ‘I am not a witch’ too, and I haven’t read the Tim Mohr, but yeah, I’ve read a lot of grumbling in its regard. When it comes to the slaves’ literary aspirations, you are like the Gordon Lish from hell! Ha ha. Ditto on also wanting to see ‘Resolution’. Local listings will be scoured. Probably too early though. ** Shane Christmass, Hi, Shane! I got your book. I’m excited to read it. All is very well, I hope? ** Michael V, Hi! You are a person after my own heart and imagination! ** Ferdinand, Hi, man. Thanks for the link. I’ll get to listen to that now that I’m back to sitting in a chair rather than in a car seat. And now I’ve just seen your Jon Rafman shares too. Thanks triply! Hope you’re good. ** Dominik, Hi, Dominik! The trip was terrific. Oh, favorite park … hard to choose actually. They were all excellent in their own ways. Europapark is giant and beautifully, crazily laid out with solid rides. Tripsdrill, possibly my favorite, is an older park, super imaginatively themed on a low budget, with maybe the best log/water ride ever. It was the big surprise. Phantasialand is fantastic, yeah. Not huge, size-wise, but totally packed with great rides, and extremely beautifully themed, very otherworldly, and with two of the best coasters I’ve ridden: Taron and Black Mamba. Excellent! Wunderland Kalkar is tiny and basically for kids, but it was much sweeter and nice to be inside than I’d imagined. Dusseldorf was good. We just walked all over and looked at art all day then drove out of town a ways to climb around on this. My tooth strangely all but stopped hurting, which makes no sense but is much appreciated. I guess I should still go to the dentist appointment tomorrow, but I don’t want to. You sound extremely inspired and great! I love your idea of starting that private practice. How do you do that? Do you just advertise your services, or do you need to get, I don’t know, a certificate or anything? Would you do it at your place or find a place to do it? It seems like a really great idea to me! Tell me more! I’m good. Zac and I have to immediately get to work on the TV script revisions. Not looking forward to that whatsoever, but it’s not a choice. So that’s going to be a lot of my week, I think. And you? ** Master James, Hi, welcome. Well, I do certain things to disguise/protect the identities and locations of the slaves. I see those posts as a text/image exercise/exploration regarding eroticism and language and and flirting and how self-presentation works in that particular situation, and I feel uncomfortable about the idea of facilitating meet-ups because that’s not my interest at all. So, yes, I make the slaves hard to find. Not impossible to find, mind you. ** Jamie, Hi, J! The trip was excellent, thank you. Highlight: mm, not one. Tripsdrill was the big surprise and probably the funnest experience in general. Oh, at the last minute, we managed to get a room at Phantasialand’s sold-out and pretty amazing theme hotel the Ling Bao, and that was cool. Lowlight? Not really, strangely enough. Nothing that wasn’t at least okay. Yeah, it’s weird: the site/GoDaddy was acting the most horrible and problematic ever the first few days of the trip after being generally awful for a week, but, as of last night, knock on the rarest wood, it’s been behaving normally and well. Strange. The Japanese slaves: Not a new site, I just found a page on a usual site where someone listed their supposed slaves’ success rate at auction. Quite odd. I’m happy you’re one of those people who can function in a curious and cogent and entertaining manner on little sleep. I just all but shut down above my neck. Hannah’s already off to Brussels. That must be disconcerting and sad. Or are you digging the extra room? While being sad, I mean. My only return plans are the TV script work, ugh. Ideally, ha ha, it should consume my week, ugh. May your Monday be like a million Saturdays piled up so high you can see it from the space station. Mellow yellow love, Dennis. ** Jeff J, Hey! Great to see you, man! Sorry as ever about the blog accessing issues. Hopefully one of these days I’ll find a way to right that ship. I can imagine you’re swamped! So soon! Scary for you, def., but don’t be scared. It’s going to go great! Great book, great publisher, great you … you’re all set. I’m good. The ‘PGL’ unrolling is okay, but we’re having some very annoying issues at the moment that I can’t discuss and that will hopefully get resolved asap. I’m back to work on the ARTE TV script today. Other than the drudgery of the work ahead, all is going well on that front. Looks like a very possible green light at the moment. I do like Lewis Klahr. Have I done a post about his work? Maybe not. I’ll see if I can. ** Okay. Halloween’s grip on this blog continues in the form of a gig that I hope is highly suitable for the season. Blast it, if you want my opinion. See you tomorrow.
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