Les Chants du Hasard
Damien Dubrovnik
Dead Cross
Tau Cross
Shabazz Palaces
Phallus Dei
Charlemagne Palestine & Grumbling Fur Time Machine Orchestra
Bill Orcutt
Oneohtrix Point Never
Moor Mother X Mental Jewelry
Lucifer’s Ensemble
Gosheven
From Nursery to Misery
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Les Chants du Hasard Chant I
‘With Les Chants du Hasard, sole member Hazard set out to unify the realms of black metal and classical music. I’m not going to pretend that I know anything about the history of 1800s orchestral music from which Hazard drew his primary inspirations1, but I do know more than a little bit about black metal, and I can safely say this LCDH nails the genre’s atmosphere. Years of listening to black metal have diluted its inherent shock value, yet this record sounds downright frightening in comparison to most releases of the style. Huge, dissonant horn swells and swirling strings are blanketed by venomous black metal croaks in richly layered soundscapes that peak and valley in melodramatic fashion. The compositions can range from hugely bombastic (“Chant I,” “Chant III”) to mystical and restrained (“Chant II,” “Chant IV”), granting LCdH a respectable and refreshing sense of track identity and variety.’ — Angry Metal Guy
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Damien Dubrovnik Arrow 6
‘Great Many Arrows is the sixth full-length from the pairing of Loke Rahbek (AKA Croatian Amor) and Christian Stadsgaard, and their first release since 2015. The album gets its name from a historic competition in Kyoto, Japan, where archers would try to shoot as many arrows as possible over a 24-hour period. (We’re told the record-holder, in 1686, hit the target with 8,133 out of 13,053 arrows, making for an average of nine arrows loosed every minute.) It is described as a shift away from the mostly electronic sound of the collaboration’s earlier works, with six tracks that “set organs, cellos, violas, wind and other acoustic instruments against the backdrop of an electronic landscape”.’ — Resident Advisor
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Dead Cross Grave Slave
‘Dead Cross emerged out of a series of impractical schemes, fallen-through plans, and last-minute musical experimentation. Shows were scheduled before a single song was written, fans were formed before even one show was played. The chaos of its creation seems apt; after all, the band is comprised entirely of artists who have thrived playing tightly-coiled turmoil—intelligent dissonance disguised as disorder. Consisting of Dave Lombardo, Justin Pearson, Michael Crain, and Mike Patton, the impressive, expansive, and eclectic list of prior bands collectively played in would be enough to ensure the unyielding ferocity of the music… but a resume isn’t necessary, here. Dead Cross stands on its own, speaks volumes with its multilayered evil-genius vocals, manic guitar riffs, and brutal rhythms.’ — Ipecac
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Tau Cross Deep State
‘TAU CROSS are a veteran punk / metal collective revolving around Amebix bassist / frontman Rob Miller, Voivod drummer Michel ‘Away’ Langevin, and members of cult crust outfits Misery and War//Plague. TAU CROSS presents a unique musical approach ranging from dark folk witchery to industrial punk metal brutalism, a melting pot of Killing Joke, Black Sabbath, Pink Floyd and Joy Division with an infusion of 16th century English mysticism.’ — Relapse Records
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Shabazz Palaces Shine a Light
‘Quazarz: Born On A Gangster Star serves as both an introduction and tells the tale of Quazarz, a sentient being from somewhere else, an observer sent here to Amurderca to chronicle and explore as a musical emissary. What he finds in our world is a cutthroat place, a landscape where someone like him could never quite feel comfortable amidst all the brutality and alternative facts and death masquerading as connectivity. The Palaceer of Shabazz Palaces says of his extraterrestrial persona: “I, Quazarz, Born On A Gangster Star, son only of Barbara Dream Caster and Reginald The Dark Hoper – he who rides on light – dreamer of the seventh dream and kissed eternal by Awet the Sun Scented – who far from home I found my same self differents in those constellies that be Dai at my weap-side immediate and all us Water Guild affiliates who revelries in the futures passed recordings and ceremonies flexing resplendent in the Paradise Sportif armor – raising these musics a joy/cry that way into these aquadescent diamondized ethers of the Migosphere here on Drake world. Welcome To Quazarz.’ — Shabazz Palaces
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Phallus Dei Stigmata (feat. Merzbow)
‘Phallus Dei would translate as ‘God’s Penis’ or maybe ‘Penis of God’, a name which reminds me of the mysterious and sometimes notorious faction of the Catholic Church/Vatican known as Opus Dei or the ‘Work of God’. The title Phallus Dei clearly has both sexual and religious connotations and this is also echoed throughout the band’s aesthetics and iconography, as well as the overall sound and the feeling it evokes. While Black Dawn utilises the darkwave and industrial sounds, there is also a definite influence from drone music such as Sunn O))) which also elicits a deeply religious/spiritual feeling; a primordial feeling that can be traced back through ritual music inherent in many cultures both modern and ancient; from the Buddhists to the Babylonians, the Celts, the Nords and even back to the pre-historical tribes of the Australian Aborigines and the didgeridoo as they danced around the campfire in the moonlit desert sands.’ — Terra Relicta
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Charlemagne Palestine & Grumbling Fur Time Machine Orchestra Omminnggg And Schlomming
‘The signature strumming of Palestine’s piano augmented by Tucker and O’Sullivan’s earthware electronics and processed strings create seamless sonic ripples in a constant state of unfolding. This is perhaps the most demonstrative document of Palestine’s powerful vocal delivery – an alien hybrid of sacred music drawing deep from the well of the cantorial synagogue and Hindustani classical styles in a bid to channel inter-dimensional beings from ancient cultures. In some respects this could be thought of as Charlemagne in dub as Grumbling Fur carefully twist and mangle their palette of electrified harp, viola, bowed mandolin, percussion, tapes and voice transformers through chains of loopers resulting in a slowly dilating vapour.’ — Important Records
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Bill Orcutt The World Without Me
‘Orcutt’s new self-titled record is largely a departure from the desolation. It’s his first solo electric guitar album, after nearly a decade-playing his four-stringed contraption. He leans mostly on a clean guitar sound, with just the buzz of the amp as accompaniment. But the amplification does allow him a few new tricks, each of which makes the record seem a little brighter. Most of these pieces start slow, plucked lightly, but at high volume. Every creaky finger slide is teeth-chattering, like you’re listening from inside of one of his pickup’s magnetic coils. A version of “Ol Man River,” from the 1927 musical Show Boat and to which he’s nodded on another of his cover-heavy records, allows Orcutt to demonstrate a dynamic range that he was only able to wring from his guitar by brute force. Volume and texture become new dimensions to explore. He swings from bluesy ambience to dense thickets of barely-consonant notes, diving back and forth between the two with a slippery energy because of the unpredictable shimmer of his new instrument. He’s always been a great improviser, but you can hear him excitedly charting new sounds and melodic runs. There’s a sense of life to it, if only because of the variation he allows himself.’ — Colin Joyce
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Oneohtrix Point Never The Pure and the Damned (feat. Iggy Pop)
‘I had a good feeling when I walked into their midtown office, which was more like a shrine to everything they loved — amongst which was a massive Akira print side by side with one of King of New York. They told me they were setting out to make a genre film. To me the Safdies are doing something really unique and yet drenched in tradition. I think of Jarmusch, Tarantino, Carax — directors whose love of the history of cinema is too strong to keep out of the filmmaking itself, but remain totally idiosyncratic anyway. We share an affection and reverence for bruised and battered stuff, and I think we both feel this urge to enshrine the history as it is now, not as it was then. On our own terms.’ — Daniel Lopatin
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Moor Mother X Mental Jewelry Matter Of Time
‘Crime Waves is a collaboration between Philadelphia-producers Moor Mother and Mental Jewelry. The EP features six tracks recorded during a session at Philadelphia’s Kawari. The music speaks about systematic violence and racism. From a productions standpoint, these songs bridge avant-classical sounds with modern broken beat/sample based technologies and live instrumentation implemented via laptop. “Two of these tracks – “Hardware” and “Death Booming” – were meant for Fetish Bones but I couldn’t get them to sound how I wanted,” writes Moor Mother. “I really loved Mental Jewelry’s production though, so I suggested that we make an EP. We had bonded over free jazz, drum and bass, and heavy dub – we just spent hours talking about music before we even recorded a track.”‘ — Don Giovanni Records
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Lucifer’s Ensemble in girum imus nocte et consumimur igni
‘LUCIFER’S ENSEMBLE is a music performance project crossing physical theatre, interactive technologies and sound art. An inverted triangle comprising two performers and a musician/composer. In their music performances they usually include guest musicians to close the circle of conceptual pieces dedicated to matters of the occult. Such matters evolve mostly around notions of Ritual, Trance and Transcendence, The Night, The Morning Star and The Angel of Light, The Fool’s Journey and The Wishful Fall……’. — LE
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Gosheven Well Tuned Dreams
‘On his debut release on Opal Tapes, Gosheven is trying to detach from the substantially distorted and unwholesome male ideal that he has been absorbing since he was born. This record is an important stage of this “caterpillar turning into butterfly” metamorphosis. To match this joyful occasion, instead of the artfully constructed but fundamentally out-of-tune Western tuning, he used – among others – the long time forgotten just intonation (pure tuning) throughout the record. For this, he developed a special electric guitar whose strings can be placed in the stereo field to enrich even more the already unusual sounding of the retuned guitar. By using just intonation and other exotic tunings it was possible to make the whole material more emotional, more intimate and last but not least slower (western music is fast because it is not in tune – rumour says this was told by the legendary La Monte Young).’ — Opal Tapes
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From Nursery To Misery The Oak Tree
‘From Nursery to Misery were three teenagers who grew up together on the same street in Basildon, Essex. Formed in 1987, the band was comprised of vocalists (and identical twins) Gina and Tina Fear, along with keyboard player and producer Lee Stevens. Lee invited the twins to over to record some music with him, suggesting they try singing over some instrumentals he had written and recorded on a newly purchased 4-track. They played a sum total of four gigs before splitting in 1991. Their recorded output, however, was relatively prodigious, with the band appearing on over 22 compilations, as well as self-releasing two album-length tapes ‘The Oak Tree’ (1989), and ‘Equilibrium’ (1990), and a split EP with Germany’s Nostalgie Eternelle, ‘Art is the Tool’ (1990). All these releases were home-produced, hand-made cassettes distributed and swapped via the Mail Art scene.’ — Dark Entries
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p.s. Hey. ** Mieze, Mieze! I’m so happy Udo lured you inside. How are you? Bunches of love, Dennis. ** Wolf, Mega-human! Yeah, I think ‘My Son, My Son’ is one of the rare recent Herzog fiction films that’s actually really good. Mm, things have happened with Arte but I’m under a gag order re: that at the moment. Soon. I’ll tell you in Paris, if not before. Speaking of, … hooray! I’ll be here and rarin’ to hang and everything else! My calendar has wolf bait emoticons plastered on the announced dates. Kiddie’s good. Prepping for a new film. Busy with his kiddo. No doubt you can see for yourself ere long. Another hooray! ** David Ehrenstein, That doesn’t surprise me. I only saw/ran into Udo once in person at a video store in Silverlake years ago, and he was throwing a prima donna snit fit at the check-out guy, charmingly, of course. ** Dóra Grőber, Hi! I hope the zombie RIPs. I slept slightly better last night but not well enough. I seem to sleep sort of crappily when we’re working on the film. I think it’s excitement-related stress or something. Exciting, exciting about your three readers. Yes, it’s stressful waiting to hear, no way around that. Let me know what they say when they say it. That’s so great! Wtf about that coffee shop owner! How weird. Well, you probably dodged a bullet, as they say. Was that the only real job possibility in your immediate surroundings? My day was good. All color grading, as predicted. I think we’ve found the look we’re going for, and now we’re meticulously making each scene conform to that look more or less. So, success in the making, I hope. I didn’t do anything really otherwise than eat and catch up on stuff and head to bed. What happened to you today? ** Steevee, Hi. Tentatively good news on your end. Trying to reach beyond the usual film buff crowd will be a challenge, of sure, but how interesting and exciting even to figure out how to do that. Of course I would like to know the details on your plans, but I’m very patient. Yeah, being (too) busy doing the thing you like/love is always something to be careful complaining about. I’m in that boat too. ** Bill, Hi, Bill! Ha ha, ‘Der Adler’, yes. ‘FPoR’ has been digitally restored? Interesting. Is it on DVD, or is it on the (very) speciality theater circuit? Harvey Mudd, right, that makes sense. What are you doing there exactly? Can you say? ** Misanthrope, What’s the difference between your former diet and your new one? Call that fucking doctor, yes! What an asshole. Pin that mother down. ** S., Ha ha, that sentence should probably be on Udo’s gravestone or urn or whatever. This movie … our new one? Uh, it’s about a bunch of stuff but the central through-line is a young guy who gets obsessed with the idea of disappearing and ends up deciding to explode himself. Sounds like a weekend. Yours, I mean. Obviously. ** Armando, Hey. Actually, our post-production time is quite short, relatively speaking. I just said I don’t remember what Niblett sounds like. I am neither unenthusiastic nor enthusiastic until I do. I really like humans. Not every single one of them, but as a general rule, yeah. It sounds like my country, if you’re still there, isn’t doing great things for your mood. I hope that changes. ** Okay. What’s today … oh, a gig. Another one of those gigs of stuff I’ve been listening to and liking and that I think maybe could be a benefit to your current listening experiences possibly. Or possibly not? Anyway, that’s the post. See you tomorrow.
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