DOWNLOAD: Kультура Kурения - Рвота

Here's a sharp little three-track self-released ep from Russian black metal band KультураKурения, with a title that translates as the succinctly dirty Vomit. The first track ends up as pure cold Northern harshness – sky-scraping, star-gazing howls into the primordial abyss, backed by fuzzy tremolo and the comforting anti-fidelity beat of cardboard box drumming (a good thing) – but begins in the post-punk tradition of much Depressive BM, sounding more like The Cure than anything grim and Scandinavian - 'Blackwave' as they term the sound themselves on their website. While the track quickly dismantles this latter genre framework, suffocating it in blasting beats, the second bridges the styles with a more finessed sense of experimentation – a loose and ragged piece with reverbed notes floating into a wide atmospheric space, before taught clean riffs arch into peaks of fiery distortion. The final track combines all elements with the greatest presence and success with a lead riff that slowly mutates without ever losing any punch. It's a pretty rocking number than adds in layers of textures through screeching vocals and extra guitar all the while hanging on to its potent initial riff but developing the track through expansion and contraction of the guitar figures.

Download for free from their Bandcamp

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REVIEW: GuMMy†Be▲R! - Time (Disaro)

GuMMy†Be▲R! drops another ep of his increasingly glamorous take on post-club electronics in the evolving collection of sounds of what was once called Witch House and is now not really known as anything, so disparate and far flung have many of its previously chief proponents been cast from each other. Time picks up where Herr Gummy left us with his last release Oakland but there's another level of development in the production - again, this guy just can't stop getting better. The beats are feeling more intuitive, the sounds becoming more substantial ad the tracks themselves bearing greater presence. Far removed from his first productions involving the garbled voices of children, gunshots and little else. 

Among the highlights of the nine tracks the stuttering house of the opening Cognitive Ascension evolves as its name implies, adding waves of melody that push the conscious up into sweaty peaks; the crystal clear heat haze of Sleeping in Dubai and its infectious treble drop, Astroid's bass throb and glassy counter rhythm, Fractured serves up a soundtrack to a lazy Californian beach side drive and the dreamy Friendzone vocalled Can't Go Wrong is pitchshifted into a subtle state of bliss.

The physical release came out at the end of August (didn't realise I'd had this on repeat so long!) on Disaro Records, limited to 200 CD copies,so it's probably all gone - check the status - but you can still get it digitally from the Disaro Bandcamp HERE

REVIEW: Sheer Ignorance - Conditioning (Self-Release)

Scotland's Sheer Ignorance began life in 2011 as a crust punk/black metal, d-beat frenzied project between Neil (of highly acclaimed death metal act ‘Nerrus Kor’) and Rick, the former bringing the vocals, the latter bringing the music.

Their debut EP was released in September 2011 and can be found on Bandcamp at sheerignorance.bandcamp.com  for just £3.

This new blackened hardcore death punk band blast so many genres into these five hyperfast songs it's barely worth trying to boil it down to anything if that indistinct tagging is the best I can come up with. Imagine the kinds of taught blackened punk spirited bands around at the moment such as Deafheaven or Castevet then reconceive them as more directly influenced by D-beat, Pig Destroyer and Napalm Death then you might come up with their sound. Lead track Pay Your Dues to Punk is so absurdly kinetic it blurs, as exhilirating as any opener should be. Social Conditioning could almost be their calling card, so diverse yet assimilated are all the influences: a great hi/low twin vocal attack, gruff and rumbly countered by fierce misanthropic shrieking, drums roll and boil locking the guitars down tight in savage switch ups between chugging and thrashing punctuated by melodic passages. It's a tightly written and ferociously performed piece, more than setting up the head-turning neck-snapping second track. Blood Sludge does what it suggests and slows things down to a doomier pace and atmosphere, those twin vocals playing off each other in even closer proximity as the riff churns up the dirt from the tarriest depths the band can reach, until half way through they draw up to a canter and blast their way out to the end. Militant Zombie Deathsquad drops straight in at full speed slashing out the speakers with hot-blooded full-throated guttural roaring and snarling – Zombies move fast these days and this blitzes you to a ragged corpse in two minutes before grinding down until your bones are powder. The end comes through politicised means with Mind Control Airwaves which fades out to finish, brilliant. I couldn't name another metal record that does that, the facetious little oiks. Perfect.

NEW TRACK: Ewan Limb - Eye

Ewan Limb is a producer with seemingly only four tracks to his name, and a video for his first piece Doppler Effect. It's a brand new project from the psuedonymed Russian, whose intent is to "lead the listener by hand, selecting all new color of road under his feet. I try to do something magic, atmospheric sound."

After that, you know as much as me.

DOWNLOAD: Adolescent - Leave for Summer

Two new demo tracks for downloading from one of Brighton's most promising electronic producers; Adolescent.   Following up on the excellent Run Away From Bad People ep released earlier in the summer this double whammy of killer atmospherics and shadowy beats sets out this artist's sound as one to get seriously involved with. The first track, Don't Feed Anger, builds up layers of beats, stuttering melodies, and vocals samples into a looping psychedelic peak.  Second track Walk Free, Walk Fast has that Bristol dubstep sound that Joker once called Purple. An itchy, twitchy rhythm locked over a soulfully bruised ambience decked out with futuristic tone jewels.  Amazing.

VIDEO: VHS Head - Death Dimension

Another great video as VHS Head get treated to visual accompaniments courtesy of SynesthesiaeFilms

DOWNLOAD: Robel Synthesia - Neon Island

Neon Island is the second album of equatorial chillwave electronica from Atlanta based Robel Synthesia.

It's a progression from his first album, defining his sound into something different to the tropical daze feelings permeating strains of the subgenre in the forms of bands such as Ducktails, USF (Previously Universal Studios Florida) and Gala Drop. There's a golden heat-haze shimmer that characterises much of the album that starts warming up straight from first balmy delay soaked track Sun Rave, whose languid vocal sample of 'Yeah yeah' melts in and out of the mix in intervals. The album's concept follows the course of a day from dawn 'til sundown, so as the suns rays start to burn into the earth so too do the tempos of the tracks that chart its progress. Ultra Magic Leaf, surely an ode to that first smoke of the day, follows it by bringing the beats; a clipped triplet marching towards the high sun of midday lead by a reverbed synth line, wordless (or at least indecipherable) vocodered voice and glittering melody. Beach Chairs gets blasted again, slowing things down to a foggy smoked out drone, then on to Rainforest Kiss with its lush wavering backdrop of animal sounds and synths picked across by a thoughtfully pretty lead. Citrus Sunset's conga shuffle heralds the twilight hours along with a soaring voice that leads into the faster Liquid Stars and down tempo again into the dreamily atmospheric Moon Potion.

Here's the artist's self-made video to go with Rainforest Kiss.

As with Indica Float, this is almost incessantly listenable anytime album that I find myself putting on at all hours. Robel still has some way to go before his songwriting and production matches that of Washed Out, but his ambition and ideas are apparent and he may only be a side-chained compression mix away from achieving it.

Robel Synthesia: Neon Island - DOWNLOAD

GIG PREVIEW: The Outer Church w/ Grumbling Fur & The Haxan Cloak + Die Farbe

This month's Outer Church experience brings two Aurora Borealis related artists to town along with a screening of Huan Vu’s adaptation of HP Lovecraft’s The Colour Out Of Space.

Grumbling Fur is the collaboration between Alexander Tucker (Ginnungagap, Imbogodom, The Stargazer’s Assistant), multi-instrumentalist Daniel O’Sullivan (Guapo, Mothlite, Miracle), andJussi Lehtisalo (chief Head from Finland's Circle).  Together they conjure ritualistic clouds of blackened analoge motorik, THC soaked drone drawn from the similarly unfathomable depths scryed into through Lovecraft's cosmic weirdness.




The Haxan Cloak is the lone Bobby Krlic, who uses primitive percussion, strings and analogue modulation to channel experiments into "the very real potential and power of the actual physical properties of sound".  His self-titled album is an abstract, hallucinatory trip through a dark subsonic netherworld. A transportive cinematic experience that is magically unsettling in its pure recorded sound form, it should be even more likely to effect your physical realm in the live setting.

LAST.FM: un sujet de conversation

  Last.fm listening stats. It's been a while.

THE NEED TO GROW TAKES YOU OVER

01. Zola Jesus - 63

02. Lanterns On The Lake - 45

03. The Field - 32

04. Death In Vegas - 31

05. St. Vincent - 22

06. Twin Sister - 20

07. Youth Lagoon - 16

08. A Winged Victory for the Sullen - 15

09. The Rosebuds - 12

09. Jacqueline Wilson - 12

1 – Can't stop listening to Conatus. Amazing. Well worth holding out on Witch House for this to arrive. What? Yes it is. IT SURROUNDS EVERYTHING.

2 – They were good at End of the Road and the album is pretty enjoyable too. Nothing spectacular though but easy to throw on when I'm not paying attention, hence the plays.\

3 – Impossible to ignore this when it's on, just sucks you in and zones you out. Psychedelic Swedish techno via Kompakt. The title track is unbelievable.

4 – Who knew they had a new album? Not me Now I do. It's no Contino Sessions.

5 – Strange Mercy has a couple of great tracks – Northern Lights especially – but it's not that great. Not as good as the EMA album.

6 – Booooooorrrrrriiiiiing.

7 – Baroque, dreamy melancholic reverb-washed pop solo artist. Another one? Yes. This one seems like a keeper.

8 – Going to be one of my albums of the year. So sensual. (incidentally, it's October – we have to get started on our AOTY about now don't we?)

9a – Loud Planes Fly Low released in June is still getting a lot of plays, which can only mean one thing; it;s very good.

9b – free audio book with the Guardian on Saturday. Syd wanted to listen to it while he ate dinner but it;s all about some mother and a cat dying. Not really much fun so he wanted to isten to Korn and Mastodon instead. Funny boy.

NEW TRACK: Gorgons - Faint Traces

Another superb new slice of chilly beatscaping from Chicago's Gorgons, this one a gorgeous slow rolling
trip that builds itself up towards a delicatly pointeed melody.

Read my recent interview with Gorgons at the Sonic Router HERE.