REVIEW: Ourobonic Plague - Post Human Possibilities

New six-track release from the darkest corner of Australia, Ourobonic Plague follows up last year's GAAP ep with a longer stretch of industrial umbral imaginings.  The irony in titling this Post Human Possibilities is that the effect of this album is to suck away all the kinds of positive potentials the word Possibility might bring to mind. It's a grey aurad environment that is cast here, a shadowy landscape of futility, chaos, dread and paranoia. None of the songs titles suggest an album that would allow a slice of light in.

The opening Her Reptile Dysfunction begins with unsettling reverberating tones and a keening sound that sneaks in under them only to grow into a wavering foreground sound that plays call and response with wordless feral utterings that crawl out from between them. Slowly the dull thump of a beat drags itself through the swampy textures to dominate the speakers, it's funereal procession harried by a rippling kick. 
By contrast, the following Lake Slasher is a far more sprightly piece, with melodic lines flickering between the branching synths like bats in the night forest, cycling round in rabidly fluttering patterns.  Return To The Lake plays on the effectiveness of adjusting the levels of disorientation around a minimal theme before the drag-crawling pitch-downed take on Nine Inch Nails that is Connection Failed preludes the huge end-piece of Washed Up On The Shore.  The album closes on this sixteen minute vista of bleakness that takes half its length to gradually evolve from a primordial state into an achingly paced tempo of dread pounding and haunted mechanics. The cover art being drawn into perspective fully with that blood red sun silhouetting a scene of deserted industry, abandoned, derelict and lifeless. The track rolls forward in waves of toxic drone, breaking on to a bed of gritty vibration like the yellowed waters of a poisoned lake, fizzing at acid charred rocks of its lifeless bank.

You can imagine a solitary figure staring hopelessly outwards, watching as a weak sun sinks below the horizon leaving them alone in an unforgiving darkness.

Order from the Twice Removed Bandcamp

Last of the FM heartbreakers

Stats time.  The thread is mine. 

01. John Talabot - 105

02. Ectoplasm Girls - 44

03. Turbowolf - 40

04. Run DMT - 33

05. Clams Casino - 32

06. Pop. 1280 - 30

07. Total Control - 27

07. SPACEGHOSTPURRP RVIDER KLVN - 27

09. Cobalt - 15

09. Lanterns On The Lake - 15

09. Wild Nothing - 15

1 – Deep-house techno noise

2 – Swedish sister noise
3 – Hairy Bristol noise
4 – Waking dream noise
5 – Untouchable intangible noise

6 – Grey dystopian noise

7a – Australian superband noise
7b – Can't crowbar Noise into here
9a – Relentlessly charred noise
9b – Pretty sleeptime anti-noise
9c – Habitual listening ends up in the top 10. noise..

totw:

Talabot brings the distortion
 

REVIEW: Ashan - To Return To (Inner Islands)

Sean 'Gkfoes Vjgoaf' Conrad's side project Ashan follows up last years single track Peace of Joy album with four long pieces of meditative acoustic trance. Ashan differs to the Gkfoes material in being less concerned with the physical realm, instead submitting itself to themes of love, peace, emotional tranquility and transcendence.  The album is inspired by the book Ashan: The Gentle Way, a spiritual tome about "The vibration of creation, of harmony, of unification, and of love."  No matter how cynically you want to view these themes, Conrad's embracing of this kind of flower power ideology is thoroughly sincere, as is the music he creates in thrall to it, and musically the resulting pieces probably work even better than the Gkfoes material because of it.  The vocals in this album bestow it with a greater sense of wonder, Conrad's partner Rosa Beach-Mason and Braden McKenna contribute additional chanting and campfire lullaby madrigals to the tracks. You can imagine this being performed in a circle, the three performers locked into each others eyes and deeper, lost in an infinitely stretching moment of communion.  There's a tangible resonance to the pieces that recalls Incredible String Band at their most spiritual, and these tracks sound like some of that band's finer, most elegantly concisely moments locked into spiralling patterns and repeated until trance state is achieved.

I don't really know who's making music of a similar style to this at the moment, maybe High Wolf at a push, but his is all tropical and steamy, this just goes for the soul and there's no one coming close to producing the effect that Conrad is capable of inducing. If you're in doubt as to what any of the above means, just get playing the stream below and realise I'm saying it's far out amazing.

Order the CD from the Inner Islands Bandcamp HERE

DOWNLOAD: Robel Synthesia - Midnight Polaroids

Another new ep/mini-album from Robel Synthesia, this one's concept simply being a silky glide through a night-time - maybe one of his, maybe several fleeting episodes stitched together, and the result is his strongest material yet.  As a general law of the world which I submit to, everything good happens after dark, and here on Midnight Polaroids nightfall has brought out Robel's punchiest beats coupled with his strongest hooks and sense of chiming melody to date. Across his three releases there has been a steady build of assurance and ability, experimenting with concepts and working out what he's doing with his craft and it's becoming a very interesting path to watch him follow.

This new release has more of a hypnogogic pop bent to it, along the lines of James Ferraro's recent Far Side Virtual, the playful melodies fizz with the effervescence of bright-lit daytime TV themes, blurred into life through a semi-conscious state of recollection - in Ferraro's case it's pretty much conjured from his own warped mind, but here's the a definite sense of inebriation and narcotic intervention serving as the dividing line between what is real and what is illusionary here. Robel doesn't go so far as to create an alternate world-view with his work, he is more concerned with documenting and reflecting his realities, as with his previous album Neon Island which which his musical analysis of his obsession with the sun. 


Streetlamp Waves starts the ep off on a hyper note, late sinking into the slow cool of Polaroids, Light Echoes and Taxi Colours both take the dreaminess of his previous eps and let the moon cast them in silvery relief, collecting the giddy expectations as an evening begins, the social carousing of the night club and introverted back-seat taxi ride home in the form of glittery amphetamine beats, Ativan coded synths and dopamine rousing drones.

VIDEO: Halls - Lifeblood

This video is directed by illustrator Ben Symonds, using footage from the BBC's Planet Earth and Frozen Planet - beating them to the punch of using the music over their footage he's used their footage under Halls' glacially evocative electronics. Lifeblood is the second track on the beautiful Halls' new Fragile EP available as a download and 12" vinyl from the label Sound of Sweet Nothing.

NEW TRACK: Voltage Black - Glass Graphic (Zen Mix)

London based producer Voltage Black has just thrown up another track to complement his increasingly great catalogue.  He's been steadily releasing one a month for the last year and his production skills are developing tangibly with each piece, last month's heavily vocalled Blackbirds, and the older Hashiriya showing dramatically different sides of his skills to this new one.  All his pieces play with a certain take on an epic structure, building towards expansive climaxes, the density of the production expanding as the track progresses dropping bass and beats patterns with palpable thrust and sense of chaos.  This is surely one of his heaviest.

Last fm to Brooklyn

This week's heavy listening double post off of DiS

There's a new 1 month chart available. Woo stats fans!



WEEK

01. Pop. 1280 - 63
02. Turbowolf - 42
03. Letherette - 28
04. Total Control - 26
04. Screen Vinyl Image - 26
06. Clair Cassis - 24
07. Ectoplasm Girls - 22
08. Everyone to the Anderson - 21
08. Ashan - 21
10. Pete and the Pirates - 18
10. Julianna Barwick - 18
10. Run DMT - 18

01 – Dirgy post-punk b-movie horrorcore dystopia on Sacred Bones. I'm have a biased predisposition to love anything off that label, but the reason is it just keeps turning out to be good.  This week’s highest entry makes my top ten of the month too.

02 – Constant in-car rotation for the greatest British rock band alive. Even my 3 year old gets it. Asks for all the songs they say “Hey”, shouts along with “Seven severed heads”.

03 – Electro fetishised soul. Just got the second ep, so I’ve been playing both a bit.

04a – Can’t stop playing Henge Beat. Half the songs sound like different bands (which reminds me, I need to get the new Balaclavas album)

04b – Got a little bit of filler (or maybe I’m just not a fan of the slower stuff) , but the wall-of-noise shoegaze stuff  is almost overwhelming.  Not quite A Place to Bury Strangers, but it’s a slightly sleeker thing.

06 – Had a luxurious velveteen black metal moment

07 – TxN is fantastic!  Swedish girl/girl spacious, surreal industrial noise minimalism littered with hooks and beats.

08a – More heavy in-car rotation playing the ...Inside A Horse album.  I need to put their earlier eps on my ipod.  Looking forward to this band blowing up as big as an angular post-rock hardcore band can.

08b – Different project from Gkfoes Vjgoaf’s Sean Conrad that plugs into the same rural acoustic nu-age psychedelic hypnotics. New album on Inner Islands is four tracks of deep and heavy lucid jam.

10a – Got One Thousand Pictures too late for it to make my end of year list, which I think it would have.

10b – The Magic Place.

10c – Still marvelling at this summery acid psych even while it snows outside.




MONTH:

01. Run DMT - 186
02. Pete and the Pirates - 121
03. Total Control - 116
04. Colin Stetson - 107
05. Turbowolf - 106
06. Matthewdavid - 90
07. Screen Vinyl Image - 87
08. David Thomas Broughton - 78
09. Cold Cave - 68
10. Pop. 1280 - 63

TOTW – Ectoplasm Girls – Sexodrone (or anything off TxN really)

DOWNLOAD: Golau Glau - Revenant Branch

Brand new EP from the mysterious Golau Glau collective for National Libraries Day.  This band always have themes and intentions with their releases, they don't just make music for the sake of it, which is an inspiring motivation.  It's good to have purpose other than for your own sake, more bands should take note.

This is a creepy, slow crawling ep. Sparse spidery beats propel sounds recorded from libraries around the UK in fetishitic, Anglophile hauntological fashion, and as an extention of that, it has a pared down industrial post punk sound.  Beguiling atmospheredelia from England's dark Satanic mills.

DOWNLOAD



Info from the band belowwwww>>>>

Revenant Branch is an EP by Golau Glau for National Libraries Day 2012 on the Pin Factory label. This is the sound of the revenant library branch, the ghosts of dead libraries returning from the grave to remind us not to close any more.

Many of the sounds on the EP were recorded in public libraries across England that have now closed down.

National Libraries Day is one day devoted to all libraries – public libraries, school and university libraries, prison, national, law, business and commercial libraries. A nation-wide celebration of libraries, librarians and library staff in all sectors.

nationallibrariesday.org.uk

Golau Glau are working on a book about public libraries. We passionately believe in them as sources of culture, information and lifelong learning, and places of non-commercial, accessible society and sanctuary for all.

golauglau.wordpress.com

VIDEO: A Place to Bury Strangers - So Far Away

A Place To Bury Strangers release their first full EP since the devastating Exploding Head album from 2009.  Onwards To The Wall is their debut EP on Dead Oceans, dropping February 6 on CD/12"/Digital formats..

The EP contains five new tracks, of which this is the lead.  It's got a blisteringly paced Instagram collage video to go with the blisteringly paced noise pop squall. Not totally convinced about the video, thought we'd seen the last of the washed out polaroids last summer. No matter.  This track is so huge you'd be best advised to close your eyes and take it with a little sensory interference as possible.

Download it as a preview track courtesy of the label HERE

VIDEO: Liturgy - High Will

New video for Liturgy's True Will. Full of the same jump cuts as the Returner video, it starts of at thirty thousand feet which is an appropriate place for a Liturgy track to position itself. Later on it jumps out to space. It's also got a lot of kitchy home-mvie clips and religious iconography which is slightly less fitting becasue there's nothing ironic or kitsch about this music but it lends itself pretty well nonetheless.

Liturgy are playing a few shows in the US opening for Sleigh Bells and Diplo.  Either that's a God-sized middle finger up at the hipster-hating flack they get by embracing it, or the same salute to the hipster crowds they're about to headspin. No idea how that's going to roll, but heads will either way, surely.