NAMAZU DANTAI – BLACK LILY IN A WHITE POND (c20)
On this attractive, limited-edition C20, we encounter a devilishly unattractive harsh noise wall from Sascha Mandler’s latest project, Namazu Dantai, following several years of recording under the Izanami’s Labour Pains moniker. Mandler dedicates this live recording to “female cruelty and my willingness to receive it” — not the first tidbit of women-targeted ire to grace a harsh noise release, though one must assume that, despite the wording, he’s aiming his anger at only those who’ve spurned him in the past. Or so I need to think, as a misogynist blast of this intensity would be merely inexcusable. Mandler erects this wall seemingly in mid-phrase, commencing side A’s blistering duration without even a figment of an attack curve. It’s an abrupt kick in the testes – one which pummels along for a pulverizing ten minutes before switching sides for yet another passage of carnal noise. This is full-on, pedal-fervid abrasion, with HNW’s trademark volume maximalism and stylistic minimalism. Imagine buildings collapsing and thunderstorms ravaging, as the noise shifts from harsh to harsher to less harsh to harsh in a smoothly shifting cycle whose ‘calmer bits,’ I assure you, can be identified only in relativistic terms. This is solid stuff, and at twenty minutes it’s quite the right length to brutalize the listener effectively yet justly. I could livewithout Mandler’s choice of muse, but there’s no sense condemning this
hefty racket. – (MT) Vital Weekly

Black Lily In A White Pond is the first release from German based noise maker Sascha Mandler’s new HNW project Namazu Dantai. Mandler’s also in the excellent, but brain screwing noise meets shaman music project Izanami’s Labour Pains.

On offer here are two sides of C20 tape? each side takes in a shifting often quite complex yet very brutal wall of noise. I guess you could call this ‘thinking mans HNW’ because like his other projects Mandler has put a lot of work into the layers & textures of the noise here, the tapes title & the bright yet slightly un-nevering artwork by Mike Haley of Wether. On side one we find the track Black Lily which drills in at first with thick, impenetrable & massive storm grey static tone wall of sound. But pretty soon it moves onto slightly thinner & more shifting yet still thick n brutal collection of tone walls that take-in: almost semi harmonic static sweeps, roaring judders, ripping tone bomb blasts, slowed & distant junk metal clatters and all manner of wall like swirling attacks.

Onto side two & we have White Pound which cracks in with a deeper static road drilling ‘n’ juddering tone which is licked by a slightly higher pitched glass shaking together pitch. As the track goes on Mandler expertly shifts the juddering pitches just slight at first before he opens the track up into a little loser & more roaring jittering tone attack. This track doesnt swirl or shift as much as the first sides track, but it still drifts & melts its wall in quite a heady & seared violent psychedelic manner.

Namazu Dantai take on wall making is distinctively swirling, morphing & often brutally psychedelic in its attack. Its great to see Mandler putting his considerable mind altering noise talents into a more Harsh Noise Wall form & I cant wait to hear what he does next with this project. -Roger Batty www.musiquemachine.com

WETHER – HORSES (c20)
Mike Haley of the formidable 905 Tapes muscles up as Wether. Presumably the title follows the welter of a recording session, but the simile of ?Horses? is uncanny: crunchy oscillations moving in nauseating circles, stampeding and whistling, shaking the foundations of dense earth. The entire body of sound moves in unison like a sheet metal maelstrom as one would find at the base of a Sickness track. The sound grows abstract and less impressionistic-representational with time, and after the jump of the C20 resuming the piece with serious internal disagreement in the left channel, revealing the convolution of the ?instrument?. Sirens bleat by comparison to the aggression of the central noise, and it?s hard to deny this classic approach isn?t now solid state. Plain tape comes in a stickered case with a color insert. 50 copies. – Animal Psi

Mike Haley, the mastermind behind the exceedingly prolific 905 Tapes imprint, provides twenty minutes of ample, blocky noise slaughter here, its title potentially deriving from the virtual torrent of hoof-stomps evoked by its mass. It’s rough but entrancing stuff, based around standard issue pedal effects and that ilk ? Haley’s chaos throbs, wails, buzzes, and romps; over its two sides, which are basically comprised of one improvisation that’s been artificially halved, he craftily zonks the listener out with a hefty dose of psychotic, unpredictable thrashing. I’ll admit horses weren’t the first thing I thought of while blasting this sucker out, as I’m more inclined to imagine a mine cart thundering out of control, or some sort of electric-industrial disaster, but hey: noise is subjective. And this lively, mangled stuff certainly leaves the listener with plenty to rollick along to. Better yet, like some of my favourite noise releases, it’s chunky and abrasive without being oppressive. Well played, Mr. Haley. Michael Tau indieville.com

VALES – SUN SICK (c40)
Full in spectrum yet devoid of life, Vales gets lost in the minimal daze of ?Sun Sick?. Side one is repeating patterns at various depths setting a woozy phase between the two channels as microtonal movement undermines the inner ear. Pitches brush uncomfortably close to the upper border of acceptable register, and resonant vibrations purr to distort the frame. On the reverse, twin tones crackle against one another in some binaural demon resurrected in the early madness of Young and Riley. Perfect for the sociopath who likes their drone with a healthy dose of paranoia. Plain tape comes in a stickered case with a color insert. 50 copies. – Animal Psi

JOE BREITENBACH – OUTLANDER (c20)
“We’ve got an all-Delawarean affair on our hands here, with Newark-native noise-maker Joe Breitenbach (Methadrone, Gallows) dispersing this intergalactic 20 minutes through tip-top Wilmington label 2:00AM Tapes. And if you, like me, are a relative newcomer to the sonic exploits of the glorious First State, well, grab your peach blossoms and get your tape player ready, because Outlander is rather righteous.
Side A kicks things off by laying out a dense, machinelike drone atop which sepulchral keyboard chords and airy, swirling samples frolic. As the track ventures on, the drone subsides, and the keyboards occupy more of the track’s aural space, played, I believe, both forwards and in reverse. It’s an eerie and disarming listen, with various electronic mumbo-jumbo located amid the sound to add variety to the proceedings. For all its sonic variety, it’s a tough ten minutes to place one’s finger on — it is indeed atmospheric, but it isn’t quite drone music.
Side B is a gunkier fuss, toying with a dusty feedback mess, menacing clinking and clanking, an electric bass, and unusual electronic interference. Here’s a track where half the fun is invested in deciphering how Brietenbach got things to sound just how they are; there could be just about anything in this confounded cauldron of sound; a shortwave radio, a sampler, a field recording culled from the Earth’s core? Whatever the background, it’s a stunning length of sound, and this delightful tape’s better half. The only potential indiscretion is the track’s liberal use of left/right stereo sound; this produces a curiously dizzying effect when paired with the already disorienting nature of the track, but perhaps a bit more subtlety could have been employed. Either way, it’s a minor detail on a compelling work of sound.” – Michael Tau (indieville.com)

Ophibre | Untitled Drones for Iron Oxide (c30)
This somewhat cleverly titled half-hour is immediately resplendent, Boston’s Benjamin Rossignol working in dense, shimmering drones that seem to radiate outwards from their thin magnetic housing. The journey on side A is marvellous, momentous, and infinitely listenable art, the sort of piercing ambience that evokes night-time cityscapes and entrancing shadow forms. At its core is a stunning organ tone which is skilfully teased and tethered about, making for fifteen minutes of unadulterated sonic hypnosis. Side B, meanwhile, is a more sinister jaunt, designed around a sharp, electro-metallic timbre that cuts along amid a haze of electronic atmospherics and physical chicanery. It’s a mesmeric, ethereal tidbit, not as entrancing as its converse, yet nevertheless astutely becoming (for experimental music enthusiasts, that is.) Between the two untitled drones on this iron oxide strip, Ophibre’s left me with a serious case of I-wonder-what-else-he’s-done. Michael Tau indieville.com
Benjamin Rossignol is the man behind Ophibre. Currently living in Boston, he’s been releasing loads of music on various formats and labels. Be it under the Ophibre moniker, O’fiber or his real name, he’s exploring sounds in all their offerings, following a thread knitted by his own subconscious, revealing to the listener an artist preoccupied with significants. Under Ophibre, Rossignol is using the tape medium in a very creative way, especially for packaging. There’s definitely something going on with tapes that makes them more and more sought after, for their properties, sound quality and convenient format. Rossignol is also experimenting with packaging in his multiple releases, my favorite being “Compositions for Disassembled Cassette.” Each release compete in ingenuity and beauty, and gives an interesting edge to his conceptual art. Not that it’s never been done before, but still, I guess music consumers appreciate an artist who try to think outside of the box as a way to present his sounds. “Untitled Drones for Iron Oxide” is exactly what the title implies; beautiful drones, well pitched with enough dynamics to make it a mesmerizing listening experience, with magnetic properties.

Now, someone with a family name like Rossignol, surely will craft beautiful music, rossignol being the French equivalent of nightingale. We can imagine that this guy takes his name seriously. If the Nom-du-père (Name of the Father), as Lacan puts it, is our symbolic entry to the world of metaphors and to our relationship with the Other, Rossignol is on an interesting path. In the sublime Sufi poem by Farid-ud-din Attar “Conference of the Birds,” the nightingale is presented as the lover. The bird who settles his passion in the scent and color of the rose, using this as an excuse to postpone his quest for the true king. Rossignol seems preoccupied as well with image, looks and textures with his recordings, oblivious to the fact that the king is immanent and transcendent, just like the music lurking behind his fancy packaging. 8/10 – Frédérick Galbrun (19 May, 2010)

A VIBRANT STRUGGLE | SOFT ILLUSIONS (c24)
It’s hard to argue with a collaboration between Sindre Bjerga, Jan M. Iversen, and Steffan de Turck (staplerfahrer), and I don’t intend to. Instead, I’ll remark that the trio have crafted something pretty damn curious here, exploring the worlds of drone and noise music but combining them with free improv clatter and burbling synth loops. Side A, “Buzzin for Hum,” transitions from industrial-calibre guitar feedback drone to a tape-concluding Casio vortex, the result being a novel and exciting work of avant-zaniness. Grimly titled (and executed) “Dead City,” meanwhile, makes ominous work of some deathly guitar rumblings, employing plenty of heavenly/devilish feedback goop along the way. It’s on the more traditional end of the experimental scene’s clamor, but it’s executed with enough noxiousness to plant a smile on my face. Ultimately, the first side is, for me, the real spectacle here, but these three veterans ensure the tape’s entirety is at least up to snuff. (MT) Vital Weekly

I must admit my deep appreciation for the brevity of 2AM Tapes. Perhaps an illusion spurred by their transparent and label-free cassettes which makes the reels appear tighter, but it seems the each release is condensed to no more than a half-hour, suiting both a more precise experiment and a more engaging listen. ‘Soft Illusions’ by A Vibrant Struggle (Bjerga & Iversen plus Steffan de Turck) can be convicted along with the recent Granitkorridor tape for label misplacement – it’s motorik bass and mechanical noise so ripe for the Peasant Magik catalog – though in this case it perhaps a lesser crime as 2AM’s youthfully-emerging aesthetic is proving aptly brutalistic (see for example the recent Wether tape ‘Horses’). The A-side’s “Buzzin for Hum” seems so woefully self-aware for the abstraction contained that it’s almost lazy (the flip-sides “Dead City” at least acts as a magic ear print to pretend). Then again, it’s tough to figure all three characters in this busy yet broad-stroke recording, yet the clashes of those strokes present some novel and contemplative constellations for their burning, tweeting duration. The reverse is an even starker drone of high-vibration and percussive daubs shoved slowly into new rotations, eventually picking up burrs and baubles which encrust the rhythm in some grotesque futurist fantasy, replete with oompa orgasm. Cassette comes with a glossy inlay and transparency. 40 copies. – animalpsi.com

FLESH COFFIN | In The Woods (c30)

An Andreas Brandal (in his solo Flesh Coffin guise) recording from January of this year, ‘In The Woods’ at first approach suggested to me a strong influence of Lars von Trier’s ‘Antichrist’ for several indefensible reasons. First is my association of Brandal with his Norwegian home, taking into account von Trier’s Scandinavian influence. Next is the tape’s imagery, a lone house buried beneath tons of timber and an even heavier yoke of sinister fog much like the film’s locale. Last, and most important, is the theme of “the woods”, as it is an understated yet wholly-intentional player in the (otherwise quite shitty) film, so beautifully animated and breathing with a life which no human could ever hope to exhale, yet alone act as though exhaling. The fierce din which swallows the first 15-minute side of the cassette approximates just this vitality, swaying at a thousand unique yet colluding apices, screaming with a metallic technology which protrudes like a skeleton in some wicked Gaia. This is well-complimented by the reverse – an equally untitled 15 minutes – which, at another strata of the woods (perhaps in the burrow), we find the creaking limbs muted but the vibrant core humming mightily amid a stretching of sinews. This is not narrative – Brandal’s recent collaboration ‘A Walk In The Park’ cannot simply be amended to ‘A Walk In The Woods’ – but literally in the woods, an eternal perspective – so long as it lives. Same deal as above, 35 copies. -animalpsi.com

Flesh Coffin’s name seems to give it all away… you have a pretty good idea what’s coming when you put Andreas Brandahl’s latest 2:00 AM Tapes release, “In the Woods,” into the deck.  Things are totally bleak.  Sounds like a tornado hitting a metal worker’s studio with a billion pieces of steel caught in a massive blender.  In other words – fucking great.  It’s not as harsh as it sounds – it’s totally listenable and at a shade under 30 minutes, the perfect length.  Well done.  -foxydigitalis.com

Meditations+Pummeler split (c22)
Here we have a collaboration within a split, as Meditations is the work of Ryan McGill (Bones of Seabirds) and Franklin Teagle and Matt Yacoub (both of Anathema Sound). “Mechanical Womb I & II” reveals itself in stages, beginning with a slow-burning clatter of metal which hardly moves but intimates a description of the object of discussion. It’s difficult to imagine one man at work on this piece, let alone three. The second stage is far more motivated, representing each player with a performing part. A talking, Thurston Moore-walking guitar dominates the field with excessive lunges toward feedback, crucially bolstered by two gradations of drone, one a groaning bass and one a mid-guard fuzz. The effect is brutal and sufficiently eventful. Then the lonely Pummeler (Mikkel Dunkerley) has his way. Prefaced by the gory, Pushead-..cum-..supremacism of Yacoub’s unmistakable cover art, the sound of “Post-Stamina Excess” is ugly yet contained like some obscene operation. The regular pump of a record-needle breather shadows a middle-range murmur which falters, regularly, pushing more then less then none then more through the crackling ether. The piece churns on its own and offers no course, suiting the 10 minute side. 37 copies. All 2:00AM tapes come unlabelled with color inserts and a title transparency.

Red Electric Rainbow | Boredom in Paradise (c30)
Two lines, one whole one broken, the first twisted the second stuttering. Such is the appropriately stultified prettiness of ‘Boredom in Paradise’ by Red Electric Rainbow (the self-..proliferating Daniel Smith). A severely Growing-..inspired pre-meditation of kaleidoscopic effects and a lazy down-stroke, the A-side piece writhes fluidly but in a narrow corridor of sound, right at the top of the channel. Flip the tape over and you get a B-side of faded pastels clipped to a frame with a similar pulse; the tones still rise like so much vaporous form, and what can be called a lack of content verges upon something so densely opaque as to appear almost tidal, even when refracting the late arriving glints of guitars and backward notes. And there’s your return to (the) paradise
(analogy). 45 copies.

Tidal | Hyperlight (c30)
Speaking of things Tidal, ‘Hyperlight’ is the inaugural release from a one-man synth project which brushes regularly against the categorical drone without satisfying the form, in effect underlining the very utilitarian essence of the form with aesthetic imposters. “Space Cloud Seed” fills the first half of the tape with a gnawed-on optimism, layering lonely monologues over baud-y melodies, whimpering synth highs and broiling lows, and an ambient color like a plume of natural gas. The listen is sophisticated, moody and transcendent, reminiscent of the post-shoegazer works of Pan American and Toshack Highway. After the fold comes a negation, as “Prism” plays a fugue of synthesizer strains weathered to a fine grotesque by the decompositional.. heat of the following, “Double Death”, which consumes the majority of the 15 minute side. A tonal antipode to the ‘Boredom in Paradise’ B-side, from what appears a deep brown Robedoor drone comes several strains of in-growing yet lofty frequencies pushing against the low hanging sky created by oneanother. The tape is the most challenging of the lot, yet offers absolutely no justification for the titles “Tidal” or “Hyperlight”. 40 copies. Recommended.

CDRX/TAKLAMAKAN – Sulphuric Lake/Ispod Zemljine Kore (split c60)
Natural phenomena are probably the most aptly to used metaphors in music, and history has indeed shown that musicians find clouds and rain and sunshine particularly appealing to translate their shallowest and/or deepest emotions into something digestible and universal. I?m walking on sunshine, you are the sunshine of my life, my thought are scattered and they?re cloudy; musicians both gifted and untalented have long since resorted to the clich? palette of flora, fauna, and weather forecasts. How can we blame them though? As attested, they are metaphors both digestible and universal, capable of capturing a wide range of complex emotions in a single compelling and comprehensible image.

The CDRX/Taklamakan split released on 2:00 AM Tapes is, in a sense, much the same, although you?ll find sunshine and jolly chipmunks and, well, happy thoughts are absent here altogether. Aptly titled Sulphuric Lake/Ispod Zemljine Kore (the last of which is Croatian for ?Beneath the earth?s crust?), the two artists put before the listener some sounds which could be represented by nothing other than such places of gloom, darkness and destruction. The artists? intent seems clear: to record pieces of somber, earthly gloom ? an intent translated excellently into the compositions on the tapes. CDRX is the project of Switzerland?s Cedric Baldacchino, who started out recording noisy sound scapes and collage works as far back as 1996, but who only returned to the scene after a prolonged hiatus in 2008 with a slew of MP3 releases, CDrs and, of course, this tape. Taklamakan is Croatia?s Harold Gojani (also of Placenta Lyposuction), who has since 2009 started bombarding the world with his own brand of experimental electronics, going back and forth between crunchy dark ambient and harsh noise walls seemingly effortlessly.

CDRX offers an excellent slice of dark noise ambient; soundscapes that roll on with all the usual waves of ambient drones, but knocked up another notch with measures of white noise and assorted crackle that vastly improve what might otherwise have been decent but not spectacular. As the tracks build, the noise levels build and build with them to almost reach a cathartic harsh noise eruption ? yet they never do, and they stay subdued, and that exactly seems the magic of CDRX?s tape side ? that it rolls forth slowly, broodingly, much like a sulphuric lake eating away at you almost unnoticeably, but no less effectively. The compositions are as far from devoid of life as you?d expect anything doused in acid for a prolonged period of time would expect to sound. At some point, a sample of a kid or kids giggling find their way into the soundscapes, though they sound surprisingly eerie amidst the bubbling acid of the track?s drones. The samples, but also the tracks? arrangements, contribute massively to the almost vibrant feel of the compositions, making them as darkly gloomy as they are compelling and a joy to listen to.

Taklamakan?s side offers a crushing track that ambiguously and admirably occupies middle ground between dark ambient and HNW. The thick layer of crunch and the monomanic character combine to make the track sound much like the work of contemporary HNW greats such as Vomir or Cannibal Ritual, yet there?s a subdued quality to it, almost as if all high frequency crackle has been eliminated from the track viciously, and a thick, spine chilling bass rumble underneath that operates in just the right tone range to sound both beautiful and darkly eerie. Perhaps even more so than the CDRX side, the Taklamakan side seems to capture the broiling, bubbling sound of a sulphuric lake, though with the smallest of imaginative leaps it could just as well be a field recording of nocturnal, subterranean life, with centipedes and worms pushing their way through the earth, nibbling away at a freshly buried body, with a thick rumble emanating from the earth?s core providing the soundtrack to the grim scenery. The track evolves slowly, but nearly never shies away from its core HNW sound. Its distinct low-frequency rumble and mid-frequency crunch are perpetuated for almost the full 28 minutes, and the result is hypnotic and captivating. Ultimately, the track winds down to retain only its dark rumble, to then end abruptly, leaving you craving more, and a bit spooked.

The tape comes packaged in once more exemplary and beautiful artwork from the 2:00 AM Tapes label, which has really managed to set a new standard in artwork presentation for smaller tape labels in the current noise scene, along with other outstanding labels such as Monolithische Aktion, Quagga Curious Sounds and Soundo Maso. Moreover, the sounds on this tape are simply excellent as well, making Sulphuric Lake/Ispod Zemljine Kore a highly recommended tape that offers two distinct and refreshing explorations of the essence of ambient sound.

Rating: 4 out of 5
-Sven Kippel – Musiquemachine.com