ambient / electronic / experimental / noise

Unexplained Sounds Group

Here in Belgium, as in most parts of Europe, the Americas and Australia, we know many different musical styles. From autotuned R&B to blackened doom metal and everything in between. If it's possible, it exists, that's the basic idea here. Yet, in all our musical indulgence we often seem to forget that there are other areas with a surprisingly varied musical scene. In the past, we have seen bands from unexpected places, like tiny villages in Siberia or crushing death metal from Iraq. Yet, the public opinion about Africa, music wise, is this: rhythmic, repetitive drums and weird chants, which pretty much explains why the sound of Die Antwoord is far from original. 

Anyway, who else than Raffaele Pezzella to dive into that vast continent and come back with some amazing tunes. Pezzella can be seen as the Steve Irwin of underground music: searching for the rarest gems and showing them to the world with the upmost respect and admiration. This continent is another baffling example of Pezzella's perseverance and passion. The compilation contains fourteen tracks, each one a unique piece of music. I'm not going to describe all of them. I'll leave the joy of discovering to you. But there are some jewels I'd like to pick out.

FRKTL delivered the opening track, one which immediately puts you in your place as far as your knowledge about African music goes. The opener, titled 'Hverfa af himni heiðar stjörnur' apparently puts everything back to Germany, more specifically the Berlin School. Klaus Schülze and Tangerine Dream clearly come to mind here. I wasn't expecting that so I was pleasantly surprised. A few interesting acts follow, combining ambient with traditional instruments and melodies. Fans of acts like Zoviet France might be interested. Flashes of dark ambient, drones, jazz and noise give the respective tracks their own identity. Some are beautiful, others plain weird.

Healer Oran is one of those act that deals in strangeness. Traditional chants and drums seem to have been processed through an array of effects which gives the track 'TaP{-' a somewhat unsettling atmosphere.Abdellah M. Hassak comes up with immersive drones and ritual vocals. His cooperative track 'Yearnings Complacency (feat Aziz Nadif)' brings some works of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan to mind. I think that's a pretty neat compliment. In_o 's track '(J. Krishnamurti)' is a glitchy piece of electronics, excelling in minimalism and a pitch black atmosphere.

Then there is the bewildering closer of AMET and the confusing track 'Imposer Le Savoir'. This is definitely one for fans of musique concrete and everything avant garde. It's an adventurous finale for an adventurous compilation, one I will recommend to every fan of unusual, abstract and enigmatic music. Pezzella has done his ultimate best again, resulting in a mesmerizing set of odd tunes to enjoy.


​Serge

progressive / black metal / doom

In The Woods… were once a legendary progressive metal band from Norway during the 90’s. They released a total of five studio albums, three singles, one compilation album and one live album throughout its initial existence. The band disbanded in 2000 and reformed surprisingly in 2014.

With the album Pure they continued their story with a new lead singer James Fogarty. In 2016 the Botteri brothers left the band leading onto Alex Weisbeek and Bernt Sørensen joining In the Woods... for bass and guitar sessions. Drummer Anders Kobro is the only original member left.

With all those band member changes In The Woods… sounds still like In The Woods… The sound of the band has still the same powerful resonance and intelligence like on the albums Omnio and Strange In Stereo. Cease The Day has a more varied and intensified sound. The music feels more atmospheric and has more black metal influences. Their weeping guitar sound has moved more towards a melodic direction with a very wide-ranging approach of vocals. Black metal screaming and clean singing joining each other in balance.

In The Woods… is still refining their sound and experimenting with various tunes and moods. The keyboards are used to give the songs on Cease The Day a creative and distinctive mood. Elements of doom, progressive and black metal are melted in this very interesting piece of work. Slow old school pieces chance to aggressive soaring black metal and visa versa. The guitars speed up and resonate heavier than they ever did before. 

Cease The Day is mind-bending with an avant-garde touch. In The Woods… shows that the path they walk is powerful and covered with surprising ambience. The story of this band hasn’t been told completely. From their debut Heart of the Ages (1995) until today with Cease The Day (2018), this band sounds still original, progressive, melodic, heavy, kaleidoscopic and timeless. We could stay day and night in the woods listening to In The Woods…

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Patsker

electronic / experimental / noise

Here is another one of those albums that not only defy the laws of music but also smash all genre boundaries to pieces in order to create something utterly unique. In fact, this thing often crosses those boundaries so blatantly that even the term "music" is no longer in order. Welcome to the strange but wonderful word of Juhani Silvola, composer, musician and producer working across multiple genres and disciplines. Juhani has a master’s degree from the Norwegian Academy of Music, where he studied electroacoustic composition with the world-renowned composer Natasha Barrett. He also worked with Sara-Jane Summers and several others.

And then there is this album, a confusing and often suffocating mishmash of electronic ambient, freaky synths and harsh noise, coming at you in six unique and bizarre pieces of music. The whole things opens with 'Ritualrytmikk', something that brings back memories of the old electronic noise and musique concrete pioneers like Pierre Henri or Karlheinz Stockhousen. 'Machines Of Loving Grace' adds some Merzbowian noise, or any other crazy Japanese harsh noise act you can image. Another artist that comes to mind is Machinefabriek. So yes, noise, mostly noise.

'Vaster Then Empires' feels like the soundtrack for an avant garde sci-fi movie while '20th Century Meditation' delivers at least a hint of calm, soothing ambient. Title track 'Post-biological Wildlife' sounds exactly as you would expect: electronic animal noises, a bit like a haunted house. Closer 'Speculative Phonography Pt.1' feels like some sort of megamix from the previous tracks. I know that sounds dry and unimaginable but this album is simply weird.

Fans of noise and avant garde electronics will undoubtedly love this. For them, this is another unpredictable sonic adventure. Other people might frown upon these eerie sounds. Strange, weird and odd, those are the keywords here, but the second half of the closing track is simply brilliant. 


​Serge

black metal / industrial / psychedelic

Yeruselem is a side project of Blut Aus Nord's Vindsval and W.D. Feld. Blut Aus Nord has been around since 1993, starting out as a black metal band, but gradually drifting into more experimental/industrial territory.

While very influential, it is also a fact that their music is not exactly easy listening. Industrial metal is often quite fatiguing to listen to, so imagine what happens if you throw a heap of ambient noise and dissonant riffs on top of that...However, BoN's last release (Cosmosophy) started showing signs of going into a more accessible direction (relatively speaking, of course, it's still not Steel Panther).

Yeruselem shows these guys going further into this direction. The sound immediately reminds me of Godflesh, but the guitars would not be out of place in a goth or deathrock band, and the melodies are at times, well, poppy. Vocal-wise,it also sounds refreshing - at times it made me think of Jesu, Front 242, or even Depeche Mode (go figure). Don't get me wrong, it's still heavy, but a more accessible way.

There are 9 songs on "The Sublime", two of which are instrumental mood-setters. The rest are fairly short songs, barely exceeding 5 minutes at max. Of note are album opener "The Sublime", (brilliant guitar work) , and "Eternal", with twisted drums and catchy vocals. 

What Jesu is to Godflesh, Yeruselem is to Blut aus Nord. And since I'm a big fan of Jesu, this really made my day. 2019 is off to a good start!


Koen

dark ambient / noise / drone / experimental

Cold Spring

The Cold Spring label celebrates their 250th release with a 29 track double CD. This UK label is specialized in all kinds of extreme music. This compilation contains a broad view of artists who create uncompromising underground music. All the tracks were already previously released. The only exclusive and unheard song is from Coil with Spastiche (Trumpo).

The songs are drowned in the darkest  and coldest atmospheres you can imagine. From the harsh noise of Merzbow to the addictive dark ambient sounds of Sonologyst, or from the doom punk escapades of Zeni Geva & Steve Albini to the creepy sounds of MZ.412. There is enough to discover on this sampler.

​The most curious artist on this release is Barry Adamson, former bass player of The Bad Seeds (Nick Cave). In collaboration with Pan Sonic, Barry Adamson composed this ice cold vocal song, The Hymn Of The Seventh Illusion, that ends this compilation in beautiful darkness. The sampler is a true guide in dark music for beginners and for experienced listeners. This double CD,  limited to 4000 copies in a gate fold Eco-pack is more than worth its money!

black metal / industrial metal

Debemur Morti Productions

During the darkest days of the year a flock of blood sucking bats were released with the compilation of Servants Of Chaos II. The French label Debemur Morti Productions indicates fifteen years of dedication to dark metal music. In fact, this is a very original release that contains fifteen exclusive tracks of fourteen bands. Au Champ Des Mort has the honor of having two hunting and atmospheric black metal tracks on the album. The variety of this extreme metal compilation is high. The psychoactive guitar riffs of Blut Aus Nord and Throane next to the more experimental and industrial approach of Terra Tennebrosa and Manes and the old school attitude of Behexen and Wallachia, show us the broad spectrum of the label in extreme metal. With no doubt Servants Of Chaos II leads the black metal fans to a dark and scorched heaven.

folk / celtic

With a fiddle and Hardanger fiddle as the only instruments used on Solo, Sara-Jane Summers shows her diverse talents on these folk instruments. She has already made several  live performances at rock, jazz, folk, country, and noise festivals worldwide. Sarah-Jane Summers  is releasing music as a duo with her husband Juhani Silvola and solo since 2008. She has made already many recording contributions in the folk-scene. Her playing  embraces the historical Celtic melancholic mood.  This release of old folk covers received an intelligent input. From happy dancing tunes to the sad sounding fiddle vibes, Solo, has the wisdom not to be boring or sleepy. Sarah-Jane Summers  managed to revive Celtic music from a different perspective. 

folk / acoustic

Stvannyr is a project of the Hungarian guitar player István ‘Musicformessier’ Csarnogursky. This artist from the Carpathian basin is a multi active guitar player involved in several projects. From guitar ambient (Musicformessier) to black metal (Realm Of Wolves) and much more (Silent Island, Black Hill). István Csarnogursky has the talent to create special floating guitar sounds that make you drift away.  With Secrets Of Black Ruins he brings a more  folk touch to the ambient guitar licks known from his other project Musicformessier. Six beautiful atmospheric folk instrumentals overwhelmed us with day-dreaming peace. Only available as digital download. Do not hesitate to have a listen to this artist’s other projects.

ambient / electronic

bandcamp

Evan Bartholomew has been performing electronic music for nearly 20 years as Bluetech. He has also credits in composing music for video games and TV/movie scores. With Liquid Geometries this American electronica artist from Portland joined the DiN label of Ian Boddy. Evan Bartholomew explores the electronic sounds  like the old masters of the Berlin School did. A lot of sequenced vibes  are put together into an interesting trip of soundscapes. Nothing new on the horizon but the recording has a high quality production and sounds refreshing. Bluetech  provided nicely constructed and moody tracks on this release. This is a grower. 

heavy metal

Athrox plays a groovy kind of old school metal, a mixture between Armored Saint and Anthrax. This hardworking band from Italy released with Through the Mirror their second album. The songs have lots of variety in style and tempo. When they speed up  you can feel and hear fragments of Metal Church. Athrox perform their music with finesse and deliver good melodic tracks. The down tempo songs don’t lose strength and have no disturbing effect on the album. Some compositions contain a welcome input of thrash metal. Athrox released with Through the Mirror an old school metal album carrying a wide range how heavy metal should sound. Nice work.

​Patsker

ambient / drone / experimental

Consouling Sounds

It was a profound year for the Belgian quality label Consouling Sounds. Dark Night Mother is the last of the twenty-two CD launches the label made this year. Stefano Pilia and Massimo Pupillo are two Italian musicians behind this project. They know each other more than a decade and started to record their acoustic home sessions. These creative meetings formed the foundation of Dark Night Mother. 

The broad experience in different music styles, the artists worked with, makes it difficult to catalog the recording. Stefano Pilia as bass player and Massimo Pupillo as guitar player are improvising musicians with a keen view how to melt their chemistry into mysterious and ethnic musical journeys. With the help of four female vocalists (Olivia Arebalo, Lucinda Mahua, Alexandra Drewchin and Sandra Canessa) a strange world of native singing, ambient and acoustic sounds was established.

The duo prepares precisely and patiently the listener to enter a world, not so easy to discover in one bite. After several listening trips it became clearer what the artists tried to achieve. Emotions of the past, present and future are molded in beautiful sound constructions. Indigenous voices bring a shamanic atmosphere and produce a strange hypnotic effect. The female singers have a very important contribution to the sound structures on this album.

Dark Night Mother had a weird outcome in how time moves when you are grasping deep into the music. In fact there is no darkness to be found in this recording. Beautiful, peaceful vibes with some melancholic parts create a new perspective of combining the uncombined. The weaving of world music, acoustic music with minimal electronica is what Dark Night Mother stands for. Stefano Pilia and Massimo Pupillo  shaped a beautiful world with abstract minimalist moods, grown from improvisations.

This music for the mind shows its splendor with patience and will be appreciated among music explorers like the fans of Hector Zazou and David Sylvian.


​Patsker 

black metal / dark ambient / experimental / industrial

Here's a review for an interesting release that flew largely under the radar: Haiku Funeral's "Decadent Luminosity", released end of October 2018. I do find it strong enough to revisit - after all, at the year's end, one should be compassionate to those who do not get what they deserve.

"Decadent Luminosity" is a double CD, with a total of 12 songs. Thematically, both discs stand on their own: the first one, called "Decadent", sounds like diabolical industrial metal - the band themselves call it "blackened industrial darkness". The second disc is called "Luminosity" and is a more ritualistic, organic affair ("ritual satanic ambient").

So what exactly is blackened industrial darkness? Imagine hammering industrial drums, meandering fuzzy basslines, some metallic impacts here and there, ancient string instruments, and, to top it all off, ritual chants and declamations. The end result is pretty electrifying, at times reminding me of NATO- or Wat-era Laibach, and of the icy cold declamations of Coph Nia's Aldenon Sartorial.

Highlights on this disc are the church organ solo at the end of the first song (Scientia Intra Satana), the eerie piped melodies on Lunata Sveti Kato Smwrt, and the Laibachian The Crown Of His Glory.
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As already stated, the second disc sounds more organic, largely due to the absence of the industrial drumming. Instead, what we get is a carefully constructed atmosphere, composed of slow drones, reverberating vocals, bells, saxophones, and other odd instruments. Perfect background listening, in my opinion - again, Coph Nia seems to have been a big inspiration (e.g. Poems of infernal Flesh).

Haiku Funeral is a French duo, operating from Marseille since 2008. Published by Aesthetic Death, Decadent Luminosity is their fifth release. Is it perfect? No, at times I find the lyrics to be somewhat silly. But apart from that, this is a gratifying and immersive listening experience for those cold days and nights spent sitting by the fireplace.


​Koen

experimental / polyphonic

During the so forced last days of the year, more and more people have the urge to hide from this commercial turmoil. Jonathan Hering gives you a chance to step into a time machine and leave the agitation with his debut album Carmina Chromatico. This Liverpool based composer offers a listening trip that spans more than six hundred years of polyphonic music.

Carmina Chromatico contains twelve tracks with only his voice singing all the parts. The composer gave his own twist in reconstructing layer by layer of the almost forgotten renaissance and baroque songs. Jonathan Hering used his bass to counter-tenor range in the compositions up to eight vocal lines. This DIY chewing over resulted in a puzzling journey of emotions. 

We can’t deny this monks work shows dedication and an original interpretation in this bestowal of European polyphonic music. After a few listening trips we felt impressed how far the vocal range of Jonathan Hering extends. He managed to keep the avant-garde sound and mood within the perimeters. 

The last track, Lachrymose, shows Jonathan Hering’s talent as a composer. More than eleven minutes of innovative music soaked with ancient influences and weeping ambiances. The cold organic atmosphere is your only guide when you take the journey into this polyphonic view of the composer’s world. There is hope in the end with the repeating of the ‘light everlasting’ words.

This album does not contain easy listening music. The quirky approach of the original songs is sometimes even a little artificial and scary. Jonathan Hering’s Carmina Chromatico is a piece for avant-garde lovers. Our kind of X-mas music.

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Patsker

black metal / blackgaze / experimental / ​avant-garde

Mosaic I: l'amour et l'ardeur is an album by Canadian experimental avant-garde black metal act Unreqvited. Relatively concise, the record is forty minutes long, and has five tracks: Sunrise, Dreamscape, Radiant, Balance and Permanence. With a dense and somewhat stagnant fury – although permeated by vivacious and gloriously consecrated melodies –, sidelined by a rude, but poetic melancholy, Mosaic I: l'amour et l'ardeur reveals itself to be a formidable and well-designed album. With harmonious elevations that makes its consistent sonority to abruptly reject the ordinary commonalities and tendencies of the genre, the album has a mordacity and a powerful style that deliberately displays its own patterns of creative indulgencies, despite the fact that its ambitious sonorous narrative demonstrates a solid respect by the avant-garde tradition, as understood and assimilated by the most talented underground acts. 

With a vivid and organic spontaneity, each and every note of the sound is a majestic evocation of hazardous infinity. While the artist definitely has its own style, it is noticeable by its proficient and highly concentrated sound how the style evolved from its own dehydrated dreams of everlasting grace. There is a calm and serene nostalgia that revolves around the beauty of its own vicinities, behind the ardent passion of powerfully elusive guitar notes, that precedes the horizon of its own splendor, at the twilight of its marvelously and endless imaginative light.   

Despite the qualities that are abundant all the way through, somewhere along the way, it becomes evident that the artist became trapped in the limitations of his own creativity, as the album progresses, and notably becomes severely predictable. Nevertheless, this does not damage the album at all; the sound somehow levitates at the expansive diagram of its own solitude, and the darkness of all thoughts are effusively redirected to the potential harmonies of its wonderful sincerities, as the sound dies on the vapor of its own protuberant clouds, to reborn as the axis of a musical aphorism, that never dies over the dreams of its peripheral world. 

Mosaic I: l'amour et l'ardeur is a very good album. You definitely will not be surprised by it, but the density, the sagacity and the originality of the music will certainly please you. Versatile enough to deserve some attention, the poetic delicacy and the sensible beauty present in the general framework of the album makes it worthwhile listening. Definitely, you will be way more happy and serene after this marvelous sonorous experience. 


Wagner 

black metal

Once in a while a record comes along that makes you frown, as it does not really fit into an existing category. Enter Ophidian Forest with “VotIVe”

On second view, I should have known better; the drummer of this three-person outfit is Otrebor, who also mans the kettles at green metallers Botanist – a band that only sings about vegetation and uses a dulcimer to create experimental black metal. So it should come as no surprise that Ophidian Forest doesn't exactly follow the Trve Metal handbook step-by-step.


So, how does it sound, then? Well, imagine a cross between dungeon synth (you know, cheesy synth sounds) and black metal (shrieks, blast beats, complex song structures). Throw in a couple of real ear-worm tunes, and you're pretty close. In most songs, the guitar is buried under a wall of synthesizer sounds, only occasionally managing to crawl to the surface. It still sounds cvlt, though, thanks to the lo-fi drumming and Amalgamoth's shrieking.

Almost every song has something special on offer. In opener “Nerthus”, halfway through there's what sounds like a hellish fanfare piping their way through a dense forest. Instrumental “Viredectis” has synth sounds that wouldn't be out of place on a John Carpenter soundtrack. There's banjo's, flutes, eerie vocals, you name it. And weirdly enough, it all comes together perfectly, sounding like a modern-day pagan ritual.

Ophidian Forest is a three-man band, existing since 2006. Fascinatingly, the three members (Otrebor, guitarist D, and Dutchman Amalgamoth) have never met in person, but create their music while collaborating over the internet. Pretty cyberish for a band who only sings about elder, forgotten gods. All in all, I'm quite impressed by this unique work of metal!


​Koen