Stone Wired - Shadow Conscious

One of the latest Stone Wired releases has hit the street, released via No Labels Interested in a limited edition of 50 copies. A lovely blackened cardboard slipcase being wrapped around the very graphical design inside. Looking closely it reveals to bodies with the top of their heads is open, brains are visible... (I think). A cool looking tape for sure, with it´s A-side and B-side being filled up with 14 tracks! I will describe the 3 first tracks on each side, and will, in the end, give an overall review of this album. 

Side A starts with Black Light, dark-ambient mood piece with paranormal post-Cold Meat Industry touches. The aesthetic is right in the eye, and the sound quality is superb (while maintaining the edge!). Sounds of underwater movement, whispering ritualistic vocals, menacing synth-work and painfull and a distorted and painful sound wrapping it all up. Very nicely done for those who enjoy that classic early 90s Cold-Meat-Industry sound. 

The next track called Frozen Meat...is a very cold monotonic industrial-drone piece. Ice cold to be exact, sub-zero temperatures while time stands completely still. Cool death-industrial rhythms here, and cool icy-moods. The third piece of meat on the plate Worms Under Skin moves into mysterious Megaptera´ ish territories, a very sacrilegious church-like feel to this. Almost a religious experience if you ask me, ritualistic ambient inside a huge church. Interesting bone-shattering electronic percussion later on here.

 The first track on the B-side Mortified moves into heavy-ambient moods. The kind post-apocalyptic feels you´ll notice in a bleak movie like the Road. The sort of feeling when trees are dead, and the sound of birds is just... gone. The only company being yourself, and you're conscious of course. Ruined factory feel with a touch of melancholy, industrial Raison D´être sort of. Second track Stench offers creepy heavy fog among the tombstones of the dead, while John Carpenter´ ish horror synth lurks atmospherically in the background. Third track Morque gives the listener just feeling... being trapped (or locked) inside one of those drawers in a morgue. Feeling slightly claustrophobic and horrific while trying to keep your calm... WHICH YOU CANT!. Suffocating black-moods and tar-like darkness-of-sound suck you in like quick-sand, just the way how dark-ambient should work.

A perfect death-industrial masterpiece with a superb sound-quality without losing the minimal-edge (Atmospheric rawness would be one way to describe it). A perfect fusion between pure dark ambient and menacing death-industrial. Dark ambient with a more... horror orientated direction?. You shouldn't miss it, seek it out! Contact the artist or the label regarding this release, it doesn't show on Bandcamp or Discogs.   

Discogs (label):

https://www.discogs.com/label/1297813-No-Labels-Interested?sort=year&sort_order=

Bandcamp (band):

https://exabyssrecords.bandcamp.com/

Gargara - Desjabetze Itogarriak

Means drowning/suffocating expropriations. Expropriations being the ownership that happens when the government overtakes a private property. When that private property is drowning/suffocating, it might mean that the property is a ruin. Something old with a lot of history gets torn down and is then being replaced by something shiny and tall for people 2 either live in or work in (without the history and character of course!). Something which actually happens all-over my Danish town (as we speak!). The project is called Gargara, if it is from the Turkish language then it means... Mouthwash. This new project is another interesting side-project of Miguel A. Garcia, whom I have had the utmost pleasure in reviewing several times! This one is a 1 track (59 minutes and 7 seconds long!), and it comes in a BEAUTIFULLY kind of rough and thin cardboard paper with cool artwork inside. 4 cards with incredible illustrations on! Another footnote would be that the vocals here are done by an Ibon RG (Link below) and the amazing artwork is done by Jon Martin. 

I was gobsmacked, the most beautiful thing I have seen in a long time! Almost limestone caverns look with the illustrations, how the shadows can trick your mind into seeing other things (and people!). And of course, I said to myself, the recording HAS to be VERY interesting! Lucky for me... It bloody is!. The music/recording is a vibrant and living piece of haunting Avant-garde´ness. A pure sound-adventure from the beginning to the end. Torturous (but ambient´ ish) netherworld-vocal-sounds rush up to meet the listener, swirling and otherworldly sounds submerge the listener further down, insect-like chirpings keep your senses alert, eerie violin scratching in the misty background. Not that far away from some of the best moments with legendary Nurse With Wound, or the Journey Through A Body by Throbbing Gristle.  

The greatest thing with this recording is that it sounds like a one-take studio experiment. One of those rare recordings where EVERYTHING clicks magickally into place and it just sounds bloody brilliant! Highly recommendable for those who have a dire need for more mysticism in their grey and boring lives!. Limited to 50 copies, and out on Spanish Marbre. Get it while it is hot!

Bandcamp (label):

https://marbrenegre.bandcamp.com/album/desjabetze-itogarriak

Miguel A. Garcia (official):

https://xedh.org/

Ibon RG (official):

https://marbrenegre.bandcamp.com/album/desjabetze-itogarriak

Mademoiselle Bistouri - Daily Routine/Solipsism

Released by German-based label Obsessive Fundamental Realism last summer (2019). Limited to 50 copies, and here is the exact description of the actual physical release (From the label):

Cassette and one single-sided insert come in a white plastic bag closed by 2 metal fasteners with a photographic print attached to the front with four metal fasteners and a label sticker attached to the back.

A lovely and cool design concept which the label has chosen to follow on their cassette releases, I like that a lot. So what do we have from Italy this time? Depraved and brutal industrial-harsh noise with tons of feedback, layers, and reverb!

I must be honest, never been a fan when someone is using pornographic-themes in context with extreme music. BUT! When it´s well done, I do tend to forget the pornographic ideas and start focusing on whatever is recorded. 

The first thing that you´ll understand more clearly than the provocative cover-artwork, would be on what is on the tape (like I said earlier). The cover-artwork shows someone's bottom with something stuffed inside, some kind of robe maybe? It could look like the work of some sort of sexual-disturbed serial killer, as the Italian serial Killer Monster of Florence? Genital mutilation, being a ritualistic fetish act for the perpetrator (or something else, nothing is certain). 

When you do press play and hearing the noise inside, somehow... it makes "sense". Whatever is on the tape is brutal and human... in a very... inhuman way. It´s recorded attitude is recognizable (in a way), and somehow it opens something inside the listener? Whatever is going on inside the "disturbed" mind of a serial killer, is clearly being described here purely in sound.

So there you go. Brutal atmospheric industrial harsh noise, not for the faint of heart!. For fans of Taint, Macronympha and Brighter Death Now (Innerwar). You can get it via the labels blogsite (No Bandcamp, see link below). Otherwise, check out Mademoiselle Bistouri´s Bandcamp site!

Blogspot (label):

http://obsessivefundamentalrealism.blogspot.com/  

Bandcamp (band):

https://mademoisellebistouri.bandcamp.com/releases

Facebook (band):
https://www.facebook.com/faustfick/posts/2454118508232654?notif_id=1580244453906884&notif_t=story_reshare    

Damien De Coene - Sans Titre

Damien was reviewed back in 2018 and even got on the best-years of 2018. Now he is back again on Anoxia Records with Sans Titre. A limited 1-cassette release which comes in a box intended for... 3 cassettes I think? This boxset (and tape) has been bound by a golden string, in a very intriguing and mysterious way. Inside you´ll find a nice looking golden-looking tape.  Sans titre means untitled in French, and the album is one hour long containing 4 tracks (3 in 10 minutes and the last in 30 minutes). 

First track defines the style chill-noise-wall. Sounds (sort of) like hearing microscopic rain inside a tent, while a small portable TV producing relaxing pink noise. Get´s your ear's attention, very pleasant to hear if you ask me... pure ear candy!  

Second track pumps more noise into the grinder. When your record player has caught too much hairy dust while playing. Or the recorded sound of a storm outside... close to the sea. Or the gentle sound of an MP3-player recording while being inside a rotating drying-machine. A very multiple picturesque sound-vision here.

The third track might just be the most... microscopic glitch track here. An incredible mind-stimulating experience going on here. Traces of something hidden between the distorted clicks. For some reason, my mind (and time) stops!... and enters a static sense of pure delight. The smallest moments matter in the big scheme, as this track proves it. 

Last and fourth track on the album ends it in a way more brutal fashion, also, of course, being the longest track. The motors of drag-racers, jet-engines, blow-torches? Or the "everlasting" sound of a burning sun? It challenges the listener with its 30 minutes!.

An HNW/ANW album which offers all that which noise-wall can (or will) delivers. Brutal effects with tons of sound and gentle rain-drop clicks offer the delight of silence. A "gentle" introductory release for anyone who wanna get into HNW. Recommendable! Do go and explore on Damien´s Bandcamp site (link below), tons of releases there!

Bandcamp (label):

https://anoxiarecords.bandcamp.com/album/sans-titre

Bandcamp (band):

https://damiendecoene.bandcamp.com/

 

Interview with Die Sonne Satans

Not much has been said, written, heard, seen or felt about this old and obscure Italian industrial-ambient project. Still, it´s one of those band names you remember from when you went through the endless pages of a mail-order catalog from Cold Meat Industry. Or maybe you ended up buying one of your favorite post-industrial/ambient compilations and Die Sonne Satans was on it. Or you are just a die-hard fan of that classic era in Italian industrial music history who knows that this act can be linked to the great projects of Atrax Morgue and Runes Order (both on Slaughter Productions of course). Ultimately we can only talk about 3 cassette releases and 2 CD compilations as their discography so why the hell is people still talking about this act?!.

Yes, I'm going to dissect this mystery once and for all. To reveal information about this one-man band, and interrogate the poor fellow out of his Italian socks!.

For the first question in this investigation, tell me how, why and when did Die Sonne Satans start?

Die Sonne Satans, who borrows the name of a 1926 Georges Bernanos novel from which Maurice Pialat took the eponymous film in 1987, was born in 1991. At that time I was often in Milan, for study reasons, where a few years earlier I met Stefano Musso (Alio Die) and with whom I began to explore the possibility of producing music. Following a first tape called Opus Vix Inchoatum titled "Nullae Procreationis Germines" I refined my technique and my musical aesthetics by giving life to the project as you know it. For me, DSS has always been synonymous with self-determination, an antidote to the tangle of conventions that I am bound to, and this is the reason why an iconoclastic and nihilistic approach pervades my entire production.

When you started this act, what bands inspired you back then?

When I was young I enjoyed, like most of us in our field, darkwave music, especially 4AD aesthetics. Then I passed to more experimental listening through Death In June, Coil, Current 93 and Nurse With Wound. I loved so much dark ambient so I can not deny that among my most admired listening were then Lustmord, Cranioclast, Nocturnal Emissions and for other reasons Hafler Trio. I still have great admiration for Asmus Tietchens, but the record that most changed my listening perspective was Teimo by Thomas Koner. In this sense, "Orbis", taken from Metaphora, is a clear tribute to his work. All the music I loved listening to from my childhood inevitably permeated my sensitivity and poured into DSS.

How was the scene in Italy at that time you started?

At the end of the '80s in Italy, it was an interesting and mature underground scene that was linked to industrial styles, just to mention Tac, Tasaday, Sigillum S. Personally, for geographical reasons, I wound up meeting Mauro Guazzotti from F:a.r., a volcanic person for ideas and energies. However, I have always been quite defined, my own has always been a very DIY and solipsistic approach and this has not led me to share ideas with other projects of the Italian scene, except with Claudio of Runes Order.

You did some collaborations with Claudio Dondo of Runes Order including Atom Infant Incubator, how did you guys meet and how did it work with you two working together?

I met Claudio through Deca (Federico Decaroli) who was a common friend. We immediately got in touch and decided to produce something together. The first Atom Infant Incubator originated from old tape recordings of Claudio's first project, "Order 68", which I added heavy treatments and new tracks, Copula is still a good job, too underestimated, I would like to remaster it and reproduce it in a more consonant design. The second work we made as AII was born from common sessions where everyone has contributed to their own parts and tools. It is perhaps more improvised and paradoxically more composed and contains many of the ideas that I wanted to pour into the DSS's fourth release.

How fondly do you remember Marco and Slaughter Productions?

Marco, for me, was a very important figure. He supported me and always believed in my productions. I'm in debt to Slaughter Productions. I have a good memory of him and as far as I knew he was a kindly person, always very helpful, almost as opposed to what the Atrax Morgue productions might make you think. His sudden death struck me a lot even though we were not in touch for a while.

Have you ever played live, and if so what is the greatest experience of this?

I have never played live, I don't think my music could be suitable for a live performance. And then I'm a very retired person to expose myself in a context like that. Uwe of Dark Vinyl as me to tour in Germany but I refused.

Are you surprised, that people are still talking about Die Sonne Satans?

In fact, I am very surprised. My production was very small compared to other similar projects. In retrospect, the mystery around my person and of course the music I've produced have helped make DSS a little worship.

How do you feel about the new post-industrial/experimental scene nowadays?

I'm no longer particularly involved in the industrial scene. Over the years my eyes have been laid on other horizons.

What are the plans for the future? I've heard rumors of re-issues?

DSS: I just signed an agreement with a new Italian label that has already released some MZ 412 old and live material. The idea is to release the three tapes and some compilations tracks in new formats (vinyl, cd...) The first work, Metaphora, is finished and the master and new cover art are ready as well. I hope it will be published in the Fall, followed by Factotum and Omega. Maurizio Pustianaz (Gerstein) helmed the remastered versions and maybe in the future, we could work together again. I want to also retrieve some materials published with another moniker a lot of time ago and maybe reworking it for a new album.

Stay tuned...

Facebook (band):

https://www.facebook.com/1d9s9s1/

Madame Swann - S/T 

written by Balderus

A Dutch friend wondered yesterday whether I know that guy from the French neofolk act Pale Roses who has just released with his side-project Madame Swann that surreal eerie music piece eponymously called. I told her how ignorant about this I was and checked the Bandcamp link attached. First bars, first hit in the brain. The deeper the listening was, the greater the enthusiasm was growing. Eerie sound textures, inspired tunes from bygone times, Chopin-Satie-and-Debussy-oriented structures and this very special feeling of non-such when an undefined vaporous memory is invading your inner cloud, were randomly at work altogether.

Betimes, after the first musical sensations, you look through the information on the BC page and realize that all your impressions in the rough are not mere coincidence. Yes! You travel back to the 19th century and the birth years of the 20th. More specifically, you enter the era of Marcel Proust’s genius footprint. Madame Swann! This piece, every track of it, sounds like one of these delicious madeleines. Once you dig further to overtake this gallery of emotions, you read that the fellow distilled all this based on what his grand-mother composed back then in the 1910-20s… 

And the idea of Zeitgeist pops immediately up.

Do you feel you are flying back to those times when the modern world was emerging? When Art Nouveau was everywhere when you were on the brink of marching between established tradition and nascent utopias of modernity? This is normal!

Old times because all that I mentioned sooner and utopias of modernity (or dystopias?) because of the tones played. Clockwork The orange-textured soundtrack which brings this eeriness, this feeling of uncertainty you got when you are entering an era of faltering steps, in search of lost time and in hesitation before a change that cannot be overlooked, all at once. By listening to this piece, both timeless and suffusing it's tick-tock, you may stand right on the frontier of your defining self.

I was told by the musician that there could be more tunes, of course only if more madeleines are discovered. The idea of a physical format has emerged, maybe to set a landmark on Swann’s way and allow the satisfaction of time regained.

Bandcamp: (band)

https://madameswann.bandcamp.com/releases