Documentary Review: Klub Kranium/Dark Blossom by Hedvig Funeral

Klub Kranium/Dark Blossom is a danish debut documentary film by Frigge Fri.

The documentary portrays three young people, Josephine, Mareridt, and Jay from Denmark who find friendship through their shared alternative lifestyle and the struggles that friendship brings through balancing love, friendship, and religion. The documentary follows Josephine who doesn't feel she belongs in any “normal” social gathering and the people surrounding her in her very small hometown of Fjerritslev, in northern Denmark/Jutland. 

The start of the documentary is somewhat loud as a promising beginning but as the film moves forward it becomes duller with not many conversations between the protagonists and oozes out by a lot of small clips and mobile phone clips that doesn't fill the screen and leaves a “debut” feel to it. 

As a viewer one might feel that a lot of the original content and far more exciting scenes and happenings are cut out and the experience of the viewer feels like... that too much is left out. That could have filled the empty spaces between no conversations and small clips.

Although as a viewer, I find the story of Josephine really good and shows how a young person struggles with the balance in the fight between friendship and her love life. I feel a disconnect between the title, the content, and the subculture as I also feel the documentary took a “wrong turn” or chose another path later on and the meaning behind it was another, to begin with, and it really shows in the storyline and clips that could just as well have left out the Alternative Subculture theme or lifestyle and followed three everyday people in Denmark.

Director: Frigge Fri

Producer: Mathilde Hviid Lippmann

Film duration: 1 hour and 20 min

Release date: 24th of April, 2021

Language: Danish/English subtitles

Two out of five coffins from me 

Official website :

https://cphdox.dk/da/film/dark-blossom-da/

 Anaru - Silent Hunter

We have had the pleasure of Anaru a couple of times on Kalteldur, and it is always a great pleasure to do again. If you don´t know Anaru, then I can reveal to you that it is a Lithuania-based industrial solo project which started around 2017. Sort of surreal experimental technoid act with a nod or two to the early cultural cyberpunk-aesthetics (William Gibson to Japanese toons like Akira etc...)  This time we have something in a classic CD format, an album with 9 tracks and is almost 40 minutes in length.

First track is called Atėjo laikas Galaktiką ginti peiliu! (translated Its Time To Defend The Galaxy With A Knife!). A rumbling, noisy and rhythmic industrial piece with a lovely doom-laden synth-melody in the background. Love the weird noises/sounds here, lots of interesting loops, and eerie stuff going on. The sound is kind of high-tech and primitive at the same time, in other words... lovely balanced between the chaotic and the structured.

The second track Alkokareivio-samurajaus Ataka (Attack of the Alokaarii samurai Border) works with futuristic sounds meeting up with sounds from the second world war! City-alarms going on, sinister-sounding knife-japing synth-keys, ritualistic undertones, warped radio noises etc. Sounds very chaotic, but it is very well structured if you ask me. A lot of ideas being mixed up here, but it works so far. 

The Third track Ritual Schizophrenia Campaign (Takes time to enter the original track title) moves closer to a kind of Deutsch Nepal sound. An interesting sample is taken from some film-noir hardboiled Detective flick and gets mixed into cool technoid rhythmic eerieness. Love the vibrating metallic sounds going on, kind of a David Lynch/Twin Peaks sort of a wibe going on here aswell. 

The Fourth track Infinite Despair Factory Staff might just be my favorite track on the album. Fans of early Autechre anyone?. Interesting and messy robotic rhythms clashes and bangs while a slightly melancholic and hypnotic toy piano (and a haunting synth tune) goes in the background. It´s fxxxxxx great, heard it a couple of times now!. 

The Fifth track Blood Citadel Intermission is a lovely and futuristic ambient-techno track. High to the ceiling while giving a good opportunity to the listener to reach a certain aesthetic of delight. 

The sixth track Prophets of a technocratic future offers metallic clashes and haunting melodies. Kind of takes me back to some of the eerie technoid pieces which you could hear on Cold Meat Industry´s The Karmanik Collection!. 

The rest of the album (3 other tracks) is for the listener to explore! And they are worth exploring. Silent Hunter is a grim and merciless journey into a dark and cold future, where everything and everyone is ruled by a technocratic elite. You can already see it now as it is happening. A post C19 society with Iphones all-around, no contact with anyone just in contact with the information from your iPhone (which is controlling you!). Just me rambling offcourse, but do yourself a favor and check this album out!. Also out on a limited CD release ( SeeBlack Ring Ritual Records Bandcamp link below ).

Bandcamp (label):

https://blackringrituals.com/album/silent-hunter

Bandcamp (band):

https://anarup.bandcamp.com/album/cold-zero

     

 

 

 

 En Nihil - Time Destroys Everything

You might have heard of En Nihil, maybe with the 1997 death-industrial classic Death Keeps CD which was released via Red Stream?... Well, this project is still alive! After Death Keeps the project had a 13 years pause, and until 2010 there have been numerous releases on numerous different labels. One of the latest En Nihil releases ended up in my Kalteldur-review-mailbox, the album title is Time Destroys Everything. Released via cult label Deathbed Tapes... the cassette tape is already sold out, but that shouldn't stop you from checking out the digital album via Bandcamp.    

The first track (all tracks are nameless) starts with a subtle humming bass... the kind of aural paranormal bass sound one might hear inside a coffin (when buried offcourse). Later on a thumping, distorted and flesh-scraping-chopped-up-sound moves up and down like a drill while additional (and lovely) layers of deep ambient sounds and harsh distortions wraps it all up! It´s terrific and pure death-industrial to the core, more focused on the early BDN-sound than the later power-electronics sound. 

The second track moves us even closer to that classic, powerful and depressive BDN sound (Necrose Evangelicum). The sound of a bone-crushing machine working on some subterranean dungeon of pure torture, in the background there are wails and screams from souls in hell... begging for release! Everything is cracking and bubbling here, with lots of action and lots of that heavy-industrial sound!

The third track has a sound that sounds like someone exhaling their final breath, which then ends with a sound that sounds like a bomb that just has been dropped... this is looped in a rhythmic way! High pitched sounds of psychedelic morbidness prevent you from escape! Very nice, very nice indeed! 

We continue with the B-side, the fourth track that is. A clear focus on thumping heavy-ambient-moods! Might just be the most rhythmic aggressive and cha piece on the album, really love the interesting and horrific layers of sound going on in the background! Perfect executed death-industrial! 

The fifth (and last track) track moves more into the territory of free-styled harsh-noise. A grinding and lovely moment on the torture table. Every distorted sound feels like shattered glass which rips through your senses, imagine a looped car crash in slow-motion? 

5 tracks through 5 places in hell. Slowly building up from the first track and ending in a chaotic moment of pure delight. A great album, and great to experience that someone is doing something which actually sounds as great as Brighter Death Now. Have you forgotten the classic death-industrial sound? Check up on Time Destroys Everything!. 

Bandcamp (label):

https://deathbedtapes.bandcamp.com/album/time-destroys-everything

Discogs (band):

https://www.discogs.com/artist/75588-En-Nihil

   

 Parthenfelder - Enduring To The End

I have just discovered a new Danish label called Section 1, and I have also discovered that Section 1 releases some highly obscure releases with new and unknown acts (Which I haven´t read or heard about until now!). Nevertheless! One of the cassettes I received from Section 1 which I gave a listen to, was the debut by a power-electronics act called Parthenfelder, and the album is called Enduring To The End. I am not 100% sure who the band members are (No info on the World Wide Web!), but I have my suspicions... but offcourse I am not gonna tell you!. A double-sided cassette, filled with atmospheric and hypnotizing concentrated anguish! 

First track Deliverance Of Tourture... Tourture?. Maybe they meant Torture instead of Tourture (Or did they?)... Something about a tour being... well... like torture... oh never mind. The track starts with a serious spoken-voice recording/sample with a moody and doom-laden synth in the background, I suspect it is a sample taken from some old documentary related to WW2. Then the track starts off (just like that!). Primitive and hellish drone noises... a bit like the engines of old fighter airplanes (Diving bomber aero-planes!). Looped and animalistic sounds of human voices. Hidden sound-activity and spiritual vocals lurk deep in the background. A flawless power-electronics intro-track. Very German old school! (Anenzephalia, Ex-Order)  

The second track Abstersion ( the action or process of cleansing ) is a track that sounds...very cold and compact. Incredible dense and incredible...mesmerizing. The recorded sound of a huge machine room in the lowest parts of the earth... As a fan of Doctor Who, I cannot help thinking back to the cybermen's early episodes. They too ALSO did the action of cleansing... sort of. 

The Third track Blinded By Ideology continues the looped machine-anguish with a focus on the vocals, very much in the same vein with Anenzephalia and Ex-Order. Not the aggressive noisy Whitehouse stuff, but more in the sort of monotonic and moody death-industrial sound. And yup, so far... it sounds like the real deal folks!. 

The Fourth track Study On Hanging Rats (and the last track on the A-side) drives a pulsating hot needle in your bloody skull. Looped throbbing noises and flesh-scraping distorted moods... Fxxxxx great!  

I think (maybe) there is maybe a hidden track on the A-side which isn´t mentioned in the booklet. So far I have counted 5 tracks on the A-side, and the booklet tells me that there are 4 tracks. No Matter. This track might just be the track called Stratagem (Deceiving and outwitting the enemy). Another decent, intense, and relentless ambient-noise track. Still maintaining that old-school Germanic sound!

                                    

"B-side" continues with Abondon All Hope (On Discogs it called Abandon!). A broody drone moves (slowly) up and down in close connection with the heavy wall of an analog bass sound. Love the effects on the vocals here again folks!.

The second track on the B-side called Enduring To The End. Continues in the same fashion as the previous track, just more menacing. Fans of Brighter Death Now´s Inner war should take notice!. Long and very epic!   

The fourth track In This Land (Album title), cools it down with atmospheric harshness and aggressive ambient vocals. The lovely heavy-industrial sound here (very metallic!). The perfect mood/sound for describing a battlefield in the first World War!

Fourth track (and last track) Outro gets back to that German bomber aero-plane sound, or just the sound of fighter airplanes on a hangar... all humming together to create a cacophonic wall of destructive sound. Something going on in the background here sounds interesting! 

An album that delivers something... well... nothing new really. But, why be new all the time?! This album delivers a sound that I think is a rather overlooked style/genre in the world of industrial and noise music. A style that borrows something from early power-electronics, industrial, and what we could call proto death-industrial?. An ambient version of power-electronics?. At one time another act (Dagda Mor) from Germany called the style Cold Electronics. Whatever Parthenfelder delivers the thing like pure perfection. Sounds like an old school in the new school, it does the thing!

Discogs (label):

https://www.discogs.com/label/1637277-Sektion1

Official Site (label):

https://sektion1.bigcartel.com/

   

 

Lyke Wake - At The End Of The Dream, Where Nothing Remains / Symphonic Noise

 

A new full-length Lyke Wake has hit the streets. A 1-track 65.19 minutes epic journey into the underworld, or in some esoteric location hidden between heaven and hell?. At The End Of The Dreams is out on CD via Lyke Wake´s own label Aspectic Noise.

The album starts in the same matter as previous released Lyke Wake albums, quite epic and with that quite retro-Italian-horror feel. I do think (for some reason) that I am sensing a bigger sense of power here. I do think that whatever he is doing, he is actually getting better at it. The finger-work on the synths? The power of improvising? The method of sounding like the real deal maybe?... Maybe if we combine all these into one answer, then maybe we are getting closer to that answer which we seek. It has a lot in comment with Lyke Wake´s Crawling Through The Abyss Of Pain, although this one has a lot more... muscle to it. I do remember that Crawling Through ended being one of the Kalteldur best releases of 2018, which gives you an understanding of why I am sitting here being... surprised that this one is just that much better. There are also some new touches to be heard within, I am not much for female opera-vocals BUT... the ones used here... hit the nail perfectly home on the board! Even the synth-driven violins sound great! The single-track also delivers some mind-blowing psychedelic harshness-sounds as well. 

Religious, spiritual, meditative, atmospheric, engulfing, cavernous, eldritch, hypnotizing, mesmerizing, psychedelic, otherworldly,  cosmic, heavenly, godlike stuff!... ( I could go on! ).

Just imagine what it would sound like if Tangerine Dream or Keith Emerson (in the 70s) did a soundtrack to an Italian Fulci-flick, and then just add a tiny drop of esotericism... and there u have it!. I fxxxxxx love it! Fans of Runes Order, Raison d´être, Tangerine Dream, and dungeon synth should seek it out!       

Facebook (band):

https://www.facebook.com/Lyke-Wake-116636291712908

Official page (band+label):

https://lykewake.wixsite.com/lyke-wake?fbclid=IwAR1xMJND48bSQytlWxyPSvENEjKJwd9AqxPaPsdwGFF3JshCWkA_dvwIG7o

 Chrome Corpse - Helmed Mounted Display

The latest offering from Seattle-based cult EBM act Chrome Corpse. Helmet Mounted Display is a 10 track 40 minutes ecstatic journey into the past while looking into the future, when did all the excellent acts from the 80s lose their touch and nerve?... and the sense of steel and strength offcourse. 

I can namedrop the likes of A Split Second, à;GRUMH..., Invincible Spirit, Bigod20, Die Krupps, New Order etc... old-school European thing made by some young lads from the U.S. Question is, do they pull it off? 

The first track Failsafe gets you back to that early FLA-sound (Total Terror) via á;GRUMH´s trailblazing Drama In the Subway. Cold steel and rhythmic synths march like an army of combat-droids, precise electro-drums, and samples tingle the nerves and cool-sounding vocals (without too much distortion). 

The second track In The Shadow of Dropship offers even better vocal-work and with a more catching aggro-sound. Really love those cut-up rhythmic-samples going on... might just be one of a must when it comes to retro EBM.

The third track Remembering Your Words instantly takes you back to that track which Die Krupps did with Nitzer Ebb, could be a cover?... Nevertheless, this version sounds better in my ears... just has... way more charms, rawness, and coolness (give it a listen ok!)  

The fifth track Dance Or Die gets away from the European sound, and meets up with a sound between Die Warzau and Innercity´s anthemic techno hit Good Life. Love it when modern EBM acts add a touch of Detroit techno into the mix. 

The seventh track Everything Stops Moving (2020 mix) gets you right back to early 242, at the time when 242 was the hottest underground thing from Europe. Imagine a cyber-upgraded SWAT Team in a Miami Vice episode... no matter, you´ll get the picture!.

The album ends with the tenth track, another version of The Feeling Is Mutual (Eddie´s Metal Body Edit). With added industrial-rock-guitar work (groovy), the sound of metallic percussion, and more.

If you are the sort of dude/girl-whatever that loved the old sound and hate the new sound, then this fix might just be it. Hell, as it is right now... I am almost too old to dance... but why not?!.. This release is available by digital means, and also by physical means (Bandcamp link)... 

Bandcamp (band):

https://chromecorpse.bandcamp.com/album/helmet-mounted-display-extended-version

Facebook (band):

https://www.facebook.com/chr0m3corps31997/

Mademoiselle Bistouri - Simplify Your Life 

The big news is that our favorite Italian noise-sicko has got a bulletproof solution for you... and your entire family! And the best thing about it is that he actually has 4 solutions to actually...Simplify Your Life! Which is (as the graphics above tells us) 1: Through love 2: Hanging around 3: Enjoying guns and 4: Getting into necrophilia or maybe...just getting a skull tattooed on your forearm?...

You could also just drop the 4 solutions, and just enjoy the sound which these 4 solutions represent on the latest Mademoiselle Bistouti release from Death Bed Tapes. Came out last year on tape, and sadly already sold out (I would keep an eye on it on Discogs if I was you!). Regarding the cover art, I really like the sleazy kind of the 70s-look. Would love to see more of that design in the world of noise and power-electronics!. Anyways.

The first track called Way#1 starts with the sounds coming from a couple (male and female) clearly enjoying themselves! Could be from some old vintage 70s porn-flick, all-of-a-sudden it stops and simply explodes into a sex-crazed noise-carnage. Nerve-grinding and mind-splintering. Interesting multi-layered things hide in the mist, there is the sound of a cracked vinyl player, interesting and psychedelic twists between the stereo speakers, and the distorted sound of grinding metal on metal. That is what you basically call a kick-ass sort of way to start an album!.

The Second track Way#2 starts with a thumping power-noise rhythm and then it quickly dissolves further into pulsating harsh noise. Interesting anguished sounds are looped in a hypnotizing way here. Great chubbed up bass-sounds and the lovely sound of screaming mics, what more can u ask for?! The slightly psychedelic undercurrents being still present in the sound. Traces of someone screaming here?

Way#3 (B-side) is the shortest track on the album, which also represents according to the cover-artwork... the handgun. High-pitched electronics-screaming, the kind of pitch which makes dogs run away! And then all the electronic-currents run through your entire body, making you twitch and squirm for more. A more in your face track with a higher tempo-switch between the sounds and moods.        

Last and final Way#4 (also the longest track) represents the skull. The very last anger and anguish left on the album can be located on this one track (over 14 minutes long!). Very brutal but also very subtle in a way. A time for torture and relaxation at the same time? A screaming vortex of multi-layered distortion sucks you in... and keeps you there! Also the track on the album with the most space in it... lots of mood and lots of action as well! 

Simplify Your Life will keep you awake from the beginning and to the end. It´s simply an action-packed harsh-noise-and-power-electronics monster that simply does not quit! You look at the cover artwork and it will tell you... ´I am a badass´ And yes, this album is such a badass that it definitely would decorate your lovely shelve containing your Chuck Norris VHS-collection!

Bandcamp (label):

https://deathbedtapes.bandcamp.com/album/simplify-your-life?fbclid=IwAR0fK9XlCTz9fxS9bOxLApDzObLoYEsB1eYjdTsAfL8Gof8GxjkIBERKbIE

Bandcamp (band):

https://mademoisellebistouri.bandcamp.com/releases

Facebook (band):

https://www.facebook.com/faustfick/

 

 Gutterskull - Crawling In Disgust

VRK - Filhos Da Ira

Our fellow maestro of Slavonian grim ambiance Talog has taken up the guitars in good company with another heavy-metal act called VRK. The limited-to-100-copies-cassette-release is a kind of a split with two mini-albums on each side. It´s punk, grim, proto-black metal/death-metal-sound, heavy, fast, and filled with utter doom and dread!. So be careful!

Talog´s Gutterskull act kick-starts the album with Silent Avenger, Disaster Never Ends and Bleed which immediately takes you back to that early Celtic Frost meets Death Strike-sound. Lots of fresh trashy drums and crusty 80s punk-metal guitars. 

The fourth track Undead Torment adds a touch of doom-metal ála Pentagram to the mix while maintaining the proto sound of extreme metal. Really love the sound of the guitars, love the vibes with the heavily distorted guitar sound. 

The fifth track Darkest Armies is all about rampaging and blood-soaked orcs on some Warhammer Fantasy-cover. Aggressive and filled with hatred without a doubt. 

The sixth track Terror Of Tomorrow is a pulsating creature of epic-punishment! 

All-in-all... Gutterskull is a charming retro-thing with tons of reasons to dig it. Think back to the 80s when this kind of music was.. really disliked. And good-mannered people associated it with ritual-murdering Satanists who would love to kidnap your dog and take it to a hellish orgy of beer... Oh, Dear!. No matter what, it sounds great and it has lots of reasons to drink while listening to it!

VRK is another kind of wild animal. More of an industrial sort of sound? Imagine a more electronic-based metal band or early Godflesh with quicker drums. They start off with Lixo Nuclear, focus on the creepy vocals!... Interesting and quite unique.

The second track Os Vermes Davoragem follows up on the claustrophobic angst-attack-sound. The sound of the guitars/bass/strings is almost a static humming sound than the sound of... well strings! 

Third track Ritual De Morte E Destrucom (Gez!)... Is not just an evil track, but a track that is just.... well evil. The sound of everything... Strangely aggressive and strangely... laid-back at the same time?.

The fourth track has a lovely epic church-organ going on, so we are pretty much bound to have the devil showing up and pissing all over the damn place!... Just for the laughs. No kidding kids, this track could also catch the attention of dungeon-synth fans!. And maybe who loved the epic church-organ moments when an act like Blood Axis did them. A lovely and sincere dark track!

Rest of the VRK-material kicks ass and well worth the exploring. Could be perfect if they were supporting MZ.412?!. A lovely mixture between electronic-based black-metal with industrial elements. 

Fxxxxxx love this split. It gets to the point and it gets the job done. It´s primitive but still sounding like a real bad-ass-job through your speakers. It sounds like the real hellish-deal, and this deal is a good deal kid!!. Pure proto-BM/Death-metal sound!

Bandcamp (Gutterskull):

https://gutterskull.bandcamp.com/album/crawling-in-disgust

Facebook (Gutterskull):

https://www.facebook.com/GutterSkull-1637233053203726/

Jugendwerkhof - Leibinfamie

 Jugendwerkhof - Leibinfamie

Something new to review on Kalteldur, and something from a newly discovered label as well. That is not only 2 things why this is new, harsh noise is a genre/style which I rarely review on Kalteldur... so this one is maybe the first time (maybe second or third, can't remember) that I get to review harsh noise. This time we are dealing with an act from Berlin called Jugendwerkhof, which has been operating since 2018. Highly productive so far, and having most of the releases released via their own DIJ-label called Low Life High Volume. This one album called Leibinfamie came out this year and has been made as a beautiful physical release. Handpainted hard-paper sleeves with a lovely (and informative) paper slip around it (chk photo below). Previously unreleased live remastered studio-album. 4 tracks, 27 minutes in total.

Leibenfamie I kicks the album into full-motion. Sound of devastating and grinding metallic scrap, machines going completely bananas just everything sounds like a huge machine ready to blow up!. Imagine a tank-engine in high speed, everything throttles, and everything breaks into splinters. 

Leibenfamie II sounds more like the breaks trying to slow down the tank-engine. This track gives me a feeling of someone... wielding metal-pieces together while someone is trying to sawblade metal pieces apart, just with added microphones up close... very close. A more "gentle" track than the first one with more space in it. Gives the album a lovely diversity so far. Lovely chaotic and warped human-screams (I think!) in the background as well. 

Leibenfamie III doesn´t add a single second for either relaxation or to catch your breath. At this moment (while listening) I sense a certain sensation of... overexcitement? There is a huge surge of energy going on in here, and it's all streaming out of my speakers (as e speak!). A lovely highspeed aggression going on, and a brutal multilayered collage of sheer metallic-brutalism in sound. 

Leibenfamie IV starts with a scraping machine-scream and forced distorted heaviness. Almost like a fusion between HNW and regular harsh-noise going on in here. Spacy and psychedelic harsh-noise, almost a bit like Merzbow´s classic Space Metalizer album from 1997! Do like all the sound-layers going on in here. Very... multidimensional scrapyard kind of an experience.

I am not much for harsh noise as such, but I do like this album. It´s aggressive but... you can actually chill-out to it if you wish. It´s brutal and raw, but still VERY spacious and abstract. It´s planned and almost organized but still manages to give you that free-styled chaotic element. As you can understand by my writings, this album can be used in lots of different ways... really it boils down to what sort of mood you are in at that giving time. A perfect place to start if you wanna get into this act!

Bandcamp (label):

https://lowlifehighvolume.bandcamp.com/album/leibinfamie

Offisial website (label):

http://lowlifehighvolume.biz/home.html

  

   

 Clavius - After Dark

Clavius is an obscure dark-ambient and drone act that has had its second album-release on Spanish Marbre Negre. This one is called After Dark, being a two-tracker being 60 minutes in total. The physical release being a pro-CD-R encased in a slim-lined DVD-case and being limited to 22 copies. 

The first (and long) 47 minutes track called 3001, Seven Minutes Later is an epic long journey into a weightless sound-territory. It could be placed in LOTS of places, it could be in the eon-old city which the elder things built... in Lovecraft´s terrific story Mountains of Madness! Or it could be in deep space on a spaceship owned by CHOAM, searching for that spice-melange (To control the universe!). Or are we talking about a parallel universe? Similar to others... but not quite!. Either way, the sound is rich and multilayered and offers a wide range of deep atmospheric sounds and moods. Keywords would be Weightless, cold, deep, epic, and cosmic.  

For ritualistic means, meditation, reading, background-stuff for roleplaying games... and all-around (and almost overwhelming) ritualistic dark-ambient offering from another universe. 

The Zodiacal Light is the second and shortest track on the album (only)...20 minutes long. This track offers more of the same ambient and drone-based moods, just with added slowed-down samples/recordings from Tchaikovsky Swan Lake, which is a melody that you also have heard as being the classic theme from some of the older Dracula flicks. A lovely metallic engine-room sort-of track with extra layers of cosmic spaceness.  

It´s an album that slows down time, de-stresses your day (if you like!). Not an everyday chill-out thing, but definitely a late-out chill in the really late hours of the night. Fans of Controlled Bleeding (ambient albums), Nocturnal Emissions, and Maeror Tri.

Bandcamp (label):

https://marbrenegre.bandcamp.com/album/after-dark

 Daniele Santagiuliana - Confinement

As always, the news keeps telling us that no... Corona won´t go away, it will stay with us... like the flu. It will linger, and stay around like a homeless cat. The same goes with Daniele Santagiuliana (the Italian guy behind Testing Vault), who has just released his Covid-19 inspired piece of work simply called...Confinement. 

As you all probably know, Italy was one of the first countries in Europe who was seriously hit with the virus. I remember seeing on the news, rows of military trucks carrying the dead... and yes! It looked like something from a B-movie Zombie-Holocaust flick! So yes... the whole country of Italy was (or still is) in confinement. The same goes with other countries like Brazil, UK, Mexico... the list goes on. 

So Mr. Santagiuliana made this interesting confined jewel in confinement (Out on CD!), so let us hear and examine what he has come up with then!. 

The first track Mediocre begins with haunting and looped ritualistic drones, with some interesting chopped radio-static hiding in the multi-layered drones. An interesting moody percussive-sound gives the track an extra layer of spookiness (VERY old-school CMI´ish kind of intro!). From then on it, the track changes its path and warps into a glitch and spoken word part. A lovely ear-opener!

The second track A Marriage offers a lot of interesting sounds. Clicks and cuts, automatic thumping sounds, moans from a ghost, and offcourse the spoken words. Really haunting stuff sofar, with the C19-virus.. everything looks like a bloody ghost town!

The Next and third track has a long track title... The Living Room Walls Are Filled With 426 Black Nails! Why 426 I say?... Maybe it´s the size of Santagiuliana´s apartment, that these black nails (symbolizing C19) prevent him from going out!. As you could probably imagine, the consistent post-apocalyptic ambient-soundtrack mood is still there. Here we have the sliding and slicing sound of creepy violin strings. There is also a windy sound here, probably the kind of wind you´ll notice when nothing is happening outside.

The Fourth track Translucent goes back to that kind of... erotic sounding drone-loop thing. There is a certain vibe that reminds me of the early Ordo Equilibrio (which is the best). Imagine a Wagner opera in slow-motion, or just imagine the apocalypse in slow motion... you know what I mean!. 

The Fifth track Dying Horses offers melodic and melancholic guitar-sounds and spoken words about taken care of yourself, kind of Swans feel here. 

The rest of the album (20 minutes) continues the adventurous, cold, melancholic, and hypnotic path... It almost feels like being in the cold north! What I really like (like the early review with him) is the sense of mysticism (Like watching a BIG and misty horizon from a tall building). The sort of inner-self sort of-a-feel you get when you start taking notice of things... you usually don´t notice. The sound is incredibly superb made, and everything about it seems very honest and sincere. Something which comes from an artist who doesn't have anything to lose, it actually feels that Mr. Santagiuliana is in the room with you! Recommendable for fans of .... somewhere between early Ordo Equilibrio, Coil, Nurse With Wound, and those spoken words albums by Current 93. I like this one... ALOT!

Bandcamp (band):

https://danielesantagiuliana.bandcamp.com/