Category Archives: UPDATE

Moremars

Grisha Shakhnes –  ‘The Heaver’ CS

“The Heaver” is the new sound work by Grisha Shakhnes (aka Mites). It includes four new long compositions, recorded on Tel Aviv during June of 2021. Released on a limited edition of 100 cassettes, including download code. On “The Heaver”, Grisha Shakhnes works with structure, textures and length, using mainly field recording, tapes and lo-fi electronics. He improvises and manipulate sounds very gently, creating foggy soundscapes of broken sounds, electronic hums and noises, mixed with pre-recorded material from urban life.

Matthieu Fuentes – ‘Ily, Almeria’ CS

« Ily, Almería » is the second album by French composer and performer Matthieu Fuentes, who debuted in 2021 with a promising album on Penultimate Press. It features ambiguous sources and unknown presences recorded from 2018 to 2022. Manipulated and re-edited on a computer and a Revox B77 reel-to-reel tape recorder. Matthieu’s music sprung from the “musique concrète” tradition, using elements and fragments of electroacoustic music, field recording and sound art.

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No Part of It

Dave Fuglewicz – ‘Selected Works, 1990-1997’
Dave Fuglewicz began experimenting with electronics in the 1970s, and then later only started meddling with recording techniques in 1984. Yet still, he waited another six years before he released his first tape in 1990, which was incidentally the year he claimed to have bought a 4 track recorder. Fuglewicz referred to the period between 1990 and 1997 as his “analog years”, since he began to “go digital” in 1998, and continued to create steadily until his passing in 2021. Since distribution was mainly limited to “the cassette underground”, those of us who care to know can benefit from the intimate knowledge that through limited resources and grainy home dubbed cassettes, and although he was almost self-defeatingly humble in many ways, Dave Fuglewicz created some exceptional, spirited recordings. This collection was compiled with the hopes that the work of Dave Fuglewicz will find a wider audience than it did while he was alive.

SHARKIFACE – ‘Climax In A Process’
It’s hard to believe that this is the first full-length release by Sharkiface, the solo project of Angela Edwards, whose trail of achievements and accolades began in the 90s, in Austin, Texas. Starting with her experience booking and doing tour management for Daniel Johnston, she then moved to the Bay Area and quickly became an important staple, collaborating with local exploding psychedelic stalwarts Hans Grüsel’s Krankenkabinet, Tarantism, and (rumor has it), Caroliner Rainbow, among many others. Sharkiface has toured the United States steadily, with some stints in Europe and Japan, and has been featured at fests such as San Francisco Electronic Music Fest, No Fun Fest, Colour Out of Space, and Ende Tymes, to name a few. For “Climax In A Process”, Sharkiface brings out career-spanning material, but also newer tracks, freshly inspired by her experience achieving an MFA in Electronic Music at Mills College, where she studied under “expert noodle wranglers” such as: Zena Parkins, Laetitia Sonami, John Bischoff, Chris Brown, Tomeka Reid, James Fei and Kala Ramnaf. Although Edwards’ actual process remains somewhat mysterious, it is readily evident that voice is a main impetus for her work, which is, at times, processed through various extremely rare electronic instruments, tape delays, samplers, and other custom devices.

DEATH FACTORY – ‘Vol. 3’
Just in time for Michael Krause’s 35th anniversary as a [home] recording artist, “Vol. 3” is here, collecting material mostly from around ten years ago, with the exception of one track, “…More Disturbing American Policies”, which was for the long since defunct Terry Plumming label in 2001. Being that “Vol. 2” was last released in 2007, we here at NO PART OF IT HQ thought it’d be prudent to continue the series, which initially focused on bringing out-of-print or unheard recordings back into the light once more. For “Vol. 3” two tracks come from releases on the late great NO VISIBLE SCARS label, who put out Death Factory’s “Chilling Impressions” and “Maschinen Unter Kontrolle” to a perfectly primed audience rearing for VHS grit and low grade horror. To round out what would, in a perfect world, be a nice double vinyl LP, “Prophecy” is an unreleased, side-long piece that didn’t make it onto Death Factory’s massive self-released “Prophecy of The Black Spider” 2xC60 tape set (2009), bringing what this author thinks is a montage of the project’s best works (as of this writing) to a close. Although his first live performances didn’t really happen until 2005 or so, Michael Krause has been active since 1988. His first known appearance was on a track with Scott Marshall of the legendary (in some circles) Chicago noise outfit Burden of Friendship, for the 1990 compilation “What Is Truth? (Volume Three)” on Panic Records & Tapes. Over time, Death Factory’s sound has developed into a peculiarly isolationist form of refined, yet still somewhat crude sonic revelry; rife with obscure samples, scrap metal, deathly synth patterns, and monstrous effects, all woven into a unique brand of concrete horrorscape that is as unpretentious as it is inimitable. Not just for fans of industrial noise, people who like genuinely intuitive experimental music, as well as kraut-rock-inspired psychedelic electronic sounds would also find plenty to chew on with this release.

ILLUSION OF SAFETY – ‘ORGAN CHOIR DRONE’
“Organ Choir Drone” features a range of instruments and recorded objects, as per usual for Daniel Burke’s ongoing project, Illusion of Safety, extant as a prominent force in experimental music since 1983. In this particular case, recording artist Arvo Zylo was invited to arrange and sequence a wealth of audio, from finished products to source material to “ready-mades” and everything in between. In some cases, Zylo provided “treatments” of certain events, but mainly it was less a collaboration, and more a pursuit of a “perfect album”, with several revisions, and maybe more minute details belabored than usual. After lots of pontification on the importance of “killing your darlings”, both Burke and Zylo agree that “Organ Choir Drone” is another quality recording deserving of the Illusion of Safety stamp of approval. However, if the listener doesn’t like it, Arvo says that they can blame him.

WILT – ‘CRYPT GLOOM’
WILT has been the main project of James P. Keeler (sometimes solo, sometimes with others) since 1998. Keeler is a graphic designer, visual artist, writer, and multi-instrumentalist, all of it dark always, and as WILT, they rightfully refer to themselves as “Masters of Depression and Decay”. Although they have had their work referred to as “noise ambient” or sometimes simply “dark noise”, which is poignant enough, WILT are especially nuanced. Keeler has collaborated with some heavy-hitters; Cornucopia, Skin Crime, Gruntsplatter, The Rita, and Prurient, to name a few, but it’s hard to compare their brand of industrial-infused, “bleakened” noise, in addition to what often, if we’re honest, inevitably traverses “horror soundtrack” territory, to anything else. After 25 years, WILT continue to not only reinvent the wheel, but show that there is an ongoing intellect and subtlety to their widely cast, yet intricate web of perpetually evolving sound. With “Crypt Gloom”, an unmistakably gothic trajectory continues on into the mist of coffin-smoke synths and foggy swamp organs. “Crypt Gloom” is Part Three in a trilogy inspired by the poetry of Percy Bysshe Shelley, an early 19th Century English poet who risked “political and religious libel” for his atheist/materialist philosophical views in his time. Part One of WILT’s trilogy is “A Deep Reflecting Gloom” and Part Two is “Crypt Hymns”, both released on cassette by Self Abuse Records.

Leslie Keffer – ‘Pollutes’
Although Leslie Keffer started making noise music with radios and voice in 2003, she hadn’t worked outside of her proverbial rural isolationist vacuum, nor had she been truly influenced by noise music until after her first tour. Once she was performing with radios live steadily for a year or two, initially opening for touring acts in Athens, Ohio, a small town where she did booking at a local bar, she found that she didn’t have time to seek through all of the radio static for more nuanced sounds in real time, so she learned to work more in the moment. Accordingly, Pollutes represents Keffer’s first release that is maybe “self-aware” as noise music with a surrounding narrative history. It might be her most harsh work up to that point, but it’s also unique in that it incorporates a vintage Echoplex tape machine for an added analog feel, as well as a toy piano on the final track. Rather than recording onto minidisc as she did before, this series of excursions was recorded direct to tape, initially self-released on home-dubbed cassettes with no digital editing (and no guitar pedals!) of any kind.

BLOOD RHYTHMS – ‘GOOD GRIEF’
Following their Horror Pilation series of 6 LPs, Arvo Zylo and Leslie Keffer did finish one more drone release in 2022, if only as a matter of chance. Keffer was grieving the loss of a loved one, and Zylo sent her a drone, as a “gift”. The audio was made from several different elements, but especially including purported “healing frequencies”, for symbolic value at the very least. This “gift” also based itself off of a one minute long track called “Grief” that Keffer had recently contributed to a compilation. In its original form, the initial 40 minute piece is yet to be released. However, Keffer and Zylo did create three finished pieces from the base materials, almost out of force of habit, since they were in such a zone from creating over six hours of material for the Horror Pilation series. With Good Grief, there has already been a body of work established, and this is an additional look into that process, as well as a finished product in itself.

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Crimson Ward Trhauma

Beast Flower Coiffeuse – ‘The Purpureal Puerperal’

When unbuttoned, unzipped, unlatched: Will you rejoice in blubbered entropy?

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Cruel Nature

Eugene Dubon – ‘Finish Line’
Finish Line is the debut EP from Seattle ex-pat Eugene Dubon. Seven tracks of rhythmic bass-heavy post-punk fuzz atmospherics, with Eugene’s musings on subjects such as the goldrush and clocks drolly delivered in a dead-pan style. Unapologetic and upfront.

Score – ‘COPE’
Made in six weeks at the end of 2022, COPE is Score’s seventh long player for Cruel Nature. The album was directly inspired by the musical descriptions to be found in the autobiographies of Julian Cope: Head On and Repossessed. Using Cope’s impassioned words as instructional starting points for each track, COPE references Mott the Hoople, Patti Smith, CAN, Duane Eddy, The Doors, Suicide, Dr John, Sly & The Family Stone and more. Recorded as it was written, in one or two takes in a tiny garage and drawing on an old quote from the arch-druid himself as a creative manifesto: “It had to be very cheap, very fast, very loose. I needed to be an ambassador of looseness”, COPE is an exercise in embracing limitations and existing in the moment, a lyric-less love letter to Rock ‘n’ Roll itself, and a one-word command to the fried modern human.

Kitchen Cynics – ‘Fractured Memories’
Alan Davidson’s follow-up to last year’s acclaimed ‘Strange Acrobats’, ‘Fractured Memories’ is another perfect showcase of this prolific and talented folk legend, whose work draws on his own experiences as well as the characters and history of Aberdeen. Full of charm, his albums are tender, bittersweet, packed with a dry wit and an ear for a melody that can pluck your heartstrings, whilst the words resonate deep within.

Downtime – ‘Neurotics’
A new project featuring the power duo of Mike Vest & Dave Sneddon. Noise rock slide guitar slipstream. Four tracks of power reverse riffs and dirges.
An intense sonic whirlwind reminiscent of Vest’s work with Blown Out

Neutraliser – ‘Capsule Bowed Space’
The second collaboration from Charlie Butler and Mike Vest. A 1hour 19minute immersive piece fusing bass, guitars, synths, piano and drums, creating sonic still drones, space improvisation and deep meditations, with bursts of mid paced psychedelic rock dirges and haunting space capsule static. Mike Vest is a maximum guitarist of countless bands, collaborations and solo ventures, past and present. 11Paranoias, Blown Out, Drunk In Hell, Mienakunaru, Melting hand and BONG. A master of fuzz drone tones, smashed guitars and eternity sustain, influenced by Takashi Mizutani, Fushitsusha, Tomoyuki Aoki. Charlie Butler is a Reading based artist who began a series of solo releases via Weird Beard, Cruel Nature, Fuzzed Up & Astromoon, and Panurus Productions which explore psychedelic, heavy and hypnotic sounds. He is also a member of Cody Noon, Mothertrucker and Head Drop.

All The Heavens Were A Bell – ‘A Wheel Of Burning Eyes’
ALL THE HEAVENS WERE A BELL is a hypernostalgic syzygy between James Watts (Plague Rider, Friend, Lovely Wife, Lump Hammer, Dybbuk, Möbius) and Esmé Louise Newman (Penance Stare, Petrine Cross, Fashion Tips, 1727). Using both self-constructed and commercially available sound machines, exploring the space between free improvisation and absolute intentionality, theopoetics, illness as vector, abstracted ritual, dread drone, trance-formation, black ambience, doomed electronics, hellfire submergence, and ophanim glow. WHEEL OF BURNING EYES is their second document, recorded deep in their vermillion chamber, during the spring of 2022. It is recommended listening for acolytes of Sunn O))), Coil, Deleuze & Guattari, Bastard Noise, Sarah Kane, William Blake, Les Legion Noires, Mark Fisher, Black Boned Angel, Laboria Cuboniks et al

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Shhpuma

Gonçalo Almeida – ‘Improvisations on Amplified and Prepared Double Bass’
Gonçalo Almeida is a chameleonic musician capable of producing a wide palette of sounds that range from jazz, post-rock to metal. Even so in this solo album he directs his music towards unexplored paths. The trio of timbres born from the combination of feedback, distortion and acoustics led him to lines and energies that he had not yet developed before, revealing a transcendent connection with his instrument. Clearly, the music on this album is something else.

Thomas Bergsten – ‘Ganjibiri’
Thomas Bergsten is a Norwegian guitarist-multi-instrumentalist known for bands like the psychedelic dance band Gunerius & Verdensveven and The Harvey Steel Show, describing itself as psych jupiterian folk music. In Ganjibiri Bergsten explores the concept of the long jams combining compositional elements with the liberty of improvisation. The result is a mysterious blend of psychedelic-spiritual Jazz. Imagine if Can, Captain Beefheart, Terje Rypdal and Ornette Coleman were playing all together in a Bitches Brew session mood.

Cruel Nature

Clara Engel – ‘Their Invisible Hands’
“I’m not writing the same song over and over so much as writing one long continuous song that will end when I die.” – Clara Engel Recorded entirely at home / solo, “Their Invisible Hands” presents 13 tracks of subtle dream-like beauty, from the Toronto-based artist. A mystical work, mixing classical and dark folk wanderings with misty soundscapes, which creates an abstract, new world atmosphere. Self-released in April as digital and CD, Cruel Nature are proud to give it a cassette release.

Score – ‘Now Here’
Score is the solo project of Chris Tate, known for his work with d_rradio; producers of a number of notable atmospheric electronica cuts from the early 2000s, along with One Key Magic and Anglo-American band, Salisman. ‘Now Here’ is his sixth album for Cruel Nature and moves through a fusion of different musical styles, while gently rising and falling in waves of energy and mood, within individual tracks and also across the whole album. There is an undercurrent of oscillating or undulating waves – reflecting life’s ups and downs and the temporary nature of all things.

Todeskino – ‘MMMiniatures’
Following his first album ‘Debutante’, which was praised as “melancholic, cinematic ambience somewhere between Sixteen Candles and Twin Peaks“ (Electronic Sound Magazine), Peter Lersch (Todeskino) returns with this latest release for Cruel Nature. Here, Todeskino reaches out to the cute, bleepy and playful excursions of electronica. A potent mix of ambient and electropop orchestrated by sugarcoated chords, bursting bass lines and squelching synth leads – each track creates a musical microcosm of highly unusual sounds. Spiked with Todeskino‘s typical ingredients of cinematic melancholy, listeners will be carried away into a mellow, colourful world. Would sit nicely in the Warp Records 90s catalogue, alongside the likes of Polygon Window

POUND LAND – ‘Defeated’
‘Defeated’ is the third album by the Stockport (UK)-based duo POUND LAND (Nick Harris and Adam Stone). Recorded in most part over the first half of 2022, ‘Defeated’ comprises eight intense tracks spanning forty minutes, opening with the visceral doom-realism of ‘Violence’ and ending with the post-punk audio-travelogue of ‘Zones’. Pound Land push their post-industrial kitchen-sink drama preoccupations even further on ‘Defeated’, exploring the dark comedy of everyday life in the dismal land of eternal recession. Sometimes the vision expands out of shitty Britain too, ‘Drone’ recounting the wearied observations of an electronic device as it traverses the globe. You’ve got to laugh, because if you don’t you’ll kill yourself. Or somebody else.

Lunt – ‘Remember We Were Waiting For The Snow’
Žils Deless-Vēliņš (Lunt) has held a mystical relationship to sound and music since he was a child, and his crafting of music can be compared to a construction kit game, where music as a whole is more than the sum of sounds. For him, sound has a kinship with the concept of pneuma in Stoician philosophy. Sound expects to be found to become music, lying there in an intuitive background. ‘Remember We Were Waiting For The Snow’ is about what is called “solastalgia” : our anxiety, our concern, our sadness to see some natural phenomenon disappear. Written 5 years ago, after Žils relocated to Latvia, it is a collection of exquisite reflective moving guitar-driven ambience drawing from same the sonic well as soundscapers like Jim O’Rouke.

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Public Eyesore

Illusion of Safety & Z’evs/t LP
Illusion of Safety & Z’ev have had an LP sitting at the plant for almost two years now, with constant delays due to covid, high temperatures, war, and broken machinery… Z’ev is of course, the late great pulley-percussionist and noise artist from the 70s until his death in 2017. Illusion of Safety being the project of Daniel Burke, active since 1983, who has been quietly sitting on this material since 2008. Together the LP is a bouquet of different sounds interweaving into deep drone soundscapes on each side, then delicately dropping you off at the doorstep of incidental field recordings and sidereal instrumentals as each side ends. From Daniel Burke: “All sound by Daniel Burke & Z’EV. A mail collaboration begun in 2008 finalized in 2012. At the conclusion of the Z’EV & Illusion of Safety performance at Enemy in Chicago in 2007, Z’EV approached me to work together on a release. In 2008 he provided me with a number of short recordings (half of which are yet to be used) of acoustic sources which like his live performance sounded very rich and surprisingly electronic. To his source material I structured the album sides adding field recordings, sampling, electro-acoustics, and Eurorack modular synth, before returning to him for additional treatments.” Vinyl Edition Co-released By: Public Eyesore, No Part Of It, Feast Of Hate And Fear, Cipher Productions, Oxidation, Korm Plastics, Drone Records, Personal Archives, Tribe Tapes, Liquid Death Records.

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Geology Records

STRATA27 – Jakub Kasperkiewicz – ‘Astronomical Winter’ $10
Guitar drone from Wrocław, Poland. Jakub uses electric guitar to produce minimalist and organic ambient passages, with occasional intrusions into space rock territories. Improvisation is central to his compositions. Edition of 50 on cassette with slipcases.

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Cruel Nature

brb>voicecoil + omnibadger – ‘DISCO’
Newcastle based sound deconstructor brb>voicecoil and Stoke based noise punks Omnibadger release collaborative album ‘DISCO’. “If it doesn’t provoke thought or debate, it’s not art, it’s entertainment, a night out at the disco. It’s less about judging a book by its cover than simply paying attention. Ooh, look at that jagged font! Songs called ‘Swastika Tattoo’ and ‘Subhuman’. Hints of fash, must be dodgy! Of course not. Know your enemy. This is an exercise in observation and critique. And sparse, gnarly electro 303 noise blended with some sludgy great racket and shouty growly vocals that brings the industrial trajectory through to 2022. This is a collaborative effort, one where distinctive elements from both sides shine through and combine to make something greater than the sum of its parts. Tracks like ‘Summer’ and ‘Sister’ allude to disco divas of the 70s in title alone, ‘Drink the Kool-Aid’ alludes to mass murder and mind control in the same decade. And while the shady sides of the dark noise and industrial scene are well-documented, so is the flipside of the coin, confronting the nastiness head on and asking difficult questions and presenting those challenges in a confrontational manner, both sonically and visually. Feel the pain. Accept the challenges. Face the truth.” (Christopher Nosnibor)

Greg Nieuwsma and Antonello Perfetto – ‘Chase Ritual’
Greg Nieuwsma and Antonello Perfetto have been making music together since 2014. Originally from the midwestern USA and Naples, Italy respectively, they came together in Krakow, Poland where they both live. As a part of the band Sawak, they released 5 records, progressing from a straightforward rock sound towards more avant garde experimentation. After the dissolution of the band, their collaboration continued, first releasing one record under the name Corticem, then putting out records under their own names. The recording process for Chase Ritual entailed layering improvisations on top of drones. Two of the three long-form tracks also feature manipulated samples of radio broadcasts from around the world. It liberally draws from a variety of influences including jazz, American minimalism, gnawa, art rock, tribal music, and raga.

Summer Night Air – ‘5’
First album of original material in 8 years, from the Tyneside electronic duo. Warm, simple, poppy electronica, with shades of synth pop, hip-pop, new-age, blissed-out ambience, and drum & bliss for your listening pleasure.

Salisman & His Celestial Bodies – ‘Gulch’
3rd album from the Anglo-American collaboration, which takes all the catchy hooks and cool song-writing sensibilities from ‘Absolution’, mixed with the prog-psych experimentation of ‘Clairvoyance’, creating the perfect companion to both. Trolling the underbelly of the remnants of the remnants, we found mostly nothing. Rotten milk and poorly performed blues. The Lexington Strut consumed us. Feet worn and cracked. Centuries of endurance. Sweet coffee consumed in a tub of pathetic burlesque performances. We didn’t like it but it was our home. Gulch.

Gvantsa Narim – ‘Gvantsa’
From Tbilisi, Georgia, Gvantsa Narim is an enigmatic sound artist, who starting writing music in 2013. Taking inspiration from religion, esotericism and Georgian polyphonic music, this – her second – album consists of 6 compositions, written during 2018 – 2022. Combining emotions and feelings; unearthly sweetness and infinite depths. There is no place for chaos here. Transcending to inspire the soul with new imaginations.

Blanket Swimming – ‘A Quiet Vision’
Nicholas Maloney (Blanket Swimming) is a musician and sound artist currently based in Nashville, Tennessee, creating personal, evocative recordings that offer a space that can be used to practice the rewarding act of deep listening. He looks to challenge listeners’ focus and perception of sound while exploring the experiential nature of sound within the context of composition. Recorded earlier this year, ‘A Quiet Vision’, takes electric guitar loops, layered with field recordings creating a work of subtle texture and flowing space.

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Tanzprocesz

DIM GARDEN – ‘Elle tombe la lune’ 5€
melodic synthesis, industrial precision and ghost stars. hits to sing in the shower. songs to listen to in the urban forest.

PHILEMON – ‘Nomenclature des sentiers lumineux’ 5€
vocal ghosts, blind bruitism and rhythmic obsessions. epilepsy cocktail for living-room. terabytes of data meticulously dusted for your pleasure.

FELON – ‘Ça gansaille!’ 5€
fake traditions, truthful arpeggios and assumed artifacts. harp and electronics allied since forever. five mental hikes for your walkman.

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