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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Cruel Nature

Karen & Peter – ‘Aggro Dulce’ CS + book
Cassette + 19-page booklet of Karen Schoemer’s poems to accompany the release, with beautiful artworks by Peter Taylor. In the fall of 2021, sound artist Peter Taylor and poet Karen Schoemer decided to create songs together, despite never having met. Both drew on the faded industrial landscapes of their respective countries. Peter was inspired by the Calder Valley in Yorkshire, with its history of coal mining and asbestos contamination; Karen had recently relocated to a rural town in upstate New York once known as “Factory Hill,” where remnants of 20th century fires and floods scar the landscape. Their independent investigations of disparate locales uncover commonalities that hint at wider, even universal, human conditions. Karen Schoemer is a poet and former music journalist who frequently collaborates with musicians including Oli Heffernan, Mike Watt, Wreckless Eric and Amy Rigby. She contributed words to Ivan the Tolerable’s “Out of Season” (2020) and words and vocals to The Long Year (2021, both released by Stolen Body Records). With Mike Watt she records as the duo Jaded Azurites. She is vocalist for the upstate New York band Sky Furrows, which released its self-titled debut album in 2020. Peter Taylor has been making music as Mortuus Auris & the Black Hand/MAbH since 2008. He is also a visual artist working across many disciplines including photography, animation, illustration, miniatures and painting. He is based just outside of South West London by the River Thames.

Chihuahua – ‘Crythor Du’
Crythor Du is CHIHUAHUA’s follow-up to their 2021 debut ‘Violent Architecture’. A looser and more experimental approach, stemming from extended jam sessions a là CAN, is prominent across this record and features a wider range of instruments and influences than its predecessor. Jazz, noise, post and krautrock collide here and make Crythor Du a musical force to be reckoned with. Noisy Post-Rock from Manchester – Experimental and Uncompromising.

Tankengine – ‘Tankengine Tankengine Tankengine EP’
TANKENGINE were recently described as a band with ‘staggering potential’, which if nothing else gave their spouses a good laugh, and TANKENGINE TANKENGINE TANKENGINE is their third EP. They are Adam Hiles on vocals & guitar (yourcodenameis:milo, Mammal Club, The Shitty Beatles), Ross Harley on vocals & really good bass (yourcodenameis:milo, Ross Harley, Crucial Taunt) and Dr Ivan Diaz on drums (Little Moscow, Lingua Vulgaris, Jolly Green Giants). TANKENGINE TANKENGINE TANKENGINE is preoccupied with the nausea-inducing realisation that we’ve lost the receipt for the future we were sold. There’s no going back now and the only way out is through.

cowman – ‘slaughter’
After a lengthy hiatus from 2013 to making a return to the fray this summer, Benjamin Heal’s Cowman alter ego is back with a vengeance: hot on the heels of the ‘Crunch’ EP, which was essentially the salvage from an aborted album project, we have a full-length album proper in the form of Slaughter.

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Monorail Trespassing

Tinnitustimulus – ‘Scrinj Maas’ C40
Live hard analog sessions recorded in 2021. A headcleaner of primal room sound; gritty jackhammer fuzz saturating waves of ring mod, undercurrents of filter sweep and bell-tones of metallic clang — all unfolding with organic evolution. A perfect union of Japanese and American aesthetics. Edition of 100 copies, with full color artwork and labels.

Dominic Coppola – ‘Prisms in Dalliance’ C30
Interplanetary drift and current which properly unfurls over repeated listens. Crystalline intonations unfold and cascade into a heavy mass of expansive geometrics — Intercede for Us. With the more subdued B-side, tone chords slowly emerge from swirling petroglyphs of dark resonance; truly ‘At the Mercy of an Aphrodisiac’ indeed. Mastered by James Plotkin. Edition of 100 copies, with full color artwork and labels.

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Fragment Factory

Jürgen Eckloff – ‘Diese, Nichts & Solche’ C46
Jürgen Eckloff (*1978 in East Berlin) is a sound artist and filmmaker whose audio works often deal with the deconstruction of language and the mechanisms of communication. Since the early 2000s, he has released numerous short films, works for radio, as well as records, often on the 90% Wasser label, which he has run with Robert Schalinski since 2001. Together with the latter and René Lamp, Eckloff was a core member of the influential artist collective Column One until their disbanding in 2016. “Diese, Nichts & Solche” is Eckloff’s first work for Fragment Factory. Three new compositions for cassette at the intersection of concrete music, language and field recordings, subtly accentuating the sheer absurdity of our times. Eckloff lives and works in the Havelland region, north of Berlin. Edition of 100 copies, comes with A5-size postcard.

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Cruel Nature

The Real Codington Factory – ‘Nickel World’
The Real Codington Factory was founded in 2019 by songwriter Shea Glasheen (from NYC grunge-punks, Cronies). Starting as an alternative grunge / indie band, and later evolving into more progressive noise-punk territory, RCF references current bands in the local NYC scene such as On Pink, Lip Critic, Cohort B, along with the likes of Lightning Bolt, Melvins, TAD etc. Nickel World is RCF’s 14th release, recorded in early January 2022 in rural Pennsylvania. Featuring dictatorial vocals recorded via an intercom, a broken down drum setup and short sharp shots of frenzied guitar riffage.

Tenchpress – ‘Tombmagic’
Brandishing a single LA Galaxy-branded drum stick and yet more unearned bravado, TENCHPRESS presents a vital new sonic totality: TOMBMAGIC. Cleaner, more neutered, more desiccated than anything that came before, the ternate album from Avon-via-Leeds’s worst finds a sonic inventory in the airless plunk of an open snare drum, the sandblasted purity of foley percussion, the test tube sterility of free soft synths, and the empty digi-gurgle of treated vocals.

Daniel McClennan – ‘Unfurling Redemption’
Known for his energetic furling beats with noise-rock experimentalists Warren Schoenbright and Why Patterns, this solo release sees Daniel McClennan draw on classical and avant-garde influences such as Giacinto Scelsi; Svarte Greiner; Valentin Silvestrov; William Basinski; along with sound-artists such as Jacob Kirkegaard and The Caretaker. Unfurling Redemption is a collection of eight assemblages comprised of synthesised instruments and freely available/stock sound samples. These assemblages explore the widely observed and seemingly inherent desire for overcoming in humankind, a dangerous proclivity for dreaming the transcendent.

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Fort Evil Fruit

Graham Dunning – ‘Silo’
Graham Dunning is perhaps best known for modifying and manipulating hardware, both in his plate-spinning solo “mechanical techno” sets and with the mad inventions of Mammoth Beat Organ, his duo with Sam Underwood. In recent years the London-based artist has also been exploring live coding, achieving analogous results through software. Silo uses the text-based sample sequencer TidalCycles on a diverse selection of tracks broadly recalling underground dance music of the late 80s and early 90s. The combination of classic house and techno tropes with off-kilter and randomised elements infects familiar territory with an air of uncanniness, like a past vision of a possible future.

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Home & Garden

MATTHEW HIMES – “Hold Tight” b/w “My Ride” 7″ lathe
As we receive this new offering from Matthew Himes we enter hazy fields of wildflower, a waking dream not entirely unfamiliar. Following the path of last year’s solo full length “Hemlock & Bergamot”, Himes delivers two new fresh cut blossoms of drifting songcraft. The lead single “Hold Tight” is a comforting promise of better times to come, one day at a time, while the flip side “My Ride” is a sort of pre-post mortem, speaking to lost friends and ashes unspread. The music is transmitted from times before and yet to be, from long boat trips on slow moving bodies of water, and care-free days now seemingly gone forever. Released as a limited edition lathe-cut 7″ and digital maxi-single. Square record cut in MONO to clear polycarbonate with printed labels featuring hand-stamped pink ink detail. Each copy is housed in a clear poly inner sleeve, and packaged in a white reverse board outer jacket with full color photo artwork. Made in a limited hand-numbered edition of 16 copies.

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Cruel Nature

Collapsed Memory – ‘No Logical Sequencies’
Inspired by Tangerine Dream and Software but filtered through the Rhythm & Sound disintegration vortex and abstracted atmospheres of Mount Shrine. Part ambient industrial, part occult sound design. Comes with an accompanying 24-page zine (No Portrait #2) as a visual counterpoint. All elements compiled during a two-year period starting early 2020.

Empty House – ‘Blue Bamboo’
Blue Bamboo consists of four improvised pieces for meditation or total chill out. Recorded over a few days in February and built upon drones created by the organ through a dream pedal or Tanpura box. The tracks were then splashed with colour and hues with treated piano, shakuhachi flute, bells, synth, field recordings and other instruments. Inspired Fred Laird’s faith in Buddhism as well as the music of Eno, David Sylvian, Midori Takada and Popol Vuh. Digitally released by Earthling Society, April 2022, the cassette edition includes the previously unreleased 16-minute composition, ‘Extinction Mantra’

Winded – ‘Deap Phat’
Growing up skateboarding and playing music in the Los Angeles DIY scene became the foundation of how Alance Ward’s music would always sound. Moving to Chicago to record and tour with various bands is how he learned to refine that sound. Being immersed in Chicago’s creative atmosphere Alance found himself playing drums on tours for artists like Jim Fairchild, formally of Modest Mouse, and the duo Azure Ray. All the while unconsciously filing away ideas that would become his solo music project, Winded. After experiencing a recent esoteric awakening, Alance relied on a cocktail of intuition and instinct rather than beers and booze to make his latest Winded recording. Adopting an automatic writing practice gave way to the hybrid style heard on Deap Phat. Like some kind of post punk parallax, the songs seem to morph in woozy ways with each listen. A whirlwind of hybrid post-punk / post-funk, ‘Deap Phat’ chops and skews through riffs, beats and day-glo electrofried psychedelia

Basalt Shrine – ‘From Fiery Tongues’
Basalt Shrine are the Filipino doom/post-metal super quartet of Bobby Legaspi (Surrogate Prey, Malicious Birth), Rallye Ibanez (Ex-Religious Nightmare, Surrogate Prey) and Ronaldo and Ronnel Vivo (Dagtum, The Insektlife Cycle, Abanglupa, Imperial Airwaves, Ex-Hateure). ‘From Fiery Tongues’ is their debut album. It’s heavy. Really heavy.

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Shhpuma

LAMIEE/Dròlo Ensemble – ‘The Deafening Moment of the Whistle After the Noise’
A combination of ancient and contemporary, bringing the music outside of time, and simultaneously popular and experimental, in hybrids of chamber music and jazz. The most important aspect is that you have never heard anything like this before….

Juhani Silvola – ‘Wolf Hour Roundelay’
We can hear traces of John Cage’s prepared piano, the rhythms of Igor Stravinsky, Gamelan music, West African rhythms, abstract free improv, doomy minimalism and extended techniques in the vein of Sciarrino and Lachenmann. The resulting pieces are simultaneously familiar and strange, created for a mind-blowing listening…

FLAK – ‘Magpie Live’
The legendary guitarist known as Flak invited musicians of the fields of avant-jazz, free Improvised music and beat music coming out from funk, namely Rodrigo Amado, José Lencastre, Luís Lopes, Guilherme Rodrigues, Francisco Rebelo and Rui Alves. Uniting the worlds of rock, jazz and electronic music in inventive and intriguing ways…

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