Obscureish Music Volum VI
I'm back with the first Obscureish Music column in quite a while. Today I have brought four very different records, a live recording of legendary japanoise band Incapacitants called Extreme Gospel Nights, a relatively unknown Nurse with Wound record, The Sylvie and Babs Hi-Fi Companion, Sissy Spacek's Disfathom and a german atmospheric black metal record titled Jahreszeiten. Enjoy!
Nurse With Wound - The Sylvie and Babs Hi-Fi CompanionSound Collage PlunderphonicsTape Music
Nurse with Wound is a (mostly) solo project by British musician Steven Stapleton, which mostly dabbles in the sound collage genre with a wide variety of influences such as krautrock, industrial, tape music and (perhaps) most importantly Dada as evidenced by their third album Merzbild Schwet, a reference to german Dada artist Kurt Schwitters. Nurse with Wound's music, at least as i perceive it, tends to fall somewhere on the line between disturbing and funny. Songs like I Cannot Feel You as the Dogs Are Laughing and I Am Blind from the 1982's record Homotopy to Marie tread a fine line between sheer disorientating terror and being so ridiculous and over the top that one might laugh at them as well. On that line the record I want to talk about today, The Sylvie and Babs Hi-Fi Companion, falls on the ridiculous and comedic side of things, while still incorporating a certain amount of disturbing parts. The record sounds like you are trapped in some sort of carousel, where every few minutes or even seconds the situation in front of you changes. One moment you are talking to a friend, then you are listening to a performance in a nightclub, then you are in the middle of a marching band gone mad, then a woman is telling you about how she shot someone in the head with a shotgun while a distorted voice sings in the background and then at about the 14 minute mark of the first song you completely lose orientation and a sense of what situation you are in as the voices and samples become so distorted that you can barely understand anything, only to be woken up by a German folk song a few seconds later. The record continues in this vein, using it's sample to create a train of thought that takes you through various imagined scenarios. If that sounds intriguing to you I think you should give this record a listen and it might introduce you to a whole new world with the Nurse with Wound catalogue and if you are a long time Nurse with Wound fan and haven't given this a listen you definitely should.Horn - JahreszeitenAtmospheric Black Metal Pagan Black Metal
Horn is a German atmospheric black metal project that I only recently became aware of. The solo project of Niklas Thiele, the band has released 11 full length albums over a period of nearly 20 years and Jahreszeiten is the first of the bunch. The album features a style of atmospheric black metal mixed with pagan black metal influences reminiscent of other German black metal bands such as Nagelfar, especially on Hรผhnengrab im Herbst. Extremely lo-fi production is paired with repetitive riffs and vocals that fluctuate somewhere between typical harsh vocals and triumphant singing, resulting in a very dense atmosphere. The singing gives the record an epic feel, almost reminiscent of something like Summoning.With the exception of the third song Das Jahr Geht Mit Eisiger Faust, which aptly feels like a blizzard interrupting you on your journey, the record feels mostly laid back as if you are slowly making your way through the forest on the cover. Jahreszeiten is a truly wonderful record that offers everything you could want from an atmospheric black metal record, while being unique in a landscape of copycats, and I can only recommend it to anyone interested in the genre.
Incapacitants - Extreme Gospel Nights
Harsh Noise
Incapacitants were one of the very first to do it, their 1983 release Eternal Paralysis being the oldest harsh noise record listen on Rate Your Music. Best known for their albums As Loud as Possible and Default Standard, they established their sound somewhere between traditional japanoise and harsh noise wall with, their tracks often being quite long and static in composition. I stumbled across Extreme Gospel Nights randomly while browsing the website of my local noise vinyl dealer, having recently read about Incapacitants live shows in a book recently, I picked this up. On the record you get treated to two new songs called Bitter Insect and Accelerated No(i)sebleed. Both songs follow the usual Incapacitants formula from this time being roughly 20 minutes long and being very close to a wall while still maintaining enough chaos and change to keep you engaged. Bitter Insect feels like the more aggressive song of the two with the use of high pitch distortion and even some extremely distorted, and great, vocals something that really sets the duo apart from many of their contemporaries. Accelerated No(i)sebleed takes a different approach with more low frequency distortion that sounds like your speakers are constantly being blown out as the duo work some different screeching noises into the song. While I don't think that this record is an essential listen for Incapacitants fans, I do think it's a lot of fun and a cool document of its time for hardcore japanoise fans.
Comments
Post a Comment