Marisa Anderson - "The Golden Hour"

The Golden Hour, Marisa Anderson’s second solo record, is inspired by Delta blues, West African guitar, country and western radio from the 60′s and 70′s, gospel, noise, rhythms, cycles, mortality, and praise. The Golden Hour features 12 improvisations for guitar and lap steel.

Marisa Anderson is a composer, guitarist and multi-instrumentalist living in Portland Oregon. She works solo and with others.
Anderson’s past projects include the Dolly Ranchers and the Evolutionary Jass Band as well as collaborations with many notable musicians. Anderson’s music has been featured on many soundtracks including, ‘For the Love of Dolly’, ‘Girls Rock’, and ‘Gift To Winter’. Her debut solo recording ‘Holiday Motel’ was a 2006 Outmusic nominee for Best Female Debut Record.
Anderson works at the Rock ‘n’ Roll Camp for Girls where she runs the after-school program and the Ladies Rock Camps. Before arriving in Portland in 1999, Marisa walked across the US, toured with Circo De Manos through southern Mexico, was a founding member of the Chaos Collective and helped create the One Railroad Circus in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

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Yan Jun - "Lamma Island Diary"

From one of the most influential Chinese sound artists of our time. A new master piece that for sure will redefine site-specific and field recordings oriented sound works. This sound diary was recorded in Lamma Island, by Beijing sound artist, Yan Jun, during his stay in Hong Kong for the AROUND sound festival in 2009. The imaginative approach of Yan Jun simply opens up a whole new world for field recordings. From now on, field recordings will never be the same.

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Cannibal Movie - "Avorio"

Cannibal Movie is a sub genre of exploitation films made mostly by Italian filmmakers through the 1970s and 1980s. This sub genre is a collection of graphically gory movies that usually depict cannibalism by primitive, Stone-age natives deep inside the Asian or South American rain forests.
Cannibal Movie is also a duo from south of Italy, exponents of new rising Italian avant-garde music scene.
They play drums and a old italian organ and their sound is a mix of obscure psychedelia, hypnotic tribalism and ecstatic magic tunes.

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Nadja / Ovo - "The Life & Death of a Wasp"

It's not often that you come across an all-star avant-metal collaboration themed around the hot beverage-themed demise of a winged insect, but that's exactly what this strange LP is. Aidan Baker and Leah Buckareff of Nadja team up with Italian harbingers of sludge, Ovo, for a typically glacial exercise in creepy, lumbering doom-gaze. 'A Wasp Flying Around The Sugar Jar' is a slow, creaking starter, but once it's in full flow, the band lock into a punishing grind, complete with screechy female vocals from Ovo's Stefania Pedretti. 'Trapped In The Jar' feels more energised and more experimental, bringing a tone that almost hints at avant-jazz and industrial music, whilst spilling out some serious Linda Blair effects on those vocals. The final movement over on the B-side, 'Drowned In Coffee', is especially pleasing, featuring manic pounding on toms and chanted vocals that sounds like a Swans record lost somewhere in the Middle East.

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BERNHARD GÜNTER - "brown, blue, brown on blue (for mark rothko)"

brown, blue, brown on blue" is significant within günter's oeuvre as an intuitive leap from his previous works. This is tobe appreciated; many of his pieces consist of events linked by intuitive leaps across silence -- e.g., a sequence of sounds may strike the listener as a riddle or conundrum. Riddles and conundra abound from event to event within his works, but not between works. His pieces are rarely at odds with each other. "brown, blue, brown on blue" goes some distance to change that.

A quick revision to the first metaphor -- günter's music would most closely resemble a tree had you never seen a tree. [David Grubbs, SÜDDEUTSCHE ZEITUNG, 2000]

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Ultra Milkmaids - 03|02|USA

Ultra Milkmaids was one of the groups I had contact early on in 1994. Back then there was no laptop scene.
Milkies were always in drone/ambient stuff. This one is rather surprising. Drones?
Yeah, but hellishly mellodious - seems like they are using more guitars. There's stil this Milkie feeling to it. Glitchy stuff which now seems a bit obscure. Re-issue of the material from 2002 released in limited number of 50 cdrs now back. Back from the past. Nice...

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Otomo Yoshihide, Ryu Hankil, Yuen Cheewai, Yan Jun, Sachiko M, Yang Ge, Xiao Qiang, Hong Qile, Gogo J, Olivier Heux, Tao Yi and Junyuan - "Big Can"

An awesome recording of Japanese and Chinese sound artists – some of whom you should know and some of whom you probably don’t – gathering inside a massive oil container and mustering all sorts of acoustic noises in response to the huge amount of natural reverb within that space. Otomo Yoshihide and Sachiko M are the two big names from Japan, and Yan Jun is the most well known of the Chinese artists, although he’s accompanied by a half-dozen other artists as well. While this might seem like a pretty large assortment of people making a racket inside the giant oil drum, the recording is suitably restrained with many of the bangs, scrapes, and prolonged vocalizations thoughtfully responding to the industrial reverb. It would be very easy to confuse some of these episodes with one of the fictional subterranean realms of Lustmord or Thomas Koner, but here all of that expansive isolationist reverb is in fact recorded live. Cracks of wood upon the thick metal walls give way to a coordinated chorale of sustained vocal bellowing that’s not too far from ritualized chants of the Tibetan or Gregorian variety, with small eruptions, clatterings, and rustlings of various objects presumably found within. When the activities diminish and some chiming metals are struck, the length of the echo seems to last close to 15 seconds before finally decaying to nothing, allowing resonance from outside to intrude. It’s very clear that all of those within the space know a thing or two about improvisation, knowing that shutting the hell up is just as important as making the right sound. But it’s the space itself – the Big Can – that is the real massive presence throughout the recording.

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Torturing Nurse - "Il Comunismo Doveva Morire"

Holy fucking shit. This CD will own you. No, fuck that, this CD will pwn you. This CD will pull out any possible 4chan geek term for domination you could ever consider. This is one of the most in-your-face, powerful, and utterly destructive noise albums I've ever heard. China has been building an interesting underground music scene over the past decade, starting with the weird 'performances' (meaning basically art where they eat soap in front of you) in the 90's. Now, you have a number of acts that are really starting to gain worldwide attention. Torturing Nurse is at the summit of the pile, battling for the top with pieces of scrap metal sticking out of their arms and contact microphones exploding from their stomachs like The Thing. Get ready to have your entire body destroyed by il Comunismo Doveva Morire.

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Burial Hex - "Initiations"

Burial Hex is the solo project of Wisconsin-based musician Clay Ruby, who after building an underground reputation through a slew of CD-R and cassette releases in tiny editions, now seems poised to emerge at least halfway out of the shadows of occult obscurity with this CD release on the cult English label Aurora Borealis.

The four tracks which comprise Initiations are all around 18 to 19 minutes in length, which makes for a satisfyingly lengthy listen, and also conveniently enough makes the album easy to issue on vinyl. And guess what? With label Aurora Borealis being the quality act they are, Initiations is also available as a double vinyl LP.

Opening track ‘Will To The Chapel’ lulls the unsuspecting listener into a false sense of security with an orchestral overture – darksome and brooding, to be sure, but not overtly terrifying. However, the gloves are dramatically whipped off at around the four-minute mark, as the minor-key strings are decimated by a ferocious onslaught of black noise. The label’s website lists the instrumentation used as “feedback, voice, PAIA 4700, samples, microphones, homemade oscillators, metal, organs, earth, distortion, delay, insect, reverb, electric piano and analog tape”, but your guess is as good as mine as to what the exact ingredients of this unholy racket are, beyond some tormented shrieks and low dragon-like growls. Possessed cries of “Thy will be done!” punctuate queasy waves of gritty lo-fi noise and feedback, something like Burial Hex’s labelmates Wraiths or early Brighter Death Now. This is the side of Burial Hex’s sound which featured on the recent split single with Silvester Anfang, also released by Aurora Borealis. A late reprise of the opening orchestral theme seems ironically mocking of the listener’s shattered sense of security – by now it’s clear that anything could happen on this album, and all bets are off about what we’ll be subjected to next.

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Goh Lee Kwang - "Good Vibrations"

recorded by goh lee kwang at the STEIM, Amsterdam, May 2007.

editing & mastering by goh lee kwang 2007.
image by lau mun leng, design by herbal in house design team.
no pre-programing, no on-going effect, no post-overdub. no turntable.

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