Monday 28 December 2020

My final releases for 2020 are unveiled:

(sic 119) Body Stress 'The Silence Hurts The Most' 12"

LP issue of Body Stress' final work, previously found on an absurdly limited 4 x C-10 set released by Moral Defeat. The intentionally short tracks further fragment Body Stress' already disruptive harsh noise style, a fierce high-end focus forged through cruelly treated electronics, indecipherable sound source abuse, and libidinous fury.

Edition of 100 copies with collage artwork tweaked from the cassette edition.



(sic 123) V/A 'Night Science VI' 'zine + CD

The sixth issue of my 'Night Science' 'zine/compilation CD. Thorough interviews and stellar CD tracks from Purgist, Iron Fist Of The Sun, Toshiji Mikawa, Spiteful Womb, Taeter, Hostage Pageant/Still Life and Torba; an interview with Lee of Annihilvs; live reviews of Puce Mary, Hair Stylistics, Hijokaidan and Merzbow; and a slew of reviews of releases from the past few years including some choice reissues and the Come Org, 'On Corrosion' and Masonna boxsets.

124 pages, perfect-bound, pro-pressed CD.



(sic 124) Human Larvae 'Methods Of Submission II' C-60

Finally, the sequel to 2017's 'Methods Of Submission'. While the first cassette evoked a suffocating submissiveness, its follow-up is a plunge into putrescence and domination across a series of ravaged power electronics missives. Intentionally raw and grimy in execution, 'Methods Of Submission II' is a far more uncomfortable offering than the first - there's no safety word this time.

Edition of 100 copies mirroring the packaging to the first cassette: painted cloth wrapped around a small booklet and secured with a bandage clip.



(sic 127) Gnawed 'Cessation' C-30

If you haven't heard this year's Gnawed full-length 'Subterranean Rites', you're missing one of the year's finest power electronics/death industrial releases.

'Cessation' is something of a stylistic precursor, 30 minutes of carefully realised horror, fear and putrescence with Grant Richardson's evocation skills at their peak through this brew of slow creep, dismal melodic fragments, puncturing vocals, execution foley and throbbing synth dread.

Edition of 75 copies in screenprinted envelopes with an insert and loss of life curio.



(sic 130) Licht-Ung 'Aube' C-40

In the final few years of his Aube project, Akifumi Nakajima (RIP) released several obscure works through and with the unpredictable and entertaining label/project Licht-Ung.

This cassette is Milan Sandbleistift's tribute to a pillar of the Japanese noise/sound design community, two side-long pieces recorded using Aube LPs (originally released on Praxis Dr Bearmann) as source material, with final finessing by Daniel Menche. The result is a sobbing swamp of noise electronics with strong undercurrents of Aube's rigid strictures, set with honest clarity.

Cassette edition of 75 copies (the artist has released a limited LP edition of 21 copies) packaged in 6" square sleeves with layered art tributing both the artist's own photography and Akifumi Nakajima's distinctive G.R.O.S.S. design aesthetics.



(sic 133) Utøya 'Lay Down And Rot' C-40

After successful cassette releases on Nil By Mouth, Contradiction Tapes and Slaughterhouse Records, Utøya sharpen their tools for a new full-length cassette entitled 'Lay Down And Rot'.

Lambasting incel culture, for this release Utøya strip away past ambient drift to focus on a primal and suffocating power electronics sound, prominent vocals and choking noise textures assuming primacy within the project's still considered and atmospheric attributes.

Available in a regular edition as well as a limited specially packaged edition wrapped in wire and bitumen.

Thursday 25 June 2020


New releases finally available, with updates across the site:

(sic 120) Mo*Te & Worth C-30


New split cassette from two harsh noise artists who should need no introduction. Mo*Te has been spawning unsettled harsh noise from Saitama, Japan, since the mid-1990s, a unique voice even among the abundance of artists of the time. Since resurrecting Mo*Te in 2012 Fumiyuki Nagura has continued in that same turgid style with intermittent cassette releases and also had his early work compiled by Industrial Recollections and Audio Dissection for a 2019 boxset. His two tracks here are especially mean, a malignancy coursing through the material for a focus and frustration unlike any previous work.

Worth adds another collection of splayed and restless noise to Will VanGorder’s impressive discography, after recent releases on Total Black and Nefarious Activities. There’s an immediate connection to Fumiyuki’s own motivations and tendencies, the tracks never shaking their debt to the mid-1990s noise underground, lingering melancholia, and the tension between creator and equipment.

Edition of 75 copies, packaged in mesh, wire and printed parts as my tribute to the Mo*Te/Cracksteel ‘Brain Storm’ cassette released by Fumiyuki Nagura’s Uncut label in 1996, one of many amazing packaging works the label crafted.
Edition of 75 copies in a semi-transparent sleeve of cut-and-paste artwork, ziplock-bagged.

(sic 118) Uboa The Origin Of My Depression & The Sky May Be C-42 + C-30


‘The Sky May Be’ and ‘The Origin Of My Depression’ are the most recent full-length recordings by Melbourne’s Uboa, finally available on this double cassette set released by Cipher Productions.

‘The Sky May Be’ is “a work about poverty, sex, anxiety and love", an overpowering record that slips between dreamy ambience and nightmarish caverns of harsh noise. The record rattles with a sense of instability from start to finish – song structures are freeform and unbound by chorus or verse, harsh elements attack at random yet land perfectly, and it’s rare that any single track can be summed up as solely ambient or noise. The sum of the music is a feeling that pushes sound and mind to its limits, reaping new forms of terror and weakness as the seconds pass by.

‘The Origin Of My Depression’ moves beyond Uboa’s expert ambient and harsh noise craftings to explore elements of shoegaze and found sound, but without ever losing its identity as a craft and highly evocative harsh noise record. theneedledrop describes the release as “a ‘cerebral dive’ into Xandra's most negative and intense feelings of being a transgender woman... via ‘intense feelings of abandonment... expressed through intense soundscapes... and walls of distortion’, culminating in a wide expanse of styles and soundscapes.

Both releases feature extended artwork.  The first 25 copies are packaged in a surgical dish with a an individually numbered printed cloth cover, while the remaining 50 copies are packaged in a double-sided cloth and photograph cover, in a ziplock bag.

(sic 116) Un Regard Froid Accélération CD


Inhumanist Singularity Electronics.

Accélération is the second full-length by Quebec-based project Un Regard Froid. Pure accelerated devotion to cyberschizophrenic deterritorialization. Celebrating machinic impulses and void lust. Injecting propergol and the ashes of economists.

Edition of 100 copies in a printed box, with a 16 page booklet of expositive artwork.

(sic 106) Culver The Razor And Deceit 12" + 3xC-40 boxset


Eight sides of ashen drone from British mainstay Lee Stokoe, covering a lathe-cut LP and three cassettes. Singular tones, melodic memories, extended techniques and raw electronics are all subsumed into the drone vortex, smothered by Culver’s billowing drones and electronics dustcloud. After a heft of releases on his own Matching Head label, At War With False Noise and Turgid Animal, and an extended reach into the experimental underground, I’m very pleased to present this release as an extended study of Culver’s central capabilities.

Limited edition of only 20 copies, special packaging.  Currently only 8 copies are for sale, the remainder will be listed at a future date.