Forest Friends : self titled DBL release

Seattle noise whimsy mayhem makers Forest Friends have released their first album with debacle records,
the duo consists of garrison and chad although they sometimes team up with Todd Dickerson (soup purse,space hawk,smegma,)
the trio can be heard on track three which is a spastic open room recording of bells and angry duck quacks emitting from some mixer loop or synth set up,
the song turns into a haunting sing along with a gentle repeating xylophone tone (maybe a home made instrument or something electric not sure)

the improvisational record is for the most part chad and garrison feeding off eachother for brief spacey freefolk psychedel-noise pop tracks,
and its one of the best records i have heard in a while, it comes across as six perfectly crafted pop songs memorably intelligent yet deliciously minimal,
the opening track takes you right into the fore mentioned forest and starts with whistling birds and rustling leaves and a whole myriad of forest voices, mumbling monkeys and chanting shamans, track two throws us into an Indian market place with the echos of Rabab's and sitar's and a distant la la da lala chant,
the market place seem to than be taken over by robots beeping and chirping and wandering around, the song fades into slow hand clapping and ends,

the album ends with a ten minuet track that could play as a prayer session, gentle folk instruments and and a repeating voices saying "Whug wug wugwug" the track ends with quiet
UFO sounds and the album is finished,

this was my first time in the forest, the duo have been making music together for the last 13 years in one form or another,
this is as i said the first forest friends release and a accomplished effort, they formed two years ago and have already opened for TLASILA
and in my opinion could easily be picked up by Paw Tracks or fat cat or some other label soon,

over all a great effort and i cant wait for the next release,



CD-r
DBL015
2008
http://www.myspace.com/debaclerecords
http://www.myspace.com/forrestfriends

.cut & Maggot Breeder : la voie sacree

so here we have a collaboration between .cut & maggot breeder, .cut started as AlBéRiCk's solo experimental project in Quebec back in 1992,
and he has been paying his dues in the Montreal industrial scene for the last sixteen years, he joined forces with french experimental guitarist
Gibet in 2003, the duo have drawn comparisons to Montreal GSYBE and industrial hero's Psychic TV,

more recently AlBéRiCk joined forces with the godfather of Montreal noise/experimental rock Reuel Ordonez,
they have released three albums together which is a good sign for any collaborative effort in a environment that houses
so many projects and efforts that put out one album and than fold,

the three inch cd-r from walnut+locust records starts off with that high tone melodic white noise that maggot breeder has become famous for,
if a blank white canvas had a volume control and you cranked it as far as it would go it would sound as vast as this track,
the sound scape builds with the high pitch screams of locust or cicadas to a comfortable level and stays that way for about the first ten minuets,
through out those ten minuets you can hear
a distant string instrument twanging discordantly set to the roar of a jet engine, as the track progresses you start to pick out the sound of more and more
horrible machines and air raid sirens, crushing wheels and thunder,
the mayhem dies down at the fifteenth minuet mark and an empty desolation spills out,
the song leaves us with a chanting monk choir and electric buzzing wires,

if im being honest i enjoy .cut and maggot breeder separate more than together, the simplicity and distinction of their solo work is more coherent
than this collaboration in my opinion, in ways it sounds like a .cut song and a maggot breeder song played at the same time,
with that said the talent and experience of the two artist comes through by the end of the twenty minuet track,

maggot breeder .cut are doing a great favor to industrial music in Canada, with the last twenty years industrial music has been under attack from
drum machine ravers, but its bands like .cut&maggot breeder that keep the dream alive,

the art for this album is a simple plastic sheath with a color print out two page pamphlet and a walnut locust catalog page,

.cut & Maggot Breeder : la voie sacree


wl013
3" cdr
2008

Wyatt Howland & Andrew Kirschner - Torture

first off the casing reminds me of a middle james co or cuthands release, its a simple one image
B&W xerox, with a 1"x1" insert explaining whats going down!

whats going down is a co op of Wyatt Howland (SkinGraft) and Andrew Kirschner (tooth, relentless corpse, Mistake label owner,)

ok so i would love to see a live set of these two, cause the recording does no justice,
there are a lot of peaks and you tend to lose all the highs,
side a starts with a claustrophobic muddle of sounds that lead you to believe you are being
buried alive in a pit of snakes, you can hear distant noise from outside the hole and the hiss
of snakes and a constant dropping and muffling tone with ever shovel of dirt,
the entire recording stays pretty quiet and staticy with the occasional helicopter noise,
there seems to be some maaa-ing and baaa-ing at the mid point,
which is followed by the sounding of an alarm, its kind of like a sheep factory melt down,
it teeters out into digital clipping&skipping, in come some moans and groans and the tape stops,


side b starts of with storm static,
a metal banging and clanging comes in like an old hermit looking for provisions in his shed,
the stereo is fun on this side, with the different sound sources in different ears,
static in one side and the metal banging loop in the other,
this side also has the peaking issues, but its not that big a deal,
overall they create a great atmosphere but the recording could have been a bit better,

mistake by the lake tapes (from Cleveland Ohio obviously)
run by Andrew and Zach troxell,
have recently secured connections with tomentosa and Hanson,
which not only means your doing something right,
but it also means it will be easy for you to purchase,
no reason not to grab one up,

contact and order here aswell...
http://www.myspace.com/mistakebythelake
http://www.polarenvy.com/



c40
MSL012
limited to 50

Sean Gadoury : Astronaut ice cream ep

the album starts off with "Dehydrated peas" which is fitting cause the first thing you notice is the back to basics sound and approach the entire album has, its simple layered guitar looping for a
lazy afternoon, there are very little delay and echo effects, no beats or drum machines, just sparse and distant ambient noise and both acoustic and electric guitar looping,

the album plays like a side projects side project, its not gonna make you start a revolution,
with that said there is lots of room for works that don't blow your mind, but take you somewhere for the time being even if you never visit that world again,
four songs isnt a lot to map out an entire sound but i feel like maybe the point wasn't put across as well as maybe it could have been, i've gotten more out of three song chat blanc releases,

the layered guitars and ambient hums are
a departure from sean's other work like that on the diction ark release,
which features a more conventional guitar, drum machines, keyboards approach to indie prog rock, think king crimson on drag city records, ...which strangely is what Weird war sound like but thats beside the point, its interesting to see that this is another side to a multi facaded artist,

freeze dried French fries is the stand out track,
it starts off with a slightly discordant overlapping of high and bass repeating notes,
there is something just not exactly right about it, and that makes it endearing,
it leads to a perky trilling chorus section which sound like the words "lets get up and go!"
its a happy and contrasting piece that kind of solidifies the rest of the album,

seans attention to detail and ear for trills and gentle guitar tones make this effort
a success,

you can download the entire album and the front insert for free at the dusty trails website,
http://sean.dukmedia.com/

sean gadoury : ASTRONAUT ICE CREAM (EP)

dtltdt-A03
Artwork by Sean Gadoury
Dusty Trails Ltd



http://www.myspace.com/dustytrailsltd
http://www.myspace.com/seangadoury

Sing Leaf : wandering

toronto band Sing Leaf release their second ep this Oct. 18th
the four track album opens with North, its chill and a little trance-y,
a soothing chirping rhythm and flutes fill out the song with a continuing bass blurp in the background,
it last for a minuet and 51 seconds, and goes straight into yavanna the second track more trance-y chirps and flowing energy,
this track introduces vocalist David Como (musician, band leader) who floats over the tracks like a possessed angel,
or a less happy Robert Schneider,

the album ends with golden yellow oak, which comes off like their older material,
it falls somewhere in between the subversive church folk of jeff mangum and Reg Vermue,
but with a much older feel, the whole album has an oldsoul feel even at times it gives off Celtic vibes with the dreamy flutes,

unlike some ambient electronic artists, repeating melodies sometime take a back seat for the sake of sound effects,
sing leaf find a way to bleed the waves of laptop chirps and catchy deja vu melodies together into a poppy serenade,


the electro half of the electrocustic banner they have been branded with is the predominate half on this album,
unlike some of their older work (like the sing leaf ep) which was more aligned to the the acoustic side and a little more lo fi,
and in my opinion was better and more focused than this effort, it does feel as though they are happy with this sound,
it comes across a more confident sounding release, but the trance beats and electro washed tones take away something from the sincerity of the band,




http://www.myspace.com/singleaf

Dead Embers : elbow deep in dawsons creek

ok so its the dynamic duo,
Darcy Atkinson (Autoerotic asphyxiation, twin scales, rocket pony*rip*,) and Josh st Denis (goatfooted, ghostbitch, ghostfood,)
ripping through an hour of music,

side a (christ on a bike) starts us off with some rhythmic delay taping, like throat chirping and rock banging,
it picks up and dies down and picks up and dies down again,
leading to some mild zlerps and slurps of a malfunctioning raygun,
it soon quites down into electric static with the occasional raygun appearances,
we than detour into stereo overdrive bassy ups and downs with interspersed high frequency
radio burps and broken hospital machine fluctuations,

its lots of fun to listen to, you can taste the energy that the duo are feeding off of,
the whole thing is quite and controlled but it never becomes annoying,


side b (yes, james ready drank coffee porter) features the abrupt dueling distortion flatulence, with pops of staticy chirps,
it builds to a nice wall of dueling static delay,
much more messy and dirty than side a.


the casing is a simple piece of chalky black paper with DEAD EMBERS stenciled on,



copies 2-6 featured a kitty cat insert, my copy features a Russian politician insert,

MT008
limited to six copys
myiasis tapes
http://www.myspace.com/myiasistapes

Hunting Rituals : tree route

hunting rituals is one of the many exciting solo shots from Scott Johnson
(gasoline gathers hands, gathers friends, bottom feeder, thoughts on air, cloud valley records....)

side A plays like a narcoleptic train ride, weaving in and out of sound structures like restless dreams, track one, or the first section of side one starts with the squeak of broken wheels, and passing sounds from an open window, water and voices from the forest below,

the second section could be when diner is served (imagine the sound of cutlery scratching to the back drop of screeching squealing wheels!)

and than the third section brings in the loud cries of the steam whistles discordant at first,
and than more and more rhythmic, the whistles bleed in to a dull wall of dead noise as you pass through a tunnel,

side B is a more consistent meandering of swamp folknoise,
the constant rub of a rock grinder set to the cries of the loon, (a juxtaposition of nature and industry?)

the whole album is made with horns and effects,
this doesn't limit the range of the recording at all, quite the opposite actually,
most of the time you cant define an origin to the sounds,

this album also marks a continued collaboration between cloud valley records Scott Johnson
and housecraft records Jeffry Astin, i cant wait to see what comes next,

the art is simple but beautiful, consists of one insert,




house craft 047
http://www.myspace.com/housecraft
http://www.myspace.com/huntingrituals
http://www.myspace.com/cloudvalleyrecordings