Artemesia- Empty Churches

Empty Churches is a creeping, bloody, chaotic mess of a sound document and I loved every minute of it.

When reviewing a noise album I normally attempt to get a feel for the concept, for what the record is supposed to tell us, if anything. The concept of Empty Churches is free-form and loose, very catholic, we're left very unsure as to whether or not an empty church is a good thing.

The soundscapes, however, leave no room for questions about their quality, as they're absolutely stellar. 

father begins with the sound of a diseased organ accompanied by high-pitched drones and what appears to be faded, stretched-out samples. The sounds stop suddenly and transition into a more Merzbow-influenced harsh-noise style, with added melodic accompaniment by a church organ. The track ends with slightly out of place, spacey, ambient synth noise.

son is much quieter, more contemplative. The organs is more up front, presenting a dreadful, echoing melody. The track ends with metallic scraping and decaying, spidery ambiance.



The album concludes with holy ghost, a more pedestrian take on harsh-noise. Still, it is not without its merit. The tones are interesting, the synthwork almost impossibly gloomy.




This is noise-makers noise, created with immense craft and textural beauty. I highly recommend you take the time to download.

An Interview With Richard Ramirez-Matzus

Richard Ramirez-Matzus, though not the earliest of American noise musicians, is certainly one of the artists that solidified it as a genre. Active since the late 80s, both solo and in a myriad of groups, his output is as prolific as it is nigh-legendary.

As well as constantly creating and releasing music, Ramirez-Matzus creates innumerable pieces of avant-garde fashion in his own collections, for a variety of celebrities, and sells said works to certain fashion houses (Comme des Garcons for example).

I normally ask the people I interview to introduce themselves, but I have a feeling that readers are going to be well aware of you.  So, instead, I’ll ask how married life is treating you?

It is wonderful. I am married to the most amazing man (Sean Matzus) that I've ever met. He and I have known each other for about 10 years prior to becoming a couple. We were friends first. We found comfort in each other after both of us were ending long-term bad relationships. We fell in love. We've been together almost five years now.

Would you describe your musical work as being thematically consistent? So much seems to be focused on sexual imagery?

I think there are certain projects that stick to a certain theme/inspiration. Some are focused on gay sexual images. Some are inspired by horror films. It really depends on the project. There are some that have "straight" sexual images too. Early on I started using gay sex art because I saw so many of women used and thought "why not men?" I know I'm not the only gay noise artist out there. I liked it and went for it. No regrets about doing so either. There are a lot of Giallo themed releases, but it's my obsession. It's my favorite movie genre.

You seem to spend a lot of time working in a group setting, playing in Black Leather Jesus, Priest in Shit, etc. What does collaboration offer you that solo work does not?

I am not always fond of working solo. I love collaboration. I enjoy seeing what different ideas that come together can create. You know, at a point, whether it's working or not. Sometimes you can bring out things in each other during sessions. In a live setting, I prefer not to perform solo (Even though I've done it numerous times) because I have stage fright. I still do.

Tell me about your label, Deadline Recordings. What upcoming releases can we expect?


I started Deadline Officially in 1992. I started a label because at the time it was so difficult to find a label to release my work. I wanted to create a label that would also give new/newer artists a chance to get their work out.

Lately I have been focused on my label Room 2A. I am working on a Werewolf Jerusalem 20x disc set based on the Grand Guignol. I am working on a box set for The Ebony Tower as well. I am releasing a tape with Smell & Quim. I just released works by Ecco, Nundata, and Blood Eagle. I will be working with Vomir and The Rita again. I may be releasing a CD of my project, Random Escorts, as a split with The Rita. I'd like to eventually release a vinyl of Last Rape.

What music are you currently enjoying? What do you think we need to know about?

Personally, I listen to a lot of music that I've listened to since I was a teen. I listen to bands like The Jesus & Mary Chain, Cocteau Twins, The Fall, A Split-Second, Gene Loves Jezebel, Pale Saints, Bauhaus, Big Black, Wire, Close Lobsters, The Woodentops, The Mighty Lemon Drops, Foetus, The The, Echo & The Bunnymen, The Church, Skinny Puppy, Frontline Assembly, Galaxie 500, and others.

In experimental/noise, I'm a huge fan of The Rita, Vomir, Incapacitants, Kapotte Muziek, The Haters, Hijokaidan, The New Blockaders, S. Core, Skin Crime, Sewer Election, C.C.C.C., Sudden Infant, Alo Girl, EEE, P16.D4, Con-Dom, Mauthausen Orchestra, Murder Corporation, Dead Body Love, and others.

I would recommend that more people check out: Struggle Session, Ascites, Illicit Relationship, Grey Cell, A Week of Kindness, White Gloves & Party Manners, Serpentine, Cronaca Nera, Tanner Garza, Folter, Morte Cammina, Nascitari, Ecco, She Walks Crooked, The Ebony Tower, Tellurian Fields, Big Hole, Female Pedophile, Ginger Cortes, Anonymous Masturbaudioum, Le Cose Bianche, Alison Rowe, Blood Eagle, Wet Dream Asphyxiation, Brutalest, Sandy Ewen, Nightmare Castle, and others (too many to keep listing).


I’m also very interested in your pursuits in fashion design. What do you hope to achieve? What is fashion to you?

Fashion is your own personal style. Many people detest fashion, but we all are a part of it. We each have our own style. It doesn't have to be "high-fashion." I started making clothes when I was a teen. I hated what was out there for men. So I went to thrift stores and reworked found items. I made them into something I liked. Some female friends liked what I did and asked me to do stuff for them. In 1997, I decided to start my own fashion line. I chose the name Richard Saenz because "Saenz" is my grandmother's maiden name. I didn't want to use my real name for obvious reasons.

I showed my first collection in spring of '98. I've been doing it ever since. I also design/co-design other labels- Automatism, Mad Recital, and Dismembered Quietly.

I am not trying to be a household name or big in the industry. My work is avant-garde fashion. It's not for everyone and that's okay. I was inspired by the designers I like: Rei Kawakubo (Commes De Garcons), Martin Margiela, Junya Watanabe, Yohji Yamato, Susan Cianciiolo, and others. I sell my work in Japan, Poland, and soon in Indonesia. I mainly deconstruct clothing and give it a new life.

You’re going to be putting up pieces from your Automatism collection for sale online, it seems. What inspired this collection? The pieces I’ve seen feel very cinematic, kind of reminiscent of THX 1138 or something. The lines look cleaner. What can you tell us about Automatism?

Automatism is a line I decided to do because I had so many ideas that didn't necessarily fit within a themed collection for my Richard Saenz or Mad Recital labels. With those two I have deadlines to meet. Automatism was to be a label that I do when I want and didn't have to fit within a season or a theme. Soon I will be selling all of my labels online. We are working on a site now.

What kind of people do you want to wear your clothes? On a related note, if you could dress any single person, living or dead, who would it be?

Someone who wants to wear something that one might ask, "What in the hell is that?!"

I sell to people who want to stand out in a good way. Someone not wanting the same old boring shit you see everywhere. Something that you can see someone has done by hand. Wearable art.

I have sold my work to a few celebrities but it doesn't interest me at all.

If I could design for any person, it would be Isabella Blow. She has passed. She was someone that loved avant-garde designers and wore them straight off the runway. Nothing really altered. She wore them as the designers envisioned.


Any final words?

Thank you for this opportunity. 

http://deadlinerecordings.tictail.com/

https://richardramirez.bandcamp.com/

NETMD- Dead Mall, 2005 Review

Vaporwave is, perhaps, the best example of exterior music. By this I mean that it's appeal lies not in the sounds that are presented to the listener, but in the imagery and ideas attached to the sounds. Some might call it conceptual, but because vaporwave acts don't normally offer much of a unified concept, I think that's somewhat erroneous.

Occasionally vaporwave albums will attach themselves to unified concepts, Housewares by 식료품groceries and most of the Dream Catalogue releases, for example. These conceptual albums never really sat well with me, though. Attaching a concept to the mostly shallow sound of vaporwave eliminates the ability for the mind to wonder.

Dead Mall, 2005, however, is an album that has managed to attach conception to vaporwave in the right way.

NETMD present a trip through a quiet, nigh-abandoned shopping mall. The sounds run the gamut from people talking, to distorted arcade noises, to remixed elevator music, to future funk. NETMD guide you through different locations in the mall, maintaining the ambiance through the use of constant, echoing footstep sounds.

The album's strength, of course, is not the sounds itself, but of the feelings they conjure. The concept is kept loose. Who was walking through this mall? Why are they there? Are the sounds of the mall imagined? What year is it?

I recommend this for listeners who want something to mull over, but don't expect much richness in sound.

Listen here.

Listen to this.

I've been radio silent for too long.

This post is simple, fantastic music that I'm currently enjoying and that I'd like to share. If you like anything you hear, please purchase it in some way. The underground needs you.


Serum Dreg- Impure Blood

Filthy, cavernous, reverb-drenched black/death. These arcane offerings truly capture something depraved and ugly about the human condition.

Winters In Osaka/Astro

Pulsing, cinematic urban ambient that blisters into a harsh noise assault. Equally influenced by American drone and Japanese noise. 

Bekëth Nexëhmü- De svarta riterna

Another excellent release from the prolific Ancient Records, the true lords of the underground. Beketh Nexehmu play very well produced anti-cosmic black metal. Submit to them.

Grav- Omhulda ondskans kretslopp

Another Ancient Records release. Fast, complex black metal with a hauntingly-beautiful clean guitar sound.

Funeral Parlor/Nihilarch split

A beautiful looking tape. Funeral Parlor's side is his trademark melancholy synth work. Nihilarch is much the same, only with a dose of power-electronics influence.

Niko Scorpio- Book of Flies Review

Niko Scorpio is a multidisciplinary artist from Finland, who works in the mediums of sound, photography, film, and dance. He's produced a metric shitload of experimental albums but this, as far as I know, is his only live work.

I was attracted to it based on its concepts, more specifically its packaging. Originally disclosed in 2004, Book of Flies was released in a hand-made addition of 13 copies, each housed in an ancient book, repainted for the new use.

I found this to be a remarkable joint abuse/embrace of the concept of seminal books, a statement, perhaps, of disparagement for the old and the dead.

I hoped dearly that the music would be as outstanding and interesting as the themes of the release. Fortunately, this ended up being the case. Book of Flies is a beautiful dark ambient piece chock full of dynamics and beauty.

It begins with the sound of wind, timeless like the speech of the old ones, synthesizer notes buried under the fogs. Electronic bleeps and bloops to remind us that this is, indeed music being made by a person. I found this section so relaxing and stimulating that, honestly, I forgot that I was supposed to be taking notes for a review.

Soon an organic, sensual rythm, played on what is presumably two rocks, joins in. The track begins to take shape around this rythm, synth lines and pure noise morphing into this pulsating, gyrating beast. It's truly hypnotic.

The song ends as it begins, with whisps of windy noise.

This is a good album to celebrate the death of an old regime, perhaps. Who knows, it might make you want to burn some books.

it can be found here

Cloudrap/Vaporwave/Oceangrunge/etc.

Recently I've spent some time reevaluating meme-music, basically anything that is primarily disseminated and consumed through the internet. This includes recent phenomenon like cloudrap, vaporwave, witchhouse, seapunk, oceangrunge, etc.

I originally put off this music as being either atonal oddities or boring attempts at anti-capitalist lampooning, but recently I've realized that it's fully capable of standing on its  own, a kind of dayglow, millennial cousin to 80s dark ambient.

 Below are some album recommendations. They might be completely obvious, but any music you haven't heard of is new music to you, I guess.

 $uicideboy$- I No Longer Fear the Razor Guarding My Heal 

One of the few cloud-rap albums that doesn't ape Yung Lean. There's real southern menace here. If these guys weren't totally crossfaded they'd slit your fucking throat.

 Oscob/Digital Sex- Overgrowth

Overgrowth is achingly brilliant, a naturalist, sample heavy work that's composition echoes Shoji Yamashiro's work on the Akira soundtrack.

Future Girlfriend- Pink Dance EP

Reverb soaked future funk, complete with anime samples.

DEIPHIX- The Pulser

The Pulser sits closer to noise than anything else on the list. Befitting of its title, its mostly made up of washes of sampled sound treated and coaxed into heavy, sludge metal rythms. I think this is what the kids call "oceangrunge."

Xavier Wulf- Project X

A little more aggressive and poppy than anything off of this list. Punk-inflected aggro hip hop with downtempo beats.

Valerian Springs- God Isn't Dead

Gorgeous, new-age influenced synths buried under thick ocean samples. Also ocean grunge.

Yung Fern- Offering

Picture Yung Lean inspired by a health dose of  Kierkegaard.

HENTAIBOYS- I AM ALONE

Bassy, catchy cloudtrap.

Do. Not. Sleep. On. Hentaiboys.

Striborg- "This Suffocating Existence" Review

Striborg, at its core, is meditation music. Melody and dynamics are forever pushed to the side in favor of pure atmosphere, creating a wall of sound designed to put listeners in a state.

The importance in Striborg's recorded material, the newest being This Suffocating Existence, lies not in its sound at all, but the effect it has on its listeners psyche. Because of this, I refuse to talk about the sounds themselves. That would be doing the band a disservice.

Instead, I will surmise, in one sentence, the spiritual effect This Suffocating Existence had on me during its run time.

Realizing Your Bones Will Soon Be At Home Among Dirt and Wood.