DEAD SHALL RISE is the latest Flesh Eating Foundation album. It contains eleven new tracks which show really well how the trio is able to dominate guitar distortion and samples. Opening with the epic and melodically melancholic "The world revolves around you", F.E.F. set high the level of quality and they dare themselves to win the bet. The following track "For you" mix e.b.m. sounds and post punk attitude creating a melodic fast tune. "Dead shall rise" sounds like a cry of a not dead with obsessive bass lines and slow guitar solos. "Swallowed" and "Disappointed" sound like rotten robotic anthems with nice melodies and piano inserts. "Truth to be told" and "Blood us dry" sound like Killing Joke on acid. "Slow death of decency" is a crawling epic distorted synth based tune which explode on the final part. "Whe it all comes down" and "Disconnect me" are catchy tunes with electro industrial attitude. The closing bonus track "...And dance" sounds like a classic 80s e.b.m. tune also inspired by Alien Sex Fiend. DEAD SHALL RISE is a really nice album and I enjoined it. Try it, it could be yours for only 5'¬!

I'm sorry it took me a while to write this review, but sure in the meanwhile I've had the time to dedicate many listenings to this weird band coming from Poland. Brasil & the Gallowbrothers Band reminded me of some open musicians' collective operating here and there and with their roots stably planted in the seventies. We're not talking about freak-rock or anything close, this music is much closer to ambient/new age music or to movie soundtracks and i dare you to deny it's not easy to imagine a movie during fifty minutes length of this work. This band consists of four multi-instrumentists playing harmonica, flute, voice, guitar, marimba, synth, samples and several other things. The cd is a really freaky experience, the instrumental interventions come in and go out really gently and are well melted with the field recording, despite their psychedelic nature they never become too old-fashioned. After a twenty minutes opening track that grows like an acid trip, the surprise comes from a pop-psychedelic folk tune with vocals and a quite simple melody. The third song brings back to a quasi kraut atmosphere while the fourth episode has a particular song structure and brings the band into a diluted atmosphere. The closing episode reminded me a lot of Faust and by some means I'm tented to say these musicians have a lot in common with them and Can above all for what concern the musical approach to a "whatever feels good" idea. A soft and old-fashioned trip, nice.

Despite the fact that this is an artist often taken as an example of an hypertrophic production, it tooks him four years for completing this new release.
The impact for this long, 60 minutes, track is demanding because this track reveals a complex structure with layers of field recordings including: insects, cars, various nature sounds that develops from a quiet soundscapes into almost noise territories and ending with a quiet summer soundscapes shored up with the sound of cars passing by. This work is constructed as a work of musique concrete: birds sings used as loops, small noises used to enhance the sound palette and the soundscape evolving slowly as in a process. It sounds like a meditation on what we could listen if not submerged by all the noise of civilization, the recordings of the cars seems frightening and a prelude to something.
This work develops slowly, demanding an immersive and careful listening. Apart from any zen silence, or any bucholic contemplation on wildlife, this is a composition using field recording that is a journey into how noisy nature can be.
A music landscape for adventurous listeners.

p.s.: this album is available also as free download @ www.kojiasano.com

One of the first human being speaking about the "black snow" was presumably Anaxagoras: this notorious Pre-Socratic Greek philosopher on the basis of the diaphaneity of the water mantained even snow was black as black colour is tantamount to the absence of all colours. Likewise if the premises originating a concept is wrong and there is nothing mistrusting the opposite premises on the logical path, it's possible to be wrong in obtaining some results. This concept has fascineted a lot of artists and could be the conceptual framework of this Black Snow Epoch, the second sonorous calving coming from the reproductive session (just musical one!) between Henrik "Nordvargr" Bjorkk, a Swedish sound adulterator - maybe some of you have already listened something signed under other pseudonyms such as MaschinenZimmer 412, Hydra Head 9, Folkstorm or Toroidh (my favorite one, maybe for some musical nuances close to Raison d'Etre releases) -, quite famous for his artistic fruitfulness in the so-called "grey area" for being one of the first sound-artists dealing with the so-called "black industrial" music (something which some reviewer names "dark ambient" as well nowadays), whose nickname means "northern wolf", and the American noise artist Andy O'Sullivan aka Goat, whose researches are more noise-oriented as well, giving to birth this freaky creature called Goatvargr - you can imagine some bestial character, whose body is half-goat and half-wolf... -, which musically could stand as a sort of alternative path towards the thick woods of power electronics, black metal and cinematic ritual drones.

If you already have listened to their self-titled debut album, you'll easily notice this time the noise sounds more "organized" - just some parts such as the deafening Wall of Wolf tread on noises in a cacophonic way - as whereas this two beasts don't pummel each other, the atmospheric grips intertwined with heavily dragged metallic marches have been preferred so that they finally emphasized the suggestions and somewhat sinister fascination of this gloomy record, alternating the feral gaits of those animals and the disquieting glacial silence with terrific buzzing or quartering through voices which sometimes sounds human, sometimes turn into more brutish timbres (have a listen to the initial Goatsbane/Scapewolf - nice wordy trick for a title! - for a thorough sample of such a transmutation...) and reaching the highest peak in the almost solemn final anthem of A Black Drum Droning. By rewording sleevenotes printed on the booklet (you can turn it into a poster with the drawing on front-cover by French), "during the black snow epoch, the true hunters will pursue"...

Access to Arasaka is the project name of Rob Lioy, based in Rochester, New York. This is Access to Arasaka's second full release on Tympanik after 'Oppidan' in 2009. Taking his name from the 'Cyberpunk 2020'³ off-shoot card game 'Netrunner,' it's no surprise that ATA's William Gibson/'The Matrix' fueled 'void()' album is as cybercore as you can get, and more deserving of that genre label than most it has been ascribed too. What I initially imagined to be another awkward melding of glitch an ambient before I heard the CD has turned out to be something else indeed.

In listening to 'void()' one is struck with just how well everything is done. There is perfect integration and meshing of the rhythmic glitch elements with the synth-sonics. Much of it is very spacious too, and endlessly intriguing. In lot music along these lines that I've been exposed to, especially of late, there is a tendency toward repetition in one form or another leads to ennui. Not so here. Things are constantly morphing, shifting, changing. There is no bombast or pretentious electronic pyrotechnics. Subtle is the encrypted code of this milieu. Over the sixteen tracks on this album there is a rich variety of mood and flavor while remaining faithful to its theme. 'void()' is the dark, cold ambience of cyberspace pierced by the semi-random intrusions of thousands of hackers. To a great degree cinematic, this could easily be the soundtrack of a rather advanced, cerebral computer game. The only human element in the music is the brief vocal sample which surfaces occasionally as a transmission from afar.

I am amazed at how quickly this album passed in time too; a little under an hour in length, it seemed like less than half that. Then again, maybe time is altered in cyberspace. This is one helluva great disc, with a high replay factor, and for those who prefer headphone or earbuds, it will surely blow your mind in a most sublime way. If you're looking for something beyond 'Blade Runner,' beyond 'Akira,' beyond 'The Matrix,' then thrust yourself into (the) 'void()'. It will surely swallow you up. Highly recommended.