Are you ready for thirty eight minutes of noise anarchy? Natiho Toyota and Kouhei deconstruct improvised noises(hisses and various electrical noises for the first and various percussing objects mixed with tones and drones for the second) just to give sound to what seems to be their own personal hell. The two Toyota's tracks "Phantasmagoreal #1" and "Phantasmagoreal #2" are really disturbing and evocative and during their fourteen minutes you'll be attacked by hordes of ectoplasmatic non beings. The three Kouhei's tracks, instead, are more noise loops based: three growing beasts that seem to live a life of their own. For the lovers of the genre...

And the swiss folks are back ladies and gentlemen, with an even more radical experimental record. Teleform, aka Bernd Schurer, releases his second CD on Domizil and takes one step further in the un-linear explotation of noise, the un-establishment of traditional song composition and the most uncompromising deconstructivism. Balancing on the thin line between soft experimental and harsh noise, "cosine f" runs over you for 37 sharp minutes with 35 anonymous tracks (playable in shuffle mode, if you please) made up of buzzes, digital distortion, jitter, crackles and other random hardcore noise. And talk about being true to continuing experimentalism, check out their flickering website, if you dare!

Austrian label Mego just released the debut 12" of ddkern, drummer and Dj also collaborating with Fuckhead, BulBul and Angelika Koehlermann's Wipeout. This vinyl (achieved with the help of Reverend Crook on keys/gear) delivers some quite cool minimal techno with non-aggressive kick tracks and delay-processed layers of sounds, samples and some noises. They attempted the terms "old-school" and "fusion techno" to describe it, but it really is dubby ambient-mini(mal)-techno. So "fusion techno" will work only if by fusion you understand "mix of different things", but not if you're thinking about Pat Metheny. I enjoyed this record, especially the last of the six tracks (that is if side A is what I thought was side A ;-) where a little more experimental sounds (smooth, almost static-like noises) step in and make the whole thing even more interesting, rhythmical and cryptic...
PS The guy loves cats and there's a cat on the round sticker ;-)

The Soil Bleeds Black's side project (together with Psychonaut 75) called Hexentanz (the dance of the witches, in german) is an evil sounding collaboration that aims at «expressing the mythic image of sorcery and witchcraft as it stood in the Middle Ages». For all you vinyl-hungries out there, here is a 7" with silver and black art work. The opening track is an occult and almost tribal chant (I keep thinking of witches dancing around the fire) with blasphemic voices that really seem to come from ancient rites. The second track could well be a more shadowy TSBB composition. Side B opens with scary processed voices and droning dark ambient sounds, and continues with more percussive marching peace and flutes. Again very close to what TSBB's last record sounds like, except this is a lot darker and devilish, and the vocal parts (not TSBB's vocalist) are more like recited. This EP wouldn't look bad in the Cold Meat Industry catalogue and if it came out at the time of the Blairwitch Project these guys would have probably got the gig.

The Riddick brothers are back with what probably is their most medieval album to this date, just one more work of love in the plethora of releases since their beginning, in 1992. 11 tracks on two sides (yes you've read right, this is a thick phat 12" LP, and for those who just don't get it -the vinyl thing I mean-, there will be a CD version of this record coming in the summer on World Serpent Distribution) with an array of traditional Renaissance percussive instruments (kick drum and tambourine mostly, but also timpani, woodblocks and stuff like that), string instruments (harpsichord, lyre/lute, acoustic/nylon guitar, dulcimer/zither etc) and lots of different breath instruments (flutes, pan-pipes, recorder, bagpipe/cornamuse/bladder pipe -only once, on side A- etc), as well as jew's harp, organ -just once, on side B-, bells and more. [I may have missed, added or wrongly identified some in the list, because there are some many, and they're so alike and so rare]. Eugenia Houston, with her high-pitch voice (ideal for this kind of chants), has pretty much taken over the singing job. While the twins orchestrate the songs, only occasionally do they contribute with their deeper vocal tone to remind what TSBB are also known for. But like I said earlier, this is quite definitely their most medieval/folkish work ever. It sounds like they put the dark vein aside and concentrated on actually quite solar folk tunes, embracing an authenticity that I have previously only heard from La Camerata Mediolanense. And because the italian guys I just mentioned are among the leaders in the genre, if you are into middle-age sonorities you should know better and make sure that this record becomes part of your collection, no matter if on CD or LP.