Lucio Morandi sounds like a new name in the experimental music genre but this recording was made in 1991 as an alias of a prolific sound artist more commonly known as Minóy. Stanley Keith Bowsza passed in 2010, before this, in his time releasing material he released many tapes under his own label Minóy Cassetteworks and many other well-known labels of the late 80's and early 90's.

After his death, a lot of the material that was unreleased was handed over to Phillip Klingler, who may be better known as the recording artist PBK. The material from this digital release was found in one of the boxes and remastered by PBK in 2017.

The release is titled Academy Of Secrets and is broken down into the following parts.

Tracks 1-4 History Is Constructed Through Reproduction. What Is Unreproducible Is Unknown:

This part of the release contains what could be a soundtrack to a Horror or Sci-fi film or TV show from the late 80's or early 90's. Orchestral sounds with some digital effects and some excellent dreamy ambient interludes. This music could easily have been used in more recent shows like Stranger Things or some of the recent 80's inspired movies like The Void.

Tracks 5-9 Giovanni Della Porta And The Hidden Laws Of Nature (Independent Of The Laws Of God).

On this part of the release, a similar but much more menacing noisy theme is apparent through out tracks 5 through 7. Track 8 begins noisy and ends in much more chill ambient / orchestral environment. Track 9 continues where 8 left off and finishes up the release nicely.

Minóy is one of those artists who has a large catalog and was very well established as an excellent musician in the field. With the project Lucio Morandi he has shifted things a little bit into a more orchestral approach. This release is an excellent introduction to the project and I hope that PBK has more releases hidden in his box of tricks.

Macronympha is now Joe Roemer and Leo Sabatto (also known as Armenia) working together long distance and creating some of the best harsh noise available at this moment in time.

Body Stress is a newer harsh noise musician from Copenhagen. Body Stress is creating an excellent wall of sound in the same vein maybe not as cut-up but still pleasing to the ears for folks that like this type of stuff.

Vile Affections Pt.1 is two grueling sides of harsh noise on which may be the best sounding "lathe" I've ever heard. This 7" comes packaged in a nice hand-made cover with some excellent collage work.

This one is limited to 10 copies and may be pretty hard to get your hands on but if you can find this one it is well worth the effort.

When Monorail Trespassing releases a new album from an artist I have never heard I usually end up frantically searching the web for more information about them. Jon Borges is probably one of the top 3 label curators in my personal opinion.

A new name (for me) that appeared on his release schedule was Torba. I was very interested in the project when I saw the Musique Concrète label attached to the genre and I also discovered they have been around since at least 2009, shame on me for not finding him sooner.

This tape titled Laavg Drjòt contains samples of several experimental artists from over the last century, these artists include Philip Corner, Curtis Roads, Mercury Hall and Uroruro.

The first track Laavg starts out with some quiet field recordings which are extremely relaxing sounds, I could personally be convinced that the sounds are of a boat resting on a lake at night and also of crickets in the surrounding area. After a few minutes of that unsettling but peaceful sound we are driven into a solid blast of noise.

The second track sounds almost like a continuation of the first but it has more quiet distant spoken parts and more expertly crafted noise.

Torba is a force to be reconned with and I'm sure he will not disappoint in future releases.

I have been familiar with Brett Lunceford's work as Stolen Light and Goose since the 1990's when I became obsessed with collecting the entire Troniks catalog. I then also began to discover his label Zaftig research which seemed to cease regular activity in about 2003. The label did continue to release its Christmas compilation until 2008, after that the label went quiet as did the projects with the exception of a few releases here and there on labels like Phage Tapes and taalem.

At this point, we come to the year 2017 which seemed fairly hopeless with everything going on in the political landscape. Early in the year though Dan Fox who runs the label Inner Demons announces he will be releasing some new work from some projects who have been dormant for some time. Projects like Fox's own Loss, 15 Degrees Below Zero and Stolen Light were announced in the new release lineup and hope had been restored to the world.

Stolen Light takes advantage of "field" recordings whether it be from television or just being out in an environment where a lot of activity is going on. In previous releases, the sounds surrounding these recordings can either be very noisy or subtle ambiance. With "Voices", Brett has utilized an approach that is somewhere on both spectrums. The first track Paranoia sounds like what a social anxiety attack feels like with the voices being clear in the beginning and the static building as time goes on. The noise at the end does almost fully envelope the voices by but they can still be heard in the background with no clear definition of what is going on.

The second track Communication And Commerce leads in with a much more dense layer of people chattering and talking in a loud restaurant or bar. The added noise on top is much more subtle this time but it works very well with this track. It is difficult to get good recordings in a crowded space with lots of sounds but Brett somehow manages to pull it off and make it interesting to listen to at the same time.

This is a great return of an understated artist in the experimental noise scene. My only complaint is the release is too short but since the label only does releases in the 3" CDr format it makes perfect sense. I hope to see Brett return to more long-form releases and there has been a rumor of resurrecting Zaftig Research, even if only for the Christmas Compilations.