Once upon a time there where 2 whitches.
They made a passionate dark ambient/dark ethereal album on Cold Meat Industries under the moniker AGHAST. Then just as suddenly, they went thier seperate ways.

Here is the newest release from one of those members Andrea Haugen.

A Far cry from Agahst, this album presents us with 10 tracks of medieval folk, tinged with metal and electronic moments. Hypnotizing vocals, passionatley bring you on a pagan journey through ten tracks of epic music.

High-lights include "my visual world" a synth driven minimal electronic peice, flowing in and out of rythms. "Celtic Crows", A tribal drum oriented gothic metal piece. All in all the album works as a whole and seems to be skirting the edges of gothic metal, and the experimental electronic scene. I look forward to hearing more by this group.

C.J Reaven Borosque brings us 11 tracks of disharmonic, off tune guitar, which is heavily processed, and full of pedal delay, distrotion and reverb.
The cds starts off very guitar heavy, with song oriented structures, and little noise. As the cd progresses it seems to find direction.

Unfortunatly everytime the cd finds a nice wall of noise, or thick cut up moments, it reverts to a off tune guitar picking, leading me to hope for it to move back to the repetitive, almost rytmic like samples of the earlier moments.
Highlight of the cd is the track "Surgeon, Corrosion Melt", which evolves quite nicely, and has alot of effects, basicaly blurring the source(thankfully) for most of the track. The ambient whitenoise in the back is amazing for most of the cd, unfortunatly the guitar tuning over the top ruins it for me.

Miba, a duo from the San Francisco Bay , bring us a glictchy, atmosperic, minimally rythmic compositon. Full of dark ambience, droning vocals, and yet also gracefull bell tones, idmism compositions, and floating vocals. Moments of moving sub-bass, and broken noise interupt the compositions, flowing in and out of the sturctures of the songs. The cd itself flows through the different aspects well, keeping us on an emotional roller-coaster of sorrow and joy. Each track going in a different direction so that the listener is kept aware of the general tone, but unable to assume what is next. Varied and highly enjoyable. The cd works well as a whole and seems out of place in a seemingly art-rock/academic noise area. This would appeal more to the fans of such acts as VROMB or ORPHX, and labels such as Hymen, M-Tronic, Warp, ect.

This is Manufactura's second album, and its first on Hive. It is a split release with Manufactura's own label(along with Scott from Converter), Aurical media.

Featuring a Aghast Veiw remix, and additional work from both Daniel Myer(haujobb, cleen, ect), and Scott Sturgis( converter, Pain Station) This cd varies greatly over its length.

What it does seem to be is consistent on a heavy bass sound. Moving from heavy rythmic noise, to vocal driven moments of noisy ebm, and decent moments of synth driven ambient soundscapes. Musicaly well produced, my only gripe is the samples at the begining of some of the songs. seems like they are a little out of place, or even ruin certain songs. Listeing to a girl scream tends to turn me off, since it seems like an old hat, due to the prevelant amount of American Pe that uses it.
All in all though this cd is highley recomended, and I am looking forward to the next installment, and a live preformance.

Totakeke is another great project of Frank Mokros(Synth-etik, Ativ). This one released on Frozen Empire Media. Coming in a slim jewel case this cd has 7 tracks, 2 of which a remixes of the title track by Imminent, and Klangstabil(antzen, MHZ). This cd starts off with a droning ambient soundscape and moves into a rythmic mixture of drum-n-bass, and idm. As each track unfolds the cd continues to have soft over-lying synths and droning backgrounds, which set it apart from the bombastic rythmic noise of synth-etik. Not as to say that the drums aren't present but up until the last track they are more subdued, giving a more relaxed feel to the cd. Moving in and out of generes, this cd is complex and highly enjoyable.