Kevin Richard Martin aka The Bug writes about his new album Machines I-V release on Relapse: “ice cold and dystopian.” It celebrates “atmospheric pressure, and the joy of full body assaults, via oversized sound systems in undersized club rooms.” It sums up this entire mix.

A Tentative Playlist for the Believer .: Ad Interim :. I’ve been spending some time in and around the Monastery of Pombeiro in my hometown of Felgueiras, near Porto. This is a most special place brimming with natural beauty, a dream for 16mm film lovers and field recorders, tucked away in acres of green park and gentle forest, untouched for some 800 years. A few months ago, when preparing an interview with the honourable Mr. Byungsoo Yeh (a respected South Korean audiophile who is the world’s most credible maker of 1920’s Western Electric Horn replicas), I had a vision: a WE 16A Horn as the centre piece of a sound system installed in the center of the church, playing a hour long selection of ambient, neoclassical and experimental tracks of a liturgical disposition. To install a Western Electric 16A horn is a tremendous task, to make it sound as intended in a church of this size is no small deed. In order to improve stereo image and soundstage we will experiment with a number of extra speakers, driven by powerful tube monoblocks and specially prepared power supplies. Now this is a project. Oh, and we need to get the WE16A over here. The selection of tracks to play is starting to gain traction in my mind and heart; a special serving of ethereal and dramatic, incorporating organ and choirs, rich in orchestral and field recordings. This mix is a first attempt at stitching these sounds and feelings together. But not stopping here, the audio will be the soundtrack to an original presentation of video and lighting, which will showcase the monastery and the church’s breathtaking ornamentation in a way never felt/experienced before.

The Martyr of Fanaticism
José de Brito c.1895 “José de Brito intends to evoke, in this work, the terror of the Inquisition, provoking “a tremor in the whole body” as Rui Almedina, a critic from Porto, said when he came across the painting. The composition is organised in two diagonals that intersect – three men in black and the vulnerability of a naked female body. Under a focus of light, her nakedness articulates metaphorically with that of Christ on the cross. Projected by the light from the window on the back wall, martyr’s hallucinations arise, in a clear allusion to the ancient Christians in Roman circuses devoured by lions, as if from a screen, in reference to the novelty of the magic lantern or the latest cinematic experiences.
Realised in Paris and reproduced in ‘Ilustration Française’, this historical composition is a pretext for an erotic-dramatic nude painting, unusual in Portugal and resulting of an eleven year stay in France. Organised in contrasts of shadows, reference to a tenebrist memory or to a columbanesque aesthetic, some aspects of the realistic description are diluted in the little sore face of the girl or in the imprecise faces of the inquisitors, revealing an anti-clerical spirit, proper to a culture of end of century and announcer of republican values.
Connections can also be made with Gustave Courbet (L’Atelier du Peintre, 1855) or Edouard Manet (Déjeuner sur l’Herbe, 1863), in the marking of contrasts naked/dressed, white/black, plastic expedients transmuted into a vast composition of academic conventionalism where some symbolic intent is diluted in prosaic solutions, omitting the aesthetic proposals of the two French artists.” in National Museum of Contemporary Art – Museu do Chiado
Lisboa, Portugal

A collection of songs with piano. Most by experimental artists of course. Acoustic pianos, uprights to grands, to digitals, electronics and electrics, I just hit my electroacoustic playlist and selected 1 hour worth of often intriguing, yet beautiful pieces for a winter night in.  

Dean Roberts, the experimental composer and multi-instrumentalist who performed in the New Zealand noise trio Thela before embarking on a series of solo projects and records with Autistic Daughters, died this week, his labels Erstwhile and Kranky announced yesterday (August 14). Roberts died in his sleep, Erstwhile’s Jon Abbey wrote, citing the musician’s sister. Roberts was 49 years old. Roberts, then a teenager, formed Thela with Dion Workman and Paul Douglas in New Zealand in the early 1990s, rising to prominence through Auckland’s free‐music scene with a pair of albums for the U.S. label Ecstatic Peace! The first, 1995’s Thela, was a landmark of rock minimalism, blending post-hardcore guitar thrums with noise sonics and sparse percussion. The following year’s Argentina added ambient elements and glints of melody, attracting admirers of the coalescing post-rock network, as well as laptop composers like Fennesz, who later collaborated with Douglas’ Rosy Parlane project… (in Pitchfork) RIP DEAN ROBERTS (1975-2024)  

It isn’t often an artist seems to materialize from nowhere with a sound so disinterested in following any conventional rules that it inspires equal measures bafflement and stunnedness, but in 2012 with the release of the ‘Unknown Vectors’ EP, Sd Laika did just that. Taking the already alien sounds of grime music as a starting off point and abrasively twisting them into something even more unknowable, Laika had developed a sound that defied any easy categorization. 2 years later Dummy Magazine would come to refer to this record as ‘one of the most jaw-droppingly inventive debuts in recent memory and ought to be considered “the other ‘Cold Mission'” (in reference to the highly acclaimed Logos LP from 2013)’. After ‘Unknown Vectors’ Sd Laika became something of a mystery, disappearing from the scene altogether leaving behind him a small, but hardcore cult fanbase convinced they’d glimpsed something very special in those 5 tracks. It was only in 2013 when Tri Angle approached Sd Laika that a new record began to take shape. This record would end up consisting of songs Sd Laika had recorded in 2011 and 2012, songs he’d convinced himself would never see the light of day. For various reasons it looked likely Unknown Vectors would wind up being Laika’s one and only ever release, which is why we’re so excited (and as huge fans, relieved) to announce the release of his debut album ‘That’s Harakiri.’ RIP PETER RUNGE AKA SD LAIKA  

Got to put this mix together after listening to Islaja’s ‘Angel Tape’. Islaja, has recently opened for Godspeed You! Black Emperor in an April concert in Tampere in her home country. That must have been special. The concept around ‘Angel Tapes’ is also special. Islaja is Finnish artist Merja Kokkonen, and she has been around. Since her debut in 2004, she has released four albums on Finland’s Fonal Records, one on Thurston Moore’s Ecstatic Peace label, one on Berlin-based monika enterprise, one on Svart, as well as a series of singles on labels such as Not Not Fun and Root Strata. She is an inspired and accomplished artist worth keeping an eye. The majority of the tracks here are short and sweet, mostly instrumental, like interludes, bridges between movements, teasing for whats next. Exception to NY musician Grey Reverend’s beautiful contribution to The Cinematic Orchestra’s Jason Swinscoe project “In Motion #1”, for which he invited some of his favourite musicians and producers to provide soundtracks to or musical re-imaginings of seminal work by great avant-garde film-makers. Well worth of your attention – even after all these years – if you’re into timeless music of remarkable emotional reach.  

Cascadian Pulse Never assuming to be blown away by Cascadian Black Metal around the time it broke big sometime in the mid-00’s (in London it was playing in stores in Camden Town) and given the times of climate consciousness we’re living, this USBM movement is still deserving of its merits. Primordial Norse Black Metal is well known for atmosphere and ambiance (check early Kampfar, Windir and Enslaved) as it is for brutal assaults of demonic noise. The unadulterated beauty of the mountain come winter, the focus on atmosphere and the natural world play a big part in Cascadian as it did when a bunch of Norwegian kids decided to make bare chested photoshoots in -25 celsius snowy Bergen. Now some 15 years after the second wave, what bands like WITTR brought to the scene is nothing short of astonishing. Its not easy to redefine atmosphere and true emotion at this level of the underground, filled with brutality and chaos. This music, thriving with eco-centric messages has been largely responsible for attracting a whole new generation – from the biggest metal market – which at the turn of the millennium was hooked on Korn. This is not a mix of Cascadian BM, but some of the bands featured here have something to say in that regard, as they use the atmosphere, the message and the aesthetic that characterises it. A strong message is also what Manchester based band A Forest of Stars delivers with their fantastic 2010 album, their best track (ever) opening this mix. Its a lesson in Atmospheric Black Metal of the highest caliber, for the ages.  

Pola X turns 25 years Another small tribute to the great, late Scott Walker who scored the soundtrack for this little known French movie directed by Leos Carax and released in 1999. It stars the late Guillaume Depardieu and Catherine Deneuve. The music in the movie, mostly instrumental, is testament to the increasingly experimental second coming in Scott’s career (he is 56 at the time of its release). It also features contributions by Sonic Youth and Bill Callahan, who also has a cameo appearance in the film. The mix continues with some older bangers and new discoveries that were brought together by my purpose built library algorithm when digging for a combination of tags that included: art-rock, experimental, groove, polyrhythm. Mostly pleasant, happy tunes this time. Promise.  

Drone of Doom Not intended but now that they’re lined up together, all these artworks speak volumes. There’s a pattern. These structures, complex, crumbling, ominous and massive. The Drones of Doom are coming. They are massive and repeating, they are patterned and when they’re not, they are the most intense. Its too hot, its burning, the smell and the heat, its all immense and on tv for your amusement. Asva’s 2008 ‘What you Don’t Know is Frontier’ starts this epic journey, epic, profound, the work of patient introspection. This is cerebral music of the highest order. Do not reduce such monumental exercises of head music to elitism. Elitism is not what you know as societal, we must care but this is enlightenment, demanding of superior intellectuality and thought-provoking, multi-dimensional ceremonies. Stand still on the deserted beach, you must cancel the bar speakers at the distance, at all cost. Only then you will hear and you will be rewarded. Fear Falls Burning, Sunn O))) and Black Boned Angel couldn’t make for a better arrangement. I struggle to keep the 1h standard. You didn’t expect the chops? Sorry.  

MSC ‘What You Say Of Power’ Following up on their thunderous 2020 collab release ‘I Don’t Ever Want To Be Alone’ with Rhode Island’s iconic experimental metal group The Body (of which MSC’s Zac Jones has long been a touring member), twin brothers Zac & Isaac Jones present their debut solo full length as MSC, ‘What You Say Of Power’. Backed up by a monumental homemade sound system and sprung forth from a time of motorbike accidents, broken skulls & van thefts, ‘What You Say Of Power’ is dense and physical, and yet at times also beautiful and delicate. Growing up in a home in the rural Southeast of the United States where Religious music was the standard, the brothers found their own route, regularly listening to classical music before growing into fringe mainstays in the punk and metal scenes with projects such as GIANT and Braveyoung. They gradually evolved out of that scene, making their way towards the current project with the release of ‘I Close My Mind And Lock It’, two EPs released simultaneously that crystalised the musical elements and techniques loved and sought out by the brothers. The soundsystem the brothers have built plays a central part of the story of this record and MSC as a project “is an extension of our path in music together”. One thing that can hamper electronic acts is the lack of control over the soundsystem available at different spaces, so MSC are grappling with that problem with a solution that speaks to their hardworking characters: building their own and touring it.  ↗ Tobira Records  

Gorgonn ‘Six Paths’ Back at the beginning of 2023 Japanese producer Gorgonn released Six Paths, a dense, crushing collection of bass experiments and soundsystem artillery that serves as both a treatise on Japanese Buddhism and as the culmination of years of “sci-fi steppas” and collaborations with some of the most ferocious practitioners of heavyweight bass experimentation, including The Bug, JK Flesh, Hype Williams and DJ Scotch Egg. The six paths of the album’s title refers to the various branches that, according to the Japanese Buddhist faith, the soul is drawn down after death, depending on the karma accrued during one’s lifetime. Between an afterlife spent in the world of the celestials, or among the demigods, an eternity spent in suffering during a karmic cleansing in jigoku, a hellish purgatory presided over by the Japanese lord of death, Emma-ō, or a liminal existence wandering the earth as a hungry ghost, it’s reincarnation as another human, or animal, that Gorgonn takes aim at on the foreboding surge of a ‘Life As A Beast’ video. ↗ 180 Fact  

thoughts of hope?