DEAYCAST Reviews : MONOCHROMACY “Living Posture” CD (Stay Strange SD. 2018)

 

DEAYCAST Reviews : MONOCHROMACY “Living Posture” CD (Stay Strange SD. 2018)

Stay Strange SD Collective artist Esteban Issac Flores brings eight heavy, dissonant and atmospheric guitar based worlds oscillating between drone , noise, metal and industrial under tbe MONOCHROMACY moniker . Flores elegantly creates haunting and dissonant cinematic spaces for a wall of destructed waves of swelling chaos, choked screams decay into walls of thick oppressive fog of tone, climax and eventually swell back down into dreary, pulsating tones. Sine waves shifting into the horizon encapsulate a distant haze of confusion and dread.

On “Living Posture” , Flores creates a deep and complex tension between the various sonic elements, which really doesn’t ever falter throughout the eight tracks of dreary doom. Some of these atmospheres could call back to Times Of Grace era Neurosis (my favorite period of one of my favorite bands ) , SUNN O)))) , Earth etc but that would be sort of a lazy comparison as Flores has clearly refined his sound to something not heard before in the tropes of heavy music.

 

Monochromacy “Living Posture” CD (photo from artist)

Monochromacy leaves the “tough guy” bullshit of extreme music far away in the trash for a delicate and intelligent experimental offering. Flores has clearly honed a unique philosophy and approach to present the listener with a tense, yet refreshingly present decaying burning structure of mammoth and intimidating take on noise-influenced, drone-metal. The plethora of unique territories covered on this record while maintaining an overall dark and dreary cinematic vibe is rather impressive to say the least.We are never left without a tight sonic line pulled taught across our reality/neck wth ever shifting tone, pulse and intention. what is going on? Where did he leave us atop this  fog  ridden, dank mountain of dissonance and confusion? What is GOING ON! Wow and just like that it’s over, what a listen.Absolutely essential ride for all fans of the heavier side of noisy guitar works and heavier dissonant, cinematic music in general.

Buy The CD Here! 

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DECAYCAST Reviews: Blaine Todd & Andrew Weathers (Houdini Mansions, 2018)

DECAYCAST  Reviews: Blaine Todd & Andrew Weathers (Houdini Mansions, 2018)

This split begins with Andrew Weathers on the A side offering three experimental guitar and synth offerings, beginning with the track “Llano” which offers spacious, minimalist guitar work complemented through warm buzzing, swelling synthesizers. The synths and guitars play wonderfully off each other in a barren, pulsing, slightly unsettling tone poem. 

The second track, and standout of the tape “Mugwort Moon” is a huge, throbbing synth number with insect-like rattling pulses that transport the listener into a parallel universe of floating drones. Weathers synthesizes a perfect union of tone and spaces to create lush, dream-like compositions with heavy and dissonant overtones. 

The Blaine Todd Side of the split is more a take on traditional Americana psychedelia  rendered  through reverb drenched folk thrusts. Todd skates across a lush and morose pond, blending dripping, cavernous guitar strums, backed with distant unsettled, sad  vocals creating a fever dream style of psychedelic alt-pop. Gentle plucks and minimalistic events within the body of the guitar bloom into lush waves of intonation, a perfect compliment to the slightly more abstracted works of Andrew Weathers on the A side. Todd’s music is slightly more on the morose side of things where the Weathers side feels  both dissonant and uplifting at the same time, a  truly unique and dynamic pairing.

The label itself describes the offering as:

“A striking document of wide open loneliness, this split release by Andrew Weathers & Blaine Todd contains timeless works about Wobblies, the Staked Plain, etc.

Thoughtful, pensive songwriting blends with artisan-crafted dronework, and undercurrents of electronic wizardry.”

All in all, great release  from Houdini Mansions, a hybrid label, review site and radio show/ podcast. Follow them today and keep a lookout for more from this exciting collective, as well as both artists individually. 

DECAYCAST Reviews : Expose Your Eyes “Brain Pan” Cassette (Aphelion Editions, 2018)

DECAYCAST Reviews : Expose Your Eyes “Brain Pan” Cassette (Aphelion Editions, 2018)

 “Brain Pan” is a compilation album of sorts spanning nearly three decades of the Expose Your Eyes moniker via Paul Harrison. This long-form cassette explores harsh, heavy manipulated noise/voice, a myriad of field recordings, slow moving and cavernous drone and ambient works, low-fi voice manipulations via  cut up and  distortion methods, glistening warm synth poems clamored against harsh noise mayhem; the  stylistic shifts throughout the release exposing the listener to a mixtape style of experimental styles. 

Standout track “Rend” blends heavily delayed percussive events with a mid-toned whirring, slowly building tension and anxiety and almost seems to crawl out of the speaker into an unsuspecting nervous system. Other tracks such as “Red River 2” offer a more sombre, melodic approach, while still retaining elements of experimentation and loose compositional structure.  The label describes the process of choosing from the vast sea of material presented to them by the artist, “For this album, Paul sent me a whole stack of recordings that I then carefully sifted through to select the pieces that would finally be presented here, and I’m really pleased with the results we’ve achieved.  

Go ahead and delve deeper into the vortex for a whirlwind of (un)easy listening.  

It will leave you washed up on a distant shore of your consciousness, perspectives altered. 

Curious, bizarre and wonderful… “

All in all “Brain Pan” explores a wide variety of experimental sounds and really theres something for everyone on this cassette from  the uneasy, nauseating sounds and sights of one (cough cough) Smell & Quim (who Harrison was a member of) to the lush, hypnotic, Organ and synthesizer forward dronings of early  Tangerine Dream. Pick it up on limited edition full color cassettes or  CD’s from the label HERE

 

 

 

 

DECAYCAST Reviews : Happiness Forever “II” (Mondo Anthem, 2018)

Happiness Forever “II” (Mondo Anthem)

Washington’s longstanding experimental stalwart William Rage returns with a heavy, cinematic offering for the Mondo Anthem imprint titled “II” or “Mondo Anthem II“. On this release, Rage crafts two slow, churning, heavy, dynamic works blending what sounds like synthesizers, field recordings, and noise sources to an interesting and unique sonic end. Overall, the sound of Happiness Forever is heavy, yet varied, textured yet articulate. A low ominous drone oscillates throughout the first side while seething, weighted atmospheric textures glaze over the drones in a hypnotic nuanced mixing style. The A side quickly builds with intensity as sine wave communications cast themselves far beyond the listener into the inner workings of the brain; something is wrong, I’m feeling uneasy.

The B side, titled “I Left My Electronic Heart In San Francisco (Recreation Of A Live Recording Of A Performance That Never Happened)” begins where the A side left off so to speak, with dense, field recordings and ominous crawling synths, which seem to sputter in and out like a rumbling, thirsty dying motor. Slow arpeggiations sing next to a thick, resonated clicking with background swells which create the perfect texture; the perfect song of alienated confusion. Mutated and garbled voices peak through the murky swamp, enveloping atop themselves and then decaying into the darkness, a different, warped experience every time. Truly beautiful sound composition.

“II” never becomes too much of one feeling, it’s always mutating while maintaining an overall fluency to its sounds and composition that make “II” a dense and refreshing listening experience for fans of many styles of electronic music. From musique concrete, to drone, to more cinematic styles of electronic composition, Happiness Forever is a which heavy fog we all must get lost in for the duration of this tape.

Follow MONDO ANTHEM HERE

DECAYCAST Presents: Thirty-Seven MORE Genre-Defying & Impactful Releases of 2018: Part Two

DECAYCAST Presents: Thirty-Seven More Genre-Defying & Impactful Releases of 2018: Part Two.

Presented more or less without comment. Please seek out these records and  support the artist in any way you can. We are NO authority on anything,  and everyone should make their own lists and thanks for reading ours! Without ado. Check out all these records, most are in print at least digitally.

8ulentina “Eucalyptus” (Club Chai)

Anatomy “S/T” (Self Released)

Austin Davis & How I Quit Crack “Far Away” (Noisequanoise)

Avola “Zone”

Bonedust “Fruit of the Ash” (Dirt Palace)

Caspar Brotzmann Massaker ‘Black Axis’

Chuck Johnson “Blood Moon Boulder” (Scissor Tail)

Collections Of Dead Souls “The Vault 12​/​2017 – 10​/​2018” (Self Released)

Daughters “You Won’t Get What You Want” (Ipecac)

Divtech “Spit Blood” (Realicide Youth Records)

Echo Beds “Buried Language” (The Flenser)

E.W. Wainwright “African roots of Jazz” (Private Press)

Fire-Toolz “Skinless X-1” (Hausu Mountain)

Gaylord “The Black Metal Scene Needs To Be Destroyed” (Blackened Death)

Gurrumul  “Djarimirri: Child of the Rainbow” (Skinnyfish)

Hama “Houmeissa” (Sahel Sounds)

Keiji Haino + Sumac “American Dollar Bill – Keep Facing Sideways, You’re Too Hideous To Look At Face On” (Thrill Jockey)

Klara Lewis and Simon Fisher Turner “Care” (Editions Mego)

Licking Wounds “Licking Wounds” (Phage Tapes)

Lingua Ignota “All Bitches Die” (Self Released)

Lizard Bitch “Souvenir”

Lonnie Holley  “MITH” (Jagjaguwar)

Meitei   “Kwaidan” (Self Released)

Mika Vainio + Ryoji Ikeda + Alva Noto “Live 2002{” (Noton)

Neckbeard Deathcamp “White Nationalism Is For Basement Dwelling Losers” (Prosthetic Records)

Nomadic War Machine “Always/Forever”

Nursalim Yadi Anugerah  “Selected Pieces from HNNUNG” (Hasana Editions)

Ragana / Thou “Let Our Names Be Forgotten” (Feast Of  Tentacles)

Ricardo Donoso “In Search of Lost Time” (Inverted Audio)

Senyawa “Tanggalkan Di Dunia” (Sublime Frequencies)

Thou “Magus” (Sacred Bones)

Ulfur, Oren Ambarchi, Kara-Lis Coverdale, Alex Somers

“Arborescence {remixes}” (Figureight)

Various Artists “Ex Abyss I” (Evening Of Light)

This is by no means whatsoever meant to be comprehensive in any way just some records that we played many times throughout the  year that we’re specifically released in 2018!

Read PART ONE HERE

DECAYCAST : Fifty + Impactful Genre- Defying Music Releases of 2018 : Part One

DECAYCAST : Fifty + Impactful Genre Defying Music Releases of 2018 : Part One
*part two to be released Feb 2018

2018 was a wild year for music and the world. Bad politics and worse people coming to positions of power often spark good art. Here’s fifty genre defying releases from 2018 that we at Decaycast found absolutely exceptional.
Please seek these albums out and support the artists as directly as possible!

700 Bliss “Spa 700” (Halcyon Veil)

Akvan “بلک متال آریایی” (Self Released)

Anna Luisa “Green” (Practical Records)

Attilo Novellino & Collin McKelvey “Métaphysiques cannibales” (Weird Ear)

Bbymutha “MD3” (Self Released)

Beast Nest “A History Of Sexual Violence” (Self Released)

Black Spirituals “Black Access / Black Axes” (SIGE Records)

Bonemagic “Cult Of The Red Vest” (Cult Love!)

The Breathing Light “Light Fast, Black Power!” (Self Released)

Burmese “Privilege” (Fuck Yoga Records)

CBN “Neblastya” (Phage Tapes)

Colin Bragg & Bill Pritchard “Andedyr” (Self Released)

Compactor “Technology Worship” (Oppressive Existence Recordings)

Conscious Summary “Exhaustions” (Skin Trade Recordings

Dental Work “Fog Of Summer Ghosts” (Placenta Recordings)

Dreamcrusher “Grudge2” (C-I-P)

Drew McDowall “The Third Helix” (Dias Records)

Eleh “Wear Patterns” (Self Released)

The Fathers “Sound Advice” (T/ECA)

Fletcher Pratt “Dub Sessions, Volume 4” (Crash Symbols)

Lara Sarkissian “Disruption” (Club Chai)

Girlz N The Hood ‘All 4 Nia’ (Self Released)

Golden Donna “Date Night” (Self Released)

Hiro Kone “Pire Expenditure” (Dias Records)

HIRS “Friends. Lovers. Favorites” (Self Released)

House Of Cake “House Of Cake” (Houdini Mansions)

Jeff Carey “Zero Player Game” (Ehse)

Jasmine Infiniti “Sis” (Club Chai)

Jonathan Snipes “The Nightmare” (Deathbomb Arc)

JPEGMAFIA “Veteran”  (Deathbomb Arc)

K 23 “Blacklight Sessions” (Fantasy 1)

Kepla & DeForrest Brown Jr. “The Wages of Being Black is Death ” (PTP)

King Vision Ultra “Pain Of Mind” (Self Released)

KK NULL “Pulsar X” (Self Released)

Kohinoorgasm “Synthwali and The War Empire” (Self Released)

Lunar Tomb “Tierra de las Brujas” (Distort Discos)

LSDXOXO “Body Mods” (Self Released)

Luke Stewart “Works For Upright Bass And Amplifier” (Self Released)

Lana Del Rabies “Shadow World” (Deathbomb Arc)

Macho Blush “Users Guide” (Tymbal Tapes)

Midmight “Cut Cut Cut Bruise” (Resipiscent)

Moira Scar “Wound World Part 1” (Psychic Eye)

Nightmare Difficulty “Run and Gun” (Self Released)

Open Mike Eagle “What Happens When I Try To Relax”

ONO “Your Future Is Metal” (American Damage)

Portal “Ion” (Profound Lore)

Russell E.L. Butler “The Home I’d Build For Myself And All My Friends”

Ryan King “How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love To Bomb” (Serious Hype)

SAN CHA “Capricha Del Diablo” (self released)

Serpentwithfeet “Soil”

S.B.S.M “Leave Your Body” (Thrilling Living)

The Sorcerer Family “Hidden Rooms” (Stay Strange)

TAHNZZ “XILA” (Self Released)

The Bedroom Witch “Triptych” (Self Released)

Turkish Delight “Howcha Magowcha” (I Heart Noise)

Voicehandler “Light From Another Light” (Humbler Records)

White Boy Scream “Remains” (Crystalline Morphologies)

Witches Of Malibu “Fever Dreams” (Self Released)

Yves Tumor “Safe In The Hands Of Love” (Warp)

V/A: “Energies” (Practical Records)

V/A: “Stable Submissions, Vol 2” (Stable)

 

Decaycast Reviews: CONSCIOUS SUMMARY “EXHAUSTIONS” (SKIN TRADE RECORDINGS, 2O18)

Decaycast Reviews: CONSCIOUS SUMMARY “EXHAUSTIONS” (SKIN TRADE  RECORDINGS, 2O18)

The newest work from LA’s CONSCIOUS SUMMARY carves a sharp and distinct  lineage from their previous works to this newest release from California based SKIN TRADE RECORDINGS. “Exhaustions”  encapsulates the delicacy and intimacy in which Samur  Khouja, the person behind Conscious Summary handles his sounds.  The first side, “Commitment To An Extinction” begins with a low, bubbly rumble just below a present volume and continues to undulate at a stasis-like pacing of a slow churning dark, gurgling sounds interjected with sharp and poignant shards of violent sorcery. The aggressively present scraping eventually gives way to a more subtle, peaceful tone poem of pulsating drones. We  are left in a contemplative, peaceful place, but not for long, a new dawn is on the horizon, one we did not plan for. The peaceful poem turns into a dynamic battle for space and form; shivering blades of sonic chaos, accented through monstrous  spurts of distorted, harsh, frequency battles, which slowly and effortlessly take control as background synthesizers pulse, hum, and vibrate with ascending tones while the chaos ensues.  After a brief but present harsh section the listener is once again placed into a new identity, which gently, calming efforts of swelling sine waves, which are so delicate and nuanced they almost weep to the listener in a morose, subtle, nuanced phrase.

The B side offers more voice forward pieces with stretched voices and textured, articulated synth happenings  work in a high tension psychedelic harmony similar to the oncomings of a long, desert experienced LSD trip, but this psychedelia is sonic, and not  chemical based. Through masterfully mixed and layered synth and voice sections, Khouja creates  high tension electronic happenings,  with choked and  eviscerated voice offerings thumped by a sub bass drone/beat that will take the listener unto the next plane of  existence, an unknown place  with spatial distortions unknown to our  current mind.

The sounds of “Exhaustions” pull from harsh noise, drone, ambient, and new age strategies in the best way possible, referencing these historic practices while simultaneously shattering the expectations of what any of these could and should be. Khouja masterfully blends these styles in a hypnotic, meditative tour de  force of minimalist contemporary electronic music. “Exhaustions” is not worlds away from the work of say Pauline Olaveros or Terry Riley however it offers its own dynamic breath of sonic interpretation. “Exhaustions” is poised, patent, and all around a profound minimalist interpretation of space, form, tension, and experience. Highly recommended, there is also a special edition encased in a  wooden box which looks beautifully crafted, and a perfect enclosure for this cavernous work of  experimental electronics and voice.