Ordeal by Roses Bandcamp Raid!!!!!!

Ordeal by Roses Bandcamp overview.

Ordeal by Roses – Cardiff UK.

https://ordxxlbxrxsxs.bandcamp.com/

I recently wrote about the series of four cassettes on the Outsider Art label, each one was by a different young UK Power Electronics artists, you’ll see how excited I got over the Active Denial tape and one by a new Welsh PE act called ‘Ordeal by Roses’. ‘Welsh Power Electronics’ and ‘Death Fixated Power Electronics,’ already I’m blown away by those descriptions. This comes from a country steeped in ancient mysticism, a land that will never really be ‘Westernised’, a dragon that will never die – I’m not talking shit either, I see this every time I go to see my Mother in Law several times a year.  I recently went to my Step Father In Laws funeral in Wales, then my cat got run over, I’m not really over either, this work kind of resonates so very powerfully in my life right now – that self-titled cassette is a diamond, a bright shining diamond that I can’t leave alone. So here I go on an unannounced Ordeal by Roses Bandcamp raid!!!!!!!

Demonstration. 

Demonstration (September 2017), begins as wall noise, various frequencies of distortion dominate and pitch against each other. PE frequencies begin to resonate massively, flooded over by the walls of distortion and interrupted by sharp frequencies. This could be mistaken for Harsh Noise but is an abstracted raw display Power Electronics dynamics. This is described as an improvisation to let listeners know what to expect in a live setting, I’d call it the first confident steps of Ordeal by Roses.

Document 1: Action 12.

Document 1: Action 12 (November 12, 2017) I believe is an early live performance, or the 12^th performance. The performer introduces what he’s doing screams and restrained noise begins, it does rise at times, but restraint is consistent to work around the vocals; spoken shout, a dialogue, the performer allows himself to be drowned by the walls of distortion, yet he punctuates it with rude blips and noises. Here we see little bits of Ordeal by Roses begin to show and develop. The later vocals are pure upset rage, not something I’d want in my face. It morphs into a throbbing Death Industrial passage of sound whilst the vocals seem intent on killing everything, as it dies down, the menace is still very prominent.

HOSPICE//CEMETARY.

HOSPICE//CEMETARY ( July 9^th 2018) the artwork to the download is impressive and powerful, a cemetery, Welsh I assume. This starts simply by resonated infected frequencies, tweaking their distortion until a temporary wall of distortion stands, the sounds crackle and creak through the transparent walls. The vocal seems to have now elevated itself to the next level, it is backed by some hiss as everything else is killed off. This is the sound of pain and mourning, just fucking blasts of it, paragraphs of pain that seem to increase in their volume and become less audible as they get angrier- the angriness is amplified by the noise. This is done well, very well.

EMPTY CHAIR//DEATH'S WHITE FACE.

EMPTY CHAIR//DEATH’S WHITE FACE (May 29^th 2019) haunting artwork accompanies this recent release. This is more representative of the fully formed Ordeal by Roses sound, it’s mournful and angry and seems entrenched in the Welsh landscape, I don’t know why but images of the place flood my mind. If you think of the work of Cremation Lily early on, this takes that forward-thinking attitude and jettisons forward with it. Just by pulling the noise back and allowing Keyboard harmonies to dominate you’re immediately somewhere else, this shoots ahead of the tape in progression.

I stand convinced in my enthusiasm, excuse me, I’m off to buy the tracks in case this Bandcamp disappears. Outstanding work sir, you’ve impressed the fuck out of me - I will always be watching.

Choppy Noodles 2019

Sol Mortuus & Nubiferous - Sorni-Ekva

Album: Sorni-Ekva

Artist: Sol Mortuus & Nubiferous

Label: Black Mara

Catalogue no: N/A

Tracklist:

     1.      Sol Mortuus – Marija Tump

     2.      Sol Mortuus – Frozen Equilibrium

     3.      Sol Mortuus – Six Shamans

     4.      Sol Mortuus – When the Snow Lies Red

     5.      Nubiferous – Itterma

     6.      Nubiferous – Kojp

     7.      Nubiferous – Chistop

     8.      Nubiferous – Tetta-Imilja

Sorni-Evka is a split album released by Novosibirsk’s Black Mara label, and features two of Russia’s exponents of texturally complex and viscerally emotional dark ambient and ritual folk, Sol Mortuus (The Dead Sun) and Nubiferous respectively, with each project contributing four tracks. Only traditional ethnic instruments are employed here – gusli (a type of harp), traditional harp, kalyuka (an overtone flute), tambourine, bells, and percussive instruments. At its heart lies the legend of the Golden Woman (Золотая баба, zolotaya baba) of the Siberian shamanic tradition and, as such, propels us into a primordial world in both time and location, and places us at the intersection between the two realms (the earthly and the supernatural).

I think it would be accurate to say that shamanism was amongst mankind’s first exercises in attempting to contact and commune with the denizens of the ‘other’ realm which many believed existed alongside ours. To this end Sol Mortuus’ opener ‘Marija Tump’ hits the primitive consciousness centres, resonating with a deeply felt vibration that more than hints at the existence of this parallel world. And this is achieved with no more than something akin to a jaw harp, flute, percussion, and a deep male voice. It reaches back into the past and pulls it into the present. And this aspect is Sol Mortuus’ presiding genius, the ability to infuse a sense of the origins of our attitudes and approaches to spirituality, and of the methods created to mediate communication between the material and the numinous. It’s earthy, celestial, chaotic, ordered, resonant, primal, spiritual, necessary, and immediate, bypassing the modern mind to head straight to the ancestral memory buried deeply within. I’ve talked about reconnections before in other reviews, and it’s as true of this one as it was of the other music I was describing.

Nubiferous is a different beast altogether, resonating and radiating from an even deeper, darker region. If Sol Mortuus delineates the ritual aspects themselves, the Nubiferous contributions describe leaving this realm and entering into and travelling through the transitional interfaces, and finally on into the sphere of the extramundane that overlays the prosaic. Shamanism as a practise entails its own dangers, and the other realm contains its own monsters and hostile entities with which the practitioner has to deal. Here deep, stomach-stirring bass rumbles vie with indecipherable breathings and mutterings, crescendos of grainy noise reminiscent of throat-singing, shimmering singing bowls, and percussive punctuations. This music is not just of the shaman himself, but of the very land upon which he stands – the world he wishes to call into manifestation is deeply embedded and intertwined with the one in which we find ourselves. If SM’s pieces were primal, these go one step further, reaching for and connecting with the primordially ordained transmission lines carrying the power buried deep within the soil and rock. This music isn’t just meant to be heard – it’s also meant to be felt. And then, after feeling it deep within, one must let it stir the soul into acting upon its subtle emanations.

Beautiful and immensely evocative.

Psymon Marshall 2019

Winterblood - Finsternis

Album: Finsternis

Artist: Winterblood

Label: Self-released

Catalogue no: N/A

Tracklist:

     1.      Finsternis (Chapter 1)

     2.      Finsternis (Chapter 2)

     3.      Finsternis (Chapter 3)

     4.      Finsternis (Chapter 4)

Once in a while, a dark ambient project comes along that ticks all the right boxes, and Winterblood manage to do so several million times over. All I know about Winterblood could be written on the back of a postage stamp – the man behind these deep, cold atmospherics is an Italian by the name of Stefano Senesi. He describes his sounds as Polar Ambient and his stated aim is “to put the listener - after a reassuring prelude - into a cold state of loss and confusion; this makes [causes] an awakening...”…

I caught this project through the Waldeinkamseit I – III album, released in 2017, on Bandcamp via a Facebook group, and which is now due for a re-release on vinyl. The sheer frigidity and deep resonances contained on that album struck me in a way as if I’d been transported to somewhere at the southern extremes of Earth, a place where an icy voice whispers softly and beguilingly as you lose all sense of being and the warmth that is life. It’s a picture of isolation in possibly the most extreme sense of the word. Finsternis, the most current release (May 2019), elicits a similar evocation of loneliness and separation but this time transfers it to the centres of deeply and unimaginably ancient forests. Think such places are warmer and safer? By day perhaps – but come nightfall and those very same woods become places of unsettling unknowns; who knows what creatures and things lurk within its recesses, or what those bizarre noises are – are they human, animal, or something else?

It is commonly acknowledged that certain places, specifically natural places, accumulate what could be called a confluence of ‘spiritual’ or ‘magical’ energies – this is why we have sacred groves, or sites like Stonehenge and Glastonbury. These are generally thought of as benign in nature, so equally there must be other places where negative energies collect (a particular example that springs to mind is Japan’s Aokigahara, the ‘suicide forest’, on the northwestern flank of Mount Fuji). One can easily imagine malign energies aggregating in such places, accumulating blackly depressing and affecting atmospheres. What if, perhaps, the most ancient forests harbour a resentment of the fact that humans have distanced themselves from the roots of their own creation and sustenance?

What we have here are four mid-length tracks of repetitive brooding loops, simultaneously airy and yet oppressive. The deeper into the trees we go and the closer we get to the forest’s slumbering blackened heart, and the more the trees huddle together and blot out the light, the more keenly we feel the overwhelmingly bleak and stifling antagonism emanating from our surroundings. But it’s apparent that we aren’t alone – just on the edges of our vision we see shapes flitting between the trunks, but are they real or imagined? Perhaps they’re the hapless shades of those who came here before us, drawn in by the majesty and power of these places. The trees watch us balefully, resenting every step we take, animosity flowing like a shimmering tide against those who no longer acknowledge or seek their wisdom. Simultaneously, it’s the sound of an antediluvian Pied Piper, mesmerising us with sweet promises only to lure us down sinister paths into darkness where we’ll meet who knows what?

A contradictory album in some ways, as noted above: it is both airy and oppressive. Light wafts of uplifting chords swell magnificently to greet us, but lurking just beneath the surface are those hints of something darker at work. And that artful repetition: it becomes a burden after it’s been carried for a while, and only becomes heavier. Furthermore, in reality these four pieces never really begin or end – they’ve always been in existence, waiting for the receptive to catch their mournful refrains. And that cover image by British painter, illustrator, and author Walford Graham Robertson (1866 – 1948) – nothing could encapsulate the hidden occult power of ancient woodland better than this starkly monochrome illustration.

If nothing else, Finsternis reminds us that these wonders have existed for perhaps longer than civilisation has been around, and that should we ultimately disappear they’ll outlast us. The Earth was theirs to begin with, and more than likely it’ll be theirs once again.

Psymon Marshall 2019. 

Akoustik Timbre Frekuency - Thee Dreamachine Sessions.

Album: Thee Dreamachine Sessions

Artist: Akoustik Timbre Frekuency

Label: Sombre Soniks

Catalogue no: N/A

Youtube Videos.

Tracklist: 

1. Soundtraks for Thee Dreamachine 01

2. Soundtraks for Thee Dreamachine 02

3. Soundtraks for Thee Dreamachine 03

4. Soundtraks for Thee Dreamachine 04

5. Soundtraks for Thee Dreamachine 05

6. Soundtraks for Thee Dreamachine 06

7. The Dreamachine Sessions (Mix)

Ritual has always been around but, rather than being static, it’s an ever-evolving practise, even if its basis remains firmly embedded in the past. Brion Gysin added to the paraphernalia of ritual by creating the Dreamachine in the heady days of psychic and hallucinogenic experimentation way back in the optimistic (and mystic) sixties. Roundabout 1961 Gysin collaborated with Ian Somerville, a mathematician and computer scientist at Oxford University, and together they created the device. A description of the ‘machine’ and it effects are outside the scope of the present review, but information is plentiful on the web for the intrepid and curious.

The six tracks elucidated on here accompany a series of six short films on the device itself and Brion Gysin, its progenitor, plus an hour long mix which is to be used in conjunction with the Dreamachine. Akoustik Timbre Frekuency here rely on very traditional ritualistic sounds – bells, cymbals, singing bowls, flutes, harking back to the very roots of ritualistic practise. In addition field recordings have been thrown into the mix, creating a sensory dissonance as it enable us to see the world in a different light. Without the context of the films however it is difficult place the pieces into some kind of framework that makes sense. But, taking it purely as an academic exercise, and taking the hour-long mix as a reviewing cue, I will be concentrating my focus on that track so I can present some kind of an overview. 

The aim of ritual, of course, is to release us from the physical and mental constraints of our mundane reality and call forth atavistic entities and manifest spiritual archetypes into being. It’s no exaggeration to say that what we’re presented with here not only achieves that, but practically throws us out of the normal and into the supernormal. And that’s just the music – if we wish to use the Dreamachine alongside it undoubtedly its effects will be more completely felt. Clearly, the limbic system, responsible in part for emotion, learning, and memory, is meant to be aroused and activated together with the excitation of our visual faculties, without or without the visual cues afforded by Gysin and Somerville’s device.

It’s actually quite remarkable the effect such stripped-back and ‘primitive’ music can have on the mind, its otherworldliness a passport to entry into a realm normally off-limits and hidden away from our senses. Also its ringing clarity clears the mind of all humdrum thoughts and images, propelling us into a dimension where everyday preoccupations play no part. Knowing this, and performed whilst meditating on the steadily flickering rhythms of the Dreamachine’s light pulses, access to the visual part of our brains (to say nothing of the deeply buried ancestral memories each of us carries within us) the efficacy of the machine can only be multiplied in manifold directions. 

Saying that, having a Dreamachine isn’t compulsory – this is music to help us reconnect with ourselves, or at least those parts of ourselves that have been inhumed by the detritus of the world we live in. Listening to this, the psychic traveller can leave this dimension behind, bending time, place, and being at will. Sit back, turn the lights off, and simply let the sounds of time immemorial seep into every nook and cranny of your body. Your mind, once attuned, will do the rest. More than that, it will refresh one’s soul. 

Psymon Marshall 2019.

Acclimate - Dreams of a Mad Titan.

Album: Dreams of a Mad Titan

Artist: Acclimate

Label: Humanhood Recordings

Catalogue no: HHR52

Tracklist:

     1.      Infinity

     2.      Warlock

     3.      Oblivion

     4.      Annihilus

     5.      The World Eater

     6.      Mistress Death

The artist has described this very limited edition cassette (30 copies of which only 7 are left at time of writing) and digital release as Ambient Industrial Space music, but don’t for one minute think this is all whooshes and progressive swellings of major chords, or bleeps and sci-fi stylings. There are elements of these but we’re not talking ‘new age’ blah here: while it’s what I call a ‘quiet’ album, insofar as it never veers into bombast or becomes overwrought, nevertheless a creepiness lurks beneath its fabric that surreptitiously worms its way into the subconscious leaving you puzzlingly unsettled.

‘Infinity’ opens out majestically, filling one with expansive emotions and thoughts, its gentle burblings and minor repeated crescendos both soothing and uplifting, accompanied by a subtle sequenced rhythm that’s barely on the edge of audibility. As an opener though, don’t be fooled by its lustrous beguiling shapes and movements – as calming as it is, what follows takes the album in the opposite direction, away from light and into the darker recesses of mind and universe. ‘Warlock’ pulses into existence, a perhaps mild harbinger of the roiling underbelly that allows the universe to exist as it does. Shimmering accents underscored by a persistent rhythm, counterpointing and complementing, emphasising that one cannot exist without the necessary other.

‘Oblivion’ is where we get to the real heart of this release: spiralling bass introduction, crunches punctuating the emptiness, whines continually striving to climb into the aether, dark breathings, and a distorted voice. This is not the bright vision of ‘Inifinity’ but its complete opposite, a disturbing fractured dream that’s vivid yet elusive and impossible to grasp – its only aftereffect being confusion and agitation. The mood refuses to lighten up on the following offering ‘Annihilus’, a track that only drags us deeper into the maelstrom – in fact it begins with a rattling staccato and a machine-like turbidity, its gravity drawing us ever inward and downward. The ghosts of dead stars and planets abound here, their cries the only reminder they ever existed.

Don’t expect to receive any comfort from the last two tracks either – now that we’ve been offered a vision of the quantum truth we shall just have to accept that this is the reality. The universe doesn’t exist for our comfort; it isn’t required to adapt to us but we, by necessity, have to adapt to it. ‘The World Eater’ brings images of a rogue black hole, an angel of chaos deaf to our pleas for clemency – it is simply here to act out its nature. Rhythmical pulsings presage its approach, and gravity and matter go awry, pulled apart and annihilated – but there is no drama, instead it’s all so matter of fact, mundane even. It surprises us perhaps with its utter banality.

‘Mistress Death’ stealthily sashays onto the starlit walkway, lithe, alluring, and deadly. She is mesmerising, a siren to lure us, an exotic beauty arriving with promises of heaven but it’s all smoke and mirrors. Inside beats a heart as black, or perhaps blacker, as the deepest regions of the limitless abyss. There is no light – just death.

Dreams of a Mad Titan works because for the most part it’s deceptively positive. It initially offers us a vision of a comfortable cotton-wool swaddling heaven-like state of bliss, but then it gradually degenerates into a gangrenous black rot thereby revealing itself as a trap, luring us moth-like and willingly to our destruction. However much we complain, however, this has always been the way of the universe – it is neutral and doles out creation and annihilation equally, whether deserving or otherwise.

Available through Bandcamp here:

 https://humanhoodrecordings.bandcamp.com/album/dreams-of-a-mad-titan-hhr52

Acclimate website:

https://noizey.wixsite.com/acclimate

Psymon Marshall 2019. 

Shift - Altamont Rising

Shift – Altamont Rising – CD/Vinyl – 2014 – Cold Spring - Unrest Productions - CSR195CD - unprlp04.   

Sometimes the third sense that you must buy an album is there in the back of your head nagging away. I was asking questions about Altamont Rising way before I finally bought it this year. From my previous Shift review of Abandon, I decided I’d already decided that I really liked the project, for me it became a benchmark to low end Industrial/PE by which I judge all others. But still, in the back of my head this album called to me. This year I finally got to see S.T.A.B. play live with Iron Fist of the Sun and Active Denial, I was thrilled with the performances and there staring at me was the cd of Altamont Rising on the Merch Desk, I bought that and the new S.T.A.B. lp and the next day got the train home, impatient to hear my newly acquired albums.

I have very Bipolar feelings towards Unrest, and this ensures that I keep going back. The murky, shifting grey midground the label occupies makes it something ‘other’ than the usual samey, extremey crap that is around. So, while I am on a high, I will review this cd that I so had to buy. I know it isn’t the latest Shift, but I like to look backwards and forwards simultaneously.

This album is way choppier and livelier than Abandon, it’s a thrives in a choppy vortex of noise, the vocals seem to exist at the core of the work; a distorted shouting that seems relentless. This is a diatribe of rage that is presented via different methods across the album. I can say I immediately like this more; I’d consider it on Par with the best Unrest vocal performances that I have heard such as S.T.A.B. and Iron Fist of the Sun. The presence of Winston Smith is nightmarish and as per usual; the mind is a terrible thing to taste. It’s done differently to the later Abandon, which marks good development and variety in how the work is presented.

There’s a very good use of wall noise, it’s done in a choppy, less dense way so the drops aren’t overly dramatic, and sound can breathe – samples and vocals can move into the whole without being drowned out. Due to this, samples and vocals are audible, not abstracted so that you don’t have to gauge them via the mood of the work. When big synths make an entrance, it’s exciting – Big Synths really do it for me these days, so I apologise if this pops up in most reviews.

Whilst listening to this I am aware that I have heard two extreme ends of Shift, I own two very different and equally effective albums. I conclude this is a great album, it has been on my playlist for months. But the questions stay with me; have I experienced the full depth of Shift; does it go elsewhere on other albums? I must find out over time.

Choppy Noodles 2019.