Honey Disco 1-4
Honey Disco is a label from Canada that releases single-sided, clear 7” vinyls with beewax on the flipside and honey smell included.The first two releases by Hristo and Koosh contain some cool funkedelic disco-dub. Number three By Eddie C was my favorite so far, with a dubby downtempo tune that reminds me slightly of T.Rex’ “Hot Love“. I heard number four by Osmose recently, wich works in a similar way, re-working Billy Idols “Sweet Sixteen”.

Myler
Gorilla Biscuits
[Pennyroyal] Myler
Northern Extension [EarToGround Records]
Irish producer Myler with 3 tight and rumbling techno tracks, released in 2014 on Untolds Pennyroyal label, soundwise somewhere between JoeFarr, J. Tjin and Randomer with those thick bassdrums and a certain funkiness that all of them have in common. The other record came out in ocbtober 2016 with 4 tracks and a locked groove on vinyl and one good digital bonus track that goes in direction of the pennyroyal material. A1 is shuffling breakbeat techno, quite ok. A2 and AA2 are more or less solid techno tracks but the real gem is the AA1 track “D’Electrocution” which is raw, straight forward basement techno with an intriguing filtered piano. Opinions might differ about this, but for me it totally works.

Ossia
Control
[Berceuse Heroique] [Read more →]

KK Null – Star Breaker
[ThirdTypeTapes, TTT18]
Veteran noise/rock artist KK Null returns to a Belgian label (after last year’s excellent Pulsar X cd on Cyber City) for another outing that seems to further his crossover into more rhythmic territory. It’s great to hear shades of speedcore and broken beats appearing in his recent material. Elements of his sound have come together to form what sound like ultra fast beats underpinning the usual abrasive frequency bashing. The rhythmic elements drift in and out of the mix in a way that makes the sound evolve through different (brutal) forms and it makes for a much more cohesive and natural sound than almost any of the more straightforward hardcore/speedcore you will hear today. The beginning of side B is a definite high point for me. Sheets of metallic noise slowly give way to an utterly pummelling broken beat that had me doing the rewind. Highly recommended listening if you like it harsh.

Bombardier
Fury
[Division 13, D13.016]
A new limited 2 x 12” release from Bombardier featuring the best of his tracks from the last few years. Jason Snell has always had a very distinctive, hardware based sound in whatever context he decides to operate in and has carried this over into his recent more techno/electro based material. There is a mixture of 4/4 and more broken tracks here but all of it is an absolute gift for any dj looking for heavy, dark beats of a kind that are extremely hard to find these days. I have no idea how many have been pressed but they seem to be released in batches from the Bombardier bandcamp page where the artist has only been charging for the postage. Don’t miss.

JK Flesh
Nothing is Free
[downwards, LINO-71] [Read more →]

“Boyd’s rather unimaginative sadism used to embarrass me, but then he explained it using words like ‘Weltanschauung'”
Lisa Crystal-Carver, Drugs are Nice [LC, p215]

I last saw Boyd Rice play (as ‘Non’) back in August 1981, alongside Throbbing Gristle (TG), Z’ev, Cabaret Voltaire and Clock DVA as part of the ‘Industrial Night Out’ at the Lyceum, London, which brought together the big cheeses of Industrial Music in what was to be something of a coming out party for the scene but turned out also to be its swansong (it was TG’s last UK concert; they broke up a few months later). At the time Rice presented himself as a Dadaist and prankster though his aesthetic was actually closer to the sub-Futurist ‘instant karma for kids’ noise-racket that Merzbow has since successfully appropriated and turned into a brand / ‘racket’ of his own. While TG boasted of making music from ugly noise, Rice tried to outflank them by serving up the ugliness directly, unfiltered by any obvious concern for form. In fairness Boyd Rice could be said to be among the key players of early Industrial Music, and as a result he perhaps has a shade more kudos than some of the complete musical non-entities we’re generally concerned with around here (Wakeford, Pearce, Moynihan, et al). Rice has declared his Fascism in a number of statements, in his art, and through public actions such as appearing in full Fascist regalia and holding a dagger in a photograph alongside Bob Heick, taken in 1989 to promote the latter’s organisation, the neo-Nazi skinhead party, American Front. He has also appeared on White Aryan Resistance founder Tom Metzger’s cable TV show Race and Reason, where he declared that his friends in Current 93 and Death in June were promoting a ‘racialist’ agenda and emphasised the importance of Industrial and Neo-Folk music for building the ‘Aryan youth movement’.
[Read more →]

toysfornoise / Coexsystems
Insecticide / Acid Wastelands
[Audio Riots 03]
Release number three on the Audio Riots label, a transparent blue 7” , limited to 202 copies, with tracks by Netherlands’ toysfornoise on side A, dystopian metallic background noises, acid modulations and a bassdrum that reminds me of some tekno. The other side by the label boss Coexsystems, with a harder bass drum than on side A, and a more noticeable acid line, straight forward and punchy, classic acid hardcore with a modern face.

8Cylinder
Pour The Poison Out And Let Them Play Until The End
[Unmapped North 03]
Freshly released on 2×10” comes this nice, 100 copies limited, package of 8 tracks from Thac0 and Unmapped North head 8Cylinder. The sleeve design is hand silkscreened and suits the other releases on the label, a very nice overall look as usual from this pittsburgh label. The first plate has six tracks with slow broken beats, very genre free, unpredictable modular-like sounds with a doomy atmosphere, deranged beat constructs which are maybe not easy to get into on the first listen, but that is definitly something good in this case. The second plate goes in the same direction, just that it contains two long single take recordings, which are a little wilder and faster, with bit crushed synths and a straighter beat that reminds of older 8Cylinder tracks or Theeq. More of that, please.

Ripit
Reverse 12
[Bruits De Fond 23]
This release was planned to come out on Reverse Records, but due to the tragic death of label owner and mastering engineer Yann Dub, those tracks remained unreleased till now. Bruits De Fond took over to make them available as a digital release. Six tracks from 2002-09, of which 4 are collaborations with A034, Hecate, Skatolo and Creminel. Excellent, dark, industrial broken beats. [Read more →]

The following samples are taken from the book
Noise: The Political Economy of Music by Jacques Attali. The open ended ideas in the writing can be used to comment on any form of music, but we have found it useful to connect it to the subversive, autonomous and political implications of techno.
It is a book of contradictions and enigmas – not least those concerning the author himself: a former advisor to François Mitterand he was lately the Head of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development before he was forced to resign from his post because of scandals surrounding the amount of funds he had spent on furnishings for his office in Broadgate and his own private jet plane.
With this in mind Noise is the testament to the way that it is possible to use language to fabricate an aura of radicalism whilst remaining reactionary (ie. He is an academic). Or the book may be a heartfelt outburst, the secret scribblings of an
aide tramping the corridors or power and smelling smoke…
Or…a book 132 pages long.

      Our science has always desired to monitor, measure, abstract, and castrate meaning, forgetting that life is full of noise and that death alone is silent…Noise bought, sold or prohibited ( “wholly or predominantly characterised by an emission of repetetive beats” – Clauses 58/60 CJB)…Nothing essential happens in the absence of noise. [Read more →]