#14

Battleship – Neon Ranch c20

Battleship serves up a tasty little selection of rhythmic, trance inducing experimental stuff here. As you're loading that awesome wizard-shaped bong, make sure you've got Neon Ranch ready in the cassette deck. Sweet.

905 Tapes


Heart Heart Julia/ T rust – Split c21

You remember how at the end of Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey, they traveled into the future to learn to play their instruments and then their future, skilled selves return to rock out? Well, not even that sort of temporal paradox could help out Heart Heart Julia. It's a whole mess of improve racket that's just taking a shit on you for having listened to it. On the flip is T rust, who play some minimalist, lo-fi psychedelic music. Rad jams, too bad they share this tape with musical fail.

Felt Cat Records


Nebula VII – Through Emptiness cd-r

An ep of harsh drone constructed from digital reverb, Through Emptiness starts out somewhat interesting, but quickly becomes stale and repetitive. This isn't “minimalist” or “a-tonal”, it's just 16 minutes of rumbling noise. Over and over and over again...

Smell the Stench


Northern Forest – Winter North cd-r

Things start off sounding like new age music for Satanists. For twenty minutes, Northern Forest goes overboard with cheesy music sequencers and synths. Really? I was dreading the release's other track, but was pleasantly surprised by a piece that blended low key synth with nature recordings. Kinda missed the 'black ambient' mark, but the last track shows potential.

Smell the Stench


Smoke – Haze c47

So, here's the thing: when you look at Haze in the light of it being an entirely improvised album of black metal, it's kinda impressive. But, when approached as just a black metal album, it leaves something to be desired. The screams, blast beats, and harsh guitars lack cohesiveness...because it was all just improvised, duh. I found the lack of structure and lo-fi recording technique on Haze to be a deal breaker, but if you like your black metal raw and chaotic, definitely check it out.

Hair On My Food Tapes