Isengrind - Journey Of The 7 Stars

Only great lengths of listening will reveal the depths of the musick created by Natural Snow Buildings, and its facets Isengrind and TwinSisterMoon. What's here are growing into truly the most heartfelt-homespun magickal sounds I have ever heard.

Wintermusick made for great white lion and his clouds of red sigilled robes. Shaded icenight shrouds of the tunnel workshop, movement on stilts through snowspace, forestspace, ornament villages, the song of the ancient bell. Spiral auroræ marking his arrival, great king of Gothic cathedral. Snowbeard and his Janusian mirrored beastface, robes emblazoned with silver stars on royal blue field, pulled by red wolves through tunnels forged of the lightning dust of ancient televisions by the antlers of the amorphous tree elks. The chants of vertical bells harken his visit. All hail the snowbound kingdoms!


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(artwork quique alcatena)

Axolotl - Memory Theatre + Telesma

Serotonin orange juice burbling; forming trees. Our thoughts are cities of organisms prokaryotes->eukaryotes->animals. The sound of the present. The Wand. Only when we are old and gray will we look back on these moments as masterpieces. They are in a sense a capture of moments incapturable. The air in the space between the amp and microphone recorded, crystallized. Messages held secret in the intermediate spaces between particles.

Memory Theatre (Important, 2007)

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Telesma (Spooky Action, 2006)


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"and thus we swam, bodies and minds intertwine, like babies in the brine"

Burial Hex - Initiations

Aurora Borealis, 2008

Burial Hex is certainly one of those individuals who would ostensibly be labeled noise or power electronics, when there really is a different, undefined, and more powerful magick going on than genre. Burial Hex takes a number of left-hand mystical elements and juxtaposes them. This album in particular puts this on display. Orchestral kosmische synths give way to burbling and manic screams from beyond the grave. Hiss and scratch akin to that of Mauthausen Orchestra or Maurizio Bianchi coats the ritual, giving it a din and drone of chaos. Alongside this is are acoustic elements, bowed strings being sawed into horrible shapes. Then it subsides and returns to stellar drifting keyboards. The song "River of Los" goes into more unexpected territory with a sort of stoned-ramblin' and shambolic drum pattern-bustin' music more reminiscent of main man Clay Ruby's numerous free-psych groups (Davenport, Family Band, etc.), yet still contained within the same blackened ritual cloud, making the track more reminiscent of Sylvester Anfang than anything else. The track also reminds me a bit of early Popol Vuh. Glorious gravesongs and acoustic necromancy.

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Burial Hex's sound has changed even further since this recording, moving into a particularly cathartic brand of minimal wave on the recent split with Zola Jesus (check it out over at NO NOT FUN NOT NO), that isn't entirely unlike his split-mate.

Jack Rose - Kensington Blues

VHF, 2005

R.I.P.

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Vodka Soap - Interpretation "The Initiation"

Pacific City, 2009

As the holographic sigils of levitated consciousnesses submerge into 5-space, hallucinations begin to synchronize through quantum entanglement. While separated in space (or in spacelike ways), the manifest thought forms begin to dissolve and merge into one another backwards through the network of times. Through use of these simultaneous hallucinations the initiation of planet-mind can begin, and the final post-technological singularity achieved (though after a kalpa or so of progressive rites through the Qliphoth and Sephiroth, through the emanations, defeating Choronzon and the Demiurge in return to Sophic-Mind).

Intended as an interpretation of Roberto Matta's painting "The Initiation" (see below).

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Zelienople - Give It Up

Type, 2009

There's been some blog hype about this band in certain quarters that led me to think it was another semi-meandering drone group. There's a time and place for that kind of music in my playlist (very frequently actually), and though seeking that sound, I was pleasantly surprised. In the best name-dropping description I can offer, what you have here sounds like what would happen if Tor Lundvall and Fabio Orsi spent a week in a desert bungalow listening to nothing but Labradford and Slowdive's Pygmalion. It's slow, drifty, a wee bit jazzy (in that good Fabio Orsi drone-jazz way), but not too dark, it's more cold and windy in feel. In that nice sweet spot between straight ahead songs and not-too-out of it improv that reminds me a lot of Steven R. Smith. Great lonely tones.

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Nature And Organisation - Beauty Reaps the Blood of Solitude

Durtro, 1994

War-torn apocalyptic folk project under the directorship of Michael Cashmore, features David Tibet, Douglas Pearce, Rose McDowell, and others. Sound is most akin to Thunder Perfect Mind-era Current 93, and What Ends When The Symbols Shatter era Death In June. One of the peak albums of the era. Certainly not to be missed, some of the best work of those involved. Rose's cover of "Willow's Song" from the Wicker Man soundtrack by is tear-inducingly beautiful.

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Sorrow (Rose McDowell) Megapost

O Rose thou art sick.
The invisible worm,
That flies in the night
In the howling storm:

Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy:
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy.

-William Blake, "The Sick Rose"

Beautiful, intimate, and autumnal dark folk from one half of Strawberry Switchblade, probably better known to readers here as the prime Current 93/ Coil/ Death in June/ Psychic TV nexus backing chanteuse. Such an immaculate voice! Few songs are truly as great as "Let There Be Thorns."


Under The Yew Possessed (Piski Disk, 1993)

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Sleep Now Forever (Piski Disk, 1999)

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Let There Be Thorns EP (Piski Disk, 2001)


(front & back vinyl because they look better than the CD cover, for you geeks out there this is probably actually the CD version I'm uploading)
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