Total - Hard + Low

Broken Flag, 1986

Another fine piece of old school psychedelic post-industrial and instrument-led power drone from Matthew Bower's main solo project of the late 80s-90s. This is the first work under this moniker and still reflects the charred, black & white war-crime Broken Flag aesthetic seen with Pure and early Ramleh. Black-box synths and corroded loops reflecting silent & undead post-apocalypses. "You'll Get Yours Yet" is still (seriously) my favorite power electronics track ever. But this tape is by no means entirely raging screech & howl, many tracks offer entirely acoustic passages, "Transfigured Night" offers a bleak Vajrayanic horn drone, and "The Sound of Music" is mainly a melancholic single-mode piano improvisation that presages Bower's much later work with minimal folk instrumentation. One of the best Broken Flag & Bower in general have had to offer.

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The Cathode Terror Secretion - Spectre Of History's Design/ UPDATE w/ S/T 3" CDR

Spectre Of History's Design (RRRecords, 2009)

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The Cathode Terror Secretion (Accretion Disk, 200?)

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Weirdly civilized digital power electronics with all-consuming vocals from a friend project of Yellow Swans/ Halflings. Turns the sardonic eye of the genre upwards to spiritual themes, existential terror, psychological uprooting and emotional upheaval of a purely psychological/psychedelic nature. Tracks like "Hymn" and "Purifier" are innovative admixtures of sacred vocal chant/drone and terror vox that set a since unheeded but transformative precedent for this kind of music that is surely not to be missed.

Upload Status

For your convenience, here is a little forward-dated blurb stating how far back I've finished uploading files from my old banned account:

As of 3/31/12:
8/10/11 (Brainworlds) Unfinished
7/27/11 (Lunar Abyss Deus Organum) Unfinished
7/20/11 (Aderlating) Unfinished
6/12/11 (Kreng - Grimoire) Done
(older unfinished)

Mirag

Black Temple Carved In Smoke (Celebrate Psi Phenomenon, 2006)

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Witch Queen Ascending (Self-Released, 2006)

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More Matthew Bower solo work that originates the whole psychedelic blackened modal droneswarm style of his latter work. Somebody reviewing some Bower release in The Wire (probably David Keenan, I mean who else?) prayed for this kind of guitar mayhem to come back and their prayers were amply answered from '06-on with everything Bower has done, with Hototogisu, Voltigueurs, Skullflower, etc. Totally electric and Black Temple... in particular goes into one of those pure blasting-open-the void kind of hyperfocused modal ascensions that I will never stop loving.

(thanks to The Static Fanatic for both of these)



p.s. Not to forget mentioning that my blog's title comes from a track on Witch Queen Ascending, "Enochian Tapestries," and its reincarnation on Skullflower's Strange Keys To Untune God's Firmament

Pure - Fetor

Freak Animal, 2007

Oldschool psychedelic power electronics from Matthew Bower's original (yes seriously) project, in name himself + Alex Windsor & Alex Binnie (Zos Kia), but in reality this release is Bowers solo, with Stefan Jaworzyn (original Skullflower, Ascension) filling in on the final live track. 2007 reissue/remaster of the 1981 Birthbiter release, with an additional live track and the original track titles and order according to the band.
While the use of guitars vaguely presages Sutcliffe Jügend's earliest work or maybe some old Broken Flag stuff like Toll, nothing in the original epi-industrial power electronics movement was anything like this, and really nothing has been exactly like this since except Bower's earliest Total releases (i.e. Hard+Low, Beyond The Rim). Has a seriously blackened, bombed out cloistered yet highly psychedelic feeling brought on partially by the lo-fi tape aura and partially by the hypnotic loop, echo, & feedback of the elements within. Remarkablely timeless, just plain unbelievable that this came out in 1981.

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Murmuüre - Murmuüre

Cold Void Emanations, 2010

Iridescent pools of astral vastness from the French psychedelic black metal master. Kind of like an epic, more spacious version of Yoga meets Year Of No Light or a stripped down Angelic Process. Absolutely gorgeous and essential move for this increasingly interesting inter-genre zone.

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Tetsuo - Ranshuo

Shit Jam, 2004

Short and totally obscure, but fucking intense Japanese slow-mid pace sludge/noise hybrid. Driven to brilliantly over-the-top glory by those razor sharp Japanese shrieking vocals we've all grown to love. As if Zeni Geva were into Grief, Framtid, & White Hospital. Relentless brutality that will well win you over before the 17 minute end.

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Burmese - White/ Men

White (Planaria, 2003)

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Men (Load, 2004)

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Brilliant hybrid of power violence, sludge, and power electronics. White even goes so far as to be reworkings of individual Whitehouse songs. Men however is much more heavy and original. I had always thought that, as demonstrated by Khanate, percussion done with a kind of stranglehold tension and release exudes a much more intense musical experience than the high-pitched whistles and screeches of power electronics can offer alone, and Burmese in this era demonstrate this perfectly. Not to be missed.