iTunes list 2008

These are the albums which my iTunes indicates have been added in 2008 and have been played most often, in descending order:

1) Hototogisu - Some Blood Will Stick
2) Aluk Todolo - Descension
3) Various Artists - Basic Replay
4) Leviathan - Massive Conspiracy Against All Life
5) Hototogisu - Green
6) Ofermod - Mysterion Tes Anomias
7) Skullflower - Desire For A Holy War
8) Ghäst / Yoga - Split
9) The Bug - London Zoo
10) Krieg - The Black House

The chosen criterion means that albums which have been released before 2008 also appear on the list. I've reviewed all of these albums on this blog, except the Krieg album and the Basic Replay album.

Obviously, albums added late this year are somewhat at a disadvantage.

Furthermore, it should be taken into account that I use the iPod mainly for commuting - Ambient is unlikely to be played frequently as the noise of the trains would spoil it. This means that excellent albums such as Kevin Drumm's Imperial Distortion, Expo '70's Black Ohms, Fennesz' The Black Sea and Aethenor's Betimes Black Cloudmasses do not appear in the list.

Furthermore, genres such as Dubstep and Dancehall are underrepresented: the missus doesn't like Black Metal and Noise, so I tend to play the former genres relatively more often over the stereo and less on the iPod. This means that albums such as Benga's Diary of an Afro Warrior, Skull Disco's Soundboy's Gravestone Gets Desecrated By Vandals, as well as the compilations Dancehall. The Rise of Jamaican Dancehall Culture, An England Story. The Culture of the MC in the UK 1984-2008, Wackies Sampler V0lumes 1, 2 and 3, and King Jammy's Selector's Choice Volume 1 are absent.

Anticipated albums for 2009 are Velvet Cacoon's Atropine, Aethenor's Faking Gold & Murder (featuring David Tibet), Khanate's Clean Hands Go Foul, Sunn 0)))'s Dimensions, Lurker of Chalice's Perverse Calculus (does anybody know something about its status?), Deathspell Omega's Chaining the Katechon, as well as Xasthur's new album. A compilation announced by Tumult has piqued my interest also: Unblack and Blessed.

Now that I'm at it, these are the albums which I've played most often since I bought my iBook in 2005 (in alphabetical order):

1) Abruptum – Evil Genius
2) Can – Future Days
3) Haemoth – Kontamination
4) Hototogisu – Spooked Summer
5) Leviathan – Tentacles of Whorror
6) Mirag – Black Temple Carved In Smoke
7) Skullflower – IIIrd Gatekeeper
8) Skullflower – Orange Canyon Mind
9) Velvet Cacoon – Genevieve
10) Xasthur/Leviathan - Split

As you can see, I'm a sucker for Matthew Bower's work.



Post scriptum

To the list of anticipated albums I should add Svarte Greiner's second full-length album, “Kappe”.

Various Failures

Such a sad list: a top 10 of records I should have bought in 2007 ... but failed to.

1) Birchville Cat Motel - Gunpowder Temple of Heaven
2) Skullflower - Circulus Vitiosus Deus
3) A Guy Called Gerald - Black Secret Technology (2008 Edition)
4) Appleblim - Dubstep Allstars Vol 6
5) Nahvalr - Nahvalr
6) Striborg - The Foreboding Silence
7) 2562 – Aerial
8) Zomby – Where Were U In 92?
9) Chaos Moon - Languor Into Echoes, Beyond
10) Nordvargr - Helvete

Various Failures

Such a sad list: a top 10 of records I should have bought in 2007 ... but failed to.

Miles Davis - The Complete On The Corner Sessions
Various Artists - Box Of Dub: Dubstep and Future Dub
Bergraven - Dödsvisioner
Aluk Todolo - Descension
Haswell & Hecker - Blackest Ever Black
Stephen O'Malley & Z'ev - Magisterial
Elegi - Sistereis
Grails - Burning Off Impurities
Yellow Swans - At All Ends
Tenhornedbeast - The Sacred Truth

Black Metal Satellites

In the previous post, I sang the praise of Kevin Martin for creating some epoch-defining compilation double cd's in the Virgin Ambient Series: "Isolationism", "Macro Dub Infection Vol. 1 and 2", and "Jazz Satellites Vol.1".

Martin seems to have given up curatorship, so chances are slim he'll ever create a compilation of "Black Metal Satellites" or "Macro Black Metal Infections". Besides, if Martin has ever been into any sort of Metal it was Grindcore, not Metal's Norwegian variety. Furthermore, Martin's sympathetically staunch multiculturalism makes it unlikely he'll ever develop much affinity with Black Metal, alas an rather ethnocentric music genre.

So a compilation of the almost-Black-Metal and the not-anymore-Black-Metal, curated by Kevin Martin, will never see the light of day. What's there to do but to imagine it ourselves?

Which musicians or bands would be featured on the first cd of the double album?

1.Kevin Drumm
2. Wolfmangler or Dead Raven Choir
3. JazKamer (something from the 'Metal Music Machine' album)
4. Prurient
5. MZ.412
6. Abruptum
7. Aluk Todolo
8. Silvester Anfang
9. Leviathan (something from "A Silhouette In Splinters"?)
10. Spektr
11. Stalaggh
12. Velvet Cacoon
13. Wraiths
14. Furze

And what would the second cd of this compilation contain? I leave it up to you, dear readers: please do use the comments box!

Mixed Up In The Hague - a YouTube Gallery

In the nineteen nineties, the squatter scene in the Dutch city of The Hague had a very active musical life, centering on electronic dance music. Focused at first on relentless, industrialized techno (Unit Moebius, Ra-x, Rude 66), in the middle of the decade electrofunk and italodisco came to the forefront. A central figure in the electro-scene was Ferenc E. van der Sluijs, better known als I-F (which stands for Inter-Ferenc).

I-F did not only put out two utterly brilliant albums of electro ("Fucking Consumer" in 1997 and "The Man From Pack" in 1999, both albums strongly influenced by John Carpenter's electronic horror film soundtracks) but also created one of the best DJ-mix-albums ever: "Mixed Up In The Hague Vol. 1". The mix consists mainly of electro and italodisco from 1980 to 1985, as well as a few contemporary nostalgic electro tunes. It was recently rereleased in a very limited edition, and is available from Boomkat, amongst others.

Below you find YouTube videos for some of the tracks featured on the "Mixed Up In The Hague Vol 1. - all great fun!

Georgio Moroder - The Chase




Jonzun Crew - Space Is The Place




Charlie - Spacer Woman (a link only because the embedding function is disabled; it is one of the best though!)


Q - Voice of Q




Vangelis - Blade Runner (end credits)




Kraftwerk - Tour De France




Klein & MBO - Dirty Talk (again only a link).


Sun La Shan - Catch




A Number of Names - Sharevari




Postscripta

• Did I aggravate any disco-hating metalheads?
• Here is a link to I-F's internet radio station.

Open The Dark

In 'The Pleasure of Text', Roland Barthes wrote: "The more decent, well-spoken, innocent and saccharine a story is told, the easier it is to invert it, the easier it is to blacken it, the easier it is to read it against the grain".

Of course, this is the reason why many of the playlists I post are inversions of the titles of tracks of Boards of Canada - their most recent cd, "The Campfire Headphase", turning away from the haunting, Coil-like soundscapes of the "Geogaddi" album and turning towards "decent, well-spoken, innocent and saccharine" electronica.

Thus, the title of the following playlist, "Open The Dark", is an inversion of Boards of Canada's "Open The Light".

1. Chris Watson - "Low Pressure. Glen Cannich, Inverness-Shire, Scotland" from the "Stepping Into The Dark" cd;

2. Svarte Greiner - "Final Sleep" from the "Knive" cd;

3. Coil - "At The Heart Of It All" from the "Scatology" cd (which must be one of the most Bataillean cd's ever made);

4. Dead Raven Choir - "October Tragedy" from the "Death To Dead Wolves" cd (download it from DRC's site here);

5. Burzum - "Hvis Lyset Tar Oss" from the cd with the same title;

6. Leviathan - "The Fourth Blind Wound" from the split with Sapthuran (download it from Southern Lord's website here);

7. Coil - "Ubu Noir" also from the "Scatology" cd;

8. Art Ensemble Of Chicago - "Thème Amour Universel" from the "Les Stances A Sophie" cd;

9. Ennio Morricone - "Fumeria D'Oppio" from the wonderful "Crime And Dissonance" compilation cd (originally part of the sound track for the 1980 film La Storia Vera Della Signora Della Camelie);

10. Goblin - "Sighs" from the utterly classic "Suspiria OST" (IMDB link here);

11. Xasthur - "Nocturnal Poisoning" from the cd with the same title;

and finally

12. William Basinski - "Shortwavemusic" from the Raster-Noton compilation cd "Archiv1".

Hey Rotting Sun

Another playlist, a rather shortish one this time, it's title once more a parodic riff on a Boards of Canada's song title ("Hey Saturday Sun"), it's contents inspired by Georges Bataille's visions of Sol Niger, the black sun ... of a solar anus ... of a sun bursting open at the top of one's head like an overripe pimple ... of a sun that is the denucleated eye of a dead priest.


Various Artists - Hey Rotten Sun

1. Godflesh - Sungod Dub (from the 'Messiah' ep);
2. Weakling - Disasters In The Sun (from the 'Dead As Dreams' cd);
3. Skullflower - Rotten Sun (from 'IIIrd Gatekeeper');
4. Leviathan - The Idiot Sun (from the 'The Tenth Sublevel Of Suicide' cd);
5. Swans - I Am The Sun (from 'The Great Annihilator' cd).



Here is a link to an article on Georges Bataille and Marquis De Sade, titled "Black Sun".

Here is a link to an article on Georges Bataille and vampirism - relevant here because the article discusses vampirism and the sun in the light (or should one say - unlight?) of Bataille's philosophy.

Here is a link to the lyrics of 'I Am The Sun' by Swans; here is a link to the lyrics of Leviathan's 'The Idiot Sun'; and here is a link to the lyrics for 'Sungod' by Godflesh.

Lists

On many blogs, on many internet magazines, the last days of the year are marked by a profileration of lists, generally of the 'best of ...' kind. As the previous post shows, not even this blog is free from this impulse to classify, to order, to fit "(...) what exists into a frockcoat, a mathematical frock-coat". Countermeasures appear to be necessary "to affirm that the universe resembles nothing at all and is only formless (...)" (from the Encyclopedia Acephalica).

Thus, now is the right time to bring into play Jorge Luis Borges' famous list of animals from "The Analytical Language of John Wilkins" (reproduced here). In this list, purportedly taken from "a certain Chinese encyclopedia, the Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge", it is written that animals are divided into:

1. those that belong to the Emperor,
2. embalmed ones,
3. those that are trained,
4. suckling pigs,
5. mermaids,
6. fabulous ones,
7. stray dogs,
8. those included in the present classification,
9. those that tremble as if they were mad,
10. innumerable ones,
11. those drawn with a very fine camelhair brush,
12. others,
13. those that have just broken a flower vase,
14. those that from a long way off look like flies.

Thus, I'd like to use this post as a platform to call for end-of-the-year-lists full of "...ambiguities, redundancies and deficiencies...", for end-of-the-year-lists that declassify, for formless end-of-the-year-lists....



PS

Here is a link to Foucault's introduction to "Les mots et les choses" which is amongst others a beautiful essay on Borges's list.

Here is a link to a documentary on Borges, from Ubuweb.

Here is a link to an interesting thread about lists.

Absent records

Such a sad list: a top 10 of records I should have bought in 2006 ... but failed to.

Skullflower - Tribulation
Om - Conference Of The Birds
Nachtmystium - Instinct/Decay
Boris - Pink
Current 93 - Black Ships Ate The Sky
Deaf Center - Neon City
Tim Hecker - Harmony In Ultraviolet
Scott Walker - The Drift
Matmos - The Rose Has Teeth in the Mouth of a Beast
Stockhausen - Gruppen, Punkte

Black hexagon sunn

Another playlist, it's title a Boards of Canada paraphrase:

• "We carry death" from The Wickerman's original soundtrack, by Paul Giovanni;
• "Gebrechlichkeit II" from Burzum's 'Filosofem';
• "Die Wölfe kommen zurück" from Coil's 'Black Light District';
• "Mole" by Sielwolf, from their 'V - Remixes' album;
• "Báthory Erzsébet" by Sunn 0))), from 'Black One';
• "I've Seen The Light And It's Dark" by The Third Eye Foundation, from "Ghost";
• "Paramnesia" from Lurker of Chalice's selftitled cd;
• "Tearing Apart" by Foehn, from her "Silent Light" cd;
• "Box Theme" from Coil's "The Unreleased Themes For Hellraiser";
• Stockhausen's "Jungfrau - Virgo R2" from 'Tierkreis';
• "Evil Spirits / Angel Dust" by Techno Animal, from the 'Re-entry' cd;
• "Canti Illuminati" by Alvin Curran, from the "OHM: The Early Gurus of Electronic Music" compilation;
• The officially nameless track from Aphex Twin's "Selected Ambient Works 2", which is generally known as 'Tree';
• "The Beach At Redpoint" and "Opening The Mouth" from the 'Geogaddi' cd by Boards of Canada.

Again, with some YouTube videos.

The Wicker Man:



Burzum:



Coil:



Sielwolf:



Sunn 0)))



The Third Eye Foundation



Stockhausen:



The Bug:



Boards of Canada:

Pyrokinetic Workshop - the videos

Some YouTube videos by artists who are included in the playlist I published earlier today:

Soul Center (Thomas Brinkmann aka Ester Brinkmann):



The music in the previous video is very different from Brinkman's work as Ester Brinkmann (an alias morbidly named after his dead sister!). Where Soul Center takes inspiration from soul and funk, Ester Brinkman's "Weiße Nächte" cd presents industrialized experimental techno with grim mutterings by the deeply pessimistic philosopher Emil Cioran (who outdoes many a Black Metal band in misanthopy).

Spektr:



Spektr's macabre video is included with their brilliant "Near Death Experience" cd.

Non:



A brilliant mashup of Disney's 1942 animated cartoon "Der Fuehrer's Face" and Non's "Total War". Some more wartime cartoon stuff here and here.

Klinik:


Ah, the joys of watching "120 minutes" on MTV when I was a teenager! This YouTube video is at least as faded as my memories of those days...

Maurizio Bianchi (aka Sacher-Pels):



This track has much more of a genteel ambient sound than that of Velours, which is included in the 'Mutation For A Continuity' box.

Pyrokinetic Workshop

"The beauty of flames lies in their strange play, beyond all proportion and harmony. Their diaphanous flare symbolizes at once grace and tragedy, innocence and despair, sadness and voluptuousness. The burning transcendence has something of the lightness of great purifications. I wish the fiery transcendence would carry me up and throw me into a sea of flames, where, consumed by their delicate and insidious tongues, I would die an ecstatic death. The beauty of flames creates the illusion of a pure, sublime death similar to the light of dawn. Immaterial, death in flames is like a burning of light, graceful wings. Do only butterflies die in flames? What about those devoured by the flames within them?"

from Emil Cioran's book "On the Heights of Despair."

I made this playlist last week for my iPod, some really dark continental-European atmospheres (though Non's Boyd Rice is an American of course):

• Gas: the first track from "20' to 2000";
• Ester Brinkman: "Die Idee des Selbstmordes" from "Weisse Nächte";
• Spektr: "Whatever the case may be" from "Near Death Experience";
• Thomas Köner: "Zyklop" from the eponymous cd;
• Non: "Secret Garden, Secret Fire" from the "Blood And Flame";
• Haemoth: "Famished" from "Kontamination";
• Klinik: "Insane Terror" from the nameless black box;
• Sacher-Pels: "Nilehpro" from "Velours".

Blackened States playlist

Yesterday and today I worked on this little playlist, a collection of avantish black metal and industrial ambient. Though I’m not at all a dj, I like to make such compilations every now and then: juxtaposing the tracks makes me listen to the music in new ways.




'Blackened States’ playlist

1. “Embleton Rookery, Northumberland, England” by Chris Watson, from the “Stepping Into The Dark” cd (a nice enough cd, though his “Weather Report” cd is much better; however, this utterly brilliant recording of black birds crowing near an old countryside church provided the inspiration for this playlist);

2. “Piercing Where They Might” by Lurker Of Chalice, from the brilliant self-titled cd;

3. “Loss And Inner Distortion” by Xasthur, from his most recent cd “Subliminal Genocide”;

4. “Narrow Road” by Thralldom from their “A Shaman Steering The Vessel Of Vastness” (one of my favorite cd’s of 2006);

5. “Winterglow” by Velvet Cacoon, from their “Northsuite” cd (I finally got it in the mail Friday!);

6. “Race Of Apathy” by Striborg from the “Embittered Darkness/Isle Des Mortes” cd;

7. “The Ice Desert” from Benighted Leams’ very odd ”Ferly Centesms” cd;

8. “All The Pretty Little Horses” by Current 93, from the compilation cd “Calling For Vanished Faces” (a heartrending lullabyif ever there was one; it originally appeared on my favorite C93 cd);

9. “It's Oh So Strange” by Foehn from the “Insideout Eyes” cd (which has a very nice handmade collage as a cover; why don't we hear from her anymore?);

10. “Not Real” by Final from the “3” cd (a Fennesz Godflesh, highly recommended!);

11. “Reasonably Miserable” by Ginnungagap, from the “1000% Downer EP”;

12. “Rise Up, Warriors” by Wolfmangler from “Dwelling In A Dead Raven For The Glory Of Crucified Wolves”.

Recent Acquisitions

Stockhausen - Aus den sieben Tagen (Ensemble Musique Vivante, dir. Diego Masson);
Luke Vibert - Yoseph;
Xasthur - Subliminal Genocide;
Jah Stitch - Original Ragga Muffin (1975-77);
John Coltrane - Giant Steps;
Coil - ... and the ambulance died in his arms.

Current reading: The Buddenbrooks by Thomas Mann.

Recent acquisitions

The day before yesterday I bought:

The Orb - The Orb's Adventures Beyond The Ultraworld (Deluxe Edition); and
Burzum - Hvis Lyset Tar Oss.

I love to buy music which is so different in one go; my cultural ideal is to juxtapose Marcel Proust and Lucio Fulci.

On a trip to London I bought:

Jazkamer - Metal Music Machine;
Boxcutter - Oneiric;
Glen Brown and King Tubby - Termination Dub (1973 - 79);
Impact Allstars - Forward The Bass, Dub From Randy's 1972-1975.

And from the innanet I bought:

Dubstep Allstars: Vol. 4 Mixed by Youngsta & Hatcha; and
Vex'd - Degenerate.

And I'm waiting for:

Wolfmangler - Dwelling in a Dead Raven for the Glory of Crucified Wolves;
Velvet Cacoon - Northsuite; and
Xasthur - Subliminal Genocide.