• Music

    William Ryan Fritch – Built Upon a Fearful Void

    Soundtrack composers don’t seem to need films to cue inspiring, haunting scores anymore.  Take, for example, the new double album by Californian composer William Ryan Fritch. The story that goes along with this fabulous artifact is as impressive as the music is.  We let the label, Lost Tribe Sounds, tell the story below, courtesy of their Bandcamp site: ‘Built Upon a Fearful Void‘ was an album seemingly fated to never be completed. For the last 8 years the album had been recorded and either lost or discarded three times; a leak that water logged and ruined most of the half…

  • Music

    Santiago Fradejas – The Light Through The Springs

    The guitar, all by itself, can serve as tool for making a haunting orchestra’s worth of sounds.  My good friend Santiago Fradejas, now resident in Kent, of all places (!) presents a mini-LP’s worth of brooding, swelling, lilting soundscapes.  There is a menacing element tying the album together, as though one was taking a stroll near the 6th ring of Dante’s Inferno.

  • Music

    Igra Staklenih Perli – Igra Staklenih Perli

    Igra Staklenih Perli were one of the greater monster progressive/psychedelic rock bands to come out of Yugoslavia (the band themselves were Serbian) during the late 1970s and early 1980s, and though some of their work could be seen as taking cues from legendary western groups like Pink Floyd, I hear elements of Can, Hawkwind, Jimi Hendrix and the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, about the only metal period I like short of Black Sabbath.  The only gripe I have with the album is the low mix.  Music like this should be listened to at high volume, so the punch…

  • Music

    Amid The Ruins 1453 – Dyerwave Trilogy (All Dyerwave Tracks)

    Dyerwave is a stand-alone genre sitting inside of synth-wave, which has produced a number of appealing artists who bring 1980s visual imagery and marry it to dystopian visions of the future.  The artist responsible for this release, Amid The Ruins 1453 is a Serbian composer and fellow Orthodox Christian who has expressed admiration for philosopher, Christian apologist, conspiracy theorist and radio talkshow host Jay Dyer. The music is appropriately bleak, and would work well for fans of Vangelis (during the period he was composing the score for Blade Runner) and a more warped disco of Giorgio Moroder.  One could also…

  • Music

    JOHN 3:16 – Yoldath Aloho

    I have to catch up and see what has been going on with our friends at Alrealon Music.  This release is two tracks of a horrifying soundscape that conjures up images of characters like Pinhead from the classic horror movie Hellraiser.  Though the movie had no effect on me (I grew up watching far better horror movies from Spain and Italy), the music JOHN 3:16 (perhaps my favorite, and certainly the most hopeful, verse in the Bible) conjures up left me feeling slightly uneasy.  Disturbingly enjoyable.

  • Music - Music Articles - Music Promo

    [Press] Meticulous Midgets – Music You Need To Hear

    Today we were given the honor of being featured by the independent music radio, magazine and record label Meticulous Midgets, who were also kind enough to reference my old blog, A Miscellany of Tasteful Music, in the past.  Meticulous Midgets not only have a fine magazine, but publish some of the best new indie music coming out of Russia these days.

  • Music

    The Hauchzart Ensemble – Hauchzart Momentum Vol. I

    What a remarkable work this is.  The Hauchzart Ensemble includes our dear colleague Wilfried Hanrath, who plays guitar, bass, drums, beats, synth and electronics on this album, along with Matt Getchell, who also provides electronics, synthesizer and beats. This album takes quite a journey, starting off with a track that, if you can believe it, reminded me of the better aspects of bands like Michael Cretu’s seminal electro-pop band Enigma.  It sounded like a very accessible piece of electronic pop, which was a good start, but then the musicians started to really surprise me with elements of bands like Tuxedomoon…

  • Music

    Various Artists – Canary Records: Let’s Add Raki to Wine: Women in Istanbul ca. 1931​-​46

    Canary Records are the kings of shellac-era reissues, and this is one of their most fabulous.  It’s a collection of female singers who were active in Turkey’s cultural capital, and Ian Nagoski, musicologist and venerable head of the company, has made these recordings sound as clear as possible, despite being around 90 years old.  Yet another stunning peek into the past.

  • Music

    The Striking Chamber – Tomás Luis de Victoria: Collected Works

    Although there are some phenomenal classical musicians represented on Bandcamp, I didn’t expect to hear any work by the Counter-Reformation-era priest and composer Tomás Luis de Victoria.  This cassette tape, released by The Striking Chamber, came as a pleasant surprise.  It’s only 13 minutes long, and it’s released here as one solitary, slightly over-compressed track, but the organ sounds clear, and I want to encourage more performers of Renaissance music to come out and share their wares.

  • Music

    Cabaret Voltaire – Shadow of Fear

    Today is a terrible day, as we’re reeling over the loss of Cabaret Voltaire multi-instrumentalist, composer and producer Richard H. Kirk.  He was 65 years old. The Cabs were one of the most influential bands of their era, whose work would have serve as inspiration to genres such as Industrial, post-punk, EBM, avant-funk, electro, acid house and techno. The album we share today was the first one by Cabaret Voltaire, with Richard doing the album solo, in 26 years.  It’s as bleak as the old material, though better recorded, and it sounds like a culmination of those early, gritty experimental recordings, that funky drum machine…