The Triple Tree – Ghosts Label: Cold Spring – CSR96CD Format: CD, Album Country: UK Released: Sep 2008 Style: Experimental, Neofolk
The Triple Tree consists of Sol Invictus members, Andrew King, Autumn Grieve, Kris Force (Amber Asylum) and John Murphy (Death In June, SPK, KnifeLadder) and is an homage to the supernatural fiction of M. R. James, the greatest ghost story writer in the English language, and the finest medievalist of his generation. Join The Triple Tree as they search for the Three Crowns, attempt to Cast the Runes, purchase The Mezzotint, follow Mr Abney’s remarkable enlightenment in Lost Hearts, and join Count Magnus on the Black Crusade! Winter evenings will never be the same again. Digipak with booklet.
Vocals, Bass Guitar, Guitar, Keyboards, Melodica, Loops, Co-producer – Tony Wakeford Vocals, Harmonium, Whistle, Bells, Drums, Percussion, Sounds [Environmental Field Recordings], Co-producer, Artwork By – Andrew King Drums, Percussion – John Murphy Vocals – Autumn Grieve, Mercy Liao (tracks: 8) Vocals, Violin – Kris Force (tracks: 1, 7) Violin – Renee Rosen Flute, Melodica, Vocals – Guy Harries Sounds [Environmental Field Recordings] – English Heretic Vibraphone, Marimba, Keyboards, Electronics, Co-producer, Mastered By – M Photography By – Mark Denton
“Nzinga Mbande” is the new album by the African Imperial Wizard collective. It is the soundtrack of the armed liberation from the imperialistic oppression that our continent has endured for far too long.
The “Nzinga Mbande” manifesto consists of eight martial symphonies. They all been have composed enduring pain and suffering and serve the purpose of giving our countries, which have been lacerated and battered by centuries of colonialism, the epic military ceremonies they deserve.
Our main goal with this new musical opus is to hand out orders to our troops and to maintain our military cohesion, the culmination of which will translate to Pan-Africanism and the profound intimidation of our enemies. If you do not sense any danger coming, this could be the first sign of you losing your mind and if you listen carefully, you may already be able to hear the wailing of your dead haunting the battlefields devastated by our armed forces.
Because today more than ever, enough is enough. We won’t stop arming our warlords and their rebel battalions. We won’t stop arming our bloodthirsty mercenaries. We will continue to rely on our proud women warriors, who will follow in the footsteps of our ancestral queens Nzinga Mbande and Sarraounia and will reduce to ashes all those who dare show them and their devastating bastions any resistance. Make no mistake, we will not hesitate to resort to rearming our children. Our child soldiers helped us before, and they will do so again without a moment’s hesitation in the face of what we have had to put up with. We would rather see them die by our side in excruciating pain than letting them fall to your Machiavellian enslaving doctrines.
Nothing has been forgotten of the painful wounds that colonisation inflicted upon Africa. We counted every hand you cut off, every rape, every slave raid, every looting, every torture session, every poisoned watering hole, every crime, every assassination, every mass murder, every massacre, every genocide, every mass grave and every hour of forced labour which you imposed on us. Mark our words: our dead have slowly but surely been counted.
The toll is outrageous, and the abominable numbers speak for themselves and the horror we have been through. But believe us, we are more determined than ever and, may our gods be our witnesses, our vengeance will be all the bloodier. Barbaric invaders, look around you, we are already here, ready to draw our old Kalashnikovs and don’t worry, they do still work, and we can assure you they won’t jam.
Finally, African Imperial Wizard will come to play their most glorious laments in your cemeteries. Our sorcerers will make sacrifices on your graves to the memory of Soundiata. We will glorify the spirits of our great forefathers who fell in battle. The same fate awaits you.
La Merde – La Vie En Noir Label: Lichterklang – LK049 Format: CD, Album, Limited Edition Country: Germany Released: 30 Nov 2021 Style: Neofolk
Hailing from Belgium, LA MERDE have been blending classic neofolk with industrial electronics since 2018. LA MERDE combines fact and fiction in an anachronistic collage of the past into a contemporary creation of sound and image. They are storytellers in an abstract sense, conjuring an aural vision, both real and imagined, of our past, present, and future. By wielding a DIY ethos and using a wide range of instruments, they’ve created a sound that is both formed from soil yet otherworldly.
With tragedy and misery as the guiding principle, LA MERDE guide you through the eternal collapse of the world. As of 2021, they’ve released sought-after tapes and joined the stage with the esteemed likes of Rome, Awen, and By The Spirits. And now arrives La Vie en Noir, LA MERDE’s debut full-length. Both consolidating and eclipsing those prized short-length predecessors, La Vie en Noir lays bare a sumptuous soundscape that spans autumnal splendor and simmering tension, bitter repose and stifled violence. Each of the 43-minute album’s dozen songs offers its own unique snapshot, and the duo thread all of it together with unified purpose and poignant dynamics. In short, it’s everything – and more – a long-form LA MERDE recording has promised to be, brimming with a dark gorgeousness that’s engrossing to the very end.
LA MERDE begin their Thelemic march with La Vie en Noir – love under will, and love is the law!
Dernière Volonté – Commémoration Label: Hau Ruck! – HR!67 Format: 2 × CD, Compilation, Reissue, Remastered, Digifile Country: Austria Released: 2018 Style: Modern Classical, Industrial, Neofolk
Commemoration brings together my work from 1998 to 2003, 5 years when, as you will see, I recorded a lot. Minimalist, factual, often dark and very pessimistic, that’s how I conceived Derniere Volonteat that moment. My equipment was very rudimentary, my texts quickly written on crumpled books, all recorded often in one or two days. It was perhaps the moment, that I was the most productive and also, by anger, the most inventive. A few years ago I started to think of a new edition of Commemoration, a review of those years of ‘iron and lead’, the testament of my ‘anti light’. This is Commemoration in its new edition. Good listening. Geoffroy Delacroix October 2018
Label: Old Captain Format: CD, Album, Limited Edition Country: Ukraine Released: 2012 Style: Military, Field Recording, Political, Religious
Oda Relicta’s “Ukrainian Insurgent Army” is a union of politics, religion, and music. The controversial agenda of the recording is exposed through 13 connoisseur compositions ranging from military marches to solemn chants to field recordings featured by a rank of artistic collaborations with: While Angels Watch, Furvus, :Golgatha:, Dissonant Elephant, Lonsai Maikov, Gnomonclast, Luftwaffe, Our God Weeps.
A complex tapestry of church hymns and procession marches, Cossack patriotic chants and Legion of Ukrainian Sich Riflemen songs is the spirit of a true Ukrainian nationalist. There is no abuse of hackneyed documentaries or copycatting of profane neo-folk genre; instead, there is harmony, passion, and wisdom conserved in laconic sonorities. Triumphing over double standard European political correctness this milestone is released exclusively upon the 70th anniversary of the UIA, celebrated on the 14th of October, 2012.
Tracklist : 1 Willow & Arrow-Wood Lyrics By, Voice – While Angels Watch 3:00 2 Pantheon Of Glory 2:28 3 Into The Woods Whence Mouth-Organ Heard 1:13 4 Triumph Of Ukrainian Insurgent Army 2:41 5 Unvanquished Knights Featuring – Furvus 3:01 6 From Dreams Into Ranks Featuring – :Golgatha: 2:55 7 Parakleisis Composed By – Dissonant Elephant, Lonsai Maïkov 3:19 8 Born In The Great Hour 3:10 9 Under-Aged Veteran (Gone) Lyrics By, Voice – Gnomonclast, Luftwaffe 3:44 10 Stray Souls Composed By – Our God Weeps 5:57 11 Martirologue 2:33 12 Black Forest 3:43 13 Mnohaya Lita 1:41
Oda Relicta – Lux Aeterna Label: Gradual Hate Records – GH113CD Format: CD, Album, Limited Edition Country: Argentina Released: Oct 2011 Style: Neo-Classical
The requiem is dedicated to all children died during the 1932-1933 famine in Ukraine. “Lux Aeterna” is a chamber requiem that follows a classical arrangement with soprano, bass and tenor vocals juxtaposed with angelic chants of the Child’s Choir, piano and organ passages of simple composition yet true purifying power. A collaborative release of Twilight Records and Gradual Hate Records. The CD comes in a grey/black digipak. The Requiem “Lux Aeterna” was originally composed by Mykhayil A.Shukh in 1988. It was premiered in Donetsk (Ukraine) in 1990/1991. The recordings took part at the festivals in Gori (Georgia) and at «Vorsel Meetings» (Ukraine). Re-recorded, re-engineered and re-arranged by Mykhayil A.Shukh; Olegh Kolyada at Oda Relicta HQ in 2010.
First Human Ferro – Heterodox Label: Old Captain – OCCD17, Gradual Hate Records – GH 128 CD Format: CD, Album, Limited Edition Country: Ukraine Released: Apr 2016 Style: Dark Ambient
Old Captain’s owner, Olegh Kolyada, fights the sea and presents his Lost Generation victory in defeat. “Heterodox” is a dark ambient album born of the sound and the fury with heroes lonely and mad. A sparse, straightforward yet emotionally vigorous record with its own interior monologue, a discourse to be a silent interlocutor to. Restraining the interior the musician offers the nature symbolism via modular synthesizers and analogue junk approach to scatter one’s ego worldwide for good. Full of elemental primitiveness the heretic in his destructive folly challenges to claim a nihilistic vision of reality to engage the listener into an ever-present absurd. A 200-CD edition in a classical glossy Digipak. A co-prod of Old Captain and Gradual Hate Records.
Credits: Artwork By – Stasys Krasauskas Composed By – Olegh Kolyada Notes: Recorded at Oda Relicta HQ in 2016. Limited to 200 copies. A glossy 4-panel Digipak edition
Ole Lukkøye – Zapara Label: Fulldozer Records – FDCD43 Format: CD, Album, Limited Edition, Reissue, Digipak Country: Russia Released: 03 Mar 2021 Style: Darkwave, Psychedelic Rock, Tribal, Fusion
Fulldozer Records presents an extended reissue of the significant Russian album of the 90s – Ole Lukkoye «Zapara», originally released on vinyl in 1993 by the label Antrop. Ole Lukkoye does not need a special introduction: the ethno-electronic band from St. Petersburg, which has existed for more than three decades, is well known to all connoisseurs of world music and psychedelia, not only in Russia, but also far beyond. Since its inception in 1989, Ole Lukkoye has released 8 full-length albums, which were released in Russia, Germany and the United States and received good press coverage. Starting from 1994 the band toured extensively throughout Europe, and five years later met the legendary German krautrock band Faust. The result of this collaboration was the recording and release of the album «Crystal Crow-Bar» in 2000 on the Klangbad label, owned by one of the Faust founders Hans Joachim Irmler, as well as the release of two other Ole Lukkoye albums on this label. The permanent leader and songwriter of the band Boris Bardash, among other things, is known for his participation in the recording of Theodor Bastard’s albums «Pustota» and «Beloe: Hunting For Fierce Beasts». A very special place in the creative heritage of Ole Lukkoye is occupied by the first album «Zapara», recorded in 1993 at the Antrop studio in St. Petersburg with the participation of engineer Yassin Tropillo. The album had a great influence on the sound of famous modern Russian ethno-electronic groups and on the entire Russian world music scene.
As those who have not yet had the opportunity to hear this album and who have heard it for the first time today rightly point out, it is hard to believe that such music was recorded in Russia in 1993. The unique and original sound of the album «Zapara» has absorbed both the influences of the best examples of the 80s darkwave scene and the tunes of various ethnos of the world, as well as the psychedelia of meditative rock and the avant-garde techniques of jazz fusion. Roughly seven musicians took part in its recording, and the range of instruments extends from keyboards, percussion and acoustic and electric guitars to bassoons, cello and banjo. The album’s magical spirit-lifting atmosphere is enframed by hypnotic recitatives in Russian performed by Boris Bardash and Andrei Lavrinenko. The canonical CD version of the album is supplemented with two previously unreleased bonus tracks: the meditative instrumental «Enfilade», recorded in 1993 at the studio of the Leningrad House of Radio, and the first version of the song «Toomze», which was recorded in 1995 at DDT studio in St. Petersburg, but was never included in this form in the eponymous album released a year later.
Umpio is the solo project of the Finnish sound explorer Pentti Dassum, a member of numerous bands with incredible stylistic coverage from noise-grind (Romutus) to challenging electroacoustic experiments (SM/DP) and unpredictable brutal noise performed on self-built metal objects.
However there’s no junk noise this time – «Insektio» is made from massive oscillations, electronic microsounds and tape manipulations. Like a heavy trip into nature, listen with one ear to the ground, how all the insects work, how temperature shifts affect the resonance of the planet, and how civilizations crumble away as only the frogs and moss will survive…
Gudelnaya Polyana – Solar Systo Togathering 2020 Label: Zhelezobeton – ZHB-LXXXV Format: 3 × CD, Album, Compilation, Limited Edition, Numbered, Partially Mixed Country: Russia Released: 31 May 2021 Style: Drone, Dark Ambient, Experimental, Ambient, Noise
Here we have a three-hour long compilation of live recordings, made in September 2020 at Gudelnaya Polyana (Russian for “droning glade”) – the experimental stage of the Solar Systo Togathering festival. The concept of Gudelnaya Polyana is total drone, infinitely diverse, but united in its essence. Every year in any weather dozens of musicians gather in the woods of the Leningrad region to take part in this ritual action, keeping themselves warm with bonfires, hot pu-er tea and kilowatts of sound.
In 2020, we were lucky to record the performances of most artists, and many of them agreed to provide fragments of these recordings for a commemorative compilation. The unity and diversity of droning sound is fully represented here since the festival gathers musicians from different fields: ambient, drone, noise, electronic, academic, and even the ensemble of 12-year-old experimenters made their contribution.
The first disc gently immerses us in the forest thicket, swamps and electrified fogs; the second takes us further into the labyrinths of sound experiments and unlikely consonances; the third begins with the piercing clarity of dawn, which gives way to a calm daytime mood, followed by the coming of night – the deep darkness thickens, we’re riding electromagnetic waves and trying to look beyond human existence…
In order to recapture the atmosphere more precisely, the tracks of 28 artists are smoothly rendered in three hour-long mixes. The artists taking part in this compilation are: AIKO ONLINE feat. KIKIMOTA & ANTON SONDA-JUNGLOV, ANDREW SPRRW & NIKA, AU, DRONE LIBERATION FRONT, EGREGOROS, EVERGREEN DJ, JAGATH, JAM DAZAN, KONTAKT S INOPLANETYANAMI ETO MUZYKA, KRYPTOGEN RUNDFUNK, LUNAR ABYSS, MIRA DREVO, NOISES OF RUSSIA, PETER THEREMIN, PETROGRAD DRONE GATHERING, SACHA RUSH & INSPECTR, SIX DEAD BULGARIANS, SOILCULT, SONOZERO, SVETLO111, SYMPHOCAT, TILE~SHORE, TIM SIX, TREMORKIKIMOR, TRETIY MIR, TUHJADES MAADES, W I I, WALDGRENZE.
