Skip to main content

Felix Blume - Death in Haiti: Funeral Brass Bands & Sounds from Port Au Prince (Discrepant, 2018)

Pretty intense album culled from many hours of field recordings made by Felix Blume in Port Au Prince in 2016. Scope out tracks like "Maestro Turenne's Brass Band "LOT BO RIVYE A"" with a bereaved woman wailing for her mother over a not-as-somber-as-you'd-expect brass band tune. Or, well, "Cries" which is both haunting and cathartic. "Prayers, Singings and Maestro Midouin's Saxophone Solo" and "Marijuana, Rhum and Music around the Graveyard" are beautiful meldings of those very things - not sure if it happened that way naturally or if it was edited after the fact but either way it's mixed beautifully. Very interesting, haunting, and at times strangely uplifting sounds.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Nachtmystium/Leviathan - In the Valley of Death, Where Black Metal is King: An Homage to the Roots (Ascension Monuments Media, 2018)

What the fuck is that title. Okay I get the first part is a Judas Iscariot tribute, but did we really need "an homage to the roots" in there? Hey wouldn't it be funny if these were actually covers of the band The Roots? Anyway. This album was supposed to come out 10 years ago, but it was blocked by the bands' respective labels. Now I guess they've figured out a way, or Blake Judd needs money for drugs so he's figured out a way, to put this out. The Bandcamp version has 8 tracks, 5 from Nachtmystium and 3 from Leviathan, but I've seen a 10-track tracklisting elsewhere. On the version I have, we have Nachtmystium covering Judas Iscariot, Ildjarn (twice), Von and Burzum. Leviathan tackles Ildjarn (twice) and Von once. I seem to be missing Leviathan's Judas Iscariot cover ("Where the Winter Beats Incessant") and one of Nachtmystium's Von covers ("Von"). Weird. Wonder if there were some licensing issues or something. All four Ildjar...
Post a Comment
Read more

Isserley - Cutest Girls Suicide Cult (Tigersquawk, 2018)

Again - no real recollection of how this one ended up in my wishlist. I keep tabs on some witchhouse stuff and I guess I heard of Isserley somewhere...then again maybe it's the rad album title and kool art that pulled me in. Isserley is the "self proclaimed saddest girl in Australia" and these are kind of witchy beats, although more distorted and noise-y than is typical...of which I approve...but overall the album (it's more like an EP) didn't do much for me. Apparently a lot of these trax are culled from previous Isserley projects and given makeovers. Good to know! But not my bag.
Post a Comment
Read more

Sunburned Hand of the Man - Get Wet with the Animal (Manhand, 2018)

I keep up with Sunburned only intermittently these days, they seem to be taking a more rock-ist approach lately. Like this one. Each track is about 4-5 minutes of pretty ramshackle, jammy, funky, boogie rock...almost spoiled by the throaty, beery vocals shouted over the top of each one of these tunes with nonsensical platitudes. I almost shut it off after a couple tracks but I stuck it out and kinda came around on some level. I was oddly reminded of My War era Black Flag sludge punk. The band sez "these Holy Grail fueled recordings are a mix of iphone and zoom recordings run through garageband, reaper and some plug-ins. We're still working on the much more listener-friendly Black Dirt session..." and point taken, listener friendly this ain't.
Post a Comment
Read more