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HLER: LGM-1: GonzoCircus Review

De Unexplained Sounds Group breidt verder uit. Het aanbod aan interessante muziek is dusdanig groot, dat Raffaele Pezzella (Sonologyst) heeft besloten om nog een sublabel op te richten. Deze keer richt hij zijn pijlen op filmische experimentele ambient met een sciencefiction gevoel of met een link naar de wetenschap. De Fin Hler mag de spits afbijten met een negen nummers tellend album (digitaal). De cd-rversie bevat er zes, de tot vijfentwintig stuks gelimiteerde cassette vijf, maar met enkele fysieke extra’s. Wij kregen de digitale versie, en die duurt ons een beetje te lang. De wetenschappelijke theorie die Hler voor zijn exploratie gebruikt, gaat ons een beetje boven de pet. Laten we het erop houden dat het gaat over pulsars van een ander melkwegstelsel die pas recent door astronomen met zeer geavanceerde telescopen kunnen worden waargenomen. Dat vertaalt zich naar uitstekend gemaakte soundscapes, die echter een beetje te veel op elkaar lijken om te blijven boeien. Het samenstellen van verzamelaars met de focus op een bepaalde regio of als een eerbetoon aan een bepaald boek of persoon zijn als een tweede natuur voor Pezzella. Een tweede deel in de uitstekende ‘Drone Islands’ serie kon dan ook niet uitblijven. En dan zet hij, zoals gewoonlijk, wat grotere namen tussen een stel obscure artiesten die het nooit minder doen dan de gevestigde namen. Die laatste zijn hier TROUM, Rapoon en Schloss Tegal. Zij worden eerder tot het drone ambient genre gerekend, wat dan weer niet kan gezegd worden van Alphaxone en Taphephobia die eerder dark ambient maken. Simon Balestrazzi en onze eigen Trauma Terrestrial mogen voor wat experimentele verwarring zorgen. Door de brede waaier aan subgenres en artiesten boeit deze compilatie al net als zijn voorganger. Pezella mocht van het spiksplinternieuwe netlabel Big Cypress Swamp (een referentie naar Lovecraft) samen met Psymon Marshall van de muziekblog 1208 North Fuller Ave., Apt 1 een verzamelaar samenstellen vol rituele en occulte ambient. Het is meteen een voltreffer van jewelste. Met deelnemers als Moloch Conspiracy en Adonai Atrophia kan moeilijk iets mis gaan. Veel minder bekende artiesten laten zich echter graag positief gelden. Melek-Tha, Caulbearer en nog een achttal anderen nemen de luisteraar mee in de diepste krochten van het occulte. De set is mooi opgebouwd waardoor de nummers als het ware bijna in elkaar overlopen en er een ware helletrip wordt gecreëerd. Met hier en daar wat duister opklinkende stemmen en dwarse klanken wordt de donkere ambient verder opgekleurd. Zoals dikwijls het geval met dit soort collecties is het niet altijd evident om de ene van de andere te onderscheiden. Net daarom is de stabiel blijvende kwaliteit zo belangrijk. Dan doet het er namelijk minder toe wiens dromen we navolgen. Dan word je gewoon het album ingezogen, tot tijd, ruimte en artiest geen belang meer hebben.

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HLER: LGM-1: Igloomag Review

Constantly threatening and burgeoning, there are hints of extra-sensory projections. Nothing mellow here. It gives a large space to tiny incremental directions and micro-tonal gestures.

Experimentations sustained by dense layers of drones and flexible sound textures

Coming from the DIY musical community HLER (aka Heikki Lindgren and Esa Ruoho) are a Finnish experimental / drone infused duo with materials published as ultra-limited hand crafted editions assorted with digitals.

HLER’s musical and creative signature is said to be largely improvised, turned to aleatoric experimentations sustained by dense layers of drones and flexible sound textures, occasionally admitting conceptual ideas that fall in the electroacoustic field of researches.

From a first listen to LGM-1, it delivers vertical droning chimes, crackling sounds, and chilling soundscapes. Playing with feedback, resonance, feelings of dislocation, motion, and buzzed out frequencies floating in the air—the whole soundscaping tapestry is well balanced. Constantly threatening and burgeoning, there are hints of extra-sensory projections. Nothing mellow here. It gives a large space to tiny incremental directions and micro-tonal gestures.

These electronic drone-soaked aspects of minimalist music can easily admit comparisons with the brooding shifted moods designed by artists such as Justin Wright (Expo 70), Phil Niblock (among other names), toxified post-industrial artefacts of Zoviet France, Nocturnal Emissions, Galerie Schallschutz, and free form electroacoustic researches, sound morphologies of Bernard Parmegiani (ref. De Natura Sonorum).

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V/A: The Dystopian World of J.G. Ballard: The Sound Projector Review

Having read some of British writer J G Ballard’s work in the past, I was curious to discover what sort of dystopian world might be imagined on this compilation from Zero K, the offshoot label of Raffaele Pezzella’s Unexplained Sounds label. I had imagined this compilation might be on the noisy, gritty side with perhaps one or two sudden car-crash explosions and the sound of crunching glass. Maybe even found sound recordings playing over and over ad nauseam the news of US President John F Kennedy’s assassination as his motorcade rolled through Dallas in 1963, Hollywood actress Jayne Mansfield’s death in a car collision with a trailer truck in 1967 or the deaths of Diana Spencer and Dodi Fayed in a car crash in Paris in 1997 might feature somewhere here. The music would range from noisily industrial and urban musique concrete collages to eerie minimalism suggesting abandoned factory sites and aircraft hangars or lonely islands in the Pacific Ocean. It would be as much spiky, jerky and not always internally consistent as it would be hypnotic and bristling with menace.

Instead what we have here from eleven artists is a remarkably consistent composite sound world of dark cavernous ambience, for the most part sombre and gloomy, and tending towards a smooth and droning delivery with few surprises. While the music is good, for me it doesn’t quite come close to sketching, even in a general way, the universe of J G Ballard’s imagination. Still, if you take these tracks as they are, and forget the premise that they are meant to serve and represent, they are very atmospheric, even meditative, and though they are dark, they are not hostile or menacing and some pieces are even quite comforting in their predictability and consistency.

Perhaps the one track that comes close to what I’d hoped for is JARL’s “Labyrinth of Images”, a skittery electronic world of insect simulacra, paralleling Ballard’s investigations of simulation in novels like “Crash” or “High Rise” in which his protagonists deal with traumas or solving crimes committed by cool-headed sociopaths by replicating acts of murder, sabotage or destruction over and over. As the track continues, it becomes ever more shrill and hysterical in tone, and derangement becomes a real possibility. It really does stand out from the rest of the music which I treat as a backdrop leading up to it and then away from it as the album continues to the end.

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V/A: The Dystopian World of J.G. Ballard: Avant Music News Review

This compilation is notable in both its consistency and lack thereof. Its 12 tracks, spanning about 75 minutes, each involve some form of gritty drone, many with shimming or lilting looped structures. But these efforts have their own unique identities that make them all part of a greater whole. Contributors include Grey Frequency, Mario Lino Stancati, JARL, Eraldo Bernocchi, HLER, Hector M. Reis, Lars Bröndum, Joel Gilardini, vÄäristymä, Mombi Yuleman, and Tarme Til Alle.

Each piece was influenced in some fashion by the writings of science fiction author J.G. Ballard. Somewhat ahead of his time, Ballard is labeled with the word “dystopian”, as his stories from 50+ years ago broached subjects that have only recently lost most of their taboo nature. He famously wrote, “The advanced societies of the future will not be governed by reason. They will be driven by irrationality, by competing systems of psychopathology.” Look around and tell me that has not already happened.

In any event, the music is enjoyable in its subtle quietness, though punctuated by rumblings and spacey themes. There is a solidly retro feel to this set, with the use of field recordings as well as analog buzz and hiss. While the majority of these undertakings might be lumped into the experimental dark ambient bucket, the pair of sound collages from Lars Bröndum stand out as having more in common with the works of Tod Dockstader for example. Other tracks fall at various places on the spectrum between ambient and musique concrete.

Once again, a stellar collection of the weird and unexpected from Zero K, an Unexplained Sounds Group label.

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HLER: LGM-1: This Is Darkness Review

Created from the bursts of radio waves originating from space, this stunning album of dark ambient / drone / post-industrial is one of those which rewards the listener with something new to experience each time it’s played. The music here is mysterious, hypnotic and alien… and yet the audio journey we are taken on has a comforting aspect underlying it all. With LGM-1, Finnish duo Heikki Lindgren & Esa Ruoho have created something truly unique, and this is very much worth checking out.