PYROCLASTICAL: Axis of Evil CD

Limited edition CD in white digipak, numbered, hand-stamped discs, exclusive art card

Styles: EBM, industrial, IDM, avant-garde electronica, harshe techno
Sort of similar:  Various Warp Records and Wax Trax! releases. If Richard D. James did instrumental remixes of Nitzer Ebb

<<ORDER HERE>> $6.00 CAD (+ regional shipping)

This group of strangers has its origin in the electronic underground punk scene of Surabaya. Nobody knows who they are, how many they are, or what their real names are. The name of the project is Pyroclastical, and its function in this world is to blow up your mind. Pyroclastical is a mixture of raw sounds that make you think… but without any pretension to be “excessively” intellectual.

This album is a sound collage inspired by the concept of “Axis of Evil”, popular on the media during the War of Afghanistan in 2003.

It is not a political criticism, but a critique of the nominal and mainstream concepts of propaganda and capitalism. But not only in the fields of politics.

Some people trust in leaders and that’s fine, but many times we are deceived by them, because we trust on their promises… in a blind way…  and some people steal our illusions without any remorse, pointing to others as the guilty powers that caused all the mess and despair.

Each one of the tracks refers to a city in the member countries of the “Axis of Evil”.

 

GAD WHIP: Trapped In A Pin Hole Camera – cassette

C38, high-bias, pro-duped, printed envelope, colour insert card 

Styles: Post-punk, first wave industrial, dub, ranting street poet, trip-hop, psychedelic

RIYL: Cabaret Voltaire, Sleaford Mods, PiL, Crass if they had been technoheads, The Happy Mondays by way of Throbbing Gristle, the lovechild of The Fall and Underworld rotting in a rubbish tip

Order HERE. $6.00 CAD (+ regional shipping)

All day every day, making tomorrow seem like yesterday.

The musical ennoblement of the Big Time Television pirate music video channel in Max Headroom, GAD WHIP come on like a nightmare wedding of Mad Max and Bladerunner with their anarchistic trash heap of tripped-out industrial post-punk.

“GAD WHIP are a quartet of non-hairy and also hairy freaks from various northern shitholes who present an ungrateful world with a very pleasing hodgepodge of high-energy, low-fidelity punky psychedelia and post-industrial musique concrète...” ~ Expletive Undeleted (read full story HERE)

Trapped In A Pin Hole Camera features the core trio of Amos, Bolam and Davies aided and abetted by Neil Campbell (Vibracathedral Orchestra, Astral Social Club etc), Paul Walsh (Smell & Quim, Foldhead etc), Jimbo Baxter (Freaks Union, The Fuckin’ Glorious etc), Eva Davies & Ryan Walker (both on extra guitar & bass duties). Recorded in several kitchens throughout the summer of 2017 in West Yorkshire, UK, with “one mic and a busking amp” the band claims, though the recording is by no means the lo-fi shambles that implies.

Gad Whip formed in the summer of 2014 and have since put out 4 tapes and a couple of EP’s (one of those being a 12” on ever/never records). Named after a murkily arcane North Lincolnshire ‘old religion’ ritual involving a long cattle whip being shaken above a priest’s head on Palm Sunday or something, Gad Whip are old enough to know better but they don’t.

Vol 11: STUDIES IN TRANCE – Hazy Montagne Mystique / YlangYlang

C30, high-bias tape. Edition of 50. Custom envelope with insert card.  $7 (+ regional shipping)

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We ended our split tapes series with Vol. 10 (sides 19 & 20) to focus more on full album releases. Seemed like the thing to do at the time. Now we return with Vol. 11 (sides 21 and 22) for no possible better reason than to release the conceptual split “Studies In Trance” by Montreal electronic dronesters Hazy Montagne Mystique and YlangYlang.

The title of this work could raise red flags for people. Cheesy house music budget compilation red flags planted in the sand of Ibiza beaches, that is. But rest assured the pair are long-time students of trance-inducing tones. For evidence see their collaborative project A Sacred Cloud whose album, ENSOLEILLÉ, 1972, we had the pleasure of releasing in 2013. Clearly when they say “Trance” they’re talking “transcendental”; trance as in drone; trance as in cosmic youth and far out cosmic spaces.

“… two artists who excel in druggy, electronic trance music — but not that type of trance. Having already worked together under the name A Sacred Cloud, Montreal’s Hazy Montagne Mystique and YlangYlang manage to fill out Arachnidisc’s four-song Studies in Trance cassette with a rather epic sounding drone. Starting off with the 15-minute raga, “chant/il sera lointain,” Hazy Montagne Mystique channel late ’70s French Zeuhl music, as dramatic rumbles and tribal drums absorb mystic chants. YlangYlang contribute three brief compositions, keeping things less stagey but equally textured, as “Temple of Tears” melds field recordings with electronic hiss. “Smoking with Spirits” resembles a melted shoegaze single, while “In Da Zone” is the most rhythmic track of the lot. With Studies in Trance, Arachnidiscs have delivered an engrossing split release that feels like a fully realized piece of art.” ~ Exclaim!

“…with a soothing new symbiotic brain worm from two of the creative lobes responsible for Jeunesse Cosmique … if you only pick up on one eccentric Canadian split cassette series this season, make it [Studies In Trance].” ~ Decoder

“Hazy’s “chant / is sera lointain” is a beautiful car wash of white noise. The listener is placed at the center of the recording, with many objects and delights that flit across the stage for the entertainment of the ears. Initial voices, imitating chants of mystic quality, give way to static and throbbing bass synth notes. The piece is stripped, collecting nuances of natural disorder, and keeping things entrancingly not of earth. YlangYlang’s … highly pleasing “Smoking With Spirits” is a delightful collection of space debris, a wealth of synthesized sighs and melodic highs. Crowding the short minutes with a cast of drone-worthy characters, YlangYlang creates a fruitful cosmology, rich in contrasting tones.” ~ Grayowl Point

SEMEN PRIEST: Third Testament

C50 – High-bias tape, toxic green shell. $6.66! (plus regional shipping)

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THIRD TESTAMENT is, fittingly, the third album by Canadian post-punk/electronic duo SEMEN PRIEST. Evolving from the “industrial vapor wave” of their debut, the duo’s previous tape, Disco Horribilis, dallied with EBM tones. On their latest outing Epididymis Rex and Zsa Zsa La Borg dilly with a harder-edged sound inspired by classic ’80s and ’90s Wax Trax! records bands.

CALL IT: Post-Punk, Disco, Industrial. Electronic, Vapour Wave
SONIC COUSIN TO: PiL, Revolting Cocks, Underworld, My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult

“Toronto’s Semen Priest make some of the best gothic infused disco/post-punk this side of Silent Shout favourite Femminielli. Those of you who follow the blog know that a comparison to the Montreal italo-disco king is one of the highest honours that we can bestow on a band, and ‘Person Suit’ hits all the notes: an epically long song, half-sung spoken-word vocals over funky synths and a bass-line made for a late-night after-party … This album is an excellent foray into a dark underbelly of Canadian electronic music.” ~ Silent Shout

“Spraying us with another blast of sludgy … ‘Wrong Number’ is a crunchy post-punk stomper … “ ~ Quick Before It Melts

Cassette: Neue Übertragungen von einer Totenwelt

TRANZMIT‘s second cassette of Übertragungen audio collages. Contains elements of recent digitally released EPs, chopped and screwed, stretched and chewed. Broken beats, erratic static. Ghost voices speak to you through these ‘New Transmissions from a Dead World‘.

Releases January 14,  2015 (TRANZMIT will be tranzmitting live at The Central in Toronto that evening)

Listen/purchase ($7.00 plus regional shipping) at the Bandcamp link below.

 

Or listen to the continuous “mixtape” version at Soundcloud (a download of which comes as a “secret” bonus track with the cassette).

SEMEN PRIEST: Disco Horribilis

C46. high-bias tape. Limited to 30 copies. ($7 plus regional shipping)

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Disco Horribilis: Latin. “To Learn of the terrible”; “Horrible dance music”

Canadian dark disco provocateurs SEMEN PRIEST (remember when they sent us a blood-filled condom?) are back with their second album. More groove and less blood this time out, but no less bile. In support of self-abuse/love, in protest of rape culture & violence against women. Rex and Zsa Zsa call for the downfall of crack-smoking mayors and burning the perpetrators of acid attacks.

TWO WRONGS DON’T MAKE IT RIGHT. TWO WRONGS MAKE IT EVEN.

CALL IT: EBM, acid house, disco, ’90s house, industrial
SONIC COUSIN TO: Underworld, Soft Cell, any two Acid House compilations playing at the same time, Skinny Puppy, Nitzer Ebb, Thrill Kill Kult, 1000 Homo DJs, Man Made Hill, Bile Sister.

New TRANZMIT Bandcamp Site

BABEL subsidiary TRANZMIT has a new dedicated web presence of its own. TRANZMIT focuses on sound collage, live radio sampling, musique concrete, industrial, audio manipulation, ambient noise, urban field recordings, and the like. Uneasy listening, dark-ambient, dystopian soundscapes.

The Bandcamp site features the definitive mixes of all the TRANZMIT sessions since 1997  in 8 albums.

Check it out HERE.

Also, listen to a brand new track: NACHTANGST

UPCOMING: BABEL/TRANZMIT will be featured on an Arachnidiscs split-cassette with ROSS BAKER early this fall.

BABEL Heurter EP

27:32 mins // Pro CD-R, thermal print // Spray painted white digipak // Numbered edition of 25

Three track EP of avant electric guitar improvisations. A prepared Fender Telecaster thwacked with mallets and layered with loop and delay effects. Recorded live, direct to two-track in late 2012 by Jakob Rehlinger.