Experimental Audio Research - Mesmerized (1994)

EAR was an extended solo effort by Peter Kember (Spacemen 3, Sonic Boom) who often invited collaborators such as  Kevin Martin, Kevin Shields, Eddie Prévost , Lawrence Chandler, Nick Kramer, Delia Derbyshire and Thomas Köner to explore the farthest attainable reaches of sonic cosmology. On their first recording, Mesmerized, it’s tough to say exactly whose work is showcased, but it’s fun to make assumptions: the evolving drone on “Guitar Feedback Manipulation” recalls Shields and Chandler while the looming bagpipes on “California Nocturne” recalls Martin and Prévost.

Is the acrostic on purpose? probably

Faust, Tony Conrad, Jim O'Rourke, Richard Youngs, Keith Rowe - In God We Trust (1995)

Just by looking at the title you can tell that this single has a real powerhouse lineup. This single was given out for free to lucky attendees of a British tour. I can best describe the single as a weird mishmash of noises and sounds. There are five tracks crammed into the one sided single, each performed by a different artist, each were about a minute long, and each of them very well done, All in all it's a great listen, well worth a mere 6 minutes of your time.

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Natural Snow Buildings - The Dance of the Moon and the Sun (2006)

Well first off, happy 100th review everyone! I don't really have words to describe how thrilled I am that the little blog that me and a few friends started together for fun grew and grew and now (after a brief hiatus albeit) we've managed to reach 100 posts and well over 30,000 page views! On behalf of the whole crew, thanks everyone! So I decided to review an album that's near and dear to me for the 100th review, it's near and dear to a lot of the writers here in fact. This album is honestly a masterpiece. A combination of beautiful, layered, intricate drones, gorgeous folk tracks, and some fantastic and hypnotic more tribal sounding freak folk tracks. It's just an album that I think everyone should listen to. As long as it might be Twinsistermoon and Isengrind make every second worth hearing. The french duo originally only released 50 copies of the album, and I am lucky enough to own one of those copies, and I ripped it just for this occasion. Thanks for staying with us and expect to see a lot more great content in the future!

The Moon and the Sun
Will dance together
And deploy their arms
To grab the earth

Double Leopards - Halve Maen (2003)

Now, I'm not a humongous drone fan, I was never super into more conventional Drone or Ambient albums. But I can surely say that, without a doubt, Double Leopards are definitely a solid act. They really create such a bleak and dark soundscape that can totally immerse the listener. The length of the album might seem a little daunting (to someone who doesn't listen to any Drone or Ambient that is) but it's definitely deserving of your time. The whole album just has such a great atmosphere. It's dark and cold and beautiful at the same time. It's an excellent starting point into the genre if you ask me, and it's worth a listen for sure, even if you don't know anything about the genre.

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Destroy All Monsters - 74 76 (1994)

Destroy All Monsters were quite an interesting group. Emerging in Ann Arbor in the early 70's, their sound could best be described as an extremely noisy and hectic proto-punk group. The band, however, is very eclectic and it's difficult to define their sound with just a genre or two, and this album, compiled by Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore, definitely shows it. They were certainly ahead of their time, and quite out there too, with songs that are full-on improvisational freak outs, to really droney songs, to songs that seemingly signal and hint at the Post-Punk, Punk Rock, and Anarcho-Punk movement that were soon to come. I definitely feel they had an influence on all three of those genres. Although the album is quite intimidating, clocking in at just under three and a half hours, its definitely worth it and I highly recommend giving this album a chance. It's a great look into one of the many (but in my opinion one of the best) precursors to the Punk movement.

Disc One: Gospel Crusade

Disc Two: Crying In Bed

Disc Three: To The Throne Of Chaos Where The Thin Flutes Pipe Mindlessly

Acid Mothers Temple & the Melting Paraiso U.F.O.- "La Novia" (2000)

Acid Mothers Temple & the Melting Paraiso U.F.O. are an extremely large "spirit collective" from Japan who stand as monoliths in the current experimental rock scene as one of the most prolific and varied bands around, going from ephemeral noise rock blasts to strung-out psychedelic droning.

Gregg Kowalsky - Tape Chants (2009)

Gregg Kowalsky, Florida drone craftsman and Kranky native, has, with Tape Chants, what is undoubtedly his magnum opus. Indeed it stands as a quiet, largely un-witnessed statement to the entirety of contemporary ambient and drone in its ineptitude and stale demeanor. Its dialectical tension of force and resignation, of repetition and novelty, stand to challenge and take to the end the Enoian doctrine of music “as ignorable as it is interesting.” What is interesting, Kowalsky shows, is so because it reciprocally negates its own ignorance.

Koji Asano - The Last Shade Of Evening Falls (2000)

"The Last Shade of Evening Falls" is a monolithic electroacoustic drone work totaling 260 minutes in length, each part around 60-70 minutes in length. This .ZIP collects all four parts.

AGF - Source Voice (2013)

There is perhaps a peculiar honesty to the human voice which has nothing to say - in the age of unspeakable horrors what truth is there of suffering than the pain of its incommunicability? The message, the content, which, under the weight of overdrivven fog, cannot even begin to articulate itself without being smothered, was the genius of How to Dress Well's Love Remains. But what is the result of content stripped of any content? What remains of the voice in this instance is the substrate of material suffering that Roland Barthes recognized as the "grain of the voice" - not just the texture of the voice, but also the material and historical body's instantiation and continuation as the voice. The grain of the voice is the texture is the voice below the level of semantic content (the "phenotext" versus the "genotext") and as such is the body materializing itself in and as voice. Adorno has located the material body, below the indentitarian perversions of rationalization, as the true site of suffering. Then the grain of the human voice - in its crying out as suffering - is the substrate of the substrate of suffering. It is the material imprint of suffering that will not even rise to the level of language's symbolic (and hence dangerously instrumental) rationality.

Boris - Akuma No Uta (2003)

Boris has a large and varied discography, but whenever anyone asks where to start, the response is almost always the same: Akuma No Uta. This album is a monolithic achievement for the Japanese trio, crossing into so many of the styles they've dabbled in, and bringing together so many varied sounds to make an extremely cohesive and well-made album - it's a great introduction to one of the best groups in modern music

Naked City - Leng Tch'e (1992)

Leng Tch'e is a ridiculously overlooked album from John Zorn's Jazzcore outfit Naked City. The album was released in 1992, the same year that Naked City's much more popular Grand Guignol was released, in my opinion Grand Guignol pales in comparison to this masterpiece. This album was also one of the first albums that could be classified as Drone Doom, predating Earth 2 by a year. For those of you who don't know what Naked City are: They are a band founded in 1988 by the insanely prolific artist John Zorn, their sound can best be described as Jazzcore, a mix of Jazz music and Grindcore which, surprisingly, works. Another thing to know is that "Leng Tch'e" is Chinese for "1,000 Cuts." It was an execution technique used in China where they cut off portions of the condemned's skin but kept him or her alive, the album cover actually depicts a real life occurrence of this gruesome act.

Hashisheen - The End of Law (1999)

Hashisheen is one of the many projects created by Bill Laswell, a prolific and eclectic musician, most notably for his work as a Bassist during the 80's and 90's. While Laswell was already recognized as a talented musician by the time this project was started, it is not a straight forward track to track album, the songs were not made with any intention of being heard separate to the vocals, they simply compliment the album's true purpose, to tell a story.