Tuesday, October 31, 2017

Shadow Reichenstein - "Werewolf Order" [2005]

Artist: Shadow Reichenstein
Title: Werewolf Order
Genre: Gothic Rock, Horror Punk
Country: USA
Release date: 2005

Track List:
  1. Borgo Pass
  2. Dracula
  3. Werewolf Order
  4. It's Halloween
  5. Wakin' The Dead
  6. Tombstone... Call From The Grave
  7. Be My Victim
  8. It's Too Late
  9. Bela Was A Junkie
  10. In Search Of Loose Dirt 
  11. Concrete Shoes
At a first glance at the band name and the track titles, one would expect the music to be as stereotypical horror punk as possible. However, Shadow Reichenstein actually are (or were? there's no new material from them for a long time, and their site is defunct...) much better than many Misfits clones. "Werewolf Order" was one of the first horror punk albums I heard (along with early albums by Cancerslug and Nim Vind), and it remains one of my favourites even a decade later. The music on this album, while still can be securely defined as "horror punk", has a lot of gothic rock/metal influences, which is definitely a good thing too. My personal favourites are tracks #4, #6 and #8.

Thursday, October 12, 2017

Rad Machine - "Taiga" [2015]

Artist: Rad Machine
Title: Taiga
Genre: Ambient, Techno, IDM
Country: Russia
Release date: 2015

Track List:
  1. Taiga
  2. Dirty Point
  3. Dansugosuto
The debut EP by Rad Machine, released a couple of years ago. Maybe it's slightly less mature than "Itkul Afterglow" in terms of sound, but it's still an interesting release recommended to any fan of obscure electronic music.

Wednesday, October 11, 2017

Rad Machine - "Itkul Afterglow" [2017]

Artist: Rad Machine
Title: Itkul Afterglow
Genre: Ambient, Techno, IDM
Country: Russia
Release date: 2017

Track List:
  1. High Tide
  2. Outskirt Sound 5
  3. Coluber
  4. Leaves
Rad Machine is an one-man electronic project by Valery Melekhin from Ekaterinburg, started as an ambient project but incorporated more techno and breakbeat elements into his music later on. Not much else is known about him, but his music is pretty good, even I normally don't listen much to the electronic music of this kind. This 12'' was presented on the Urals Industrial Biennale, and some people on there even thought they were listening to some previously unreleased EP by Aphex Twin :) Release notes:

"Itkul Afterglow will follow Melekhin's appearance on an Opal Tapes compilation of Russian music, titled USSR, with a set of cuts that run the gamut from deep, reverb-drenched outings to raw machine-driven funk.

The EP will drop digitally, on 12", and cassette, which will also feature four bonus tracks not on the digital and vinyl releases. The cover art for the release was sourced from an old postcard of Lake Itkul, a highly inspiring travel destination for Melekhin over the years"


Tuesday, October 10, 2017

Ragnar Grippe - "Sand" [1977]

Artist: Ragnar Grippe
Title: Sand
Genre: Ambient, Experimental Electronic, Musique Concrete
Country: Sweden
Release date: 1977

This highly minimalistic album, containing two long untitled tracks composed mostly of heavily reverberated analog synth sounds, is poorly known nowadays, but it made a significant influence on early industrial music scene. Not long ago it was re-released by Dais Records along with many other early industrial and experimental electronic classics. A little backstory on this album can be found here.

Saturday, October 7, 2017

Юрий Морозов - "Погубить человечество" [1979]

Artist: Юрий Морозов
Title: Погубить человечество
Genre: Ambient, Experimental Electronic, Musique Concrete
Country: USSR
Release date: 1979

Track List:
  1. Ария демона
  2. Катастрофы
  3. Фиолетовая вибрация
  4. Летающие тарелки
  5. Мистерия эроса
  6. Битва бронтозавров
  7. Пляски машин
  8. Сигналы помощи
  9. Агония
The most experimental album by Yuri Morozov I've heard so far, even more so than his previous one. To be honest I have discovered the electronic/experimental part of his discography only not long ago, and so far I like it much more than his blues rock albums.

Of course, like in case with his other album I've posted about a week ago, you shouldn't expect much from a tape album which was never intended to be published widely - it was just an experiment by a guy who had access to a pretty advanced synthesizer for that time, and wanted to create something that sounds as scary and "alien" as possible. And I must admit that the result indeed reflects the atmosphere of the "dark" sci-fi of the 1960-80s quite well. It's far from being a masterpiece like "Martian Chronicles" by Solaris, but it's fascinating to know that music like this existed in the USSR as early as in late 1970s, and I'd recommend to anyone who would appreciate the atmosphere of apocalyptic sci-fi, the UFO craze and the nuclear war scare of that time.