We had the honor of chatting with world-class artist Jaboe to discuss her recently re-imagined album of classics and rareities Skin Blood Women Roses, released via Consouling Sounds / Sonic Rendezvous for Record Store Day. Jarboe discussed this new album, and highlighted points from her entire career, her feelings about Roadburn Festival, and her time featuring with Swans on their best-known and loved material. She also discussed her other artistic disciplines, upcoming world tour, and much more!
Dirk Serries has been composing interstellar, compartmentalised Drone structures for thirty-five years now, fourteen of which have been spent as the figurehead of his Fear Falls Burning project. The Belgian’s latest album, Function Collapse (Consouling Sounds), shows the scope of the electric guitar and the man’s wizardry of command.Continue reading →
Ian Clement (Wallace Vanborn) and Michele De Feudis (formerly of Horses On Fire) have put their raw talent and imagination to deliver the outrageously fun, The Very Very Danger. Transforming into their own superheroes—Kitty taming the synths, Bunny behind the drums and Bear chugging away on the bass—they bring you Witness The Legitness (9000 Records/Consouling Sounds)Continue reading →
Having gained renown as a winner of the Cannes Soundtrack Award in 2013, Brooklyn-based Dutch composer Jozef van Wissem is something of an expert lute player and is no stranger to getting Drone-like music from it. We Adore You, You Have No Name (Consouling Sounds), van Wissem’s latest album, is a journey through the archaic and the contemporary, the rustic and the mystical.Continue reading →
In a short space of time, Belgian Black Metallers Wiegedood have proven to be somewhat of a special entity, and a name that has begun to creep into a wider audience (not to mention a name that your scribe has found difficult to remember how to spell for about the same length of time). Featuring members of, and having association with, the likes of Amenra and Oathbreaker, their brand of Black Metal similarly revels in moody tropes and being both explorative and emotive. It is interesting, then, that latest album and the final part of their trio of releases, De Doden Hebben Het Goed III (Century Media) follows suit fairly firmly, but does up the ante in places.Continue reading →
When a band that formed in 2006 have already recorded ten full-length albums and so many EPs and splits that I can’t be bothered counting them, it’s fair to assume that they’ve (I know, it’s only one person, but you use a band-name you get called by a plural – science) nailed their sound down by now. With Metal/Noise pioneers Gnaw Their Tongues, however, it’s a bit more complicated than that – they’ve somehow managed to develop a style that is instantly recognisable but changes subtly across each album, to the extent that you’re never sure exactly what you’re going to get when a new one is announced, and how heavily it will lean towards their disparate sides.Continue reading →
Cult favorite Amenra have released their brand new music video for the track ‘Children Of The Eye’. The song comes off of their forthcoming new album Mass VI via Neurot Recordings next month. Watch the clip below.Continue reading →
There is art in being able to give reverence to the founding, cultural milestones of a creative scene in a manner that still maintains a progressive bent and that is also in keeping with developing a wholly separate artistic entity. For while Wiegedood walk a left hand path Continue reading →
The Church of Ra – comprising Belgian outfits Amenra, Wiegedood and Oathbreaker and sharing members between them – is a wildly inventive Cerberus which nevertheless tends to remain largely within the confines of its Metal boundaries. Colin H van Eeckhout is often regarded as the titular head of that movement but RASA (Consouling Sounds), the debut solo effort from the Amenra frontman, is moving, ambient drone with little of the growling anger usually expected from the genre.
The bumph accompanying the one-track album tells how its creation has tapped into the man’s emotions. Initially however, the effect is purely soothing: an atmospheric thrum, its gradual increase in volume coinciding with the subtly wailing harmony of the hurdy-gurdy. Fans of van Eeckhout’s day job will be aware that the agonised shriek isn’t the only weapon in his arsenal, and here his easy yet mournful inflections add further poignancy to a lament which grows more hypnotic as even less seems to happen.
The brief introduction of rhythmic tub-thumping at the midway point brings a level of fire whilst simultaneously retaining the gentle feel of a deer springing through hard ground, the tension building while bizarrely massaging the temples. As drums re-enter the fray the listener becomes aware of having been lost in a reverie: constantly juxtaposed elements of light and dark polarising the equilibrium of the senses, the whispering laments of the sensual atmospheres whistling through a forest and bewitching the mind, with van Eeckhout’s gently howled intonations continuing to both trouble and assuage the soul.
There are elements of Amenra’s genius here: the tremendously affecting last five minutes reminiscent of the suspense-filled lull in ‘A Mon Âme’ for example. Those who have witnessed the band live will also recognise a stripped-back version of the barely controllable tension as their sound builds toward its terrible crescendo. Much as with the indigenous warblings of Wardruna, there is no crescendo here, merely a wonderfully hypnotic, emotive coda which continues to build the protagonist’s pain alongside its irresistible relief.
It has often been said that the aforementioned Norwegians draw tears from audiences, so what this will do God alone knows. RASA is a half-hour embodiment of distress and salvation, delivered with the most moving, disarming beauty, stripping the listener’s soul bare and leaving them distraught whilst not entirely bereft of deliverance. Pure and staggeringly powerful, this is a compelling, wistful drama that must not be polluted by extraneous noise and should be upheld as a beacon of perfect expression.
