Berlin is such a hotbed of activity for experimental art. Long established as a hub for innovation and rule-breaking, be it in literature, art, music or film, it’s little wonder that so many artists base themselves in this great city, which allows them to create freely and collaboratively. And what better place for a musician who is just beginning to find their foothold, developing their own style, and making their first forays into the music world? Laurén Maria is one such artist.  Nominally, a folk artist, Maria is blessed with an incredible voice. A voice that she uses to elevate her chosen genre from something familiar to something totally distinctive. Deftly combining her ‘instrument’ with a carefully selected collection of field recordings, distortion, drone and collage, she accompanies the listener on an unpredictable journey of sound and sensation. This aesthetic was evident on her solo debut, 2023’s Leaves Falling Beyond The Sky, but since then she has undeniably upped her game as on the newly released follow-up, You’re Beautiful.

McCarthyism may have been notorious for ending careers thanks to its ardent blacklisting policy, but Japan was no stranger to excluding its filmmakers, either. Left-leaning politics might see you cast out, a la Tadashi Imai, but so could experimental arthouse filmmaking when it was considered an affront to Japanese moral values. Director Seijun Suzuki found this out the hard way. While working for the Nikkatsu studio, he decided to turn the standard yakuza tropes on their head for 1967’s Branded To Kill, and while now considered his masterpiece, it proved to be the straw that broke the studio’s back. Having grown tired of his seemingly outlandish and wayward filmmaking, they promptly terminated his contract. Furious, Suzuki took them to court - and won. But it led to him being blacklisted for the next decade, most of the seventies, which ironically feels like the ideal time for his innovative, art-led filmmaking. Ten years later, however, Suzuki returned with 1977’s A Tale of Sorrow and Sadness, a socially astute and darkly comedic tale of vapidity, greed, manipulation and golf. 

MDS vs Satan features three militantly brutal slabs of HNW, with each being as intense, unrelenting, and set as the other.

In A White Room is a crude’n’crusty slice of perversely themed wall matter from this South Carolina-based project. The just under nineteen-minute release bluntly purrs, clutters, and hacks along.

The Modern Day Crusades serves up two twenty-five-minute slabs of thick ‘n’ grinding walled noise. With each track being as unforgiving and unrelenting as the other.

J.W, Coop is an early 1970s blend of bitter-sweet drama and contemporary western. It regards the titled character, an all-in-denim blue cowboy who gets released after nearly ten years inside, to retake up his rodeo career- the film mixes in road movie elements, as well as fairly extensive real rodeo footage. Here from Imprint is a bare-bones Blu-ray release of the film.