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Accident Fantôme is the portmanteau for the project of two otherwise autonomous, established musical duos, Accident du Travail and Fantôme Josepha. United by shared interests in historical instruments and long-form, ambient drone composition, the four gathered in an old church in a village just west of Metz (where some of the group are based) early last year to perform and record together.
Here’s a CD serving up three works for flute composed by Italian avant-garde/ modern classical composer Luigi Nono (1924- 1990), with a fourth by Nono collaborator Roberto Fabbriciani, who also plays flute/ piccolo here. The sound on offer here is a nice mix of moodily seared, eerily abstract, and tautly ambient, with a great use of compositional space.
Revolutions is a long-form drone work from American composer/guitarist David First for twelve players. It’s based on the 16th through 32nd harmonics of the note G—a sound world, which resides largely outside of traditional Western musical instruments and training.
The Hazing is an entertaining ‘n’ fast-moving mix of horror, dark fantasy, and comedy. The early 2000’s film regards a group of pledges being sent to a creepy mansion for an initiation. But instead of pranks & tricks, they come face-to-face with a body jumping demon, that is focused on killing them all….think like if Hell Night and The Evil Dead had a straight-to-VHS baby. Here from Wild Eye Releasing is a bare bones DVD release of the film.
Forbidden World (Mutant) is an early 80’s shot of camp, gooey, gory, and sleazy Sci-fi horror. It’s largely set within the confines of a science facility on a desert alien planet. The film has a great breakneck pace, with moments of jerky/ jarring visual collage- flashing back & forth through the picture's timeline. From 88 Films, here’s a new dual UHD and Blu-Ray release of the movie. It features two versions of the film, three commentary tracks, and a good selection of extras.
Released in the early 70’s, Desire First Sex Experience ( aka Yokujô Shotaiken) was the first of six roman porno films filmed in Sweden by Japanese studio Nikkatsu- making for a curious blend of Scandinavian and Asian takes on softcore erotica.
Following up 2021's Additive Inverse, Jim O'Rourke & Jos Smolders come together again for more sonic experimentation and procedural processing with Albumin. Their second on Moving Furniture, these two tracks showcase Jim's Kyma System generating the basis of the album before both he and Jos altered them separately in their studios. The result is a shimmering and ambulating collection of textures that flows, drifts, and pulls the listener into its midst to carry them forth through the duo's process. Working very well together, the pair combine sounds to form an enigmatic sonic stew, unpredictable and enjoyable, collected and concentrated.
From the early 60’s Los Golfos (The Delinquents) focuses on a youth gang in Madrid. As the film progresses, their crimes get steadily worse, though one of their number has possibly found a way out of a life of crime, becoming a matador. It’s a neo-realist film, shot in a gritty documentary style, really giving one a feel of the city & its suburbs. Though the film does have a rather unpleasant tone, with moments of animal cruelty. Here from Radiance Films is a Blu-ray release of the film, taking in a 4k scan, and a selection of old and new extras.
From the early 1980’s, Special Effects was Larry Cohen's (It’s Alive Trilogy, The Stuff, God Told Me To Do It) take on the then-popular erotic thriller genre, with a twist of snuff-focused horror. It regards a blonde-haired Dolly Parton look-alike coming to NYC to make it in acting, who ends up dead, and a down-on-his-luck director played by Eric Bogosian (Talk Radio, Uncut Gems) decides to make a film with the lead suspect in the case. Here from Transmission, Radiance sub-label is a Blu-ray release of the film, featuring a new & archive commentary track, and two new interviews.
Cécile is Dead is an early 1940’s French detective mystery- blending in touches of noir, and light brushes of humour. It’s a decidedly dialogue-heavy affair, with a fair few suspects for the murder of three women being investigated by the cool, calm, and pipe-smoking Inspector Maigret. Here from Eurkea’s Master Of Cinema series is a Blu Ray release of the film, taking in HD scan, a new commentary track, and a mix of new archive extras.
Woken (2024) is a dystopian sci-fi thriller arriving on UK digital on 25 May via 101 Films. Written by Alan Friel (Cake) and Rebecca Pollock (Stolen Girl), and directed by Friel in his feature-length directorial debut, the film follows Anna (Erin Kellyman), a pregnant woman who wakes on a remote island with complete amnesia, surrounded by strangers claiming to be her loved ones. As she struggles to piece together her fractured memories, she discovers a horrifying truth: humanity is on the brink of extinction, and nothing on this island is what it seems.
51926 is an example of eerie, atmospheric, and low-key industrial-toned walled noise from Wisconsin’s Vacant Align. This is a single forty-five-minute track release.
XXX severs up two tautly textured walls from this Czech project. Each runs around the ten-minute mark, and each is as tense/ airless as the other.
Tribe is a sci-fi/horror found footage film regarding a retired professor clawing back his sanity, when he finds himself stuck in the California mountains, unable to drive with his body altered & his mind frazzled. The 2025 film blends elements of unfolding mystery, body horror, and cosmic horror- with moments of glitching dark surrealism. Here from GrimmVision is a VOD release of the film.
Brazilian filmmaker Paulo Nascimento, best known for the dramas A Oeste do Fim do Mundo and Em Teu Nome, makes his English-language debut in 2026 with the supernatural horror film 13 Souls. Dripping in heavy-handed atmosphere, it joins the legacy of young-girl-possessed films. But while it adds a mighty mythological twist, it’s let down by an overearnest approach and an underworked script.
Here from the BFI here is the 6th in their CFF bumper boxset series, which collects together British children's films from between the 50’s and the 80’s. All the films here were produced by The Children's Film Foundation (CFF)- a non-profit organisation that, between the late 1940s & 1980s, made one hundred and seventy-plus films, each running just under the hour mark. This three-DVD set brings together nine films & five shorts, and once again it’s an entertaining & fun set
From the early 2000’s, Fungicide is a huge dose of bad cinema- the acting shifts dead-eyed or OTT, there are 90’s PC grade special effects, overload sound effects, cheap in-camera effects, cheap puppets ‘n’ gore, etc. We are very much in the same territory as that classic of so-bad-it’s great of Birdemic: Shock and Terror(2008), but instead of birds, the terror here is, as its title suggests, mushrooms, which are either portrayed by either bad PC graphics, teethy puppets, or someone dressed up in a mushroom suit. Here from Visual Vengeance is a Blu-ray- featuring new & archive commentary tracks, a RIFFTRAX version of the film, and a few more things.
The Shroud is a 2022 Italian horror movie written and directed by Fabrizio Spurio (Vanity, Instinct and Innesti) and starring Francesco Lonigro (Instinct, Gazzelle: Polynesia and Put Grandma in the Freezer), Chiara Pavoni (Employee’s Mystery, Corona Days and Blue Sunset), Monica Rondino (Thanatos - Impulsi di Morte) and Andrea Pacilli (who also scored the movie).
Carving their own path through the juicy flesh of the death metal world, Japan's Defiled have continued to shred and thrash, unabated and influential, for nearly three and a half decades. Two thirds of that time have been with Season of Mist, and the label has provided the band with an outlet for their ever evolving brand of death metal. Impossible to pin down, Defiled have utilized all forms of extreme metal and hardcore to deliver their message, and their latest, Altered State, is no exception. While their style may change and evolve from one album to the next, one thing is a given: their ability to deliver a frenetic, fun, headbanging frenzy.
Here’s the third volume in the Twilight Of Perception series. Each three-CD set in this series serves up a selection of rare and unreleased tracks from between the mid 1990’s and early 2000’s by Euro ambient pioneer Vidna Obmana, aka Dirk Serries. The set features eighteen tracks in all, with a good variation in both the tone and atmosphere, moving from lulling n’drifting ambience, all the way through upbeat / rhythmic-edged ethnic ambient works.
Atonauer is the most recent project from Finnish polymath, Lauri Wuolio, and the first offering, Ocean in A, is a minimalist triumph that stands out among electronic drone works of late. The title of the release — combining an earth element with a particular note — recalls Terry Riley’s seminal In C (1964) and A Rainbow in Curved Air (1969), though Atonauer’s really makes use of the water motif. The work as a whole feels submerged in a dark expanse, absent any native light source. The sea is also transit, marking the transatlantic journey between Finland and New York, where the bulk of Ocean in A was recorded.
Matador is a darkly comic erotic thriller from director Pedro Almodovar (The Skin I Live In, Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down and Volver). Released in 1986 the film stars Almodovar favourite Antonio Banderas (The Mask of Zorro, Desperado and Interview with the Vampire), Assumpta Serna (The Craft, Wild Orchid and The Shooter), Nacho Martinez ( famous for his voice actor work on the Spanish dubs of 1984, Frankenstein and The Bride of Frankenstein), Eva Cobo (Armour of God II, The Legend of Wisely and Pasos) and Julieta Serrano (Women on the verge of a Nervous Breakdown, Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down and Dark Habits)
Ard Bit is the project of Norwegian Ard Janssen. The new album is called Juxtaposed, forty two minutes of intentional electronic soundscape, with muted pastel colors, nine tracks ranging from two to seven minutes.
Tinokuknoi Arevulopapo is the new project from Lea Cummings (King Futile, Kylie Minoise, Official Music Team, etc) and Sarah Glass, who has collaborated with Lea on a few projects. The project takes its name from a character in a Philip K. Dick short story, and Irata is a single-track affair. The forty-seven-minute instrumental track shifts between droned-out moodiness, ritual alien sound-scaping, tolling ambient industrial, and beyond