Here’s a two-track digital release, Calgary, Alberta’s CORR//PT│0N_UN1T- each track runs at the twenty-minute mark, and each is a journey into busy & detailed walled noise.

Like A Rock( როგორც კლდე) is a recently released three-track release from  Mtskheta, Georgia‘s Owners Of Knowledge, whose sound mixes elements of walled noise, dense ambience, and field recordings. Each track here rolls in at dead on the twenty-five minute mark, and each is a dense journey into all-enveloping sound craft, which sits at the more focused walled noise end of the project's sound.

Womb is a new horror/slasher movie being made available on digital platforms on 29^th April.

Nine Guests For A Crime is a late 70’s giallo set on a Mediterranean island- with a selection of bickering ‘n’ bitchy of rich folks, glimpses of female flesh, touches of eerier atmospherics, and odd dabs of gore. Here from 88 Films is a new Blu-ray release of the film, featuring a new commentary from three genre experts,  and a mix of new/ archive extras.

Dracones is the latest release from Hüma Utku, who maps and performs a journey from pregnancy to motherhood with astounding clarity and detail. Unlike so many other personal narratives transposed into sound, Dracones is anything but celebratory or self-indulgent. Instead, Utku manages to press our noses up against the immediacy and claustrophobia of the corporeal changes she underwent while making this album, building a dark and moody background through minimal instrumentation. 

Eclipse is a little-known/ rarely-seen British film, which sits somewhere between glum drama and a slowly unfolding psychological thriller. The late 1970s picture is largely set in the wintertime on the lonely and barren Scottish coast. It regards a death at sea, and a small Christmas gathering touched by moments of troubling behaviour, doubt, unsettling reveals- all edged by an uneasy to jarring electronic score, which bubbles up ever so often.  Here from the BFI’s Flipside series is a new Blu-ray release of the film, taking a new 2k scan, new commentary track, and a small selection of new & archive extras.

The Cat ( aka Die Katze) is a late 80s German bank robber thriller, with some distinctive elements, and clever twists 'n’ turns in its make-up. It’s a film that quickly pulls you, then nicely notches up the tension, as a tense chess game-like unfold between the robbers & police. Here, from Radiance for the first time outside Germany, is a Blu-ray release of the film, featuring a new scan of the film, and new interviews/ selected scene commentary track.

Impact, from the late 1940s, is a mix of noir and small-town/ courtroom drama. It concerns a scheming wife who tries to off her big city millionaire husband, but instead, her lover gets killed- though the press reports her husband is dead, as he goes into hiding in small town America, and she goes to the slammer. Here from VCI Entertainment is a dual DVD/Blu-ray release of the film, featuring a commentary track

What's the difference between love and herpes? Herpes lasts forever. In this case, the French band Herpes continued to live on as the old-school death metal-inspired Disfuneral. Ten years into the game, the quartet releases their second full-length, In Horror, Reborn, which is nine tracks of classic death - raw, fast, and thrashing. What they lack in flash, they make up for with passion, and In Horror, Reborn quickly draws the listener in to its old-school revelry. Riffs, dissonance, throaty screams, and propulsive drums meld together to provide a familiar experience; one of fun, headbanging, fist-pumping action.

The Savage 7 is a box set bringing together the early 80s to early 90s studio albums/ selection of rare tracks from W.A.S.P- one of the more consistent, memorable and at points, creative heavy metal bands to appear from the 1980s. The band's sound sits somewhere between the heavier/ rawer side of glam metal, shock rock, and punchy-to-moody heavy metal. This recently released set comes as either a seven-CD set or an eight-vinyl box- I’m reviewing the first of these

The Mill Killers (aka Scopophobia) is a Welsh crime thriller, with undertones of horror, mystery, and nods back towards Giallo films of the 70s. The 2024 film regards a group of grown-up school friends who revisit the run-down industrial town they lived in. A large part of the film takes place in a shadowy, at times downright creepy, abandoned steel works- with some neat plot twists, a few decent scares, and light touches of gore. Here from Miracle Media is a VOD release of the film.

The Wolf House is a 2018 animated horror film from Chile, directed by Cristóbal León and Joaquin Cocina (The Hyperboreans, Los Huesos and Strange Creatures). This duo are regular collaborator and has formed a pretty successful partnership when it comes to writing, directing, producing, and animating what have mostly been short films, up to now. The Wolf House was their first attempt at a feature-length presentation, albeit quite a short one at only 73 minutes.

Changeling plays a jazzy brand of symphonic progressive death metal, with a shade more elegance and tastefulness than most of the scene.  Though they are a new band, they are comprised of veteran musicians.  Their self-titled debut is being released by Season of Mist this year in 2025.

In the history of the Cannes Film Festival, only ten directors have been awarded the prestigious Palme D’Or award on more than one occasion. Whatsmore only one of this exclusive group came from the world of Asian filmmaking. In fact, it took Japanese director Shohei Imamura, whose film career started back in the late fifties first as a writer before moving swiftly into directing, nearly thirty years to win the first of his two awards with 1983’s brutal The Ballad of Narayama. His second arrived 14 years later when after an almost decade-long hiatus Imamura unleashed the magical and touching Unagi aka The Eel.

Harakiri for the Sky are an Austrian post-black metal band formed in Salzburg and Vienna in 2011. Scorched Earth is the 6th full-length album from the duo of vocalist, JJ (Michael "V. Wahntraum" Kogler) and multi-instrumentalist Matthias Solla, formerly of black metal band Bifrost.

It was back in 2018 that saxophonist Jean Jacques Duerinckx came together with guitar-vocalist Guillaume Cazalet to form the genre-defying, boundary-pushing collective Neptunian Maximalism aka NNMM. Pulling on the Sun Ra inspired concept of the Arkestra, NNMM blend drone with free jazz and doom metal predicated on a sense of ritual, primal rhythm and otherworldliness. Untethered by expectations, their works range in intensity and scale as its members switch between genres, while always leaning heavily into the power of live performance. As such, their latest release, Le Sacre Du Soleil Invaincu is a voyage through the world of raga revisiting and reworking three classical Indian pieces recorded over four nights at St John’s Church in London’s Bethnal Green. 

From the late 70’s, Thirst is one of the more original/ distinctive takes on vampiric cinema. The contemporary set Australian film adds elements of kidnap thriller, drama, and sci-fi into its genre mix. It regards one of the descendants Elizabeth Bathory- been abducted by a high-tech blood sucking cult. Here, from Powerhouse- either as a UHD or Blu-ray- is a new release of the film. Taking in a new  4K scan, and an archive/ few new extras.

Booger is a coming-to-terms-with-grief drama, wrapped in elements of dark humour, body-horror, and indie artiness. The New York City-set film focuses on twenty-something Anna, whose close friend/ apartment mate has recently passed. She gets obsessed with finding ‘Booger’, the stray cat the pair had, who has recently disappeared. Here from Arrow Video UK is a Blu-ray release of the 2023 film, featuring a few extras.

Pyroclastic Sleep is a thirty-seven-minute slab of densely slipping, sliding, and searing noise craft, which sits somewhere between walled and harsh noise. It’s the first release from SADOPRAXIA- a new collaborative project between two Polish noise acts- Sado Riutals and ECHOPRAXIA.

Taking environmental recordings to the next level, Natasha Barrett utilizes 3D ambisonic microphones to capture the sonic imprint of various locations in exciting new ways. With this as a base, she then transforms the sounds and atmospheres into abstract works that will give the listener an entirely new approach toward the area as initially perceived. Toxic Colour is her latest work, with five pieces of intricately recorded and deconstructed soundscapes to tickle one's brain.

Here’s an Untitled split between two US wall projects- Chianti Ohio's Polyester Ghost, and South Carolina’s  Absurd Reality. The former severs up two shorter/ tauter tracks. While the latter gives us a single slice of longer/ slightly harmonic/ densely moody wall.

Kawaii From The Edge is the very welcome return of Portland’s Hana Haruna, who is one of the more creative projects working within today's walled noise scene. I’m happy to report this new album is up to Hana Haruna's normal high standards, with each of the three twenty-minute tracks blending rewarding/distinctive layering, ambient elements, and a generally skilled/ creative approach.

Here’s a new four-track release from Tucson, Arizona’s Ennaytch- and as we’ve come to expect from the project, it’s another trip into interestingly/ creatively layered wall craft. 

Girl With A Suitcase is a 1961 black and white drama directed by Bologna-born Valerio Zurlini.  It is presented here in a crisp restored version from Radiance in a limited edition of three thousand copies.

Here is another mini-CDR from Inner Demons Records, featuring the work of Sven Phalanx whom I was completely ignorant of, I’m afraid. The packaging and artwork is very diy, and that’s great; in a time when noise releases can be increasingly professional or deluxe there’s something refreshing about a no frills, old school, ‘bedroom released’ noise album: those expensive Urashima vinyl reissues you buy started off like this. Navigation has five tracks, all reasonably different and all ranging from around three minutes to five minutes in length.

80 is a collage work of samples and snippets culled from the eponymous decade and worked into two long tracks, each with a rather telegraphic title, "80:81:82:83:84" and "85:86:87:88:89", respectively. This is the third and final installment in a trilogy that began with 60, and then 70. The source material is necessarily limited in the scope of such a copy-and-paste project, so the familiarity with the sampled sounds will certainly depend on where you spent your 80s, or how you came to acquire an affinity for said decade. Why the archive fever? The question seems to linger like the stale air of a basement room throughout, whether intended or not.

Drawings is a two-CD release bringing together five pieces from up-and-coming Berlin-based modern classical composer, whose work bridges the gap between atmospheric simmering and hauntingly harmonic.

Penumbra serves up four slices of low-key, pared-back, and glumly fragile modern classic minimalism. Think Morton Feldman at his more drifting & fragilely fraught- you’ll get an idea of what is on offer here.

Here, we have a recent, more grown-up cinematic retelling of the classic Brothers Grimm fairy tale, which concerns a miller's daughter making a deal with a forest imp. This new version has a darker, more adult hue with swearier language, sexual suggestion, and fleeting nudity, though until its last quarter, it remains a period drama with fantasy edges...where, after more horror elements come in. Here from Miracle Media is a VOD release of the film.

Rats: Night Of The Terror is a campy, creepy, and action-edged slice of post-nuke sci-fi horror. The early 80s cheapie Euro cult film is a schlocky & enjoyable ride, with touches of gore, cheesy tough guy to OTT acting, and a moody-to-bounding electro score. Here from Severin is a three-disc release of the film, taking in a UHD, Blu-ray, and CD. The set takes in a 4k scan of the film, three hours of new/ archive extras, and the film's score on the CD.

Here, Severin brings us, for the first time on UHD, Antiviral- the award-winning 2012 debut feature from Brandon Cronenberg  (Possessor and Infinity Pool). Brandon is not only the son of legendary body horror maestro David Cronenberg, but he is his father’s natural successor, creating smart, subversive body horror that harks back to David’s finest work from the 70s and 80s.

Originally released in 1992, this legendary compilation from the classic period of Japanese noise got a loving remaster and re-release through Cold Spring. Closing out 2024 with a bang, Noise Forest resurrects the limited, hard-to-find compilation featuring some of the heaviest of heavyweights to ever scorch feedback through their distortion pedals. Readers of Musique Machine will be familiar with Merzbow, Masonna, Incapacitants, C.C.C.C., and the others, but many most likely have never heard this compilation before. Like a wonderful time machine, Cold Spring's re-release of Noise Forest brings us back to a magical time when noise was starting to hit the world scene and opening the eyes (ears?) of extreme music fans across the globe.

Blue Sunshine is a difficult-to-bracket late 70s film that sits somewhere between a conspiracy thriller, drug-fueled drama, and deranged horror film. It regards a batch of bad acid, which, ten years after being taken, is causing those who took it to turn into bald & demented killing machines. Here from Synapse Films is a new classy three-disc set of the film, taking in a UHD, Blu-Ray, and CD soundtrack, taking in 4K restoration of the film, a good selection, inlay booklet, foldout poster, slip case/ sleeve.

Death Streamer is tech focused vampire picture regarding a group of blood suckers who stream their killings, but then things go somewhat askew when a group of YouTube vloggers tune into the stream by mistake. The film is the second in Charles Band’s ‘Pulp Noir’ series, which is all about creating edgier, darker and scarier sort of genre entertainment. The film ups both the gore & nudity of a typical Band production, with a more active use of CGI. Here from Full Moon Pictures- is a Blu Ray release of the film.

Blind Ambitions is a thirty-three-minute slab of rabid ‘n’ rapid walled noise. The  track features a punishingly crude unfold, and as soon as it kicks in, you're pinned down- not let up until the track finishes.

Remember is a half-hour wall that retains a punishing and thick presence. The MDS( Most Dangerous Soldier) is one of the more recent projects of Leeds-based Peter Beswick( Carrion, Meanwood Beck, Utterblight).

Here from 88 Films, as part of their Nikkatsu studios Roman Porno series of reissues, is Yumeno Kyusaku’s Girl Hell. The late 1970s film is set at an elite girls' finishing school in the 30’s- it regards the relationship between two girls, and the male depravity/perversion that surrounds them. The picture shifts from sordid, at points, troubling/ brutal melodrama into a surreally edged ghost story in its last quarter. The release comes in the form of a region B Blu-ray- this features a new crisp HD scan, a new commentary, and a few other extras

During the early 80s- the golden age of the slasher film- as with any popular genre, it got its fair share of parodies/ send-ups, and 1982’s Wacko is one such film.  It took a decidedly bloodless, bad taste to ridiculous humour-laden, and often manic take on stalking ‘n’ slashing form, sending up not just the genre, but other horror/ impactful cinematic fare of the period. Here, from 88 Films- as part of their slasher classic collection series- is a new Blu-ray release of the picture, featuring a new commentary track from the slasher-loving podcast The Hysteria Continues.

Black Cab is a 2024 film that attempts to blend together a kidnapping cabbie thriller, with an uneasy ghost story. Playing the films, at first happy-go-lucky, later unbalanced/ unpredictable, cab driver is Nick Frost(  Space, Shaun Of The Dead, Paul). Here from Acon Entertainment is a Blu-ray release of the film.

Russian digital glitch artist Ivan Pavlov, AKA CoH, has long been one of my favorite musicians, from his refined, minimalist solo work on Raster Noton to his magickal collaboration with Sleazy of Coil in the form of SoiSong.  As such, I am excited to comment on his latest collaborative work, the first he has done with instrumentalist and producer Midori Hirano, who here plays piano.  Pavlov has done several other such collaborations in which his role is digital processing and arrangement of a performance of an acoustic instrument by his collaborator.

Ninja Legends is a four-CD box set bringing together all the output of the Japanese-born, London-based two-piece Frank Chickens, who blended Western pop tropes with tacky to traditional eastern elements. They have a genre-blended sound that shifts between the quirky, tuneful, and moodily theatrical. The set takes in the project's three ’80s studio albums- We Are Frank Chickens, Get Chickenized, and Club Monkey- with the fourth disc taking in the project's 80's BBC sessions.

Noriko Baba is a Japanese modern classical composer whose work blends more nostalgic and traditional harmonies with pitch warping, jarringly sear, and general off-kilter-ness. Here from Austria’s Kairos music is a seven-piece/ten-track album, collecting together her work from the years 2008 and 2022.

From “String Quartet(s)” is a seventy-two-minute journey into shifting/ unpredictable sound craft, which moves between modern string composition, all-out noise, and a mix of the two.

Primarily relying on the resonant sections of discarded pipe organs, Miłosz Kędra has crafted an album that is something greater than the sum of its jettisoned limbs. In short, repurposing, or reusing, really, pipe organ segments is a kind of aesthetic program within the field of musical composition, something akin to ragpicking in the 19th century. 

Watch If You Dare To is a 2024 straight-to-video horror anthology film featuring seven new tales of terror. This is a follow-up to the earlier Watch If You Dare released in 2018. 

Horror Terror is a short wall noise split bringing together two Polish projects-Warsaw’s ELEKTR0BATH, and Olsztyn’s Olion. Both parties offer up a brutal and truly unforgiving shot of wall-craft.

Téra is a twenty-two-minute slice of searing ‘n’ baying wall noise from Bordeaux-based Raté. The cover art features a somewhat abstract picture of clouds and the top of a building, and this is rather fitting, as the ‘wall’ does have a rather rushing feel through the buffeting air/ thick clouds quilty about it.

Here we have two dense & compacted slices of walled noise from this Chianti Ohio project. Each runs at around the twenty-minute mark, and each is an effective enclosing & bass-edged example of the wall form

The Swamp Mansion of the Crocodile People / Hellfire & Honeycomb is a walled noise split with a dense to moody sound, and a southern gothic theme. It features Poland’s Sado Rituals with a nearly thirty-minute track, and three tracks from the rather mysterious Polarlicht running between seven and nine minutes.

Avari is a C90 album from the French harsh to wall noise project Trou. It takes in four Roman numeral titled ‘walls’, which all have a decidedly clattering, raw, at points atmospheric quality.

Adela Has Not Had Supper Yet (aka Adéla Jeste Nevecerela) is a late 1970s Czech film, which is a pulp parody/ proto steampunk edged blend of comedy, mystery, and man-eating plant horror.  It regards a ‘world famous’ American gumshoe going to Prague, looking for a lost dog and finding a master criminal/ uncovering his dastardly plans.  Here from Deaf Crocodile is a region one/ A Blu-ray release of the film, including a new scan of the picture, a commentary track, and a few other extras.

Over his forty-year career, and nearing one hundred feature-length films, America's low-budget horror/ sci-fi director Mark Polonia has tackled most sub-genres. But one he’s never attempted, until now, is the giallo. The Girl Who Wore Yellow Lace is his first stab (pun very much intended) at the genre, and it’s colour-filtered, black gloved/ masked killer-bound affair with a few fleshy moments. Here from SRS Cinema is a DVD release of the film, including in a director's commentary.

Deep Blue Sea is a late 90s sharksploitation film, which sits at the larger budgeted end of the genre, featuring stars such as Samuel L. Jackson, Stellan Skarsgård, and L L Cool J. The film is set in an isolated sea-based research facility, where scientists are enlarging the brain/intelligence of three sharks to try and find a cure for Alzheimer's, but when a sea storm sweeps in, things go more than a little wrong. The film features largely realistic-looking shark /effects, some rewarding thrills, sharks stalking down flooded corridors, and a few moments of gore. Here from Arrow Video- both in the UK and Stateside- is a new release of the film. The release comes as either a UHD or Blu-ray, featuring a new crisp 4 K scan, two new commentary tracks, and a selection of new archive extras.

Sephiroth's seminal Cathedron gets the deluxe reissue treatment in both 2xLP and CD formats this spring from Cyclic Law. 26 years since its initial release, Cathedron still stands as a classic in the dark ambient genre, and this reissue aims to make even more lifelong fans. Limited in both CD and 2xLP formats (300 of each), collectors looking to add a crisp, clean classic to their collection should snatch this up.