100.0% positive (622 ratings)
Buyer Rating: 100.0% positive (51 ratings)
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Reviews & Discussion:
Maurizio Bianchi - SFAG
Oct 11, 2010
Review by Frans de Waard in Vital Weekly:To change into a wolf, that is what this release is about. Not just a piece of music, but it comes with neatly designed and printed pocket book on the subject of wolves. In history, in military and in legends. A well researched work. I don’t like wolves, or any canine descendent for that matter, but that didn’t stop me from wanting to hear this. Thomas Bey Williams Bailey is someone whose work I respect a lot. He’s one of those people who think about noise and do something that is more interesting than what is regular in that field. For this release he works with a ‘feraliminal lycanthropizer drone modified with “spectral shaping” plug ins’, samples of black metal using the word ‘wolf’, processed vocals spontaneously captured during fits of rage and ‘additional sonic ornamentation, of a too varied nature to list here’. This are put together into a piece of music that lasts almost thirty minutes and that has an unsettling power. Particular loud here, compared to some of his previous work, but Bailey knows how to pull back and add that much needed variation in his work. Brutally loud at times, and unsettling quiet at well chosen times. White static noise, banging metal samples, piercing drones and uncontrolled voices make this both an unsettling and pleasant work. It didn’t change me into a wolf, nor did it make them appreciate more (or perhaps even less, come to think of it), but Bailey proofs once again to be a master of intelligent noise. (Frans de Waard) |
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Edition of 200 copies cassette reissue of an obscure 1981 cassette album from Maurizio Bianchi, originally only available direct from the artist. Paralleling his work on Symphony For A Genocide, this is classic Bianchi, with that heavily-delayed organic/electronic sound that makes for some of his blackest psychedelic Industrial ritual. I still think Heather Leigh’s Jailhouse Rock album is the closest comparison to early-80s Bianchi, that same miasma of F/X damaged sound and staggering implosive rhythms that give the impression of haunting foghorns through cotton wool, and SFAG sounds a lot like some of Heather’s most trashed rock/roll. Some of the keyboard sounds are particularly loopy, almost with an eerie Joe Meek appeal, and the gothic passages of doomy synthesized melody raise it way above the bar. (by David Keenan)