Even though my player is driving me insane sometimes with complete unpredictability when a tape is worthy of being played and when not; eventually the machine will bend to my will. And I will keep feeding it with new stuff. Here the most recent additions to my cassette collection:
DEEPSKY - 1 Galactic Instant (2024)
At least as long as I haven't been to a full festival again, I'm still affected by the Post Roadburn Blues, so it seems fitting to begin with a tape I bought directly from the artists after their Offroad show in Tilburg's public library.
In little over forty minutes "1 Galactic Instant" features cosmic Ambient improvisations from 2023, recorded during two shows in Tilburg and one live stream.
In little over forty minutes "1 Galactic Instant" features cosmic Ambient improvisations from 2023, recorded during two shows in Tilburg and one live stream.
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| Deepsky live in Tilburg 2025 |
The guitar and effects / drums and percussions duo doesn't linger on ideas as endlessly as many other Psychedelic artists would do, but they're also not changing things up so fast that it could pull you out of the floating escapist state this music creates.
And even when Carmen Ra and Koen Wijnen get a bit louder and daring like towards the end of "Neptune" or play with a certain tension when they are "Circling the Ice Giant", the're always doing it within the atmospheric framework they've established.
Deepsky aren't on a mission to reinvent the wheel of relaxing Space music, but they're putting an interesting personal spin on it.
And even when Carmen Ra and Koen Wijnen get a bit louder and daring like towards the end of "Neptune" or play with a certain tension when they are "Circling the Ice Giant", the're always doing it within the atmospheric framework they've established.
Deepsky aren't on a mission to reinvent the wheel of relaxing Space music, but they're putting an interesting personal spin on it.
TEMPÊTE SOLAIRE - Heliospheric Dialogues (2024)
My second tape souvenir wasn't actually for sale at the festival, but a gift I received from a fellow Roadburner, who brought it with him from Montreal, because he thought I might appreciate it more than other people who he could have given it to. And you can be sure that I'm indeed enjoying it very much.
Tempête Solaire is a trio featuring Drone guitar master Eric Quach (thisquietarmy), which is already a plus. Yet this also fuels expectations this EP is subverting y being much more Jazz-oriented than what I've heard of his huge output so far.
His role next to Eric Craven on drums and Elyze Venne-Deshaies on saxophone is not even playing guitar, but eight-string bass. In "Nuages Magnétiques" they are starting on a vivid Free Jazz journey with some eery modern effect twists. It's dark and droning, yet also Spiritual and transcendent.
Both the "Dove Manoeuvre" and "Syzygy" show a more Psychedelic, yet also faster and much funkier side of Tempête Solaire. But don't think you have figured these tracks out too quick, because the unsettling Space sounds and distortions you wouldn't have heard in your grandpa's Jazz trio, will probably correct your assumptions immediately. It's a special niche sound. And I wish we could hear more of it that these very fine nineteen minutes.
Tempête Solaire is a trio featuring Drone guitar master Eric Quach (thisquietarmy), which is already a plus. Yet this also fuels expectations this EP is subverting y being much more Jazz-oriented than what I've heard of his huge output so far.
His role next to Eric Craven on drums and Elyze Venne-Deshaies on saxophone is not even playing guitar, but eight-string bass. In "Nuages Magnétiques" they are starting on a vivid Free Jazz journey with some eery modern effect twists. It's dark and droning, yet also Spiritual and transcendent.
Both the "Dove Manoeuvre" and "Syzygy" show a more Psychedelic, yet also faster and much funkier side of Tempête Solaire. But don't think you have figured these tracks out too quick, because the unsettling Space sounds and distortions you wouldn't have heard in your grandpa's Jazz trio, will probably correct your assumptions immediately. It's a special niche sound. And I wish we could hear more of it that these very fine nineteen minutes.
BONG-RA - Black Noise (2025)
It took me a while to decide in which format I wanted to purchase the new album of Jason Köhnen's main band, which once again has shifted its shape significantly.
I ultimately chose the tape from Tartarus Records over vinyl or CD, because the simple black box just fits the album title "Black Noise" the best.
Musically Bong-Ra partly returns to the Electronic break-beat solo project days as last celebrated on "Vaseline", completely abandons the saxophone Jazz elements of "Meditations", but definitely keeps the riff power and heaviness of "Antediluvian".
You can also expect sludgy Doom influences, yet embedded in a very different context, because the now Industrial Metal trio (which has since also released a cover of Godflesh's "Cold World") just is a different beast.
As I haven't been to keen on every of Köhnen's past combinations of Metal and electronic beats I came in a bit sceptical and needed a couple of listens until I was fully hooked, but boy, these nine tracks are actually an enormously satisfying throwback to the heydays of Nineties Industrial Metal, including a certain two-dimensional flatness of its synthetic sounds and sawing guitars. But somehow it's just what this delightfully demonic soundtrack to the demolition of mankind needs.
Select influences from Jourgensen and Broadrick, killer riffs, distorted hollow screams, obligatory voice samples and a mad drum computer going berserk. And the gruesome hopeless darkness of the closer "Blissful Ignorance" alone... Yeah, that's some great brutal noise. "Black Noise" rules.
I ultimately chose the tape from Tartarus Records over vinyl or CD, because the simple black box just fits the album title "Black Noise" the best.
Musically Bong-Ra partly returns to the Electronic break-beat solo project days as last celebrated on "Vaseline", completely abandons the saxophone Jazz elements of "Meditations", but definitely keeps the riff power and heaviness of "Antediluvian".
You can also expect sludgy Doom influences, yet embedded in a very different context, because the now Industrial Metal trio (which has since also released a cover of Godflesh's "Cold World") just is a different beast.
As I haven't been to keen on every of Köhnen's past combinations of Metal and electronic beats I came in a bit sceptical and needed a couple of listens until I was fully hooked, but boy, these nine tracks are actually an enormously satisfying throwback to the heydays of Nineties Industrial Metal, including a certain two-dimensional flatness of its synthetic sounds and sawing guitars. But somehow it's just what this delightfully demonic soundtrack to the demolition of mankind needs.
Select influences from Jourgensen and Broadrick, killer riffs, distorted hollow screams, obligatory voice samples and a mad drum computer going berserk. And the gruesome hopeless darkness of the closer "Blissful Ignorance" alone... Yeah, that's some great brutal noise. "Black Noise" rules.
LÉSION ÉTRANGE - Lésion Étrange (2025)
Think there's an easy cheat code for writing music reviews by just reading the Bandcamp tags? Well, then try this release by Arsenic Solaris: "black metal experimental extreme metal drone free improvisation jazz jazzgaze noise postrock Lyon".
Well, ok... forget what I've just said, because this actually helps, I guess. So why do I even bother always to find my own angle? Whatever, these two longtracks of twenty-three ("Alpha") and eighteen ("Omega") minutes by Lésion Étrange are really something!
Imagine Olhava's infinity-embracing Blackgaze, but with a more Heavy Jazz-reminisent drumming. A hypnotic swirl of Post Rock guitar licks and layers of Noise spiraling towards... a resolution in smooth yet menacing, dynamically grooving Ambient atmosphere, which finally grows back into the beautiful primal chaos of creation.
A dissonant yet magnetically transfixing meditation fades into celestial Drone. Ghost winds are howling through the void until they are blasted away by an annihilating Blut Aus Nord cacaphony. Only a soothing triumvirate of Swing, Folk and Ambient can bring you down after this.
Phew, what a journey!
Well, ok... forget what I've just said, because this actually helps, I guess. So why do I even bother always to find my own angle? Whatever, these two longtracks of twenty-three ("Alpha") and eighteen ("Omega") minutes by Lésion Étrange are really something!
Imagine Olhava's infinity-embracing Blackgaze, but with a more Heavy Jazz-reminisent drumming. A hypnotic swirl of Post Rock guitar licks and layers of Noise spiraling towards... a resolution in smooth yet menacing, dynamically grooving Ambient atmosphere, which finally grows back into the beautiful primal chaos of creation.
A dissonant yet magnetically transfixing meditation fades into celestial Drone. Ghost winds are howling through the void until they are blasted away by an annihilating Blut Aus Nord cacaphony. Only a soothing triumvirate of Swing, Folk and Ambient can bring you down after this.
Phew, what a journey!
BRUIT ≤ - The Age Of Ephemerality (2025)
The surely most noted album of this lot has to be the new work of the French Post Rockers Bruit ≤, which comes with a self-conception the word ambituous seems almost too small for.
Recorded as a patchwork of different techniques and approaches, from programmed demos over free improvisations to explorations of sonic space in a church with a variety of guest musicians on brass and guitars, "The Age Of Ephemerality" feels like a snapshot of humanity from a cosmic perspective.
What happened so suddenly between the age of a depopulated Europe under feudal religious reign and the post-capitalist chains of global digital slaverey?
You could write books upon books about questions like this. Or you let this band which talks remarkably loud and detailed about its process and message for an instrumental group, actually deliver on the promise of their words and give you at least a highly impressive idea of an answer while they melt together centuries of musical expression from church organ and classical strings to analogue synthesizers, digital programming and the huge dynamic potential of dreaming, contemplating, urging and devastating Post Rock to a towering whole that can hardly be believed to be created just by four dudes from France and their friends.
Even though it's put together from a lot more fragmented, sometimes seemingly random pieces, this album even eclipses the band's widely lauded 2021 release "The Machine Is Burning And Now Everyone Knows It Could Happen Again". This is how you fill instrumental Post Rock with meaning to the brim. Absolutely huge!
Thankfully the creators of this tape edition from Frozen Records took it as serious as it deserves and didn't half-ass its design.
Recorded as a patchwork of different techniques and approaches, from programmed demos over free improvisations to explorations of sonic space in a church with a variety of guest musicians on brass and guitars, "The Age Of Ephemerality" feels like a snapshot of humanity from a cosmic perspective.
What happened so suddenly between the age of a depopulated Europe under feudal religious reign and the post-capitalist chains of global digital slaverey?
You could write books upon books about questions like this. Or you let this band which talks remarkably loud and detailed about its process and message for an instrumental group, actually deliver on the promise of their words and give you at least a highly impressive idea of an answer while they melt together centuries of musical expression from church organ and classical strings to analogue synthesizers, digital programming and the huge dynamic potential of dreaming, contemplating, urging and devastating Post Rock to a towering whole that can hardly be believed to be created just by four dudes from France and their friends.
Even though it's put together from a lot more fragmented, sometimes seemingly random pieces, this album even eclipses the band's widely lauded 2021 release "The Machine Is Burning And Now Everyone Knows It Could Happen Again". This is how you fill instrumental Post Rock with meaning to the brim. Absolutely huge!
Thankfully the creators of this tape edition from Frozen Records took it as serious as it deserves and didn't half-ass its design.
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